William O

.
Thanks for the topic and the example, William. Here are some related ruminations.
Learning is defined in my 1976 AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY, as a noun, as “acquired wisdom, knowledge, or skill” and, as a verb, as “gaining knowledge, comprehension, or mastery of through experience or study.”
In PRINCIPLES OF NEURAL SCIENCE (2013, 5th edition, Kandel et al., editors), we have, consistently with the dictionary, but going beyond it: 
“Learning refers to a change in behavior that results from acquiring knowledge about the world, and memory is the process by which that knowledge is encoded, stored, and later retrieved.” (1441)
In this encyclopedic authoritative reference, the types of memory and what is known of their neural bases is presented. There is a section “Long-Term Memory Can Be Classified as Explicit or Implicit.”
Implicit memory sections following that one often sound like stolen-concept talk. “Implicit memory stores forms of information acquired without conscious effort and which guide behavior unconsciously. Priming is a type of implicit memory . . . . Two types of priming have been proposed [conceptual priming and perceptual priming, with much evidence]” (1452)
Implicit memory is detailed further throughout the next Chapter titled “Cellular Mechanisms of Implicit Memory Storage and the Biological Basis of Individuality.”
On the face of it, there appears to be a stolen concept fallacy in that these tremendous advances are talked of as implicit memory when one is reporting physical and chemical changes in neurons in the nervous systems of animals not possessing consciousness. Memory would seem to be something that entails consciousness in our first conception of memory, yet today we talk of memory in such a thing as a snail. (Rand assumed that even insects have consciousness, but that is incorrect by our present lights, and I set it aside.)
In the April 1968 issue of THE OBJECTIVIST the brain researcher Robert Efron wrote: “The concept ‘memory’ depends upon and presupposes the concept of consciousness, cannot be formed or grasped in the absence of this concept and represents, within wider or narrower limits, a specific type or state of conscious activity.” (This paper was reprinted, with adaptations, from one Dr. Efron had presented at a conference in philosophy of science the preceding year at Univ. of Pitt.) Efron argued that in the preceding 50 years, experimental psychologists had destroyed the concept of memory. Similarly for the concept of learning. Many of the instances of talk of memory at the time of his paper remain junk talk today, or rather, junk if taken literally. However, since that time, it looks to me that the extensions of the concept of memory down into the neural processes of even animals not featuring any consciousness is not really a stolen concept. The loop back to the concept with consciousness in it is very long, setting our conscious brain within its developmental story, evolutionary story, and dependencies of specific conscious processes on specific unconscious processes, all among the neuronal activities. It seems to me this best, fullest story can be told without slipping into eliminative reductionism, and is not a stolen-concept fallacy regarding memory or learning.

All we really need is saturation; as much of it as possible. If the older generations are mostly beyond help then let's just make sure everyone in America under 20 years old knows the word "Objectivism" and where to go to learn more about it.
And then we wait.

There is no specific Objectivist objection to “social sciences”, but there are objections to practices of particular disciplines. These objections aren’t peculiar to Objectivism, rather they are straightforward scientific objections. It’s just that Objectivists make superior scientists, so we are well attuned to checking our premises (we do it all the time), and we understand the importance of a good philosophical foundation for any activity, with terms being defined.
Any claim (social science or otherwise) must be justified by reference to facts of the universe which can be observed. Part of the evaluation of a claim is consideration of alternatives for which there is also evidence. Once there is no remaining evidence, even conceptual evidence, that supports an alternative claim, the conclusion is certain: it is proven, and justified (basically, OPAR ch. 5). Social sciences fall quite short in the enterprise of considering reasonable alternatives.
The main problem of social sciences, as I see it, is even articulating a valid conceptual claim. It is not at all difficult to come up with (valid) empirical law in physical science, but it is nigh onto impossible to do this in social science (economics has the greatest potential that I can see). What is a “law of sociology”? What indeed is a meaningful theoretical question in sociology? Here are some examples of what seem to be theory questions in sociology (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociological_theory)
What is action? What is social order? How is intersubjectivity achieved? Do social structures determine an individual's behaviour or does human agency? What is the social world made of?


