dianahsieh

Originally posted by Diana from NoodleFood In her otherwise awful book How Could You Do That?!, Dr. Laura rightly observes that the most common kind of question asked on her radio show is "Now that I've done all these things I shouldn't have done, how can I avoid the consequences I knew, but denied, and just hoped would not happen?" In my capacity as a moral philosopher, I've certainly seen my share of that plea for help with irresponsibility, including from some supposed Objectivists. Yet this "Dear Abby" column is perhaps the most strikingly blatant example ever: Contrary to Abby, I regard genetic testing as a pointless waste of money without some significant familial or racial history of testable genetic disease. (If Paul and I were to have children, we certainly wouldn't need to be tested for Tay-Sachs and sickle-cell anemia! Our offspring would have hybrid vigor!) And I don't think Abby has reason to so definitely conclude that the father wishes the boy to the tested because of doubts about his paternity. It's a plausible hypothesis though, since the offered justification of "genealogy purposes" seems weak. That being said, I'm delighted to see Abby call this woman to the carpet for the "gall" of asking for help in more lying to conceal her misdeeds. At this point, I suppose I should mention that my paper on such false excuses, "False Excuses: Honesty, Wrongdoing, and Moral Growth," published in 2004 in the Journal of Value Inquiry (Volume 38, Number 2, pages 171-185), is available here. (I didn't write this post intending to plug that paper, but I suppose the topic caught my attention for good reason!)

Originally posted by Diana from NoodleFood, In the comments, Ergo raised a good question about the moral judgment of Marxist dictators versus Marxist intellectuals. So I'd like to sketch an answer to the question: Why and how is the Marxist intellectual morally worse than the Marxist dictator? The key point is that the Marxist intellectual willfully makes possible all the brutal rights-violations of the Marxist dictator. That's no accident, it's the explicit end of his intellectual work. How so? The intellectual offers a moral defense of the dictatorship of the proletariat. He uses people's existing bad ideas (e.g. altruism, mysticism) as a weapon against them in order to push them into far worse ideas. As a professional intellectual, he has the upper hand against ordinary people not trained in the art of philosophic detection. In part, that means that he must evade on a massive scale to make his arguments, whereas ordinary people may accept them due to confusion, passivity, or minor evasions. By his arguments, the intellectual disarms the actual and potential victims of the dictator of any moral objection to the means and/or ends of the dictator. Without that, the people would immediately rise up in rebellion against the unjustified brute force threatening to crush them. <li>The intellectual's moral defense of the dictatorship of the proletariat also emboldens the petty power lusters of the world to seize power. In a free society, such a person could aspire to no more than the leadership of a criminal gang. The intellectual presents that seizure of power as morally right and historically inevitable -- and thereby fosters and rationalizes the power lust of the future dictator. <li>Once the dictator is in power, the Marxist intellectual conceals and excuses his inevitable brutality and mass slaughter. He is thereby sanctions those crimes. (In this respect, he's like an uncle who approvingly nods and even offers helpful tips as his nephew rapes a young girl. Even if the nephew would have raped her anyway, the uncle is still morally guilty.) In so doing, the intellectual preserves the power of the dictator, often for decades upon decades beyond its natural life. If his arguments are even partially accepted in free countries, thanks to the bad premises people already accept, then he morally disarms the potential outside opponents of the Marxist dictatorship. Consequently, they will not exert any kind of pressure upon the dictatorship to reform, nor treat its espionage seriously, nor punish it with economic sanctions, nor invade to cut off the head of the expanding empire. Instead, his own country will prop up the Marxist dictatorship with aid of various kinds. At least in the case of Soviet Russia, the Marxist intellectuals did all that -- with exactly the consequences I've outlined. Without their help, Soviet Russia would not have lasted for all those decades. In fact, it never would have even come into existence. While I do think that the Marxist intellectual must evade more than the dictator -- if only for the simple reason that he's called upon to think more in the course of his work -- I don't think the magnitude of his evil is a solely function of the magnitude of his evasion. (A hermit in the woods may evade all day long, but I wouldn't call him evil, for the simple reason that the scale of his destruction is so small. He's just immoral.) To be valid, the moral judgment should integrate mind and body by asking: What does the evasion accomplish in reality? So we need to pay attention to the scale of the destruction of values involved. In the case of the Marxist intellectual, he did not just make the mass murder of Stalin possible, he also made that of Lenin, Mao, and Pol Pot possible. He also promoted socialism in Europe and America -- with substantial success. However, and this is critical, the fact that the Marxist intellectual is more evil than the Marxist dictator does not mean that the dictator is not fully evil. The dictator is absolutely 100% morally black, without the slightest shred of good in him. My point is rather that the evil of the Marxist intellectual is of broader scope. Despite his veneer of civility, he is a danger to every living creature on the planet. By leveraging people's ordinary altruism into even just some sympathy for socialism, he is teaching them to submit to the yoke of whatever dictator might arise, while also encouraging the rise of that dictator. (And yes, that does require more evasion than just driving the yoke.) Without that intellectual legwork, the dictators wouldn't stand a chance. I haven't covered all the possible angles on this topic, not even all those raised by David Kelley in Truth and Toleration. In particular, I haven't touched upon the argument that any given Marxist intellectual is just one voice in a loud chorus, nor upon the point that the intellectual persuades others while the dictator forces them. Still, I hope that the above comments constitute at least a clarifying start.

