Ilya Startsev

The particularly funny thing is that any honest form of Buddhism wouldn't have anything like propaganda. I would say the thing you linked is more of a Western corruption of Buddhism that tries to portray itself as enlightened rationality, but ends up as a philosophical mess.

The link of the 'early responses' leads to a pro-GS blog post, which makes an impression that Science and Sanity received mostly positive reviews and the few negative reviews it had, including the one by Hook, were misrepresentations of Korzybski's work and misunderstandings of his system for a philosophical one, as if it isn't. In this respect I would go with Albert Ellis and say that all such cognitive creations, like the system of Korzybski, are inherently philosophical (even on the unconscious level).

The only piece of information I found on this forum on Korzybski is the following:
There is no discussion of him or his system, but I think the discussion is long overdue.
First, why Korzybski, and who the hell is it? Does anyone know or has ever heard of him?
Alfred Korzybski, as I found only by accident, was a 20th century thinker, who, like Rand, created his own system of thought and an institute (including an international one) with its own journals and researchers who wrote within the framework he set up. In stark contrast to Rand, however, he created, what he called, a 'non-aristotelian system of general semantics', the first of a kind and one that he thought was necessary for the world to overcome all the insanity of totalitarianisms and mental health problems in general. I am currently reading his major work Science and Sanity (Korzybski, 2000), and here are some excerpts from prefaces there:
The above is a mixture of form and content impossible in Aristotelian system and in David Kelley's interpretation of Aristotle in particular. Going on:
Here he is going against identity. About identification he also says the following:
He generalizes the influence of Aristotle's thought on even ordinary individuals, a major contrast to what Rand thought:
His comment is also coming from a war-like stance directed against Aristotle and all those in his tradition:
And there is more, even though I still haven't finished reading all the prefaces yet (there is one for each edition). I wonder why Rand fought so fearlessly against Kant when she had a contemporary so much worse right at her nose. They wrote at about the same time and both lived in America. So what do you think about this guy? I know he appears to be a crackpot, but his use of contrariness against everything Aristotle and building an elaborate system around it, connecting most of modern scientific data (from einsteinian and quantum physics, psychiatry, and nascent neurology), makes him a peculiar and very nice contrast to Rand, a nice clean divide from her framework of knowledge. On every one of her yesses he says noes and vice versa. This is a more evident contrast than Kant had even been, since for Rand he mixed good and evil, or reason with unreason, while Korzybski includes Kant in the aristotelian tradition, and strangely discusses neither him, nor Rand, as far as I can see.
Korzybski, A. (2000). Science and Sanity: An introduction to non-aristotelian systems and general semantics. (5th ed.). Brooklyn, NY: Institute of General Semantics.

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Early Responses to Korzybski
Sidney Hook is in that survey of responders - The Nature of Discourse. Hook was Leonard Peikoff’s dissertation advisor. Peikoff has been asked about General Semantics, and he flatly rejected it. Peikoff has mentioned a conversation between Rand and someone who subscribed to GS (whomever it was, it was not Hook, who was a champion of John Dewey). My only exposure to GS was through a man who subscribed to it and who was a big poster on the site Objectivist Living.*
Nathaniel Branden 
 

For example, here Ellis speaks on behalf of Korzybski:
First of all, Kozybski is also concealing an all-or-nothing outlook called Aristotelian vs. Non-aristotelian. You are either in the first or in the second system; there is nothing else, according to Korzybski. Such form of concealment is similar to the kind of pathological egoism that all collectivist/altruist tyrants deny and want us to believe they don't have.
And second, considering especially that Ellis has written a book denying self-esteem, called The Myth of Self-esteem: How Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy Can Change Your Life Forever, then he is on the side of quite a pathological 'altruism' of these collectivist folks we all know from the 20th century, although he would of course deny this, just as would Korzybski, by making us believe that their systems would lead us away from such atrocities, even by making them approach so much closer. That's the essence of the non-identity mentality.

Since Ilya is here, I thought I would bump this and also thank Boydstun.  He has a wonderful paper on Kant, with the link above.  He greatly anticipated the direction I was taking this post.