You need a certain amount of background knowledge to grasp the meaning of these questions, but it should not be an infinite regress of arbitrary stipulations and conditionals (“if we define X as Y, then Q follows”). Social sciences are very abstract, in the sense of being significantly removed from experience. Unlike concepts in physical sciences, concepts in social science do not reduce to undeniable observations (iron bars and what happens to them if you stick them in a fire), they reduce to other concepts which reduce to conditionals of the form “We can define X as Y”.

There are two broad kinds of scientific activity: observing, and theorizing. Framed in Objectivist terms, there are perceptual questions, and conceptual questions. Physicists don’t just ask “what happens what you bash two Rolexes against each other at a million miles an hour?”, they ask “why does this happen?”, and “how do we increase the energy output?”. Social science is for the most part stuck in the descriptive, perceptual phase: “this is what these subjects did”. Even answering the most elementary descriptive questions can be extremely difficult, since for the most part, social sciences are observational (not experimental), and the observational data is in disarray (who collects it? how cooperative are those being observed, or those collecting the data? how accurately do the collectors employ the academician’s protocol?). In the realm of conceptual-level theorizing, the prospects for saying anything meaningful in the social sciences are dim, for two reasons: people are free to chose, and people are free to chose irrationally. Most people can’t predict my future actions, because they don’t understand my hierarchy of values. It’s even harder to make a prediction when the object of investigation (an individual) does not always act rationally.


Contrary to the Wikipedia characterization of “social science”, I would say it has to do with the interaction between choices of an individual and the value one expects to obtain from interacting with other persons. Correspondingly, much of linguistics and cognitive psychology
are not social science.
 

 

.
William, I’m not sure Audi sticks to that list of conditions in all his works, and anyway, the list circumscribes a more narrow concept than the usual. In his The Architecture of Reason, he allows that certain moral principles could be self-evident or at least, more weakly, a priori. Right principles present to us in this way would seem to be at least about the perceptual level and, frankly, in the thick of it. That goes as counter only to his item 2 on the list.
The usual definition of the self-evident is the manifestly true requiring no proof. This is still a good place for philosophers to start and not forget. I doubt one would be laughed out of the academy if one did not confine one’s philosophic uses of the term to the constraints Audi was formulating for it. 
“Percepts, not sensations, are the given, the self-evident” (ITOE 5; similarly, early Heidegger).
A paragraph from my book in progress:
Sextus, Peirce, and Moritz Schlick argued against self-evidence of our cognitive bases.* They erred in supposing self-evidence in cognition is spoiled by any obscure or fallible aspect and by connection of any purported self-evident cognition to other cognition. To the contrary: In one’s present perception is this text. That one perceives those marks in this read, perceptually knowing their existence and character, is self-evident. They are not only perceived as present, but as having the particular character they have. Additionally, they are not only perceived as present, but can then be reflected as self-evident. Their status as self-evident does not require they have no obscure or fallible aspect and have no connections with other cognitions, preceding, overlapping, or subsequent.
*Sextus c.200b, I, 151; Peirce 1868b, 19; Schlick 1925, §19; see also Maddy 2011, 118–37; cf. Binswanger 2014, 382.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PS
Rand rightly held that it is incorrect to try to prove the existence of the external, perceived world.* The world’s existence is self-evident in perception. The existence of character and spatiality and action is self-evident in perception.
*Rand 1961b, 28; cf. Gilson 1937, 146–47, 152–55; Heidegger 1953, 202–7/194–200.
(1961b is For the New Intellectual, paperback.)

I think there's a difference between writing an article for a general audience and having a conversation with a specific person. If you're writing an article for a general audience, you can be passionate without turning people off, because no one will feel targeted. This is one reason why Rand's articles are so effective.
However, if you're talking to a specific person, it can be advisable to tone things down a bit so that they don't feel attacked, which will turn them off to your ideas. Another issue is that they may have some argument you haven't heard before, which can be a problem if you've made the conversation really intense and passionate. I find it's better to just calmly put my views forward for consideration.
For example, consider this conversation:
A: "I believe in God."
B: "Believing in God is a childish fantasy that no adult should take seriously."
Now, B may be right about all that, but A isn't going to be open to B's arguments from this point on, because A will feel like they are being attacked. A better approach would be to say "Why do you believe in God?" and explore their reasons calmly and civilly, which is the ask and listen method.
I'm not saying you have to coddle every ridiculous point of view, of course, but if it is a view they could have arrived at honestly then it's better to try to hear them out.