Originally posted by Diana from NoodleFood, I wrote the substance of this post on my personal history with Nathaniel and Barbara Branden quite some time ago. At the time of writing, my purpose was to more fully explain my strongly negative judgment of the Brandens, as well to use my own case to examine some of the errors commonly committed by honest admirers of Objectivism in the course of judging them. However, the publication of Jim Valliant's The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics (PARC) rendered that whole enterprise thoroughly superfluous. For any honest inquirer, Mr. Valliant presents an overwhelming case against the Brandens. He does not merely prove that they manipulated, deceived, and abused Ayn Rand all those decades ago, but also that they continue to do so to this day. (And, I should add, they do so with the blessing and assistance of The Objectivist Center.) So at this point, I'm mostly just posting this history for the record. Still, I think that my errors in judging Nathaniel and Barbara Branden indicate the great value of The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics, particularly to young people new to Objectivism. Certainly, my own history with the Brandens, and probably even with TOC, would have been radically different if I could have read that book ten years ago. (That's why I'm such an enthusiastic supporter of the book.) So here is my history with Nathaniel and Barbara Branden... Early in my freshman year of college in the fall of 1993, I read Ayn Rand's major philosophic anthologies -- The Virtue of Selfishness, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, and Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology -- for the very first time. Just a few short months later, in February 1994, I read Nathaniel Branden's article "The Benefits and Hazards of the Philosophy of Ayn Rand." At the time, my basic view of the article was very positive. I was too much of a novice to understand the gross inaccuracies in Branden's claims about Objectivism, let alone the fallacies and falsehoods of his criticisms thereof. I wrongly read the article as identifying and criticizing certain common but significant errors of Objectivists in applying the philosophy, rather than as critical of the principles of the philosophy itself. Or at least I regarded his criticisms as valid to that extent. (Unfortunately, my e-mail record is a bit spotty on this point.) Of course, Nathaniel Branden was clear enough that he blamed Objectivism in that article -- and elsewhere. For example, in response to my "Yet Another Heretic" post to MDOP in February 1994, he wrote: In my reply, I clearly rejected Branden's criticisms of Objectivism, unfortunately while still accepting his basic portrayal of Ayn Rand (and Leonard Peikoff) as demanding dogmatic agreement from Objectivists. That's not surprising, since at that point, I'd already accepted David Kelley's views about the injustice of the various "purges" in the Objectivist movement. The next month, I read Nathaniel Branden's memoir, Judgment Day. My reaction to that work was more mixed. I was completely enthralled by the brilliance of Ayn Rand's mind as portrayed in his first meeting with her. Yet as the story progressed, I was deeply dismayed by her seeming irrationality in her dealings with other people. Knowing the ways in which strong emotions can distort memories over time, I did have some reservations about the reliability of Branden's recollections. Yet I never really suspected outright, devious, and wholesale deception from him. I'm not entirely sure why not. I was likely naive, in that I tend to find grand-scale dishonesty utterly bizarre as a strategy in life. I was also likely impressed by his seemingly frank admissions of his own past wrongdoing. Obviously, I should have seriously considered the possibility of ongoing deception, given his admitted willingness to live in a mess of lies for so many years. In those early years, I also read a few of Nathaniel Branden's other books, namely The Psychology of Self-Esteem, The Psychology of Romantic Love, and The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem. I enjoyed them all to varying degrees. I attended a weekend seminar he conducted in Chicago in October 1994. During the seminar itself, I was favorably impressed by Branden's intelligence, insight, and consistency with my (limited) understanding of Objectivism. (Later, once I knew more, I realized that his grasp of Objectivism was superficial at best.) About a year later, in November 1995, I heard him speak at the Cato Institute on "The Philosophical Foundations of a Free Society." In response to a question, he claimed a close affinity for Objectivism: From my perspective at the time, Nathaniel Branden seemed very Objectivist, regardless of his tumultuous history with Ayn Rand. My doubts about his portrayal of Ayn Rand slowly faded into the background. After graduating from college in May 1997, I moved to Los Angeles in search of web programming work. As I was job hunting, I approached Nathaniel Branden about the possibility of developing a web site for him, mostly so that I would have some work for my portfolio. (It wasn't because I was a big fan of his work, since I wasn't.) That began my long tenure as his webmaster. For many years, we had a reasonably friendly business relationship, mostly consisting of infrequent e-mails about the web site. While living in southern California, I also attended a few gatherings of people interested in Objectivism held at his house. During those years, I never bothered to read Barbara Branden's biography The Passion of Ayn Rand, except for a page or two. Predictably enough, I'd totally lost interest in the details of Ayn Rand's life after accepting Nathaniel Branden's basic portrait of her. Reading Passion seemed like an unnecessary and unpleasant chore. In those years, I did frequently hear disparaging stories about Ayn Rand from people in and around David Kelley's then-named Institute for Objectivist Studies (IOS). Unfortunately, I didn't realize that Barbara Branden's biography was often the only source for those stories. I presumed her to be fairly reliable reporter of the early history of the Objectivist movement because Passion seemed to be the widely-confirmed truth. (What a vicious circle!) Also, I thought of her as reliable simply because she was a first-hand observer of events. As with Nathaniel Branden, I did not seriously consider the possibility of grand deception, personal bias, or the like. So in time, I came to accept the broad strokes of Nathaniel and Barbara Branden's portraits of Ayn Rand's character. Despite my admiration for the philosophy she created, I concluded that Ayn Rand was often deeply irrational in her dealings with other people. It was a harsh disappointment at first, but one which I felt bound to accept in light of the seemingly well-established facts. (I can vividly remember a moment of grappling with that bitter conflict in my freshman dorm room.) I concluded that I would not have liked to have ever met Ayn Rand, since we surely would have been at odds. (Augh!) Obviously, I failed to examine the portraits of Ayn Rand created by Nathaniel and Barbara Branden critically enough, in substantial part because I was too quick to accept the standard view of Ayn Rand found in IOS/TOC circles. Without a doubt, the Brandens' portrayals of Ayn Rand were widely taken for granted in the intellectual circles of IOS/TOC in which I involved myself (to varying degrees) for ten years. That's hardly surprising, given David Kelley's reliance upon and praise for Barbara Branden's biography in making his allegations of recurring tribalism in the Objectivist movement in Truth and Toleration. Kelley conceded that he did not regard Ayn Rand as "entirely responsible for the tribal character of the [Objectivist] movement," but then wrote: In the mid-1990s, David Kelley invited Nathaniel and Barbara Branden to actively participate in IOS/TOC. For the past decade, both have done so to varying degrees. Nathaniel Branden has spoken at TOC's Summer Seminar almost every year for the past ten years. He has been prominently featured at other TOC conferences, including "Reclaiming Spirituality From Religion" (1999) and "Success: What it Is and What it Takes" (2004). Both Nathaniel and Barbara Branden were invited to speak at "Atlas and the World," although Barbara had to cancel at the last moment due to illness. Barbara Branden was featured as the keynote speaker at the 10th anniversary banquet in 1999. TOC's magazine, Navigator, published two articles by Nathaniel Branden and favorably reviewed The Art of Living Consciously and The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem. In 1998, Navigator favorably highlighted the then-forthcoming movie The Passion of Ayn Rand based upon Barbara Branden's biography. In a 2003 book review of by William F. Buckley's Getting It Right, Robert Bidinotto clearly treated Barbara Branden's biography and Nathaniel Branden's memoirs as accurate and reliable accounts of Ayn Rand's life, even referring to "Barbara Branden's excellent biography, The Passion of Ayn Rand." TOC's book service reissued his Basic Principles of Objectivism course, as well as edited versions of his essays from Who is Ayn Rand?, "The Moral Revolution in Atlas Shrugged" and "The Literary Method of Ayn Rand." Both Nathaniel and Barbara were interviewed for the so-called Objectivist History Project in 2003, 2004, and 2005. (Nathaniel was interviewed twice.) Perhaps most telling of all, despite the publication of Jim Valliant's The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics, both Nathaniel and Barbara Branden are slated to speak at the upcoming 2006 Summer Seminar. Barbara Branden will speak on "Rage and Objectivism." Nathaniel Branden will speak on "The Implications of Love." Together, they will be publicly interviewed on the topic of "Galt's Gulch and Objectivist Community." (Uncle! Those three topics are so pathetically ironic as to be beyond my capacity to mock.) Predictably, once Nathaniel and Barbara Branden became officially involved with IOS/TOC, the general attitude toward them among IOS/TOC supporters shifted in a significantly positive direction. Self-selection was partly at work; most of the few people who strongly objected to their presence, such as Joan and Allan Blumenthal and Jim Lennox, quietly abandoned the organization. Others stayed but tended to keep their objections quiet. Many devout fans of Nathaniel Branden began attending the Summer Seminars largely to hear him speak, to the point that people sometimes joked about him "holding court" in discussions with far too many people gathered in concentric circles around him. Also, more than a few individuals adopted a more positive view of the Brandens at this time. I suspect that many people, particularly those confused or undecided about them, were swayed by their trust in David Kelley's judgment. They were also likely influenced by Nathaniel Branden's charm, large persona, and seeming friendliness to Objectivism. Moreover, given the pre-existing break with ARI, people generally ignored or dismissed the contrary testimony of ARI-affiliated scholars who personally knew Ayn Rand and/or the Brandens as biased hagiography. Many people attempted to erect an untenable wall between the person of Ayn Rand and her fiction and philosophy, disclaiming any interest in the person, even though disdain for person clearly bled over into disdain for the fiction and philosophy. (All that was certainly true in my own case, I'm sorry to report.) Notably, all those changes happened without any serious discussion about the honesty and