New Buddha, I sincerely apologize concerning ad hominem attacks. I try to delete them when I proofread my comments, but some do get through, based on emotions I feel at the moment. Notice also, although that doesn't excuse me one bit, that they are indirect attacks. I would never directly attack anyone on this forum!
Yes, there is also a contradiction on my part (based also on emotions, rather than proper reasoning). When you brought up LQG I was a bit surprised because I've never heard about it before, and since I disagreed with the Atomic article I decided to attack the theory too, not realizing that my disagreement was with its philosophy, not science, of this particular writer. (It's funny, though, that he also confuses philosophy with science, as in his book on Anaximander.) In any case, we should stick to philosophy here, as I am not a professional scientist, just an amateur like Peikoff is.
The 'deception' part is a rhetorical tactic I've used too often, so I will try to hold off on that. I respect Peikoff greatly (much more so than Rovelli), and when the contradiction was obvious I hated attacking him. I am also surprised that Lee Smolin "approved" of Harriman's book (that's indeed quite a shift in the scientific community if that is indeed so!), as I didn't grasp that from your previous comment. Could you reference exactly the "approval"?
Only a posteriori as an explanation, yes, as happens in M-theory (necessitating the presence of gravity by the structure of strings). In any case, as I quoted from Wikipedia, gravity is added after quantum evidence was coded into strings.
Yes, and here I once again refer to string theory. Notice that Einstein's and Hawking's original explanations (equations, descriptions) had nothing to do with actual quanta. The idea that information is not lost in black holes and that holographic principle is fruitful in understanding them comes from Leonard Susskind, one of co-founders of string theory (and the principle exponent, I would say). In the Diagram I've added him as an integrator of a completely new kind, undiscovered yet by Peikoff or any of Objectivists. But seeing that someone on this forum is actually approving of him is another great surprise (of today)!

Actual usage of quantum gravity from literally today.  https://www.ibm.com/blogs/research/2017/07/scientists-observe-gravitational-anomaly-on-earth/

No a theory of quantum gravity must exist. Explaining the physics of black holes would be impossible without it. Way too many explanations pop out of the equations, things like the holographic principle or bouncing branes causing the phase transition that we today see as "The Big Bang", etc., that it is virtually certain that we on the right track with M- theory.
I'm an Objectivist and also certain that the various Objectivist intellectuals who attempt to shoot down string theory are always attacking a straw man that they simply don't understand while taking an extremely rationalist view point regarding physics that doesn't jive with reality at high energies. 