.
William, this logic text by Stock in 1888 uses self-evident for the principle discussed at this linked page. It nicely mentions Aristotle’s first-figure syllogisms as those known as perfect, the self-evident ones upon which (with some other self-evident logical principles) Aristotle had argued the validity of the syllogisms of the other figures. Stock was an Oxford teacher of logic. At the beginning of the book, Stock had described the three laws of thought also as self-evident. His conception of the identity law among those three is very slender, though rightly conceived as necessary and universal. Were one to enrich the identity law along the lines of Rand’s enrichment, I think it would still pass for self-evident and indeed already encompass the principle known as nota notae discussed at the page of this link.
All the same, I don’t think nota notae would be inheriting its self-evidence from that more Randian law of identity. Self-evidence stands on each of its occasions without having had self-evidence transmitted to it from some other occasion of self-evidence. I don’t care for Audi’s grandparents-example in his point 4. There are things we prove are necessarily so, such as Lowenheim’s Theorem in logic or the Pythagorean Theorem in geometry, and that does not necessarily make those propositions self-evident, at least not in an unstrained sense of the self-evident. That is not to say that no propositions that are conclusions of a proof are not also self-evident. Some are and some are not. I can construct a proof to the conclusion “Nothing comes from nothing,” although that proposition were already self-evidently true to anyone who soundly grasped its statement.
Discussion of self-evidence of principles in logic, by Frege and by our contemporaries Tyler Burge or Penelope Maddy stays close to logic, recognizing that logic will apply to the actual world. But these proceed without (making explicit) the broad background thesis of Rand’s that “logic rests on the axiom that existence exists,” that two-word proposition being a report of a standing manifest fact, a truth known self-evidently by perception.
.

This is not usually the sort of discussion I try to get involved in -- for a variety of reasons. But in this case, I wonder what you mean that "propositions are only self evident in a derivative sense, for Rand," when it seems to me that Rand is stating directly that propositions are not self evident:
"Nothing is self-evident except the material of sensory perception."
and "Nothing is self-evident except the evidence of your senses."
Perhaps there's some other quote which speaks to this directly that I'm missing? But otherwise, and bearing the above in mind, what is the "derivative sense" you're preserving for the self evidence of propositions?

There are so many good quotes on the CD containing "self-evident." Here's one selected from The Art of Nonfiction, 3. Judging One's Audience (pg. 21):
An important principle here is that man is born tabula rasa. Writers often assume something is self-evident, since they themselves now take it for granted, when in fact it is complex. Nothing is self-evident except the evidence of your senses. Therefore, when you write, assume nothing is self-evident but logic. (Logic is actually not self-evident, but in order to communicate, you must assume a person knows how to make logical connections.) For the rest, since no knowledge exists at birth, you must judge what acquired knowledge is necessary to make your point understandable—and then you must communicate it.
The evidence of the senses, properly identified, is comprised of both existence and consciousness in every moment of awareness. The concepts of existence, consciousness, identity, are only derived from the self-evident much later.

Regarding the claim that 20% of Objectivism be removed, wouldn't that completely gut Objectivism if carried out consistently? For example, if Objectivism made some allowance for forcible taxation in order to help the poor, we would have to give up the non-initiation of force principle and the trader principle. Further, the non-initiation of force principle and the trader principle are based on the Objectivist ethics, so we would have to give up the Objectivist ethics.
Rand regarded Objectivism as an integrated system. It is not a bunch of independent parts with no connection to each other that you can freely tinker with.

No. Rand's point is that the self, the 'I', stops existing at death. We never actually experience death, because death is the end of all experience. And because of that, one can equally validly look at death as the end of the world -- the end as far as the self is concerned. Rand's view here is essentially the same as the ancient philosopher Epicurus, who famously stated his view as "Where death is not, I am; where death is, I am not."