objectivity of Barbara Branden's portrayal of Ayn Rand in The Passion of Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Branden's in Judgment Day. Personally, while I often heard objections to the quality of the Brandens' writings and lectures, moral objections to their involvement in a supposed Objectivist organization were not just rare, but non-existent. Nathaniel Branden was such a regular fixture at TOC that he was widely regarded as the Benevolent Patriarch of Objectivism. Correspondingly, Ayn Rand was generally seen as the Wicked Witch of Objectivism. For so many years, I went along with all that. Now let me pause here to offer an assessment of all that. While writing up the bulk of this history in the summer of 2004, I came to a hard judgment about myself: Over the course of far too many years, I defaulted on the task of morally judging Nathaniel and Barbara Branden, particularly Nathaniel. To be clear, the fundamental problem was not that my moral judgment was in error, nor that my method of moral judgment was flawed, but rather that I refrained from moral judgment. Here's what happened -- or rather, did not happen. I did not come to a clear and solid evaluation of the Brandens' actions and character based upon the evidence available to me. When the evidence seemed mixed and confused, I did not set myself the task of answering the critical questions, e.g. "Are the Brandens' trustworthy recorders of Ayn Rand's life?" and "Are their criticisms of Objectivism just?" and "Are the Brandens genuine allies of Objectivism?" Instead, my judgments tended to drift along in confusion, pushed here and there by the evidence close at hand. As a result, I passively absorbed a fairly positive view of both Nathaniel and Barbara Branden, as well as a correspondingly negative view of Ayn Rand, from the culture of IOS/TOC. My negligence in this case resulted in substantial injustice, not just to Ayn Rand but also to all those who saw through the con game of the Brandens years ago. And yes, it was important for me to come to a clear moral judgment of the Brandens, particularly Nathaniel. Nathaniel and Barbara Branden were not mere distant strangers, but intellectuals actively involved in an organization claiming to represent and promote Objectivism. So by supporting and promoting that organization, I was also indirectly supporting and promoting Nathaniel and Barbara Branden's unjust and dishonest attacks upon Ayn Rand's philosophy and character. I was helping to send the message to the world, including to newbie Objectivists, that Nathaniel and Barbara Branden are basically friends of Objectivism, that their criticisms thereof are honest and reasonable, and that their portraits of Ayn Rand are generally correct. By participating in an self-described "Objectivist" movement which welcomed the Brandens as friends, I implicitly sanctioned -- and even encouraged -- those nasty smear articles on Ayn Rand and Objectivism based upon the "stunning revelations" of the Brandens. From an outside perspective, if even defenders of Ayn Rand's philosophy accept that she lived a sordid life, then that's all fair game, right? (Every single person who still chooses to associate with TOC in any way, shape, or form, is guilty of the same injustice, even if sometimes critical of the Brandens. That's why I think it's so critical for the few honest ones to read The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics -- and then sever their ties with TOC.) Even worse, as Nathaniel's webmaster, I personally and directly promoted his work, including his attacks upon Ayn Rand and Objectivism. So due to my failure to judge the Brandens as I ought to have, I was destroying the very values I wished promote. All in all, I feel a rather mushy and foul disappointment with myself for this failure to properly judge the Brandens. Even given my limited context of knowledge, I could have and ought to have done better. In contrast, although my ten years with IOS/TOC was predicated on substantial error on my part, at least those errors were mine. I made them, by my own conscious judgment and deliberate choice, because I believed David Kelley to be on the side of the true and the good. In contrast, with the Brandens, my failure to judge meant that I passively allowed others to decide for me. I had no malicious motive: I did not wish to think ill of Ayn Rand, as so many of the nasty folks on "Rebirth of Reason" and "Objectivist Living" clearly do. Still, I allowed my confusions to get the better of me; I passively accepted the standard views at TOC; I defaulted on the responsibility of moral judgment. At least that black cloud has a small silver lining: that failure provided me with an enormously clear lesson in the real-life importance of moral judgment. As with all philosophic issues, if you do not decide for yourself, you allow others to decide for you. So let me now return to my history. My turning point with respect to the Brandens began in 2003, as I was editing my introductory course on Objectivism, Objectivism 101, for the 2003 TOC Summer Seminar. I decided to add a brief biographical sketch of Ayn Rand to the first lecture, focusing on her life up through the writing of the novels. For some background, I skimmed the early chapters of Barbara Branden's The Passion of Ayn Rand, as well as the material covering the same time period in her biographical essay from Who Is Ayn Rand?, both for the first time. Although I was delighted by some of the childhood stories in The Passion of Ayn Rand, my overwhelming response was disgust at the barrage of disparaging, gratuitous, and arbitrary psychologizing of Ayn Rand. Barbara Branden seemed determined to spin the worst possible interpretations from the most innocuous facts. In order to do so, she routinely interjected herself into the story to draw some unwarranted negative conclusions about Ayn Rand's psychology, usually about her deeply repressed subconscious motives. She refused to allow her readers to form their own judgments based upon the facts presented. It was infuriating. (I'll rip apart some examples in a later post.) At the time, I recognized that Barbara Branden's basic evaluations of Ayn Rand were less than objective, even malevolent. I suspected that her account of her own years with Ayn Rand was similarly, if not more seriously, poisoned by bias. I wondered whether Nathaniel Branden's memoir was similarly flawed. In addition to these worries about the Brandens' portrayals of Ayn Rand, I also wondered what justice was rightly due the creator of Objectivism, whatever her personal conduct. In particular, I was disturbed by the contrast between my tepidly mixed feelings toward Ayn Rand and my wholehearted reverence for Aristotle. After all, Aristotle advocated slavery! (As it turned out, I didn't need to solve that dilemma, since I soon realized that it was based upon a false premise about Ayn Rand's private conduct.) My assessment of these matters was substantially hampered by the thought that I faced the Herculean task of having to find out the truth about those long-gone days of the Nathaniel Branden Institute. I thought, for example, that I had to determine who was responsible for the stifling atmosphere around NBI, if such existed at all. That seemed impossible to me, as I couldn't blindly trust the claimed recollections of one side of the conflict while arbitrarily ignoring or discounting the other. Nor was I going to adopt some cowardly middle position. I wanted to judge for myself based upon direct knowledge of the facts, but such knowledge seemed out of my reach. (In fact, I could have largely decided these questions first-hand by listening to Ayn Rand's Ford Hall Forum lectures, as I did in 2005. Her tone in the lectures is serious but not angry -- and her benevolent responses to all sorts of questions were clearly nothing like the dogmatic authoritarianism portrayed by the Brandens.) For the next few months, I was overwhelmingly busy with work in graduate school, not to mention with my efforts to get to the root of my unhappiness with The Objectivist Center. I pursued my questions about the Brandens only on occasion, mostly by speaking to a few trusted friends who'd attended NBI lectures and seeking out various criticisms of the Brandens. Finally, in the spring of 2004, I was able to come to firm moral conclusions about both Nathaniel and Barbara Branden. In the course of reading some of their recent writings on Ayn Rand and Objectivism, I realized that I did not need to somehow uncover the hidden truths of decades past. Those writings were revealing enough on their own. As indicated in my "Unnecessary Evidence" post, further consideration of Barbara's arbitrary psychologizing of Ayn Rand in her biography, combined with her too-often-ludicrous posts in NoodleFood's comments, were reason enough for me to judge her guilty of longstanding, malicious injustice toward Ayn Rand. Since then, her behavior has only confirmed that judgment: she arbitrarily accused her then-friend Lindsay Perigo of alcoholism, invented ludicrous fairy tales about Leonard Peikoff, offered fantastically twisted interpretations of Ayn Rand's personal journal entries, and more. As for Nathaniel, re-reading his "Benefits and Hazards" article told me more than I needed to know about his character. For him to promulgate such amorphous, slippery, and context-dropping criticisms of Objectivism, even while asserting his great authority on the subject, was beyond the pale. (I'd like to blog on his particular charges someday, since some are quite cleverly constructed, almost worthy of Ellsworth Toohey.) And so I concluded that Nathaniel and Barbara Branden were and are dishonest, unjust, and generally vile people. I told them so in a private e-mail in June 2004. I announced that judgment in my August 2004 blog post, Unnecessary Evidence, after Nathaniel Branden decided to play a malicious practical joke upon me -- by trespassing upon my property, no less. (My e-mail to the Brandens is reproduced in that blog post.) Since then, Jim Valliant published The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics. He sealed the case against them, revealing them as dishonest, unjust, and malicious critics of Ayn Rand and Objectivism -- to this very day. Before I read the book, I did not think that I could possibly think worse of Nathaniel and Barbara Branden. I was wrong. In the meantime, the leadership of TOC is steadfastly refusing to consider the issue. In the wake of the revelations about the ongoing immorality of Nathaniel and Barbara Branden in The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics, they are suddenly disclaiming all interest in Ayn Rand's life, while simultaneously refusing to even read the book. TOC is too committed to "openness" and "tolerance" to make the requisite moral judgments of the Brandens. As someone said in the NoodleFood comments recently, they're willing to tolerate everything -- except genuine Objectivists. With the publication of The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics, all those who claim some affinity for Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism face a stark choice: EITHER Ayn Rand and Objectivism OR Nathaniel and Barbara Branden. It is simply not logically possible to value both Objectivism and its would-be destroyers. The middle ground is gone forever. For many years, I thought that I could and ought to stand on that middle ground. I'm delighted to have been proven wrong, since that leaves me free to admire Ayn Rand in the way she so richly deserves. More than anything else, that is the great value of Jim Valliant's The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics.