The Atomism of Democritus was front-and-center among scientists in the 17th and 18th Centuries, but it was reintroduced through the writings of Lucretius (and Epicurus) specifically Lucretius' On the Nature of Things which was found in 1417 by Poggio.  I visited your website through the above link and see no reference to Lucretius.
Regarding Newton's corpuscular theory of light:
In this paper, by William Jensen (Dept Chem, University of Cincinnati) on Newton & Lucretius, he details the introduction of Epicurean atomism into renaissance intellectual life:
Though the manuscript of the epic poem, On the Nature of Things, by Lucretius, was first printed in book form in 1473 and in many subsequent editions, it was not until the 17th century that it began to impact significantly on scientific thought...Sir Isaac Newton was a second-generation participant in this revival of atomism and so could build upon the earlier atomism of such 17th Century writers as Pierre Gassendi, Walter Charleton and, especially, that of his older British contemporary, Robert Boyle.
Whether Newton was also directly exposed as a student to the famous poem of Lucretius is not known. However, by the 1680s, when he began seriously writing the Opticks, he had almost certainly read Lucretius in the original, since among the surviving books of his personal library is a 1686 Latin edition of De rerum natura, which one Newtonian scholar has described as “showing signs of concentrated study” (i.e. numbering of lines and dog-earing) [6][7]. Likewise, the Scottish mathematician, David Gregory, reported a conversation with Newton in May of 1694 in which Newton stated that he could demonstrate that [8]: "The philosophy of Epicurus and Lucretius is true and old, but was wrongly interpreted by the ancients as atheism."
Regarding the influence of Lucretius on Kant see this paper, page 143:
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) was perturbed by Leibniz and heavily influenced by Newton. He openly acknowledged his debt to Lucretius in offering a nebular hypothesis concerning the formation of the planets and solar system.40
‘I will not deny’, he admitted, that the theory of Lucretius, or his predecessors, Epicurus, Leucippus, and Democritus has much resemblance with mine. I assume, like these philosophers, that the first state of nature consisted in a universal diffusion of the primitive matter of all the bodies in space, or of the atoms of matter, as these philosophers have called them. Epicurus asserted a gravity or weight which forced these elementary particles to sink or fall; and this does not seem to differ much from Newton’s attraction, which I accept. (Universal Natural History and Theory of Heaven, 1755) 41
Despite his favourable attitude towards Lucretian cosmology, Kant rejected ‘the mechanical mode of explanation’ which, he said, ‘has, under the name atomism or the corpuscular philosophy, always retained its authority and influence on the principles of natural science, with few changes from Democritus’ (Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, 1786). Kant argued in the finale of his critical writings, the ‘critique of teleological judgement’ (Part 2 of The Critique of Judgement, 1790), that science required, conceptually, a teleological framework for the explanation of life, regardless of the basically unknowable nature of things. But atomistic and anti-teleological ideas were attracting a favourable reading in the rapidly developing life sciences. David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (first published 1779) contained a paraphrase of Lucretius’ selection principle,42 arguing that currently existing species of animals are those which, unlike their counterparts, had apt combinations of organs and were thus able to survive and reproduce, and this notion was common amongst the philosophes.
For additional info on Atomism, there is a good link to an article by the physicists Carlo Rovelli in the below post:
 

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You’ll have to do the study and make your own informed discernments. (Record your sources and page numbers in your notes and drafts; it saves you time later and helps you make real progress over the years.)
 
Before Kant what criticisms of Locke’s realism were made by Berkeley, Hume, and Reid? What criticisms were made by Kant of all those predecessors?
Chapters 6-12 of Primary & Secondary Qualities – The Historical and Ongoing Debate (2011, Lawrence Nolan, editor) and see Kant’s Prolegomena and his Critique of Pure Reason (Pluhar translation, index).
 
What empiricist rejoinders were promptly made against Kant?
Kant’s Early Critics –The Empiricist Critique of the Theoretical Philosophy (2007, Brigitte Sassen, editor)
 
Philosophy of perception continues alive and lively to this day, as in A. D. Smith’s The Problem of Perception. As for the Kant scholars, none find Kant either faultless or the last word worth saying on any of his topics.

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On sensation for Kant: KANT'S THEORY OF FORM --Robert Pippin (1984)
On sensation and perception: KANT'S INTUITIONISM --Lorne Falkenstein (1995)
On sensation, perception, and definition: Follow Index of Werner Pluhar's translation (1996) of CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON.
On definition, see especially A727-32  B755-60.
 