In 1974, interviewer James Day asked Rand "How do you, as an Objectivist, feel about death?" Rand's reply was "It doesn't concern me in the least, because I won't be here to know it. The worst thing about death, and what I regard as the most horrible human tragedy, is to lose someone you love. That is terribly hard. But your own death? If you're finished, you're finished. My purpose is not to worry about death but to live life now, here on earth."

I think a typical Objectivist probably does not have a deep understanding of Kant or Hume. However, I think a typical Objectivist will have a better understanding of Kant and Hume than the general population, and that someone who is an Objectivist is much more likely than the general population to have seriously studied those authors.

I read this book and took notes for my own interest. I wanted to read it in order to see the development of American libertarianism (e.g. the kind we see at Cato), as part of my wider goal to see why people conflate Objectivism with libertarianism (besides the obvious similarity of both aligning with laissez-faire capitalism). I still suspect that libertarianism is all essentially anarcho-capitalism, thus always wrong. So I went with a book by Nozick who seems pretty far from an ancap. What I note here is what I find interesting and worth mentioning from his book.
Distribution and Justice
Nozick explains several ways to think of justice. He focus on distributions after an injustice occurs. It answers why there me be more distribution after it has already happened. Distribution here is about who is entitled to the holdings they possess. Redistribution is proper, then, if people are not entitled to their holdings. For instance, how are you entitled to your TV? And if you aren't entitled, if it were stolen for example, then what?
A just distribution would depend on the original acquisition of holdings, and transfer of holdings.
Some judge if the distribution is good or bad based purely on now, or as Nozick phrases it, current time-slice principles. In other words, how things used to be or how they started doesn't matter if right now the distribution is unjust. The current distribution has a pattern that unravels in a certain way (e.g., there is a specific distribution of wealth of some sort).
A (laissez-faire) capitalist type of distribution has no pattern beyond individuals. In a capitalist society people often transfer holdings in accordance with how much they perceive others benefiting them. Nozick phrases it this way:
"From each as they choose, to each as they are chosen."
Entitlement to Property
Nozick follows Locke when it comes to property:
Acquiring the thing
Mixing ones labor into something
There is enough and as good left over.
This problematic for the obvious reason that Nozick doesn't base this on man's needs of life. It's more focused on the actions in a consequentialist way such that distribution is not done improperly. He seems to take the time to mention Rand in a footnote, but waves her off as merely saying "property is that which one uses to live", or as if she begs the question of what property is by saying there is a right to life. (This is on page 179). Either way, he makes no mention of products of the mind, or means of survival. 
Contra Rawls
Nozick later criticizes Rawls:
Politics is constructed by Rawls without reference to moral principles. Distribution from a veil of ignorance where no one knows what he is or could be deserved through actions in the past. Imagine we were all in a room, ignorant of our past actions, our strengths, our weaknesses, etc. So, given this starting point, Rawls wants to figure out how distribution should be.  (My note: Don't equate this with Communism. This is more like the modern liberal who wants a fair and balanced distribution for all. A Communist would judge your past and take from capitalists that are seen as exploiters. Capitalists care about neither.)
When faced with these (developing) principles, the next generation develops a particular sense of psychology and justice, and the next generation, and so on, converging to P at the limit. P would be the ideal distribution, that is, the state of the world would be more just in time.
Some may see capitalism as providing a distribution in accordance with natural assets, perhaps in the "Social Darwinism" sense. Nozick says that Hayek argued that under capitalism the principle is not distribution in accordance with natural assets; differences in natural assets will be two differences in holdings according to perceived service to others. Distribution here would be based on value offered to an individual, not being "born" better, or being an heir to a billion dollars. Assets impact what we do, that's as far as they goes.
Moral Defense of Capitalism
Nozick actually makes no attempt to provide a moral defense. He doesn't try or attempt to say what is morally superior, apparently he only offers good consequences.
He doubts the value of unified explanations of all conjunctions. He asks: What would our theories of the world look like if we require unified explanations of all conjunctions? Not merely the conjunction of separate and disparate explanations (which may be compatible), but unification.
Nozick rejects a unified theory of moral facts apparently, or just that they can't be applied so widely. There would be no total integration, which he sees as fine. Either way, we'd recognize this as moral grayness, where morality cannot offer an answer to capitalism or any other theory.
Inequalities
Nozick rejects having to explain inequalities, but in order to make this claim, seems to reject any notion of needing reasons to do something. And he seems to mean this in any moral context, not just on the political level. That is, it is not necessary to explain oneself even to oneself. Perhaps we could, but Nozick doesn't think it matters.
Some major points:
if people don't deserve their natural assets, then they don't deserve the fruits of their labor
if differences are eliminated, then envy might grow more severe because it becomes more apparent that the advantages someone has. On top of that, there will be fewer ways to become better as an individual or in comparison. [My note: If math ability were the single permitted difference, then more people will seek their values this way while needing to ignore others.]
A right doesn’t go far as to say someone in prison not hearing your words means your rights for speech are denied. Disruption is no violation in that same sense. (But Nozick barely details the idea except as one to think about)
Exploitation to a Marxist always boils down to their solutions becoming capitalist in the long run. Nozick is still arguing by showing the end-state, without regard for moral principles besides homo economicus. It is not true that all people will desire rational ends. All Nozick really has to say regarding moral principles is that we ought to construct a system justified in terms of rational people would do.
[My note: Many people seem to think Rand argues for capitalism because rational people operate that way. But her idea is that capitalism is the best system for a good life, for all people.]
Utopia
A real utopia is a meta-utopia; the environment in which utopia may be tried out; the environment in which people are free to do their own thing; the environment which was to a great extent needed to be realized first for more particular utopian visions to be realized stably
He says particular individuals will differ in the best life one can have. Makes no argument as to how these individuals differ or even their impact on a developing society. Where is the consideration of individuals who wish to destroy or harm? I presume the best life for a Nazi is not in a capitalist society. But this means Nozick doesn't care what societies form - as if Nazis don't exist, or as if other societies always want peaceful resolution.
Anarchy and the Minimal State
Nozick does this part first, but with all the above, his reasoning is like an ancap.
He explains various scenarios of private legal or defense entities, then details a rational way to deal with conflicts as any competing agencies might. Then he goes on to say that an agency that operates like a state where one agency is in charge of a region. That it'd come about by invisible hand means, not particular rules.
This makes it clear to me that even a libertarian as academic as Nozick is a "dressed up" ancap. So, his legitimate state would be a de facto state as opposed to one established de jure - that is, by fiat or by legal declaration to a geographical area. His best moral argument is that this is one way a state can arise legitimately.