Originally posted by Diana from NoodleFood, The Chicago Objectivist Society is hosting two lectures by Jim Valliant about The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics on April 15th: You can pay with a credit card via the Chicago Objectivist Society's web page.

Hal, The distinction between errors of knowledge and breaches of morality is not the same as the distinction between motives and consequences. The first concerns whether a person evaded or not, whereas the second concerns the goal versus the outcome of action. So a person may have a good motive, yet still evade left and right. Also, I did address something like your point in this paragraph:

In this essay, originally posted to NoodleFood, I argue that David Kelley's views of moral judgment in _Truth and Toleration_ are implicitly grounded in the mind-body dichotomy. For more of my writings on the various false friends of Objectivism, visit: http://www.dianahsieh.com/misc/toc.html David Kelley on Motives Versus Consequences in Moral Judgment In the first chapter of Truth and Toleration, David Kelley begins his discussion of moral judgment by explaining that it is "the particular form of evaluation concerned with what is volitional, with the realm of man-made facts." He then writes: Kelley is right that "philosophers have long wrestled with [the] question" of "how to integrate [motives and consequences] into a single judgment": it's standard fare in contemporary moral philosophy. Utilitarians and other consequentialists claim that only the consequences of an action matter. Kantians and other deontologists claim that only the motives of an action matter. Moral philosophers often attempt to strike some balance between these two extremes, despite the great difficulty (if not impossibility) of identifying any rational principle by which determine the "proper weight" in any given case. Simply by framing his discussion of moral judgment in terms of this standard puzzle, Kelley has already set himself in conflict with the Objectivist metaphysics. How so? By accepting the basic terms of the motives-versus-consequences debate, he's accepted its underlying split between mind and body. The basic question of that debate, after all, is whether a person should be judged primarily by the action intended by consciousness (i.e. the mental) or the actual results in existence (i.e. the physical). The mental and physical aspects of human action are treated as fundamentally separate and distinct parts, as only related by chance. Once the problem of moral judgment is framed in terms of a fundamental distinction between motives and consequences, a proper Objectivist solution is no longer possible. To claim that only one element matters, whether motives or consequences, is to outright embrace either the mental or physical side of the mind-body dichotomy. More subtly, any attempt to assign "proper weight" to each side also leaves the dichotomy intact. In that case, the mental and physical aspects of human action are juxtaposed but not integrated. They are still treated as quite separate and distinct elements of human action, only barely related. (It's like adding oil and water to a jar, rather than just one or the other, but not blending them into a creamy new whole via emulsification.) Notably, Kelley does not merely raise the "motives versus consequences" dilemma to highlight its basic error. He fully accepts it, using it throughout his discussion of moral judgment. In the passage quoted above, he not only says that moral judgment concerns both motives and consequences, but also assigns each its own standard of judgment: the standard of rationality for motives and the standard of life for consequences (T&T 9). He later discusses "evaluating actions" and "interpreting motives" as two separate kinds of moral judgment (T&T 11-13). In transitioning from one to the other, he mentions that "to judge an action morally, we must consider motive as well as consequence" (T&T 12). Also, in the opening comments of the later chapter on "Error and Evil," Kelley's very strange analysis of ideas as possessing the primary property of truth/falsehood and the derivative property of good/evil depends upon his mind-body dichotomy, particularly the gap between motives and consequences and between rationality and life. He writes: Kelley's subsequent argument that the Marxist professor is less evil than the Marxist dictator depends upon these general distinctions -- and thus upon the mind-body dichotomy. (Don't get me wrong: his analysis of those cases is also wrong for many other reasons! That's another blog post though.) All in all, Kelley clearly filters the Objectivist understanding of moral judgment through the distorting lens of the mind-body dichotomy, courtesy of the division between motives and consequences. As we shall see, the results aren't pretty -- nor remotely Objectivist. The Objectivist Integration of Mind and Body in Moral Judgment Ayn Rand's rejection of the mind-body dichotomy allows her to bypass the traditional debates about motives versus consequences in moral judgment. It's not that Objectivism has "yet to address this question," as Kelley claims (T&T 9). Ayn Rand did not somehow overlook or ignore the issue in her lengthy discussions of moral judgment in "How Does One Lead a Rational Life in an Irrational Society?" and "The Cult of Moral Grayness" in The Virtue of Selfishness. Rather, because she consistently rejected all forms of the mind-body dichotomy, the thorny question never arose. Two passages by Ayn Rand on justice illustrate that point. First, in Galt's Speech of Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand describes justice thusly: The thorough integration of mind and body underlying this conception of justice leaves no room for the standard debate about motives and consequences. For Ayn Rand, justice requires the moral evaluation of a person "for what he is" -- meaning for all that he has made of himself as a human being in thought and action. It also requires the judger to take action consistent with those evaluations. To fail in that moral virtue by refusing to differentiate between good and evil is to court disaster. So justice -- both by the judger and for the judged -- presupposes the integration of mind and body, thought and action, and moral and practical. Ayn Rand even explicitly speaks of mind-body integration just two paragraphs earlier, in the discussion of integrity: "man is an indivisible entity, an integrated unit of two attributes: of matter and consciousness, and that he may permit no breach between body and mind, between action and thought, between his life and his convictions" (AS 937). (She could well have added "between motives and consequences" to that sentence.) So in moral judgment, the standard questions about the "proper weight" to assign to motives and consequences are beside the point. The whole man is to be judged, not just some selected parts thereof. Second, in Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, Ayn Rand analyzes justice as follows: Notice what Ayn Rand does not do in the passage: She does not divide human action into wholly separate domains of motives and consequences, assign a different standard of evaluation to each, and then wonder how to properly combine them into a single moral judgment -- as David Kelley does. Instead, she is concerned with objective moral judgment by proper moral standards of all that lies within a man's volitional power of choice. Like Aristotle, Ayn Rand understands human action to be an integrated whole consisting of deeply integrated mental and physical aspects. So precisely how are mind and body integrated in human action? Metaphysically, the fact that all human action is goal-directed means that its mental and physical aspect are integrated by complex relations of cause and effect. Our bodily movements are continuously guided by mental processes, i.e. by our thoughts, percepts, values, desires, goals, and choices. An everyday action like driving to the grocery store to buy steak for dinner requires a vast background of mental activity, such as remembering the pleasure of eating perfectly grilled slabs of beef, accepting the consumption of animal flesh as moral, recognizing the car as the most efficient form of transportation, understanding the need to trade with others, projecting the inevitable hunger of later that evening, noticing the red light at the intersection, knowing that steak is a nutritious food, and so much more. Even the super-simple action of depressing the gas pedal cannot be understood except in terms of perception of the upcoming hill, a goal of maintaining speed, and knowledge of the effects of depressing the gas pedal. Since human actions aim at some end, they cannot be understood apart from the complex of mental states which generate and guide them. At root, those particular mental states are the product of the thinking that a person does -- or fails to do. So a person's chosen actions are the causal effects of the sum total of his ideas, and those ideas are the causal effects of the sum total of his thinking. Morally, the mental and physical aspects of human action are integrated by the deep causal connection between thought and life, i.e. by the fact that human survival requires the volitional exercise of reason. In "The Objectivist Ethics" and elsewhere, Ayn Rand stresses that "man cannot survive, as animals do, by the guidance of mere percepts," that "he cannot provide for his simplest physical needs without a process of thought," that man's "basic means of survival is reason" (VOS 22-3). In fact, the connection between reason and life is so deep that she repeatedly connected our basic volitional choice to think or not with our existential choice of life or death. So in Galt's Speech, she observes: "You are not free to escape from your nature, from the fact that reason is your means of survival--so that for you, who are a human being, the question 'to be or not to be' is the question 'to think or not to think.' (GS 930). Similarly, in "The Objectivist Ethics," she writes: "Metaphysically, the choice 'to be conscious or not' is the choice of life or death" (VOS 22). The fact that human life requires thought means that the choice to think is the embrace of life whereas the refusal to think is the embrace of death. Or, as Ayn Rand wrote: "To the extent to which a man is rational, life is the premise directing his actions. To the extent to which he is irrational, the premise directing his actions is death" (AS 936). According to Objectivism, valid principles of moral judgment must reflect the integration of mind and body inherent in human action. They must be well-grounded in the deep causal connections between a person's choices, thoughts, actions, and life. Leonard Peikoff does just that in Fact and Value: In contrast, David Kelley claims that moral judgment concerns two distinct realms: the mental realm of motives, judged by the standard of rationality, and the physical realm of consequences, judged by the standard of life. That's simply not consistent with the Objectivist approach. Does this criticism mean that questions about motives versus consequences never arise in moral judgment? No. Sometimes a person's motives for acting may conflict with the ultimate consequences of that action. Whether for good or for ill, a person's plans may be confounded by the misjudgment a critical fact or the intervention of some unforeseeable outside force. Such mixed cases are often difficult to judge rightly. However, they are variant, unusual cases -- and ought to be treated as such. The norm of human action is motives integrated with consequences, thought with action, mind with body. So the distinction between motives and consequences is not a fundamental divide in moral judgment, nor a proper starting point -- contrary to David Kelley's analysis. David Kelley on the Dual Standards of Life and Rationality As we've seen, David Kelley does not merely distinguish between the mental and physical aspects of human action in Truth and Toleration. He also carves out separate domains of motives and consequences, each with its own standard of judgment. After so injecting the virtue of justice with this mind-body dichotomy, Kelley must resort to strange philosophic gymnastics to then relate these two domains of human action back to one another. Given the already-contradicted fact of mind-body integration, his strategy is as sensible as declaring entities to be mysterious combinations of existence, identity, and causality, and then attempting to somehow relate those parts. Still, let us consider the details. Unsurprisingly, Kelley attempts to connect motives and consequences by appealing to rationality as a means to the end of human life. He writes: In fact, by accepting the standard framework of motives versus consequences, Kelley has already "divorce[d] the inner choice from the outer action" (T&T 10). Once that is done, he cannot then properly integrate them as Objectivism demands. So what does he do instead? Kelley clarifies his approach in the next paragraph by contrasting two examples of wrongdoing: The most glaring oddity in this passage is Kelley's claim that "we measure the degree of irrationality by considering the scope and value significance of the foreseeable consequences that were evaded" (T&T 10). Since when?!? Apparently, irrationality is no longer to be understood in principled terms as the willful indifference to or rejection of the facts of reality (VOS 27-8), as the pursuit of desires contrary to facts (VOS 31), and as the attempt to defy reality by rejecting reason (AS 959). According to Kelley, that broad perspective is dangerous: it encourages us to think of evasion as "intrinsically wrong, apart from its consequences" (T&T 10). Instead, the irrationality of any given mental process is to be judged on the basis of the harms likely to result from it, as in the comparison of the dieter to the dictator. Kelley interprets "the fundamental and all-encompassing standard" of life in the most concrete-bound terms, so that it only concerns "the foreseeable consequences" of actions (T&T 10). Ayn Rand's broad integrations -- like the inevitable peril to human life of rejecting reality and reason in favor of fancy and whim -- are discarded. And so Kelley reduces the scope of irrationality from evasion of any fact whatsoever to just evasion of the likely outcomes of action. What does all that mean in practice? It means that if John's wife threatens divorce if she catches him in bed with yet another hooker, John can be morally condemned as irrational for soliciting the in-home services of "Bunny" only to the extent that he evades the risks of detection and the pain of divorce. He cannot be condemned for ignoring his past promises of fidelity, blaming his actions upon his "bad" genes, and deceiving himself about his hostility toward his wife -- even though those evasions also made the call to "Bunny" possible. Also, if "Bunny" insists that John use a condom, then his wrong isn't quite so bad, since he need not evade the great risk that he will transmit some nasty STD to his wife. Similarly, if a Marxist professor evades the facts about the respective histories of capitalism and socialism, he's not to be condemned as irrational -- so long as he has some tissue-paper rationalizations blaming the poverty and repression of socialist countries upon capitalist enemies or poor leadership. Those rationalizations, after all, mean that he's just evading some historical facts, not "the scope and value significance of the foreseeable consequences" of implementing socialism. If you're now tempted to protest that David Kelley can't really mean that because it's just too absurd, let me recommend Ayn Rand's advice on "Philosophical Detection": If Kelley did not really mean that "we measure the degree of irrationality by considering the scope and value significance of the foreseeable consequences that were evaded," then he ought not have written, published it, and re-published it (T&T 10). Since he did, we are entitled to take him at his word, to read him straight, as I have done. The fact that the implications are unpalatable, implausible, and contrary to Objectivism is his problem, not ours. So how does Kelley paint himself into this bizarre corner? In retrospect, the proximate cause can be found in the way Kelley attempts to connect motives to consequences in moral judgment through the fact that reason is a means to life. In a passage already quoted above, after noting that "rationality is a means to an end, not an end in itself," Kelley writes, "If reason did not help us pursue and maintain our lives -- if it made no difference whether we thought well, or poorly, or not at all -- then rationality would not be a virtue nor a standard of judgment" (T&T 10). Upon this basis, he concludes that "life is the fundamental and all-encompassing standard" of all evaluation (T&T 10). Kelley's description of reason as a "help" to life is an illuminating abuse of language. Consider the meaning of the word "help." If A helps B, then A contributes something to an already-existing B. So if John helps Mary with her homework, that means that he offers her some assistance, not that he does it for her. In short, necessary conditions are not kinds of help. (The sarcastic exception -- as in "Oh, I guess it would help toast the bread if I actually plugged in the toaster" -- proves the rule.) So eyes are not a "help" to seeing: they make seeing possible. And reason is not a "help" to human life: it makes human life possible. Reason does not merely contribute some extra goodies to human life. Reason is not just one of many alternate means to human life. Rather, reason is the most fundamental and absolute requirement of human life. Kelley's tepid choice of words suggests a failure to grasp the true relationship between reason and life -- and his overall argument confirms that. If reason were just some means to the end of life like bananas, trucks, and antibiotics, Kelley's argument subordinating the standards of reason to the standard of life would be perfectly sensible. After all, a banana farmer ought not destroy his health in order to maximize banana production, since that would constitute using a means (i.e. bananas) to destroy the end (i.e. life). He can pursue his life by other means. So if banana farming is killing him, perhaps he ought to become a mango farmer, a truck driver, or an interior decorator instead. Since he can support his life by any one of a vast range of honest, productive professions, the standards of any profession must be subordinate to the standards of life. In contrast, the relationship between reason and life is quite unlike the relationship between bananas and life. Life accepts no substitutes for reason. Reason is not merely one faculty among many capable of providing the knowledge required for human life. Humans cannot live on the perceptual/emotional level, as other animals do. Without reason, we cannot know or pursue the values required for life. In short, reason is not merely a means to human life, it is the essential necessary means to human life. Consequently, the standards of reason actually constitute the standards of life. The logical processes of reduction and integration, for example, are not Duties Imposed By Pure Reason, but rather the basic methods of establishing proper cognitive contact with the world in which we choose to live. By telling us how to stay in contact with existence, the standards of reason tell us how to stay in existence. To instead claim, as Kelley does, that the standards of reason must be subordinated to the standards of life is to deny that the exercise of reason is an absolute requirement of human life. It is to lower reason to the status of bananas. In failing to grasp the deep connection between reason and life, Kelley rejects the wide scope of the Objectivist virtue of rationality. He cannot understand that human life absolutely requires what Ayn Rand described as rationality: That is the virtue required by human life. As should be obvious, it involves much more than just the proper consideration of "the scope and value significance of the foreseeable consequences" (T&T 10). David Kelley's Rationalistic Misunderstanding of Objectivism David Kelley is hardly ignorant of the Objectivist principle that reason is man's basic means of survival. I'm quite certain that he's rattled off the right catch-phrases on other occasions. Yet this discussion of moral judgment from Truth and Toleration shows that he does not genuinely understand its meaning and implications. At best, he understands the principle in a highly rationalistic way, as a floating abstraction detached from reality. Worse, he's injected it into the framework of traditional philosophy, with all of its erroneous presumptions of a split between mind and body. (That's one reason why students not terribly familiar with Objectivism often find Truth and Toleration so comfortable: his basic philosophic framework is more familiar to them, since so much is borrowed from contemporary academic philosophy.) As expected, David Kelley's rationalistic misunderstandings of Objectivism in Truth and Toleration are not limited to his discussions of moral judgment. The same basic pattern is found in his mangled discussions of both moral principles and objectivity. However, those are topics for another day. P.S. Many thanks to Lin Zinser, Don Watkins, David Rehm, and Paul Hsieh for their helpful comments on a draft!

