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Boydstun

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Posts posted by Boydstun

  1. I have not read the more famous biography of Ayn Rand, the one by Barbara Branden, which was made into a movie. I have read the following biography by Nathaniel Branden.

    The book MY YEARS WITH AYN RAND is a recounting of all the years the author Nathaniel Branden was connected with Ayn Rand and his years beyond direct connection up to the time of Rand’s death in 1982. The story begins when Nathan was 14 years old (1944) and first read THE FOUNTAINHEAD. The story has a lot more autobiography of the author than I had expected, but as it went along, I could see how that was sensible for the sort of personal-psychology reflectiveness with which the author is saturated and saturates this story. 

    Near the end of the book, Branden writes:

    “Here is what I believe: Ayn was a great thinker and a great woman. She was also a struggling human being, as we all are. If one cannot understand her humanity, shortcomings included, one cannot fully appreciate her greatness; one cannot know Ayn Rand.”

    It is those “shortcomings” which the author thinks he has conveyed within his book (and which I do not accede to as being shortcomings) that might bring others not myself to conclude that the book reflects negatively on the person Ayn Rand. The author may have had that as part of his purpose, but it does not succeed with me.

    Late in life, I have asked myself the common question: Would you do anything different were you able to live your life again? The first thing that came to my mind was that I wished I were more patient and gentler with some of my immediate family (now deceased), not cutting them (and other people) off and out of my life for long periods so brutally (even if deserved). But then I think on it a little further and realize that that is ridiculous. Supposing I were the same person of the moments in the hypothetical reliving, I would have made the same choices and behaviors. (I say that from knowing that my personality in that respect has not changed.) And a 20-20 hindsight perspective on a whole life is simply garbage anyway. Real life is, at most all times of it, with an unknown and indeed not-yet-set course, among potential distant-future courses growing out of present choices.

    I can think of a “shortcoming” in my personality: that I was pretty shy and, in some situations, insecure. But what on earth does such a thought mean? That I would have been better off as a youth had I not been me in those respects? Honestly, fully, the “I” would be an equivocation. Such an exercise is foolishness.

    There are some things simple to change and still be oneself. When I was a youth, I hunted. I killed wildlife, which we ate, not that we couldn’t go to the grocery store. When I learned Rand’s theory of ethics, though there seemed no implication about hunting (mainly for sport), hunting seemed to me out of tune in sensibility with that ethical basis I had come to accept. I stopped going hunting, later sold my shotgun, and remained the same essential self.

    So, I do not accede to the usual easy talk of “shortcomings” of real persons concerning their personalities. Furthermore, insofar as “shortcomings” is meant to entail a moral failing, there can be no such thing for characteristic behavioral responses over which one has no originative genuine choice.

    I gather that, in context, the “shortcomings” in Rand the person, referred to in Branden’s paragraph I quoted above, were mainly responsive behaviors towards persons in her presence and with backdrop for her a love affair with the author, whom Rand had greatly admired. That it had been and had ended, and her attitude towards it all in old age, seemed natural and nothing “shortcoming” to me. 

    I take issue with an assertion, additionally, in that quoted paragraph. That is the idea that in knowing personal particulars about a person—such as how went the dinner party we made for a couple last night or what physical labor I like most to do or who all turns me on or who was my unrequited would-be lover—are NOT more my humanity or more who I am than my prose writing, most of all, my scholarly papers. Nothing is more me than my mind, and nothing shows that thing so much as my written works. I earnestly suggest the same is so for the person Ayn Rand or any writer.

  2. Appellate court for D.C. federal court in the case United States of America v. Donald J. Trump has ruled that the former President does not have immunity against criminal prosecutions. I expect the U.S. Supreme Court to let the ruling and its reasoning stand by not accepting an appeal.

    Quote

    Since then, hundreds of people who breached the Capitol on January 6, 2021, have been prosecuted and imprisoned. And on August 1, 2023, in Washington, D.C., former President Trump was charged in a four-count Indictment as a result of his actions challenging the election results and interfering with the sequence set forth in the Constitution for the transfer of power from one President to the next. Former President Trump moved to dismiss the Indictment and the district court denied his motion. Today, we affirm the denial. For the purpose of this criminal case, former President Trump has become citizen Trump, with all of the defenses of any other criminal defendant. But any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as President no longer protects him against this prosecution.

