danielshrugged

I want to caution against falling into a false dichotomy. Indeed there are "Objectivists"--in my experience, at least, a small number of them--who treat the philosophy dogmatically. Ayn Rand doesn't say that one ought to be an architect. She doesn't say you ought to have red hair. Those who dye their hair red to be like Roark are usually nuts. There are subtler cases, too, such as people who are impressed so much with Ayn Rand's powerful writing that they tend to obey the writing rather than the reality on which it is based. This leads to rationalistic deduction from the writing. However, don't let the small group of dogmatists push you into subjectivism. I say this only because of the comment about Randroids and the reference to dogmatists on this forum. Randroids is a term the subjectivists use to poke fun at serious Objectivists. And as for this forum, I have not encountered much dogmatism from serious Objectivists. Care to name examples? Areactor: I realize you may have meant that 11-point outline in jest, but let me point out that it is flawed as an outline of the ideal man. OPAR proceeds in hierarchical order; that is not the order that thinking follows chronologically. One does not begin with metaphysics. In addition, I hardly think an ideal man needs to know Objectivism, which is what you imply.

If you need to contact me about any of the following, please use the button at the bottom of this post to e-mail me. I have already sent a similar message to more local channels that are more likley to succeed, but I figured it couldn't hurt to try this forum in addition: The Objectivist Club at St. John’s College in Annapolis is planning three events for the upcoming academic year. Since the club receives no money from the college, and since our upcoming activities exceed our budget from previous years, I am in search of additional private donations—especially from anyone willing to sponsor one of our events. Here are the details: - For $100, you can sponsor a screening of the Academy Award nominated documentary, Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life in the college’s large auditorium—projected onto a large screen. Additionally, the event will be well-advertised, so it may introduce Ayn Rand to a number of people. This event might be co-sponsored with the Film Society at St. John’s College. - For $200, you can sponsor a lecture by Craig Biddle on epistemology and ethics. - For $400, you can sponsor a lecture by Allan Gotthelf. Again, e-mail me for further details. I expect this lecture would be popular at St. John’s—and there’s more to the story, but I can’t reveal much publicly yet. These special events are in addition to the club’s regular study of OPAR. Last year, we hosted our first event, a lecture by Ed Locke titled “Reason and Emotion: Ayn Rand’s Solution to a 2,000 Year Old Problem.” And of course, the club is grateful for contributions of any amount. Please note, however, that it is possible that circumstances will prohibit the club from collecting donations at these events, so you should e-mail me if you are interested in donating. Sincerely, Daniel Schwartz Founder and Archon, St. John’s College Objectivist Club Student, Objectivist Academic Center Two-time conference scholar at ARI’s summer conference

You're hanging around the wrong Objectivists.

Marc, All of the facts from the film that you cite only support my point. Your interpretation of those facts is backwards. Exactly right. It was illogical for him to be suspicious of robots. He was letting himself be ruled by emotion. AND SPOONER ENDED UP BEING THE ONLY ONE WHO WAS RIGHT ABOUT THE ROBOTS. His emotion was right that robots were dangerous; everyone else's logic was wrong that robots are no danger. I have already hinted at the reason for the theme of racism. If Spooner was being logical, he would have been able to identify his fear as parallel to racism (the film suggests). Indeed, as a black man, he may even have conflicting emotions...he desparately wants to avoid doing to robots what others used to do with black men. But he lets himself be run by his strongest emotion, his fear of robots. Not only is this another instance of the ultimate triumph of emotion, but it heightens the suspense in the film by adding the double conflict between this emotion and Spooner's own logic and own conflicting emotion. Now you're dropping context. It is revealed later in the film that it wasn't a murder. The doctor wanted to be killed in order that the world would be saved. I would say it's obvious today to anyone who has studied history, but that is only because Russia made it a decades long experiment. The film only shows a few minutes of tyranny, hardly enough to make anything obvious (on the logical, rather than the emotional, level).

I'm selling the two tape VHS set of Ayn Rand's We the Living. The Ayn Rand Bookstore price is 69.75, but I will sell them for $48, shipping included. I have only viewed the tapes once, and they are still in new condition. The entire sum of $48 will be donated to my own Objectivist Club at St. John's College. It will go to support one of the events I'm planning for the upcoming year: a projection screening of Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life in our auditorium (possibly in co-sponsorship with my school's Film Society (audiences for their films range from 18 to 80); a talk by Craig Biddle, and a lecture by Allan Gotthelf which I am trying to schedule as a regular college-sponsored Friday night lecture--which all 475 students of the college are supposed to attend (though I can hardly guarantee the college will agree to this). The St. John's club receives no money from the college, so we depend entirely on voluntary, private contributions. In other words, we need your help.

This can't be right, can it? Isn't this a generalization: "All books from the Loeb library feature side-by-side Greek and English text"? You say that a generalization is a broader abstraction, even though the abstraction "book" has to cover more units than a generalization about one kind of book. I know I'm probably twisting your meaning, but it's only because I'm unclear exactly what your meaning is.