Originally posted by Diana from NoodleFood, I'm very pleased to report that Front Range Objectivism's Weekend Conference on Law, Individual Rights and the Judicial System was a thoroughly delightful experience, just as I expected. The lectures were very good, each conveying an unexpected wealth of new ideas and information. The conference was run very smoothly, thanks to Lin Zinser's excellent organizational skills. I also really enjoyed the time spent with Don Watkins, David Rehm, and Greg Perkins. For the sake of those who were not present, let me offer from brief comments on each lecturer. (Although I took reasonably good notes, I can't guarantee that I've not made some error in presenting the ideas of the speaker. So take what I've said with a grain of salt.) Tara Smith gave an excellent lecture on "Why Originalism Won't Die: Common Mistakes in Competing Theories of Judicial Interpretation." A few weeks before the conference, I re-listened to her OCON lecture "How "Activist" Should Judges Be?: Objectivity in Judicial Decisions." Although the two lectures concerned the same basic topic, the OCON lecture offered a more sweeping overview, whereas the FRO lecture offered a much more detailed examination and in-depth critique of the reigning theory of judicial interpretation today, namely originalism. She particularly focused on demolishing its claim to objectivity -- and she did that quite effectively by means of the Objectivist theory of concepts. So, much to my delight, the FRO lecture was definitely not just a rehash of the OCON lecture. I mention that in the hopes that a recording will be offered for sale, in that both lectures are well-worth buying. In any case, I know that Tara is working on publishing it as a law review article. Dana Berliner spoke about her fight against arbitrary government seizure of private property for private developers as one of the Institute for Justice's litigators in the Kelo eminent domain case. Since I have some reservations about supporting IJ, I was very impressed by her thoughtful approach to working within the very messy state current legal precedents. In arguing the Kelo case, she (and IJ generally) was careful to avoid endorsing the bad premises of various awful but well-entrenched precedents, even when working within those precedents. She repeatedly emphasized a very important point: that mere parchment cannot protect our rights. Supreme Courts have repeatedly handed down awful decisions time and time again, even when the language in the Constitution is clear and unambiguous. That's why we need a rational culture to preserve our liberty, particularly a deeply entrenched respect for individual rights. Ms. Berliner was also clearly devastated by the outcome of the Kelo decision, precisely because IJ chose a case that would have such a broad application. However, she was also very heartened and hopeful by the resulting furor over the decision. She reported that 46 states are working on passing more restrictive amendments and/or laws about eminent domain than found in the Kelo decision! Emminent domain is definitely a critically hot issue today -- and defenders of individual rights have a great opportunity to strengthen government protection of property rights by capitalizing on the public fury over Kelo. Eric Daniels gave two excellent lectures on the history of the unenumerated rights in the 9th and 14th Amendments, almost all of which was unknown to me. In particular, I had no inkling of the conflict between the doctrine of unenumerated rights and that of the police powers of the late 1800s and early 1900s. (The police power is the power of the states to regulate anything for the sake of promoting the health, welfare, safety, and morals of people. Even in the founding period of the US, it was widely assumed to be a legitimate power of the states, albeit not of the federal government.) As usual, Eric's command of that historical material was awe-inspiring. At the end of his second lecture, Eric offered some interesting suggestions for better protecting currently-unenumerated rights. He said that the relationship between the rights must be made more clear, particularly that rights are an integrated whole, that they do not conflict, that they are all derivatives of the right to life. Physical force must understood to be the only means of violating rights. Government power must be strictly limited -- and that must be recognized as a positive good. The fundamental rights must be more clearly articulated, as opposed to the grab-bag of rights listed in the Bill of Rights. A clear declaration of the nature of rights and purpose of government should be included in the Constitution, perhaps as a preamble. The most fundamental change must be a moral change in the culture, particularly the acceptance of self-interest as the only foundation of ethics, of capitalism as moral, and so on. Amy Peikoff gave two very interesting lectures on the supposed right to privacy, the subject of her philosophy dissertation. She examined the origin of the claim that privacy is a fundamental right in and of itself worthy of constitutional protection -- and the subsequent and ongoing debates about it. (That part of the lecture was a bit difficult to follow, unfortunately.) Then she examined whether the right to privacy is a legitimate right at all. Amy's view is that it is not. Here's why: Privacy is a good--like food, music, or love. So while we have the right to take the actions required to secure our privacy via judicious use of our property and voluntary contracts with others, we have no direct right to privacy per se. (Amy has some interesting ideas about "virtual trespass" upon which Paul might blog.) Also, rights are freedoms to act in pursuit of the values required for life. If privacy were a right, then the mere act of being watched would have to necessarily interfere with those actions, but that's not true. (In fact, the right to privacy is based upon a Kantian appeal to the dignity of the human person, not upon a Lockean theory of rights.) The right to privacy is non-objective. The claim that some information is private (or that some observation is an intrusion) is a value judgment, often substantially dependent upon the individual's personal preferences. In contrast, the law should just concern factual, perceptual judgments about whether force was initiated or not. (That lack of objectivity is also a basic problem with taxing "luxury" goods or banning "obscenity" too.) Consequently, upholding a right to privacy means that people cannot protect their privacy to whatever degree they please, but rather must depend upon the government's idea of a "reasonable expectation of privacy," as set by community standards and limited by community welfare. (Collective subjectivism replaces objectivity, yet again, courtesy of Kant.) Rights don't conflict. Yet laws designed to protect privacy often undermine genuine rights to property and contract. So employers lose their right to contractually set the terms for the use of their computers by their employees when those employees are deemed to have a right to privacy shielding personal e-mail composed at and sent from the workplace from examination by the employers. Also, even the justification of genuine rights (like the right to abort a fetus) by the right to privacy diverts attention away from the genuine liberty rights at stake. And so those genuine rights are not eroded, since they are not paid due attention. our government doesn't currently protect the our genuine rights to liberty, property, contract, and so on. So we should worry that demolishing the right to privacy in the context of our present legal system would mean giving up some protection of genuine rights, most obviously the right to abortion. However, Amy's purpose was not to claim that we should be advocating the elimination of the right to privacy right now, but rather than a proper political system would not appeal to a false right like the right to privacy. Also, we should advocate particular rights like the right to abortion on proper grounds, i.e. right to liberty, not privacy. Amy is also working on publishing this work on privacy as a law review article. In the panel discussion, perhaps the most interesting point raised concerned the extent of the danger posed by the reversal of Roe v. Wade. Institute for Justice lawyer Steve Simpson said that such a decision would not merely throw the abortion issue back to the states, but could open the door to a federal statute banning abortion. Also, I should mention that I was very impressed with the integration between all the talks: references to ideas from prior talks were constantly flying about in delightful ways. Overall, I was dismayed to learn just how much Kantianism has infected American jurisprudence, not just via the appeal to human dignity underlying the right to privacy, but also in the now-standard idea that the government may do almost anything, so long as it claims to intend some good. (That's the current state of the law with respect to eminent domain.) For more on that sordid topic of Kantian jurisprudence, I'm delighted to recommend Amy Peikoff's very good course Louis D. Brandeis: Altruism With Integrity and Its Consequences. (I listened to it just a few days after the law conference.) Although that's not the main topic of the lectures, she discusses Brandeis' Kantian altruism -- and the disastrous effects of his very effective implementation thereof in our legal system. Overall, my hearty congratulations to Lin Zinser for producing such a fantastic event!

Originally posted by Diana from NoodleFood, Hooray! I just registered for the 2006 OCON! It'll be in Boston from June 30th to July 8th. Discount pricing lasts for just a few more days -- until March 15th. The schedule looks particularly good this year: I'm particularly displeased that I won't be able to take two very promising optional courses, thanks to an already-way-too-full schedule. (Yes, yes, that's a great problem to have. Still, I grumble.) I'll get those lectures on CD, of course... but they won't arrive until late fall. Here's my first session of optional courses: The Rise of Totalitarian Islam, Yaron Brook Savoring Ayn Rand's "Red Pawn" by Dina Schein Ayn Rand's movie scenario "Red Pawn" is arguably the most dramatic of her early works of fiction. This course aims to raise the reader's enjoyment of "Red Pawn" by analyzing it and to teach the rudiments of literary analysis using this work as the model. Among issues to be discussed: how to determine "Red Pawn's" theme; the essential elements that make this work dramatic; an analysis of the story's characters; how the events, characters and even descriptive details support the theme; how Miss Rand's technique of writing in tiers applies to this work. By contrasting "Red Pawn" with its nearest literary neighbor, We the Living, Dr. Schein will shed more light on both works. The Greco-Persian Wars by John Lewis Gems of Short Fiction by Lisa VanDamme Here's my second session: Aristotle's Ethics: Its Critics through History, Marc Baer Descartes's Meditations, Robert Mayhew Understanding 20th-Century Philosophy--the Case of Quine by B. John Bayer Inspiring Heroes: Great Leaders by Debi Ghate, Talbot Manvel and Rob Tarr I really wish that I could also take these courses, but at least I'll hear on-the-spot reports from Paul: Objectivist Epistemology in Outline by Greg Salmieri The Nature of Probability, Its Valid and Invalid Uses by Evan Picoult Also, I should mention that I'll definitely buy this course on CD: The History of America (part 5): 1920-1975 by Eric Daniels As for the general sessions, I'm particularly looking forward to: Motivation in Education, Lisa VanDamme The Value of Ayn Rand's Philosophy of Art, Mary Ann Sures Unborrowed Vision: The Virtue of Independence, Tara Smith I'm rather excited now!