     

  3. Tad, from whom is this quoted "Privileged and Confidential" opinion? Was it composed after the decision in Moore v. Harper? I gather it was not, since it refers to VP Pence in the present tense. I defer to the Supreme Court on the constitutionality of the quoted scheme. What they imply about such a scheme might be gleaned from full study of the majority opinion in Moore v. Harper, which I'll leave to you, as I'm smelling the blood in a really important article on the Analytic-Synthetic distinction I'm bringing to conclusion at this time. I'll likely post it in Facebook (because they are generous with size of photos there) and link to it from OO

    This is Black History month, and I'd like to contribute a bit of it that is related to what NC was trying to do, which came to be struck down in Moore v. Harper. This did not involve gerrymander by the state legislature, but its restrictions on voter eligibility. The Oklahoma Democrats, a bigoted Party in power there and then, figured Black voters would vote Republican.

    Quote

    When Oklahoma joined the Union in 1907, its constitution allowed all men to vote, regardless of race. In 1910 it introduced a “grandfather clause” through an amendment to the [State] constitution. This clause provided an exemption to literacy requirements for direct lineal descendants of citizens who had been legally able to vote on or before January 1, 1866. In other words, anyone whose father or grandfather was white. The Supreme Court ruled that Oklahoma’s grandfather clause was unconstitutional in ‘Guinn’ v ‘United States’. Oklahoma legislators subsequently passed a law that required everyone except those who had voted in 1914 to register within an 11-day period or be perpetually disenfranchised (deprived of the right to vote). The Supreme Court struck down this law as well, but not until 23 years later. –Records of Rights

     

  4. Let's make sure the point in that last quote is not lost: 

    "The Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank, takes an extreme position on the ISL theory in its brief. The document was written and submitted by John Eastman, Trump’s legal advisor and a central figure in the attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. In fact, Eastman used the most radical version of the ISL theory to advance his argument before Jan. 6, 2021: In a memo, he spelled out a frightening, unconstitutional plan of how then-Vice President Mike Pence could declare Trump the winner of the Electoral College and the presidency. 

    Unsurprisingly, given its author, Eastman’s amicus brief in support of Moore states that the power conferred to state legislatures by not only the Elections Clause, but also the Presidential Electors Clause is “plenary,” meaning absolute. The ISL theory is inconsistent with cases from the past century, the brief writes, so the suggested solution is to simply overturn three decisions. . . ." –among the amicus briefs 

    This brief was on the losing side (the Moore side) of the decision (6-3) of the US Supreme Court.

    Afoot now is the campaign by a good many Republicans for defying this ruling at the State level (defy any court) and any other rulings on election law by the Court that is unfavorable (in these Republicans' estimate) to their candidates. It's as though many Republicans are assuming great losses ahead for their candidates if elections continue to be decided by eligible voting citizens. So they are putting about ways of circumventing that anticipated result by claiming as legal what is decidedly illegal under US law.

    (That portion of Republicans are united in their rationale [a lie, not merely a falsehood, for they are not really that stupid] that any elections not in their favor must have been fraudulent. There is no Confederate Army, and there is not going to be any warring between US military and National Guard or within the latter. Those troops are overwhelmingly genuinely committed to the survival of our constitutional democratic republic, just as the majority of the present US Supreme Court.)

  5. 9 hours ago, chuff said:

    At the risk of oversimplifying, it appears this decision acknowledges the legal principle that the States have final authority over their own election laws (as they do over any other state laws that do not conflict with the U.S. Constitution, as well as over the interpretations of their own constitutions).

    And that any such law cannot be exempt from the judicial review, state or federal, of state law for federal elections, which was being attempted in NC (so that the state legislature could dictate election law with no constraints from other divisions of government). Moore v. Harper has lain to rest the Independent State Legislature Theory (ISL) in election law.

    Quote

     

    The Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank, takes an extreme position on the ISL theory in its brief. The document was written and submitted by John Eastman, Trump’s legal advisor and a central figure in the attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. In fact, Eastman used the most radical version of the ISL theory to advance his argument before Jan. 6, 2021: In a memo, he spelled out a frightening, unconstitutional plan of how then-Vice President Mike Pence could declare Trump the winner of the Electoral College and the presidency. 