I keep thinking that Kant is an egoist rather than an altruist and that he sacrificed his soul by and for his (egoistic) mind, so his self-sacrifice is purely for his egoistic end, which is also the end of all, according to his ethics. So Kant universalized his self-sacrificial end of killing the soul, the killing of which you seem to call 'self-authored self-sacrifice', by applying it on everyone, as if everyone, at base, was a Kantian, a mind-egoist, a rational subjective egoism at that.
I wonder if we can understand common sense under this soul that Kant, along with all of his genuine followers (see the end of this comment), is sacrificing. I think his "On A Supposed Right To Lie from Altruistic Motives" shows how his being irresponsible and accommodating to a murderer, universally and theoretically given, betrays his best friend in a practical situation, and how this contradicts common sense. His epistemology similarly contradicts common sense by ignoring our ability to know of perceptions like chairs.
Also, I agree with Rand that there is 'the absence of definitions' in Crit#1. I must add that it's the absence of the definitions most relevant to epistemology, namely 'sensation' and 'perception.' His phenomenology is also so confused in terms of internal vs. external and the 'phenomena' with such concepts as 'nature' and 'substance' that by the end of Crit#3 it basically loses all definition with which it started in the first Critique. Hence Rand's comment that Crit#1 is 'resting on a zero' is not so inaccurate.
The following you quoted from Kant draws my ire: "Since, then, neither concepts given empirically nor concepts given a priori can be defined, there remain no concepts on which to try this artistic feat of definition except concepts thought by choice. In such a case I can indeed always define my concept; for I must surely know what I wanted to think—since I myself deliberately made the concept and it was not given to me through the nature of my understanding, nor through experience."
It means that we cannot define anything taken from outside (empirically, naturally, experientially) but only our imaginary thoughts and words. A sui generis reduction of the worst possible kind, i.e. Kantian.
After two years of studying him, I have yet to find something good and likable in his philosophy. Oh well, I will keep on searching. After all, I did find something good in Rand and Lenin, why must Kant be so different, right? At the same time, my goal is slowly becoming the devotion of my life: to save philosophy from Kant. And in order to reach this goal it might take more than my life. I hope others will follow this path contra Kant.
Ah, that sounds like my opponent, Bill Harris, who was banned from the forum (and some other ones, too). Harris, of course, ignores that only Kantian psi promotes such claims (such as given by B.M. Jesse, D.F. Bjorklund, A. Damasio, T.E. Feinberg, B. Hood, J. LeDoux, among others, who believe that our self is a concept merely imagined by the brain). On the other hand, there is the psychology of Nathaniel Branden, Carl Jung, Carl Rogers, and the psi evidence brought by Maurice Merleau-Ponty against Kant (yes, and not simply Descartes, as M.-P. was also attacking transcendental intellectualism).
In short, Harris has a problem with Rand's "ditect [sic] realism, in which we just absorb sensory data that's then processed into 'concepts'". Evidently, for such a Kantian as him who has a problem with so many 'you's connected to commonsensical realism, 'naive' in his mind, senses must be processed through a priori categories at the point of them entering our brains and then must be dissected and disintegrated like no tomorrow. At the end we only have a mess.

Nicko0301
"I don't see the distinction."

Really? BogG's reading ("You receive no benefit at all from doing your duty. This includes even a feeling of satisfaction or fulfillment. You will feel nothing.") entails that no action of a moral agent which is required by duty can be beneficial to that agent. But Kant isn't saying that doing your duty can't benefit you. In fact, in the Groundwork he explicitly mentions a case where one could act in a way that benefits oneself and be moral: a shopkeeper who offers inexperienced customers the same prices as experienced customers has two possible motivations - he may be acting out of duty to his fellow man or he may be worried about losing customers if he takes advantage of their ignorance. If the shopkeeper is fully motivated by his duty to his fellow man, then his actions express moral worth, regardless of the fact that he accrues some benefit by his actions.

"Kant is still attacking the notion of self-interest."

I'm making a point about the content of what Kant is saying, not about the truth of what Kant is saying. That Objectivists will disagree with Kant's view regardless of whether one accepts my reading or BobG's isn't really relevant.

"I mean, can you imagine living a life wherein you did absolutely nothing for yourself?"

Kant doesn't argue for this. It is entirely permissible in a Kantian framework to do things that are in your own interest. In fact, Kant writes in the Groundwork that "To secure one’s own happiness is a duty". It's just that such acts usually aren't expressions of moral worth because they generally aren't undertaken out of duty. That doesn't mean they're forbidden. Kant even writes that "we should praise and encourage" actions that comport with duty but which are undertaken for selfish reasons.

BobG
"If your purpose is to understand Kant a mainstream history does not necessarily give you an accurate view. Dr. Peikoff does give you an unadultrated view as close to Kant as is possible."

If your purpose is to understand Kant as opposed to strawmanning him, the work of somebody who basically considers Kant a proto-Nazi is not the best place to begin. Even if Peikoff were somehow right about Kant, it would be better to begin with a more charitable reading. That's just a principle of good philosophical scholarship.