Originally posted by Diana from NoodleFood, This recent letter to the editor.. from the Ayn Rand Institute on the cartoon jihad has a more personal touch than usual. (And I enjoyed that!) I only wish I could witness the reaction to the Free Speech Campaign in person! (If I weren't so overwhemed with school, I'd certainly fly to a coast to see either the March 10th lecture at UCLA or the March 13th lecture at Johns Hopkins.)

Originally posted by Diana from NoodleFood, When Objectivists meet for the first time, they often inquire about each other's early history with Ayn Rand, particularly how they discovered her fiction and philosophy. That's a fine and dandy question, but here's a somewhat different one: At what point in reading Ayn Rand did you realize that she had something really significant to contribute to your understanding of the world? Perhaps I'm unusual in even experiencing such a moment, but Ayn Rand's quick description of concepts in "The Objectivist Ethics" (in The Virtue of Selfishness) truly convinced me that she was worth seriously studying. That passage reads: . I was a freshman in college at the time, in the middle of a particularly difficult course on philosophy of language. (I'd already devoured both The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged the previous year, in high school.) Just from the first few sentences of that paragraph, I realized that Ayn Rand had untangled the knots in the bewildering questions I was studying, albeit in outline form. That's the hook that inspired me to seriously consider Objectivism. Has anyone else had a similar experience? If so, what was the hook?

Originally posted by Diana from NoodleFood, A few weeks ago, Paul sent me to a lengthy TCS article by philosopher Edward Fesser on "The Metaphysics of Conservatism." The article consists of some downright disturbing discussion of the philosophical underpinnings of the various forms of modern conservatism. Fesser clearly grounds the core of conservatism in Plato's mystical metaphysics and intrinisicist epistemology. Since I've heard the critiques of neo-conservatism from Objectivist scholars like Yaron Brook and John Lewis, that's not news to me. Still, I was pleased to hear those ideas from the horse's mouth. After some lengthy discussion of philosophy, the author distinguishes between three kinds of modern conservatism: Realist Conservatism, Reductionist Conservatism, and Anti-Realist Conservatism. As you might have noticed, this division of conservatives is itself highly Platonic, in that these three types of conservatism are defined in terms of Humean deviation from Platonism. Absolutism varies inversely with empiricism. Still, the categories do seem to capture the varieties of intrinsicism and subjectivism found in modern conservatism. Although I'm no expert on such matters, it does correspond to much of what I've seen from conservative intellectuals over the years. As for the substance of his argument that modern conservatism is rooted in ancient thought, let me indicate just some of the mental gymnastics required to make that case. For example, the article basically ignores the quasi-communist totalitarian dictatorship of The Republic, even though Plato regarded that state as the natural outgrowth of his mystical metaphysics and intuitionist epistemology -- and rightly so. As otherworldly entities, the Forms will be distant from the thoughts of most people. Lacking the special training of philosophy, ordinary people are easily deceived by the imperfect, changing, and sordid appearances of this world -- not to mention led astray by their passions. So a good society would have to be rule paternalistically by a special caste of those truly in touch with the Forms -- conservative intellectuals, no doubt. Although the details of Plato's ideal state -- such as women, children, and property in common -- would be rejected by modern conservatives, the basic ideal of a rigidly paternalistic state flows directly from Plato's metaphysics and epistemology. Fesser ignores that rather large element of Plato's philosophy, perhaps unwilling to admit just how paternalistic his conservative ideal would be. Even worse, Fesser grossly misrepresents Aristotle's philosophy so as to claim him as a source for modern theocratic politics. For example, he attempts to use Aristotle's hylomorphism (i.e. the idea that substances are unions of form and matter) to justify a total ban on abortion, euthanasia, and the like. When he makes this argument, he's already mentioned that "Aristotle also emphasized the idea that a substance -- a statue, a tree, a human being -- is a composite of matter and form... And the soul, on Aristotle's view, is simply the form of a living body. A human person, therefore, is on his view a composite of soul (or form) and body (or living matter)." That's accurate. Yet consider what he does with those ideas: The first sentence and a half of that quote is accurate. The rest is a logical leap to Platonic and Christian garbage. Perhaps most obviously, the claims about damaged or immature humans "not perfectly exhibit[ing] the form of the human body" is a highly Platonic analysis -- and quite inconsistent with Aristotle's approach. Also, Aristotle would not even recognize all the talk about a fetus as a "person" with "all the rights of a person, including the right to life," since he had no concept of "rights." Yet even if we make some allowances on those scores, nothing in Aristotle's views about the metaphysical nature of the human organism supports the notion that abortion and/or euthanasia are morally wrong. If anything, Aristotle's discussions of these matters in De Anima (DA) or Generation of Animals (GA) suggests precisely the opposite view. As already mentioned, Aristotle does regard the soul as the form of a living human body. Yet souls are not limited to human beings, as in Christian dogma and as implied in the above passage. Rather, the soul is the form of any living body, whether human, animal, or even plant. Different kinds of living organisms have different kinds of souls, differentiated by natural capacities. So plants have a "nutritive soul" of growth and reproduction. Animals have a "sensitive soul" also capable of perception and locomotion. Humans have even more, namely the "rational soul" required for abstract thought. (See DA 2:3) Since souls are not uniquely human, the mere possession of a soul cannot confer any special moral standing upon all and only humans, as Fesser implies. Moreover, nor can the rational soul possessed by only humans do so, since not all humans have the capacity to reason. Some humans will only have a sensitive soul. Others are limited to a nutritive soul. As pertains to abortion, Aristotle explicitly says the soul of a human must develop from nutritive to sensitive to rational, albeit with some subtleties about actual versus potential. (See GA 2:1.) As for euthanasia, clearly a person suffering from degenerative brain disease may regress from a rational to sensitive to nutritive soul. That's why they're called "vegetables"! Given Aristotle's analysis of the metaphysical nature of organisms, it's hardly surprising that he was no opponent of abortion, but rather allowed it in the early stages of pregnancy due to his metaphysical views. In his discussion of the best state in the Politics, he writes: In contrast, Aristotle is opposed to suicide, but for reasons which have nothing to do with the nature of the human soul. (For more details on Aristotle on both abortion and euthanasia, including detailed textual references, see this helpful paper.) In short, by leaping from hylomorphism about humans to moral and legal opposition to abortion and euthanasia, Edward Fesser is engaged in that all-too-common practice in philosophy of "making stuff up." (Yes, that's technical terminology.) Even worse, he's obviously relying upon the ignorance of his audience to do so: Although his claims about Aristotle are little more than logical leaps based upon gross misinterpretations, few of his readers are likely to know those technical details of Aristotle's philosophy. Thus Edward Fesser, like the philosopher-kings of Plato's paternalistic totalitarianism, is perfectly willing to engage in whatever deceptions necessary to induce the rest of us lower beings to accept the rule of conservative intellectuals. Lovely.

Originally posted by Paul from NoodleFood, This is an astounding story of an autistic high-school student who got to play a few minutes at the end of a basketball game. Be sure to watch the video included in the news article. It would be interesting to know if his skill with the basketball is related in some fashion to his autism.

I did. Here's what I blogged about it: Last night, Paul and I heard Scott Powell's teleconference lecture on his new history course for adults, as blogged here. Although I'm not yet sure whether I can fit the course into my schedule, given all the oppressive demands of graduate school, the course definitely looks interesting. I'm enthused about the thought Scott has put into the teaching of history. In particular, I like his reverse chronological approach, since I've often found that studying later events first helps shed light upon the significance of earlier events. (Once that foundation is laid, you can then further study whatever most interests you, since the before-and-after context is well-established.) I'm also enthused by Scott's enthusiasm for his subject, since I think that makes a world of difference in teaching. Scott is repeating last night's lecture, although the schedule has changed from the first announcement: The next and final session will be Sunday, Feb.26 at 12:00 p.m. (Pacific Time). E-mail [email protected] to sign up. If you're interested in history, I'd certainly recommend giving it a hearing. Update: After inquiring about the pace of the lectures, I'm confident that I can fit the course into my schedule. (I do prefer to be overwhelmed by the demands of work, after all!) So I'm signing up at this very moment.

No such program exists. For any serious Objectivist, graduate school in philosophy will necessarily be a long march through a great deal of stinky muck, albeit with perhaps an occasional bit of fresh air and solid ground. The problem isn't merely the content of the ideas taught, but also the painfully unreadable contemporary readings, the all-pervasive rationalism, the hit-or-miss courses rather than an integrated curriculum, jaded and bored professors, and more. I would only recommend graduate school to someone with a burning passion for the subject who wishes to teach in academia, since otherwise it's just too awful. (And for that, you need a Ph.D. An MA in philosophy is worthless -- unless you just need make up for a deficient undergraduate education in philosophy in order to get into a Ph.D program.) As for Objectivist professors: Tara Smith is an ethicist at UT Austin. Allan Gotthelf is an Aristotelian at U Pitt. Both of those are excellent programs by conventional standards -- meaning that you'd have a good chance of finding a tenure-track job thereafter. But if you aren't interested in specializing ethics or Aristotle, those schools might not be your best bet. I've found that working in the history of philosophy is generally much more pleasant than in contemporary philosophy -- and more important. Hume and Locke are legitimately part of the philosophic canon. Nagel and Chalmers will be forgotten soon enough. For the nuts and bolts of philosophy departments, you should look at the Philosophical Gourmet Report: http://www.philosophicalgourmet.com/ Also, I would strongly recommend taking OAC classes before and/or during graduate school in philosophy, since you certainly won't learn anything about Objectivism in graduate school.

Originally posted by Paul from NoodleFood, I've been listening to Leonard Peikoff's excellent lecture course "Understanding Objectivism", and I was struck by his assessment of the state of religion in the US back in 1983: Of course, since that time Peikoff has significantly revised his position. In his also-excellent "DIM Hypothesis" course, given in 2004, he makes a persuasive argument that religion poses the most significant (and still rapidly-growing) philosophical danger to the United States, far more than the discredited ideas of the secular leftists/collectivists. It's amazing how much things have changed in 20 years.