    Unsurprisingly, given its author, Eastman’s amicus brief in support of Moore states that the power conferred to state legislatures by not only the Elections Clause, but also the Presidential Electors Clause is “plenary,” meaning absolute. The ISL theory is inconsistent with cases from the past century, the brief writes, so the suggested solution is to simply overturn three decisions. . . . –among the amicus briefs

     

  6. Economic Freedom – Haley!

    Vote for Haley in the Primary in your State! Anti-intellectualism is one reason, which, joined with others, Rand condemned the Presidential candidate of '68 George Wallace and his movement as proto-fascist. Trump should be condemned just as Wallace and for those same reasons and more. Wallace was not the nominee of either Party. Still, he won seven Southern states and a million votes. Had he gotten the Democratic nomination, as earlier in that century he could have, he could have won the presidency. Support for our constitutional democratic form of government is actually pretty weak, I gather, among the anti-intellectual portion of the citizens. Mr. Trump stirs that weak portion for support. Plenty of shallow sloganeering all around, of course, as ever.

    I gather Haley will be in this at least through Super Tuesday, with her bloc-dollars from Mr. Koch and pals, with at least that money source. Her turn to raising the issue of economic freedom, I notice, coincides with the unwavering support of that by Koch across the decades. 

  7. 3 hours ago, Jon Letendre said:

    It is a preposterous insult to Donald Trump's very person to suggest he would go near that gross woman. He accessed professional models his whole life, the notion is ridiculous.

    . . .

    Jon, if you are on a jury, that thinking is against your logical and legal responsibility. I can believe that Mr. Trump never earned an honest dollar in his life. But if I am on a jury in a case against him, that is not pertinent to any case that might be brought against him in the law. All that rightly matters for the juror is whether the evidence allowed for consideration in the proceeding and credence in the presentation thereof suffice to show the accused guilty beyond a reasonable doubt or (in civil suit) more likely to have done the proscribed deed than not have done the deed.

  8. 3 hours ago, necrovore said:

    Because the standard of proof is lower in civil trials -- "preponderance of the evidence" instead of "beyond a reasonable doubt."

    You may remember they found no shortage of people who were "raped" by Kavanaugh, too. Or by Julian Assange. Or by Russell Brand. Anybody who is inconvenient to the government.

    The law under which Trump was convicted had been modified recently in order to make convictions like that possible.

    Sexual Assault Statute of Limitations

    Accusors of rape by Kavanaugh had no court adjudication supporting their claims by "a preponderance of the evidence." And I'd think it reasonable to suppose him innocent until there is such a legal proceeding finding that he did it (supposing it is possible to file suit against a Justice at all).

  9. Tad, I've gathered that when hyperbolic arguments are posed in briefs or court opinions or oral questions from the appellate bench occur it is by way of thinking through logical implications of a position. Such was a question was recently posed from an appellate judge to a Trump attorney who was arguing that a former President should be subsequently immune to all criminal prosecution. Hyperbolically and hypothetically, could President Biden order the killing of his political opponents and be immune to criminal prosecution for the rest of Biden's life? (The attorney waved his hands that the present case is somehow qualifiable so that it can be set off from such a scenario. Without the differentiating qualifications in hand, the attorney looked to be evading the question; it's my impression that for your case, you should not fail to actually answer a question from the bench.)

    Back to the case Moore v. Harper.

    Elections Clause of US Constitution

    Holding in Moore v. Harper at US Supreme Court: (re)affirmed for the plantiffs.

    Quote

    . . .

    Several groups of plaintiffs challenged North Carolina’s congressional districting map as an impermissible partisan gerrymander. The plaintiffs brought claims under North Carolina’s Constitution, which provides that “[a]ll elections shall be free.” Art. I, §10. Relying on that provision, as well as the State Constitution’s equal protection, free speech, and free assembly clauses, the North Carolina Supreme Court found in favor of the plaintiffs and struck down the legislature’s map. The Court concluded that North Carolina’s Legislature deliberately drew the State’s congressional map to favor Republican candidates. In drawing the State’s congressional map, North Carolina’s Legislature exercised authority under the Elections Clause of the Federal Constitution, which expressly requires “the Legislature” of each State to prescribe “[t]he Times, Places and Manner of ” federal elections. Art. I, §4, cl. 1. We decide today whether that Clause vests state legislatures with authority to set rules governing federal elections free from restrictions imposed under state law.