My understanding is that Objectivism holds that the choice to live is pre-rational. In other words, life versus death is the fundamental alternative, so there can't be a more fundamental reason for choosing it beyond the fact that you want to stay alive. That's the closest thing to a non-rational choice that I'm aware of within Objectivism.

This is actually a bit of general scientific knowledge, not a fact about Objectivism. The basic idea is that you can have [A B] in youe mind and clearly have separate A and B, also [A B C] end so on, but you cannot hold [A B C D E F G H I J K] in your mind and have each be separate entities. It might be a blurred list which you would re-crete in the form "A" (and the rest), "B" (and the rest) and so on. Or, you can subgroup, perhaps [A B (C D E F) G (H I J K)]. She says "five or six". The official answer is seven, plus or minus two.

epistemologue, your source holds that universals are entities:
"The phenomenon of similarity or attribute agreement gives rise to the debate between realists and nominalists. Realists claim that where objects are similar or agree in attribute, there is some one thing that they share or have in common; nominalists deny this. Realists call these shared entities universals; they say that universals are entities that can be simultaneously exemplified by several different objects; and they claim that universals encompass the properties things possess, the relations into which they enter, and the kinds to which they belong."
Underlining mine. That's from near the beginning of Chapter 1 in Objectivism and the Corruption of Rationality.
Will you grant the point now? If you are a realist, you are defending the existence of a kind of entity.