But the primacy of emotion over reason permeates the whole movie! The political implications of this (supposed) fact only become apparent at the very end of the film. Apart from those political implications, we see a down-to-earth Detective Spooner who is suspicious of the robots (while everyone else thinks Spooner is crazy--come on, robots just follow their logical routines). At the end, the supercomputer asserts that its actions are logical--and the only response the film offers to this claim is to show the emotion of Spooner and Sonny (the robot). No logic is obviously faulty. There was a whole country once which operated on that supercomputer's logic--and promoted it as the scientific system of government. That country was Russia.

All right, I'm persuaded.

I have to think about this some more.

But values, interests, and knowledge are properties, not actions. I've leave it up to Matt whether he wants to share his name with people.

I suppose you could put it that way. And my reason is that the faculty of choice is a property of an entity, while the exercise thereof is an action of an entity. And only entities (and their properties) are causes, not actions. Matt is minorityofone.

I've only skimmed this thread, but as best I can tell the disagreement between Matt and Stephen is, at least in part (and especially in respect to accounting for the Ayn Rand quote from the epistemology workshop that Stephen cited), a result of equivocation. Matt rightly claims that PARTICULAR choices do not cause particular actions. Stephen, in pointing to the Ayn Rand quote, only observes that the FACULTY of choice causes human actions.

Sure, it has a horrible theme, but it still has some elements of great art (and some disastrous flaws).

If that were true, then atheists would have no grounds to say that God does not exist. They would be right to reject the idea as arbitrary, but they would only be able properly to say, "I don't believe in God," not, "I believe that there is no God." The first statement claims a lack of belief (or a denial of cognitive standing to the idea); the second, a denial (of the existence of God). Here's an arbitrary assertion, for an example: "An alien civilization on the other side of the universe recently discovered the works of Ayn Rand." It would be ridiculous to believe such a thing, of course. It's arbitrary and shouldn't even be considered. But you wouldn't go around saying, "I believe that no alien civilization knows about Ayn Rand." You have no basis to say that, either. The existence of a God is different, because a God would contradict known facts of reality (such as the law of identity). You are correct, of course, that the primary atheistic argument is based on the fact that God is arbitrary. But that's not enough.

I don't think he's talking about romantic love in that quote.

I have heard that lecture, but I don't recall Dr. Peikoff saying such a thing. I do remember his saying it is a bad idea make a habit of going to a restaurant privately with a friend of the opposite sex. Can you give a quote from the lecture?

Not expecting too much? Expect less. The film paints Rand as a psychopath.

One identifies hunger by the method of concomitant variation: "If the phenomenon being studied varies either directly or inversely with exactly one of a number of possible sources, then it is the cause." Within limits, the lower the fraction of food eaten over time, the hungrier one will be. Most of your objections are answered by my specification: within limits. That the correlation between food/time and hunger changes when one eats either a large or small amount does not change the fact that we can observe that correlation within a normal context. Edited for word choice

I found I, Robot to be a very mixed film. First of all, it has very little basis in Asimov. Asimov was a masterful plotter, and he was pro-technology. The film's biggest flaw is a giant plot hole--something Asimov would never be guilty of. I think they chose a black detective for a reason. Spooner is distrustful of robots in the same way that whites were distrustful of blacks, the movie suggests. This paints his distrust in a slightly more irrational light and heightens the suspense. I think it was a poor choice, nonetheless, but they were trying to do something with it artistically. Also, the anti-technological elements of the film came in the form of isolated lines of dialogue and didn't make it into the theme. By the way, I disagree with your formulation of the theme. I would put it, "the importance of the heart over logic." I didn't notice a religious parallel, and doubt whether one was intended.

That definition reads, "a system for the cure of disease based on dogma set forth by its promulgator." Ayn Rand did not set forth dogma. She gave arguments for her views.

Beethoven is known for his "storm and stress" music.

It's not ENTIRELY impossible that something won't change my mind. Specifically, if Bush goes after Iran, I might consider voting for him (though I have doubts that he would wage a successful war, as opposed to getting more American soldiers killed and leaving Iran with mob-rule). The reason I say that I've already decided is because I really see no possibility that Bush will go after Iran. Two "events" in particular helped me to make this decision. The first was that I heard in the news that our State Department is trying to offer monetary and security guarantees to North Korea in exchange for their giving up nukes. The second was various religious statements by Kerry that made me doubt he even had the advantage of not being religious.

Just reporting a change in my choice on this poll. I had previously selected that I did not know how I will be voting. Now I know that I will be abstaining from voting for a president.

By non-Objectivists, I meant people who never became Objectivists, not just that they weren't Objectivists at the time of reading. The benevolent view of these people is that they loved Atlas so much and were in so much suspense that they just could not stand to have to read a speech before finishing the book. That might be true of some of them. But even in that case, I think the mind-body dichotomy might be involved, in that they consider the action of fiction and the ideas of philosophy to have nothing to do with each other.

In my experience with non-Objectivists who read Atlas, most skim or skip Galt's speech.