    . . .

    The precedents of this Court have long rejected the view that legislative action under the Elections Clause is purely federal in character, governed only by restraints found in the Federal Constitution. The argument to the contrary does not account for the Framers’ understanding that when legislatures make laws, they are bound by the provisions of the very documents that give them life. Thus, when a state legislature carries out its federal constitutional power to prescribe rules regulating federal elections, it acts both as a lawmaking body created and bound by its state constitution, and as the entity assigned particular authority by the Federal Constitution. Both constitutions restrain the state legislature’s exercise of power.

    . . .

    Historical practice confirms that state legislatures remain bound by state constitutional restraints when exercising authority under the Elections Clause. Two state constitutional provisions adopted shortly after the founding expressly constrained state legislative action under the Elections Clause. See Del. Const., Art. VIII, §2 (1792); Md. Const., Art. XIV (1810). In addition, multiple state constitutions at the time of the founding regulated the “manner” of federal elections by requiring that “elections shall be by ballot.” See, e.g., Ga. Const., Art. IV, §2. Moreover, the Articles of Confederation—from which the Framers borrowed—provided that “delegates shall be annually appointed in such manner as the legislature of each state shall direct.” Art. V. Around the time the Articles were adopted, multiple States regulated the appointment of delegates, suggesting that the Framers did not understand that language to insulate state legislative action from state constitutional provisions.

    . . .

     

     

     

     

  10. On 2/2/2024 at 1:22 PM, necrovore said:

    Since the Democrats control the press and have (long since) rejected the idea of objective reporting, it should be borne in mind that they have motive, means, and opportunity to lie about Trump, exaggerate about him, take his statements out of context, and so forth. . . .

    They certainly do replay on and on statements of Trump's taken out of context, and these are easily spotted. After all, we are not confined to television or radio. We can look up full remarks on the internet. Television does de-contexting with Trump's remark about being dictator for his first day in office. Serious business instead requires looking into specific plans he and his campaign team have lain out for what he would direct being done during his coming administration (assuming the practical conditions that he gets the nomination, gets more electoral votes than his Democratic opponent, and then does not have his actual edicts among those proposed overruled by the judiciary). We should look also into what "emergency powers" the Executive has; that facility is a regular step in states that have transitioned from democratic republic to dictatorship.

    As opposed to much of the political talk on television, we should take seriously the charges of prosecutors and the verdicts of juries or judges. Prosecution wins so often in the cases they bring, even with procedure stacked so heavily in favor of the accused, because prosecutors select for prosecution only cases which, with the evidence they have, are highly likely to result in conviction. Trump has been adjudicated in a civil trial to have committed a rape. That is something to be taken more seriously than mere allegations or talk on partisan television.

    It is not objective and not credible that every time a judge or jury rules against one's favored candidate or Party (what some of the Party imagines would be in the Party's interest) the decision was made due to outside pressure or bribery or political preferences. A judge recently ruled in Illinois that keeping Trump's name off the Primary ballot would be unconstitutional. To pass off the decision as simply favoritism towards Trump is not rational. The rule of law in this country is not a joke, not a farce, and not comprehensible to those who would rather talk about people than the ideas and reasoning in our legal system. Again, the most important case before the US Supreme Court last year halted a Republican Party effort to have State Legislatures have more power in deciding election outcomes.* Passing off the Court decision to the Court being against success of the Republican party would be plum ignorant.

    6 hours ago, necrovore said:

    The country is becoming so divided that there are likely to be riots regardless of who wins or why.

    . . .