It implies that when you say that abstractions require universals to be valid, you're saying that there is a kind of metaphysical entity that abstractions have to correspond to. If that's what you're saying, then it's open to the anti-realist to maintain that our concepts correspond to similarities, which are not entities. Likewise, when you say that induction requires universals, what you are saying is that there is a kind of entity that the generalization has to correspond to, as opposed to simply corresponding to the causal connection involved, which is not an entity.

epistemologue, your source holds that universals are entities:
"The phenomenon of similarity or attribute agreement gives rise to the debate between realists and nominalists. Realists claim that where objects are similar or agree in attribute, there is some one thing that they share or have in common; nominalists deny this. Realists call these shared entities universals; they say that universals are entities that can be simultaneously exemplified by several different objects; and they claim that universals encompass the properties things possess, the relations into which they enter, and the kinds to which they belong."
Underlining mine. That's from near the beginning of Chapter 1 in Objectivism and the Corruption of Rationality.
Will you grant the point now? If you are a realist, you are defending the existence of a kind of entity.

Traditionally, realists about universals assert that they are entities.
"Universals are a class of mind-independent entities, usually contrasted with individuals (or so-called "particulars"), postulated to ground and explain relations of qualitative identity and resemblance among individuals."
http://www.iep.utm.edu/universa/
As far as I can tell, you have not given a definition of "universals," which is a prerequisite for your position.

I wanted to add my thoughts, as a parent who is currently working through The Fountainhead for the first time.
I appreciate the quote that was given on Rand' and motherhood being a career that can become outdated.
This can be applied to fatherhood as well - which at this point in my life is my central purpose.
Thus, I would characterize one's central purpose in life not in terms of an unchanging career, but in terms of a single building that Roark might have built - in the sense of a stage of ones life.  A rational, discrete accomplishment and goal that consumes one with passion and leads to flourishing.
Everything I do at this point in my life is in the very broad context of my being a father - even my mental "breaks" from fatherhood (such as dates with my wife, studying philosophy, going to the gym - which I require to come back and continue being the best father I can be, rejuvinated with fresh energy and perspective.)

My marriage, my philosophical studies, my health/fitness, my personal time, my job - all of this (at this point in my life) supports my central purpose of being a father.

More to the point - Within the context of my knowledge, I don't do anything antithetical to being a father in the long-run. My current "building/structure" must integrate and not contradict the others I have built in the past - for example I will rely on my marriage, life experiences and health/fitness to support my next structure, so they all form a support of whatever my current building is.

As Rand alludes to, at some point it won't make sense for fatherhood to be my central purpose...my structure will be completed (for the most part...I know I will always be a father) just like my competitive bodybuilding, my college degrees, my career, my romantic life, a stable home, etc have all been important structures in my life for me in the past (in that chronological order, actually).

But the important point is the structures one chooses to build in life may change and this presents no contradiction with the objectivist conception of a flourishing life.  This is the integration referred to in the title of this thread - and it is deeply personal, and individualistic.  The structure of one's value hierarchy should properly be completely unique and personal for that individual.

Ultimately, the moral rule is that one pursue a flourishing life of reason, purpose, and self-esteem.  The number of ways one may do this is limited only to their imagination.
But just as Roark had multiple buildings that he architected during his life, a person's highest values may change as well.
And Roarks buildings, although discrete, did not preclude one another.  There is no reason that they should.
And if I may share something a bit more to the point, if not exceptionally personal:
It brought tears to my eyes when it occurred to me that my children are my Stoddard Temple.  And I know that I will have to unveil them to the world someday, and it breaks my heart, in a selfish way, that I can't keep them perfect and sweet and pure and innocent forever.
And they will be vandalized, and judged improperly by those who don't deserve to even look upon them.
I will build it my way, according to the very best within me, no matter what it takes, through sleepless nights and tears, but also through joyous highs and laughter.  And I will let no one sway me from my path unless the reasoning of my own mind convinces me of a better one.  
And when the time comes, as it will, for me to move on and choose a new structure in my life to focus on - I will look back on my temple and know it was built according to my highest values and to the best of my ability.
And properly, and egoistically, I will be a better person for having built it.

Your criticism of Rand's theory of concepts is that it is "subjectivist," but the concept of subjectivism you're using isn't the same as Rand's - on your view, it's basically just a pejorative way of saying she isn't an intrinsicist. But what we need is some reason to think that intrinsicism is true, which, as the previous respondent points out, you haven't provided.