Originally posted by Diana from NoodleFood, Someone who probably wishes to remain anonymous sent me the following comment on my post on David Kelley Versus Ayn Rand on Kant: Indeed! David Kelley should know better than to think that the Marxist professors who advocate the "dictatorship of the proletariat" are morally better than actual dictators of that proletariat. Yes, those Marxist professors do merely attempt to persuade others -- but they attempt to persuade some to exercise brute force while rationalizing and/or denying the resulting rivers of blood to others. The fact that the professors wouldn't dream of bloodying their own hands does not exonerate them, but condemns them further. It shows that they wish for the illusion of civilization, even while obviously supporting the very opposite, including death camps for even suspicion of dissent, show trials against loyal communists, and starving whole peoples into submission. (Yes, Marxist professors did support such atrocities, not just by rejecting such "bourgeois" concepts as individual rights, objective law, and economic freedom, but also by defending the USSR and other communist regimes against almost any criticism.) To be unable to slit the throats of your ideological victims yourself, yet continue to preach the ideas which justify and inspire others to slit throats, is not a sign of any redeeming virtue but only of dishonest cowardice.

Originally posted by Diana from NoodleFood, On a mailing list to which I subscribe, Travis Norsen posted the following message: The full article is available online to subscribers. (Any educational institution worth its salt should have a subscription.) Travis submitted the following letter in response to the article to Nature, but it wasn't printed. He's graciously allowed me to post it to NoodleFood. (If you're interested in such matters, Travis published a three-part article on physics in the first three issues of Axiomatic Magazine.)

Originally posted by Diana from NoodleFood, A rather large number of lectures by Andy Bernstein are on sale at the Ayn Rand Bookstore through February. For those who've heard some or all of them, I'm wondering which you might recommend as particularly enlightening. To set the context, I'm largely interested in them as source material for teaching The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged in philosophy courses. So Kantianism vs. Objectivism in The Fountainhead and Ayn Rand's Characters as Philosophic Archetypes (Parts 1 & 2) sound particularly interesting to me. Here's the list of the lectures on sale: Rational Egoism in The Fountainhead -- Sale Price: $22.36 (List Price: $27.95) Kantianism vs. Objectivism in The Fountainhead -- Sale Price: $14.36 (List Price: $17.95) Ayn Rand's Characters as Philosophic Archetypes (Parts 1 & 2) -- Sale Price: $88.74 (List Price: $147.90) The Mind vs. Collectivism in Ayn Rand's Novels -- Sale Price: $11.16 (List Price: $13.95) The Mind as Hero in Atlas Shrugged -- Sale Price: $19.16 (List Price: $23.95) Atlas Shrugged as the Culmination of the Romantic Novel -- Sale Price: $14.36 (List Price: $17.95) Philosophic and Literary Integration in Atlas Shrugged -- Sale Price: $63.67 (List Price: $90.95) Objectivism's Man-Worship vs. Contemporary Man-Hatred -- Sale Price: $44.96 (List Price: $59.95) The Philosophy of Romantic Fiction -- Sale Price: $47.21 (List Price: $62.95) How to Be an Impassioned Valuer -- Sale Price: $38.96 (List Price: $51.95) Primacy of Consciousness vs. The Objectivist Ethics -- Sale Price: $42.71 (List Price: $56.95) Objectivism and the Revolution in Political Philosophy -- Sale Price: $48.27 (List Price: $68.95) How to Spread Objectivism -- Sale Price: $7.00 (List Price: $8.75) Objectivism for Beginners -- Sale Price: $42.71 (List Price: $56.95) Four Giants of Philosophy -- Sale Price: $34.46 (List Price: $45.95) Friedrich Nietzsche: His Thought, His Legacy, His Influence on Ayn Rand -- Sale Price: $48.27 (List Price: $68.95) Villainy: The Nature of Evil -- Sale Price: $14.36 (List Price: $17.95) I'm still very intrestested in what listeners would recommend.

Originally posted by Diana from NoodleFood, ReBlogged by Meta Blog... Wow, what a delightfully pleasant interview with Andy Bernstein in today's Baltimore Sun! Andy will be speaking in Columbia, Maryland on Saturday, February 18th. (That's in my old territory -- just about 25 minutes from the farm on which I grew up.) Here's the announcement: Bernstein to Talk in Maryland on February 18 Andrew Bernstein will have a book signing and presentation about The Capitalist Manifesto in Columbia, Maryland on February 18. The title of the talk is: "The Capitalist Manifesto: How in Two Brief Centuries Capitalism Brought Freedom and Widespread Wealth to Mankind After Millennia of Oppression and Destitution." Multiple copies of the book will be available for sale. Manfred Smith is organizing this event. If you would like to help Manfred to advertise the event, or have any questions, please contact him at 410-730-0073 or manfredsmith_at_comcast.net. Book Signing and Presentation Saturday, FEBRUARY 18th at 1:00 pm Howard Community College Columbia, MD Kittleman Room (ILB 100) Please forward it to anyone in the area you think might be interested.

A while back, Ranil Illesinghe has a nice post on the difference between individualism and non-conformism. The whole entry is worth reading, particularly for people new to Objectivism. I particularly liked the litmus test at the end: Can you imagine Howard Roark abandoning his style of buildings simply because great masses of people started recognizing their superiority over the buildings designed by Peter Keating or Gus Webb? Perish the thought!

This Spiegel interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali on the Muslim response to the Danish cartoons is well worth reading in its entirety. However, I particularly appreciated this exchange: (Via Orson Olsen) Also, Onkar Ghate has a good op-ed on the pathetic response of the United States government to these events. Here's a teaser: Beware, the last line of the article is quite chilling.

According to Brit Hume tonight, the Denver's own Rocky Mountain News is one of just four American newspapers willing to publish the Danish cartoons. Ari Armstrong saw the print edition. He said that the newspaper published the "Stop stop we ran out of virgins!" cartoon with this op-ed. As Ari said, "Surely, according to the principles of justice, the News deserves our gratitude and thanks for its defense of liberty and denunciation of Muslim violence." I particularly loved this passage from the editorial: Defense of free speech is not so robust in this country as it could be, either. A State Department spokesman issued a mealy-mouthed statement that recognized the importance of freedom of speech but then added that the publication of cartoons that incite religious or ethnic hatred is unacceptable -- as if that is what happened. There is no evidence whatsoever that the cartoons incited hatred against Muslims or Islam, only that they incited violence by Muslims. That is, indeed, unacceptable. From what I've read, most media outlets refusing to print the cartoons claim that to do so would be offensive to Muslims, in bad taste, and so on. That's a pathetic, context-dropping rationalization. They ought not run the cartoons as cartoons -- but as news. However, at this point, given the overwhelming barbarity of the response from the Muslim world, the cartoons damn well ought to be reprinted as cartoons, not just as an act of solidarity with the Danish cartoonists, but also as a perfectly just comment upon the deplorable violence of the Muslim response. http://ObjectivismOnline.com/blog/archives/000634.html

A few days ago, I was preparing some notes for an upcoming FROG discussion of the chapter on slavery from Andy Bernstein's so-far excellent book The Capitalist Manifesto. Apropos Andy's argument that Enlightenment rather than Christian ideals eliminated slavery in the West, I remembered Frederick Douglass' comments on the particular brutality of religious slaveowners from his short but powerful Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. The passage was even more wonderful than I remembered: Another advantage I gained in my new master was, he made no pretensions to, or profession of, religion; and this, in my opinion, was truly a great advantage. I assert most unhesitatingly, that the religion of the south is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes,--a justifier of the most appalling barbarity,--a sanctifier of the most hateful frauds,--and a dark shelter under, which the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most infernal deeds of slaveholders find the strongest protection. Were I to be again reduced to the chains of slavery, next to that enslavement, I should regard being the slave of a religious master the greatest calamity that could befall me. For of all slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. I have ever found them the meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all others. It was my unhappy lot not only to belong to a religious slaveholder, but to live in a community of such religionists. Very near Mr. Freeland lived the Rev. Daniel Weeden, and in the same neighborhood lived the Rev. Rigby Hopkins. These were members and ministers in the Reformed Methodist Church. Mr. Weeden owned, among others, a woman slave, whose name I have forgotten. This woman's back, for weeks, was kept literally raw, made so by the lash of this merciless, religious wretch. He used to hire hands. His maxim was, Behave well or behave ill, it is the duty of a master occasionally to whip a slave, to remind him of his master's authority. Such was his theory, and such his practice. Mr. Hopkins was even worse than Mr. Weeden. His chief boast was his ability to manage slaves. The peculiar, feature of his government was that of whipping slaves in advance of deserving it. He always managed to have one or more of his slaves to whip every Monday morning. He did this to alarm their fears, and strike terror into those who escaped. His plan was to whip for the smallest offences, to prevent the commission of large ones. Mr. Hopkins could always find some excuse for whipping a slave. It would astonish one, unaccustomed to a slaveholding life, to see with what wonderful ease a slaveholder can find things, of which to make occasion to whip a slave. A mere look, word, or motion,--a mistake, accident, or want of power,--are all matters for which a slave may be whipped at any time. Does a slave look dissatisfied? It is said, he has the devil in him, and it must be whipped out. Does he speak loudly when spoken to by his master? Then he is getting high-minded, and should be taken down a button-hole lower. Does he forget to pull off his hat at the approach of a white person? Then he is wanting in reverence, and should be whipped for it. Does he ever venture to vindicate his conduct, when censured for it? Then he is guilty of impudence,--one of the greatest crimes of which a slave can be guilty. Does he ever venture to suggest a different mode of doing things from that pointed out by his master? He is indeed presumptuous, and getting above himself; and nothing less than a flogging will do for him. Does he, while ploughing, break a plough,--or, while hoeing, break a hoe? It is owing to his carelessness, and for it a slave must always be whipped. Mr. Hopkins could always find something of this sort to justify the use of the lash, and he seldom failed to embrace such opportunities. There was not a man in the whole county, with whom the slaves who had the getting their own home, would not prefer to live, rather than with this Rev. Mr. Hopkins. And yet there was not a man any where round, who, made higher professions of religion, or was more active in revivals, --more attentive to the class, love-feast, prayer and preaching meetings, or more devotional in his family,--that prayed earlier, later, louder, and longer,--than this same reverend slave-driver, Rigby Hopkins. More recently, I ran across this fantastic quote from Mr. Douglass on Tom Palmer's blog: The old doctrine that the slavery of the black, is essential to the freedom of the white race, can maintain itself only in the presence of slavery where interest and prejudice are the controlling powers, but it stands condemned equally by reason and experience. The statesmanship of to-day condemns and repudiates it as a shallow pretext for oppression. It belongs with the commercial fallacies long ago exposed by Adam Smith. It stands on a level with the contemptible notion, that every crumb of bread that goes into another man's mouth, is just so much bread taken from mine. Whereas, the rule is in this country of abundant land, the more mouths you have, the more bread you can put into your pocket, the more I can put into mine. As with political economy, so with political and civil rights (Frederick Douglass, November 17, 1864). I've not read much from Frederick Douglass, but every bit I do read inspires me to read more. http://ObjectivismOnline.com/blog/archives/000632.html