    I don't think so. It seems there must be a focal event (such as the murder of MLK) or violence organized by organizations with a specific civil-disobedience or resistance-to-government purpose, focused by its leadership for a particular date of gathering (such as busting into the Capitol and busting its security staff on 6 January 2021, and a lot of those criminals are locked up, unavailable for a rerun). In a speech in Waco several months ago, candidate Trump urged supportive population in general to gather in New York on a court date he had coming up—gather and  protest the legal proceedings against him or anyway such was going to happen spontaneously and with violence. Few, if any, showed in the street. Relatively few had shown up at his inauguration (I imagine too many were too frail with age for that sort of assembly.) Even with a Presidential candidate himself advocating or rationalizing or predicting violence over an unfavorable election outcome, I'd bet a Coke there will be civil order. Pro-Choice and anti-abortionists were vehemently opposed across decades, but there were only a few acts of violence (arson of abortion clinics). Overwhelmingly, people will stay here in this country and not commit violence, even under law they rate as highly unjust, to have a peaceful place under law to live.

  11. 17 hours ago, Doug Morris said:

    So far, everyone on this thread has ignored Trump's attack on our system of democratic elections and orderly transfers of power.  This is a more direct and immediate threat to our rights and our general well-being than any of the other issues mentioned.  The only alternative to our system of democratic elections and orderly transfers of power is a contest of physical force to determine who comes to power.  That is a fast track to dictatorship.

    People's willingness to believe Trump's lies without evidence looks cultish to me.

     

    Trump urging election fraud in Georgia 

    I know people who supported Trump in 2016, but after such public displays of his illegal attempts to change vote counts (under a subjective faith, or at least a sales-front, "I won by a landslide"), they were not supporting him again. (That is not to say they are going to vote Democratic!) They told me that even before his indictment for illegal acts attempting to invert the results of the election. Naturally, I couldn't help but wonder why such a voter did not perceive salesman Trump back in 2016 as I thought obvious (and posted): a blowhard and con man.

    But there were other supporters, some parading themselves as Objectivists, who proved to be not such innocent supporters of Mr. Trump for President in 2016 and subsequently. These are the ones who relish his subjectivism and bold lies, which they repeat. Not simply falsehoods, but repeat as lies. I've not known them in person, but One of them I thought I knew a fair bit from online talk. As the Trump term in office unfolded, it turned out that there was nothing against the free market that Trump might do which One would not rationalize away. Then, it turned out (I learned from a long-time in-person friend) that One was in fact himself, of himself, the most deceitful online companion I'd happened into.

    Not that those depraved Trump ones are 100% in agreement with everything Trump says in public. They have some independent judgment on when an old lie should have been retold instead of Trump giving his honest commonsense take on something involving elections. When Trump gave a sensible look as to why Republicans did not pick up more seats in the Congress than they did in the 2022 election, these cohorts in viciousness and subjectivism would have none of it; rather, if their side lost some, it should be proclaimed as due to election fraud.

    Still, there is no indication yet of a bloc of voters willing to support candidates of such proclaimed autocratic ambitions as Trump's, but are candidates who are not connecting themselves personally to Trump. Because there are not fast principles or public-affairs policies distinctive to Mr. Trump (i.e., not just Republican principles and policies had without Trump), a lot of that depravity-faction will crawl back under the rocks as the personal Madoff-sunset is repeated for Mr. Trump. Should he win re-election this year, I remain confident that the judiciary upholding the continuance of our constitutional democratic republic and the substantial continued public support for that will block the maneuvers from Trump proto-fascism to fascism. (And between you and me and the fence post, I'd expect his first interest in winning presidential power this time is to try trumping any possible criminal convictions of him in judicial process.)

  12. The Original Sham – Part 1  Part 2  Part 3  Part 4

    PS – Again, the original sham is that mortality is not naturally inherent in life. The idea of the natural as in contrast to the supernatural was unlikely to be an intelligible distinction for Moses and his tribes. I gather that our meaning to that distinction is a transfiguration of Aristotle's distinction of the sublunary world (natural) and the world beyond that, namely, the heavens (supernatural). The supernatural today does not mean that at all.

    As against the natural motion of a thrown baseball, Aristotle would have the catching of the ball as an intervention against the natural motion. So he did have a distinction of the natural trajectory as distinct from the artifice of the players catching the ball and powering it in a new natural trajectory back to his mate. The supernatural today is that sort of artificial, intelligent intervention, but by an invisible agent who in principle could redraft what are the natural trajectories among the plethora presented by geometry.