"If I was talking about actions performed from your own motivation you would be right. Since I was referring to Kant's view of ethical actions you have misread my statement."

I'm not quite sure I understand your counterclaim here.

"Yet, I am quite sure that Kant explicitly said that a moral action should elicit no emotion in the actor."

Kant does not say this. Kant says that to the extent that one acts on the basis of desires and preferences rather than out of respect for duty, one's actions are not expressions of moral worth. (http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/pdf/kantgw.pdf p10) You can have emotions, it's even permissible to act on the basis of them so long as you are also acting in accordance with duty. It's just that to the extent you act on the basis of those emotions, your actions don't have moral worth.

"A moral action would be performed solely because it is moral and have no consequence for the actor."

The first half of this sentence is true, that actions which express moral worth are those actions performed solely because of duty. But the not having any consequence stuff isn't in the Groundwork. Kant flatly doesn't care about the consequences of actions, and he repeats over and over again the Groundwork that they are irrelevant to determinations of the moral worth expressed by actions. What Kant cares about is the reasons for action.

The answer, at least partially, can be found in the introduction to "The Night of January 16th". I know that it was mentioned in the journals but I highly recommend reading it in full.

The way I understand it is that Hickman was an abstraction. The attraction was not conceptual (and thus details of the case were not relevant) but emotional, on a sense of life level. She used this case for her projection - like one can use a piece of art (even if the artist intended/meant something very different (even opposite) than what you getting out of it - it happens to me a lot). This was about the idea of individualism/independence - about the psychology it requires to be daring in this way. She did not admire this particular man. Her comments are not identifications about this particular case - but rather a hypothetical - conceptual exploration of emotional reaction. Rather than repressing it - she explored it. Sense of life reaction is not conceptual - one may react positively even though the details are horrifying. In my opinion this is a testament in a way to her underlying positive evaluation of herself (deeply rooted conviction "I am good") because I think many would have dismissed the feeling due to the details of the case.

It is very likely that the same is true of her journal comments related to society. It could have been her projection in relation to society's reaction to radicalism, toward those who boldly project that they don't need the approval of society, toward those who reject the notion that consensus, the majority of opinion - is a valid standard of truth and value.
It could have been an exploration of the reaction of society when it realizes that it lost it's grasp over the individual.

To my understanding, Rand was more interested in the public's reaction to Hickman than the man himself, and seemed to think that the reaction was more due to his taking pride in defying the morals of society than in the crimes he actually committed. This aspect of his situation intrigued her, and provided fuel for a later short story which incorporated a proud man on trial in front of an outraged society, without the serial murder part. With this in mind, the more appropriate Hitler comparison might be admiring or at least acknowledging how successful Hitler was at propagandizing himself and gaining public opinion during his rise to power. Plenty of healthy, moral people have spent countless hours analyzing Hitler's Nazi propaganda and how it was so successful, and have learned valuable things about propaganda, charisma, etc that have nothing to do with the evil things Hitler did.

Some people do better when they present arguments against the very thing they are learning about. Perhaps the objection is trite to the more learned person, or oversimplified, or confused, but this is how learning works. When a kid learns astronomy, there may be weird objections that are bizarre, asking about how aliens built the solar system. Clearly, Szal's objections are more sophisticated than that. But by presenting the objection, often that suggests wanting to learn more. Szal probably has some good questions, and also errors in reading Rand as people do with any philosopher.
A good way to find contradictions in oneself is to use one's ideas "above" their knowledge level. To do well in that setting, you need to say what you understand and your issue with it, even before a strong foundation. When you get something totally wrong, errors become clearer. If you learn to cook, say, sometimes deliberately ignoring an ingredient or technique, objecting to fantastic advice from pros, helps you learn why those techniques are used.
 

Perceptual Ontology appears to be a "solution" looking for a "problem".  This post is just degenerating into a game of definitions.
What concrete problem does Perceptual Ontology solve?  Why is it necessary to form the new concept.
Rand's Razor:
The requirements of cognition determine the objective criteria of conceptualization. They can be summed up best in the form of an epistemological “razor”: concepts are not to be multiplied beyond necessity—the corollary of which is: nor are they to be integrated in disregard of necessity.