The last day to register at the discounted early registration price for Front Range Objectivism's Weekend Conference on Law, Individual Rights and the Judicial System is quickly approaching: It's this Saturday, February 11th. Don't miss your opportunity to save $75 on the conference fee! The conference itself will be held on March 4-5, 2006 in Denver, Colorado. You can register by mail by following the instructions on the brochure. Or you can register online. Here's the information from about the speakers and lectures from the web site: *** Tara Smith, PhD, will open the conference with a lecture on Why Originalism Won't Die: Common Mistakes in Competing Theories of Judicial Interpretation. In the debate over judicial interpretation of the Constitution, the theory of Originalism (advocated by Antonin Scalia, among others) has been subjected to seemingly fatal criticisms. Despite the exposure of flaws that would normally bury a theory, however, Originalism continues to attract tremendous support. What explains its resilient appeal? Why do many continue to regard it as the most reasonable basis for judicial interpretation? This lecture will answer these questions by identifying the fundamental weakness of the leading alternatives to Originalism and by demonstrating that the heart of Originalism's appeal–its promise of judicial objectivity–is illusory. All camps in this debate, we will see, suffer from serious misunderstandings of the nature of objectivity. Dana Berliner, JD, of the Institute for Justice, will present two lectures on Reading "Public Use" out of the Fifth Amendment: A Look at the Use of Eminent Domain for Private Parties in the United States. Eminent Domain, the power of government to take private property, is limited by the U.S. Constitution to "public use" and requires "just compensation" when property is taken. Without a proper understanding of the importance of property to individual rights, fuzzy language and exceptions have eroded the limitations on this governmental power. Part I will trace the history of the law of eminent domain, its inclusion in the Constitution, its subsequent interpretation by courts and other branches of government, and the relationship of the public use issue to the debate about "judicial activism" in the courts. Part II will focus on more recent developments in the issue of eminent domain, covering the development and litigation of the Kelo case at the U.S. Supreme Court, focusing on both the litigation strategy and the constitutional analysis in the majority, concurring and dissenting opinions. Ms. Berliner will also discuss the subsequent popular and political backlash, and show the difficulty of implementing philosophically consistent policy in legislation. Eric Daniels, PhD, will discuss Unenumerated Rights: From Calder v. Bull to Lawrence v. Texas. The Founding Fathers intended to create a government to secure individual rights. They listed and laid out numerous rights in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, but they also added the Ninth Amendment to guarantee "unenumerated rights." What are these rights? How can they be protected? Has this been a successful means of protecting individual rights? These two lectures will explore the history of the framing of the Ninth Amendment and the implementation of unenumerated rights in major court decisions from the Founding to the present. They will explore how individual rights–both enumerated and unenumerated–have fared under the changing philosophies of interpretation and theories of jurisprudence that American courts have embraced. Amy Peikoff, JD, PhD, will give two lectures entitled Is There a Right to Privacy?, in which she will explain why she opposes the current legal recognition of a right to privacy. In the first lecture, she will discuss the history of the right to privacy in the United States, including descriptions of the cases in which a right to privacy has been recognized, and summaries of the main arguments given in favor of such a right. In her second lecture, Dr. Peikoff will present what she thinks is the proper approach to the legal protection of privacy, an approach based on Ayn Rand's philosophy. The conference will conclude on Sunday afternoon with a panel discussion by Jim McCrory, Steve Plafker and Michael Conger, officers of TAFOL, The Association For Objective Law, seeking to provide an integrated perspective on the issues discussed throughout the weekend sessions. These lectures, presented over one weekend, March 4 - 5, 2006, promise to be a unique experience, applying Objectivism to the philosophy of law. *** If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Lin Zinser by e-mail ([email protected]) or phone (303.431.2525). Knowing what I do about the organizer and the speakers of this Weekend Conference on Law, Individual Rights and the Judicial System, I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Originally posted by Diana from NoodleFood, A few weeks ago, Tyler Cowen blogged about alternative marriages, but not in the way that you might think: Tyler's concept of a "modal spouse" is quite clever. Personally, I've noticed that my almost-seven years of marriage to Paul have rendered me ever-more romantically incompatible with other men. When we were first married, I could at least imagine myself dating some other men that I knew, even though I had zero interest in doing so. Over the years, that's become harder to do. Now even such imaginings are impossible, since almost every deviation from Paul would constitute an unwelcome defect. Much to my annoyance, I even like his annoying qualities! More precisely, I wouldn't wish his annoying qualities to be different, since I know them to be deeply connected to other aspects of him that I value intensely. Thus my husband has systematically eliminated my modal husbands -- apparently by some dastardly scheme of love! Of course, that's the normal progression of a good marriage, since a married couple should integrate their lives with respect to a wide range of particulars, not just core abstract values. Notably, I do suspect that many people do fit the "best of thirty" model of marriage fairly well. They are ever so flexible in their choice of spouse largely because they could be satisfied with almost any reasonably decent, attractive, and sensible person. Although convenient, such flexibility is not to be sought or envied. It is a symptom of selflessness -- in the literal sense of "lacking a self." Like Peter Keating in The Fountainhead, such selfless people do not slowly carve out their soul in the process of choosing their values. Instead, they go with the flow, carelessly absorbing conventional values from the culture. Such people lack the deep passions that might enable them to find a truly significant other. They only need someone like themselves: someone safe, moderate, conventional, and ordinary. They need not search too hard, since they aren't looking for much. So they'll focus on relatively superficial qualities of prospective spouses, although usually not with any great clarity. They say: "Oh, he makes me laugh," "She's sensible," "She likes my dog," "My dog likes her," "He adores me," "He buys me presents," "My parents love her," "She's kind," and so on. Although such qualities may be of some importance in a spouse, they ought to pale in comparison to more fundamental values. After all, why care that your wife loves your dog when she's also determined to teach your children to love Jesus? Of what importance is your husband's similar taste in movies in comparison to his jealousy of your every professional success? What if your wife supports your career ambitions, but only so that she can throw the most lavish parties on the block? What if she's just as easy with the pool boy as she is with a joke? What if your husband's close relationship with his family means that he'll submit to their unwelcome interference in your marriage? How valuable is a wife's everyday kindness if she melts into a puddle of helpless dependence in an emergency? Superficial qualities simply don't say much about the choices that a person will make -- yet those choices may bring joyful delights or unbearable misery. While spouses in a good marriage may not explicitly share a system of philosophy, their operational philosophic principles do matter a great deal. Imagine that one spouse regards facts as absolutes, whereas the other ignores or wishes them away. Or that one spouse is guided by reason, whereas the other is a slave to the passions. Or that one meets disagreements with respectful understanding and persuasion, whereas the other resorts to manipulation, if not force. Or that one regards full virtue as possible, while other rationalizes failures by appeal to innate human weakness. Or that one regards work as an onerous chore, but it's a core love for the other. Or that one spouse is determined to raise thoughtful children, while the other indulges their whims out of fear of being disliked. These are not minor issues: they shape the whole course of a person's life, especially a marriage. Moreover, a person's deep values are not exhausted by the universal values of philosophy. Particularly in marriage, highly personal values matter. Some people immerse themselves in the aesthetic side of life, while others captivated by technology, the drama of sports, or the solitude of nature. Perfectly moral people differently value qualities like vivacity, reserve, sensitivity, passion, discipline, strength, calm, caution, spontaneity, exuberance, steadiness, openness, organization, friendliness, and so on -- both in themselves and in others. Good people also pursue a variety of different careers, hobbies, passions, and entertainments -- although those particulars are often somewhat flexible. So much variety is possible, yet the values of a married couple must be compatible or complimentary, although not necessarily identical. They cannot clash in their basic approach to life, since then life together will be painful, if not impossible. As Ayn Rand argued in "Philosophy Who Needs It," even people who never think of such issues in terms of abstract philosophic principles cannot escape them. They merely act upon implicit conclusions, whether right or wrong. The more than a person explicitly grasps and embraces his operational philosophic principles, the far less likely he is to betray them in practice. And that matters in marriage -- and much else in life. Notably, people can explicitly consider philosophic issues even if wholly unschooled in the discipline of philosophy. In choosing a spouse, a person can consider his own character, personality, morals, and vision of the good life -- comparing and contrasting it to that of any potential spouse. Unfortunately, many people lack even such basic skills of judgment, thanks to the "judge not" theme in our culture. They tend to fall back upon their emotions, often unhappily, and often to very bad ends. Ultimately then, a person with deeply-held values must and will be very particular in his/her choice of spouse. He will not be content with any reasonably decent, attractive, and sensible person. He will understand that his value hierarchy cannot be integrated with most people, nor even with most good people. And he will be aware that many people hold deeply wrong if not pathological values. That knowledge will make a person choose his spouse very carefully -- and rightfully so!