    Anyway, in the original sham in the Garden of Eden story, we should notice and add that all bad things—death, suffering, setbacks in production—are to be blamed on the humans. This blaming continues today, whether within a religious or a secular head: if there is a calamity, then it should be blamed on human behaviors.

    Some say that in such blaming, people are being impelled to conceive themselves as in more control of things than in fact they are. A hailstorm or a death in the family may well have been purely a course in nature. Humans or invisible engineers are not in control in what happened nor rightly to blame. That is, people are exaggerating what control they have, and in the  same stroke, they are struggling to regain control and stabilize their course of life.

    I conjecture an additional reason humans so often fall into blaming themselves or other humans for natural calamities. They have some inkling of the Morality of Life, eventually found and articulated publicly by Rand, which says that right action is from the nature of life and that engaging in right actions supports life. They are often mistaken that their behavior caused the calamity, but their continuation of life with a renewed sense of holiness in the actions they will take might have at least a symbolic relationship to the truth, often subconscious, that is the Morality of Life.

     

  13. Here is the US House of Representatives doing as usual: NOT "I'll cut these expenditures, if you'll cut those." As usual, the opposite: "Let's keep buying votes from our different constituencies with taxpayer dollars, the fiscal responsibility be damned!" 

    Quote

    It would also accelerate the deadline for filing backdated claims for the Employee Retention Tax Credit, a Covid 19-era program that has been subject to widespread fraud, to January 31, 2024, instead of April 15, 2025. That provision is estimated to save taxpayers more than $78 billion – offsetting most of the cost of the package, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation. ——(CNN Report of Bill passed today)

    Baloney! Free lunches of baloney all around!

    Federal FY 2023 ended with a budget deficit of 1.7 trillion dollars. The federal government has spent $510 billion more than it has collected in fiscal year 2024. What is the House doing to attain a balanced budget in FY 2024? Nothing that I've heard of. 

  14. I submitted my hommage to Leonard Peikoff to the FB Leonard Peikoff Appreciation Group. They refused to post it. (They do not give reasons.) I have posted it verbatim at my own FB page here. As with the FB Ayn Rand Group, I mentioned above,* I've ended up leaving this FB group, holding itself out as friendly to Objectivism, as well. Happy that I am able to share my studies and writings on Objectivist philosophers, other philosophers, and their works here at Objectivism Online. I appreciate this forum and the intelligence and independence of its regular participants, and I appreciate what Leonard accomplished.

  15. On 8/27/2023 at 8:27 PM, Boydstun said:

    ~Part 2~

    I’ll divide Part 2 into two sections. This first section examines further Aristotle’s conception of teleology in natural phenomena, also his method for natural science.

     

    . . .

    I'd like to add a note to that Part. Aristotle's four causes and his teleology, good and bad in application, is treated by Leonard Peikoff in Lecture 5 of his 1972 lectures on the history of philosophy. Transcription of this portion is available in Founders of Western Philosophy – Thales to Hume (2023) on pages 187–91.

  16. 17 minutes ago, HowardRoarkSpaceDetective said:

    I'm not sure I understand what you mean by this.

     

    On 1/6/2024 at 3:38 PM, Boydstun said:

    Original Sham – Rand and Nietzsche

    . . . A little-sister sham is misrepresentation in the thought that one’s death is one’s eternal nonexistence. The truth is that a nonexistent has no passage, no situations, and no character. Those are the fundamental categories of things in existence. Some traces of one’s existence from before its end—traces in existents continuing to exist, with their passage, situation, and character, beyond one’s own death—indicate to succeeding humans some of the particular passage, situation (and situating), and character that had been oneself. There is an eternal nonexistence of one before one lived and after one lived, but those do not belong to one. . . .

     

    All Along

    Become some reason, then all along,

    beneath each chant, arch, trance, and tear,

    was known

    stop-still of life, the end, no more,

    no something, no place, no passage.                                 (Sept. 2021)

  17. This post is an hommage to Leonard Peikoff (b. 1933) for his contributions to the philosophy Objectivism. His biggest contribution of written work is his book OBJECTIVISM: THE PHILOSOPHY OF AYN RAND. His second most important written contribution is his essay “The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy” (ASD). This was published in THE OBJECTIVIST, a journal edited by Rand (d.1982) and N. Branden, in five installments from May to September of 1967. Peikoff was 33. (Those were the nominal dates of those issues of the journal; at times the journal was behind its target dates for publication.) ADS followed immediately Rand’s series “Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology” in that journal. Three years before ASD, Peikoff had completed his PhD dissertation THE STATUS OF THE LAW OF CONTRADICTION IN CLASSIC LOGICAL ONTOLOGISM at NYU.