Thanks, Repairman. Honestly, I missed you and every one else on this forum, even Harrison Danneskjold, whose comments had been always cutting and hewing me, but I even miss his comments. It's been long three years, my dear Objectivists, and I am back!

This is a thread about comparison and failure to understand N on Rand's part. People should be able to notice that explaining is not the same as endorsing; pointing out a similarity doesn't mean I'm equating N with Rand. I didn't write a substantial essay on how Rand gets right the things N was skeptical about and/or denied. N didn't believe in systemetizing, Rand did. 

Welcome back, Ilya
It's always refreshing to view your multi-faceted concise and to-the-point interlocutions.

Eiuol,
 
I applaud your effort to grasp Nietzsche, especially in D, GS, Z, BGE, and GM. I am delighted to report that the number of reads of my series Nietzsche v. Rand has now passed 14,000. I want to direct you to the Appendix (scroll down) to this essay in that series. This Appendix traces the transition in Nietzsche from “feeling of power” to “will to power” and elaborates just what was his mature conception “will to power.” Nietzsche’s conception of life in terms of will to power includes domination of organism by organism in all the forms of life. He foisted his favored conceptions of human social relations onto the nature of all life (defining life differently than Rand would do seventy years later for mainstay of an objective morality [and differently than had Guyau 1885, also for purport of an objective morality]), then pointed to that supposed way of all organisms as rationale for his often nasty views of human nature, particularly focused on social relationships.
 
Never forget Nietzsche’s BGE 265, which is antithetical to Rand’s ideal in Anthem (1937) and to her mature ideal of Atlas Shrugged.
“At the risk of annoying innocent ears I will propose this: egoism belongs to the essence of the noble soul. I mean that firm belief that other beings will, by nature, have to be subordinate to a being “like us” and will have to sacrifice themselves.”

I have read a little bit of Nietzche's work, and I've found his to be rather amoral. He rejected free will entirely, and believed as a result that someone who was truly wise would recognize that there was no distinction between good and bad, and that everyone's actions were just the predetermined result of their nature -- thus, someone like Hitler would not really be responsible for the atrocities he committed, and it is foolish to condemn him or to see creators of value as superior to Nazi oppressors. He also had a contemptuous attitude toward morality, and my understanding is that he did, in fact, want to see the "masters" trample on the slaves as punishment for the slaves' choice to believe in a moral code, and as a reward for the masters' ruthless pursuit of (What Nietzche would consider) their own self-interest. He also regarded all morality as socially prescribed, and nothing more than the will of the strong imposed on the weak, and did not recognize any possibility of an objective morality based on the value of human life.
 
 
I believe that Nietzche preferred masters because he saw them as strong due to their willingness to coerce the slaves into obedience.
 
I haven't found much of value in Nietzche's works. I suppose he deserves some credit for his recognition that altruism was wrong. But his response, like Rand's, should have been to construct a new moral code based on self-interest which recognized the right to life of all human beings. What he created instead was a blank check to trample on human life, in order to satisfy one's own whims at the expense of others.

Eioul,
 
If you have access to the Modern Philosophy: Kant to the Present, Lecture 5 starting at 30:45, Peikoff devotes almost 48 minutes in a much more charitable view than Rand's in the interview shared in your OP.
 
Knowing that Rand deals with broad ideas, she is speaking of Nietzsche as a general overview of his overall philosophy. Peikoff examines examples of his writings as you have used in outlining the issues you've identified. In one passage from the lecture, LP makes the statement: In general, all you can say is the irrational element dominates progressively as Nietzsche grows older. Another statement, paraphrased, likens Nietzsche's writings to the Bible, as he is supposed to be all things to all men. In LP's summary he says: Nietzsche shares a kinship with Objectivism only in isolated, unsystematic passages.

Lester Hunt, a philosopher anthologized in the book mentioned in #9, once said that N. is important to a biographical or developmental understanding of Rand but useless for understanding the positions she arrived at.