You yourself may or may not be confused on this point, but the way you have phrased it would certainly be confusing to someone learning about the philosophy. The logical structure of Objectivism does not consist of a series of deductions from the law of identity. You cannot deduce anything from the law of identity, as you can see just by looking at it. Objectivism's logical structure is inductive, for the most part.

You yourself may or may not be confused on this point, but the way you have phrased it would certainly be confusing to someone learning about the philosophy. The logical structure of Objectivism does not consist of a series of deductions from the law of identity. You cannot deduce anything from the law of identity, as you can see just by looking at it. Objectivism's logical structure is inductive, for the most part.

Dustin, I wasn't asking if any of your questions/objections in this thread alone you considered to be answered/resolved, I was asking about if you considered that to be the case of *any* of your questions/objections you have raised on this forum in general.
Also, you have in your post there stated your position, but you have not addressed anything any of us have already said to you here about why we contend such a position is incorrect.
You didn't answer my question either about what sources, aside from this forum, you have on Objectivism, or even point me to a place where you already answered that question (which also would have been perfectly acceptable). When I said, "You've made lots of threads here based on questions/objections to Objectivism " - I didn't mean that as an accusation, like it was an inherently bad thing that just should not be done. I was stating it because it was relevant to my later question, asking what, if any, sources you had aside from this forum on Objectivism. Asking this many questions isn't a bad thing necessarily, but it does makes me suspect that you may be attempting to approach learning about or "challenging" this philosophy very badly. You may be jumping into the middle of this philosophy and going about it all higgledy piggledy, not looking into the well made primary or even secondary sources on it that answer the whats and whys pretty thoroughly and systematically. You may instead be asking people to not just reinvent the wheel for you, but reinvent the rocket ship, knowing almost nothing about rockets already yourself, and that they do so random piece by piece with you showing little interest in actually seeing how the pieces fit together and why, or maybe even seeing all the pieces, just seeing how these individual parts aren't making sense to you at first glance and on their own and then saying "This makes no sense! It's all bullshit! No way this thing gets off the ground." This seems like a bad way for you to learn about Objectivism and an even worse way to try to convince anybody who knows Objectivism well that it is incorrect. It's also hugely inefficient on time involved doing it the messy way versus going to the primary or even secondary sources.
As for "echo chambers" and "safe spaces" -- you realize, don't you, that with Objectivists being such a teeny, tiny percentage of the population, we all spend our lives immersed constantly in people and products of contrary beliefs, right? This forum is just one of the few places where we come together with people that DO share our support of this philosophy so that we can actually get some where furthering our discussions of the subject beyond constantly just going over the basics with people who think the philosophy is flat out incorrect, just endlessly rehashing the same basic issues over and over that are already old hat to us, never touching any further or new material. We don't need to have this forum bombarded with people who disagree with us in order to be exposed to other beliefs and the possibility that we are wrong because we already inevitably face those things all the time everywhere else we go pretty much. Our goal here on this forum isn't to *never* be exposed to contrary ideas(something the forum couldn't possibly achieve anyway), its to just have somewhere that actually is about our ideas in the midst of aaaaaaaaaaaaaall the rest that we are exposed to which isn't. And we already do believe in reexaming our own beliefs if ever we come across something which seems to flout them anyway. Having this forum to discuss Objectivism with mostly people who support it is like having a forum for fans of bag pipe music in a world where pretty much everybody hates bag pipe music.