    The only substantial supplement to Rand’s theory of concepts since ADS (and two papers by David Kelley in psychology of abstraction in the 80's) is my paper “Universals and Measurement” (2004), which addresses magnitude structure all the world must have if Rand’s model of concept structure is indeed applicable to all term-concepts. https://forum.objectivismonline.com/index.php... I hope soon to complete an amplification and recasting of an issue raised within ASD: necessities in truths.

    I’d like here to recount my own personal sequence of events concerning Rand and Peikoff. I had been given THE FOUNTAINHEAD and ATLAS SHRUGGED by a cousin-in-law S. Swift at Christmas 1966. I was a freshman in college. On the first page, the invitation page of ATLAS, beginning “What Moves the World?” Swift had written “Read The Fountainhead first.” On the title page for Part I of ATLAS, he had written “Let your actions be guided by rational choice", which was really good orientation I needed at that time. He had underlined the opening line of that novel. I carefully read them in the summer and fall of 1967. I was in a private mental hospital that summer I read THE FOUNTAINHEAD, and my doctor kept encouraging me to finish it. It saved my life, and thereafter I never again required psychiatric care.

    After those novels, I began reading Rand’s nonfiction books that were out at the time, and I read THE OBJECTIVIST, which was at my University library. Peikoff’s ASD introduced me to the Analytic-Synthetic distinction, and over my many years, I have studied its appearances in the history of philosophy and another distinction by that name in the history of mathematics.

    In second semester of my freshman year, I had my first course in philosophy, which was mainly an argued layout of all that is, by a Thomist professor, who was superb. He had been trained at the University of Cologne after WWII. But I did not learn of the A-S thread in philosophy until I read Peikoff’s essay on it. I continued to take philosophy courses in college—I minored in it—concluding in my final semester spring 1971 with a seminar on THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON, under another superb professor, who was from India and who had been trained at the University of Gottingen. I pursued graduate studies three times in my life, once in physics, twice in philosophy. I had to withdraw for various reasons in all cases, but learned enormously from those studies. I am an independent and inveterate scholar.

    I had seen Ayn Rand on the Johnny Carson show at the home of my friend Swift. https://www.youtube.com/playlist... I did not see or hear Peikoff speak until about 1974, when I took a recorded lecture course of his on the history of modern philosophy. https://www.youtube.com/playlist... Very good. During that decade, I was working my way through Fredrick Copleston’s A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. Completed. I took Peikoff’s 1976 recorded lecture course THE PHILOSOPHY OF OBJECTIVISM when it was presented in Evanston, north of Chicago. That greatly renewed my enthusiasm for the philosophy as one of much width and depth.

    I read Peikoff’s THE OMINOUS PARALLELS when it came out in 1982. Five years later, Peikoff published his intellectual memoir “My Thirty Years with Ayn Rand” in THE OBJECTIVIST FORUM. I wrote him a letter thanking him for sharing that and telling him how eagerly I was looking forward to his book on Objectivism, stemming from his 1976 lectures, that he had been working on for some time. And how important I thought it was. He thanked me.

    In 1991 the book was issued—OBJECTIVISM: THE PHILOSOPHY OF AYN RAND. It is very fine, accessible to the general educated public, and indeed it proved very important to setting out the philosophy of Ayn Rand in a systematic and comprehensive way, as the philosophy had been developed by the end of her life. That book put Rand’s thought as a comprehensive philosophy more decisively pinned on the map of philosophy. Life accomplishment “as difficult as it is rare.”

    (This photo is Peikoff and Rand early in their association.)

     

    LP' copy 2.jpeg

  18. 2 hours ago, necrovore said:

    Something further needs to be said about this.

    I think a lot of young people, including young Objectivists (and myself when I was younger), have big dreams about what they want to do with their lives, like wanting to produce and sell products and services of various kinds, wanting to be a John Galt, or a Dagny Taggart, or a Hank Rearden, but in their own fields -- and then they run into a bureaucracy (or "political class") that doesn't want to give them the freedom to do that, places big pointless obstacles in their paths, and regards them as "potential criminals" just for being independent thinkers. Then these young people find that most people are indifferent to their situation, or are even on the side of the bureaucrats. (They may also find supporters who are sadly powerless...) Young people who know Objectivism know there is no good reason for this situation to exist, but it seems that persuasion might be possible, because freedom of the press still exists. As a result, they find themselves "drafted" into politics, at least as a hobby, even though neither politics nor philosophy was their original choice. Meanwhile they end up in their second or third (or twelfth) choice of career because it's the only one they're allowed into, and they have bills to pay. Very few people, Objectivist or otherwise, can provide for themselves as professional intellectuals or advocates of freedom.

    In a free country one wouldn't have to worry about politics.

    In a mixed economy, the political side of philosophy may be more "practical" than one's preferred choice of career, but if so, this is because the bureaucracy has made it more practical. So this is a characteristic of the mixed economy, not so much of Objectivism or its advocates. (And don't worry, it will disappear either when the country becomes mostly free or when it becomes mostly totalitarian; in the latter case there is no freedom of speech anymore.)

    I seriously question this. I've known lots of creative hardworking people, especially artists, who gave up their top-loved careers to earn a living or better standard of living, knowing full well that they would have only peripheral time for the studies or creation they most treasured. One is likely deceiving oneself if one thinks accomplishment of one's early dreams was dashed by the American political and legal circumstances.

    The failure is most often because there were competitors better at that work than oneself for filling the slots. I know that assessment about how good one is in some areas is foggy. I naturally write some amount of poetry. I never devoted any study or training or week-after-week effort on it. And I don't know that my products would be "better" if I had. It had not been a dream of mine to become a poet, a widely appreciated one (and I'm not widely appreciated for it). I'd say it is hard to make a good self-assessment of how good one is in some areas, such as that one. (Although, I seem to recall that Walter Scott gave up writing poetry upon reading some other poet.) But when it comes to becoming a concert pianist, for example, I think the comparison becomes clearer as to why one should withdraw from trying to fill one of those few slots there are for that skill.

    My dream was to become a physicist. I worked and worked, years of preparation, and sacrifice of all sorts of good things for the sake of making sure I was not derailed from staying in college and pursuing my mission. I failed at the graduate level. It was honestly because there were others much faster at learning the advanced physics and mathematics. I withdrew in an ocean of tears. In a while, I thought, "Well, at least one should have money." I found out what additional learning I needed to get a good-paying job in engineering. I got that second degree, and it worked out. I hated every hour I was in engineering school because it was not physics school. Making money after that, it turned out, left more time in after-commerce hours to study and create what I pleased than I'd previously had available in my scratching out a living in unskilled labor. (And even though in the engineering work, where we were scrambling to finish the last nuclear plant to be built in America, I could be working 60 hours a week!) I did not return to my former top-passion subject for learning in spare hours. I turned to my second, which was philosophy, in which I had minored in college. Thanks to my long life and my good company, I ended up in these golden years in the perfect study and writing environment and able to buy any book I need or desire and have it arrive at the front porch.

    When I first began to study philosophy in those after-work hours, after largely letting go of learning more physics or mathematics, it was high-class contemporary political philosophy. I enjoyed it, though I eventually shifted to other areas of philosophy, intensely, leaving political philosophy aside. I suggest that people who stop pursuing their original dream and take up study and action in political areas actually like it. It was a secondary for them all along. 

    One reason Objectivist types might be drawn to blaming the government and the culture for the failure of their dreams is because of one aspect in the struggles of Howard Roark in Fountainhead. The only thing holding Roark back is social conflict, indeed social malevolence towards him. He has genius and the skill to fill the slot he eventually wins. Only bad character in society slows him down. Indeed, in both that novel and in Atlas, one will find only human sources of human pain and suffering and despair. That focus suits her chosen themes. But it is not all the factors in play in our real lives in the world of our time.

    Resilience and achievement of happiness even on losing one's top dream is a virtue in my book. It is possible, it's yours.

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