If anybody is interested in other philosophers or movements apart from Objectivism and Aristotelian philosophy, you are welcome to share your experiences here. What attracts you to those ideas? Do they influence your own thinking or philosophical positions? For the sake of the topic, these presentations need not necessarily point out the similarities/divergences with Objectivism.
My first encounter with philosophy was a long time ago in primary school. After scrambling in my aunt's book collection, I found a Romanian philosophy textbook from the communist era. It was full of pictures and it probably covered every major philosopher known at the time, from Thales to the moderns. Marx and Engels where the only ones that had full page photographs.
At the time I didn't understand much of what I was reading, but being a philosopher seemed like a really prestigious thing. Upon reading that the history of philosophy can be described as a duel between materialist and idealist points of view (as it's commonly taught by marxists), I promptly declared myself a materialist, because idealism struck me as an extraordinarily bizarre point of view. Nobody I knew subscribed to the primacy of consciousness view. (Objectivism is the only philosophy I know of that is not monist or pluralistic in some way, although there might be many others). My first encounter with the world transcendental was on the page about Immanuel Kant, and I quickly used it afterwards in a test paper at school (it was not a philosophy test, obviously). I didn't realy know what it meant, apart from reading the dictionary definition and considering it to be one of the coolest words in my vocabulary. After the grades were announced, the teacher asked me what transcendental means and, after I blurted out the dictionary definition, she said that she just wanted to make sure that I'm not using words without knowing what they mean.
Until about half an year ago, when I started to study Objectivism seriously and I read Atlas (I knew about Objectivism much earlier than that, and I read The Fountainhead three years ago), philosophy seemed to be no less pointless than religion. After all, with all the advances in science and psychology, what could philosophers possibly bring to the table? Objectivism provided interesting answers to this question, and I am sympathetic to a lot of Objectivist positions (most strongly in metaphysics). I also emphaticaly disagree with some points, from Rand's denial of human instincts all the way to her claim that Dali's paintings portray an 'evil metaphysics'.
Lately, I remembered about that old gang of philosophers who called themselves the Idealists and decided to see exactly what line of reasoning brought them to their philosophical claims. I'm not really interested in Kant since his version of idealism is nowhere as weird as that that of his succesors (he still believed in a noumenal world), but I do have a strong interest in Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. Even without believing much, if any, of their speculations, it's still fascinating as hell to read about their philosophy as a classical musician. Romantic classical music composers were inevitably inspired by the contemporary trends in German philosophy; Wagner was notably a follower of Schopenhauer, although S. is a bit too Kantian (and Buddhist) to grab my interest. Speaking of Buddhism, my first encounter with detailed information about it (meditation always fascinated me) was also in a communist book of my aunt's, titled Questions and Answers Pertaining to the Atheist Education of the Youth.
If I have to take something good out of German Idealism, it's definitely the enthusiastic, creative and imaginative spirit that was its trademark (and was also present in the arts). Apparently Fichte and Schelling were extremely charismatic teachers, managing the feat of being university teachers and superstars at the same time. Hegel was notorious for his classes, which people attended without understanding a single word of what he was saying. His system is absolutely gargantuan, and nobody since him attempted such a feat. His famous claim, 'The truth is the Whole' is quoted at the beginning of Leonard Prikoff's OPAR (systems were the big trend of German Idealism)
As much as I like Rand, I have to say that the whole Romantic Realism thing never appealed to me as strongly as the movements and genres that feature a great deal of fantasy, myth, even the supernatural. And I'm an earthly guy. It seems to me that this type of art does something that Romantic Realism does not: it's a concretized presentation of some of the more 'metaphysicaly adventurous' parts of ourselves: myths, the dream world, imagination, altered states of consciousness. It also inspires me to study the broader nature of consciousness, apart from its perceptual and reasoning faculties.
I leave you with this beautiful romantic painting, The Chancel and Crossing of Tintern Abbey, Looking Towards the East Window, by JMW Turner. Exploring the visual arts of the Romantic era is also on my current to do list.

Sometimes belief in God is dishonest, but not always. Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, Rand's favorite philosophers, both believed in God. Ayn Rand herself believed in God when she was young, as did Leonard Peikoff, who is the most prominent Objectivist philosopher alive today.
When we reject belief in God, I think we are the beneficiaries of advancements in science and philosophy from over the past few hundred years that not everyone has fully grasped the ramifications of yet. It's not necessarily immoral if you can't see the flaw in the cosmological argument without help from the great philosophers of the past, any more than it's immoral to miss an error in a fallacious mathematical proof.
Basically, your position amounts to the claim that every invalid concept is an inherently dishonest idea (to use Leonard Peikoff's term). That's just not true.
But you are equating a logical mistake, forming an invalid concept, with deliberate dishonesty. They are not the same.
They are irrational in the sense that they are using an invalid concept, and that there is a breach between their reasoning and the facts. That doesn't mean they are irrational in the sense of being immoral or dishonest - although, in some cases, they are.