Bowzer

They are nothing alike, Treylis. Witttgenstein is your typical mish-mash of awful ideas which is apparent if you do so much as flip through the Tractatus; it is simply a collection of arbitrary, rationalistic "propositions" in no particular order. There really is no way to compare a rational, consistent and true philosophy (Objectivism) with a heap of nonsense (the Tractatus). You will be very hard pressed to get someone with a philosophy degree to actually comprehend some portion of Objectivism. The fact that your friend compared Ayn Rand with Ludwig Wittgenstein shows that he has absolutely no grasp of Objectivism. I have known many philosophy students and I have yet to meet one that could grasp a single principle from Objectivism. Many of them were decent human beings it's just that they have rendered their minds unable to approach ideas in any kind of rational manner. Tragic really...

Welcome, Pericles. I'm a huge New Wave fan as well! Have you seen this Rhino Records compilation yet? It's the best that I know of. The choice of music spans the Billboard charts to the unkown depths of the 80's. The liner notes are excellent as well (as is to be expected from anything that Rhino puts out). If you know of similar collections, I would appreciate a heads up.

Hogwash!

Anyone that would say this would be terribly mistaken. The only sense in which anything is provable is through its relation or its non-relation to reality. It's no small wonder why you would equate Objectivists with dogmatists if this were your understanding. Sure, plenty of people do this in their attempt to polemicize their philosophy (it's not just a problem in Objectivism) but most of them are making an honest but misguided attempt to make their views clear to you. The only advice one can give is to go to the source. Read Ayn Rand and consider her ideas as best you can. Trying to learn a philosophy strictly through secondary sources like this is a bad idea. "Supernatural" is defined as: 1. Of or relating to existence outside the natural world. 2. Attributed to a power that seems to violate or go beyond natural forces. 3. Of or relating to a deity. Typically people use the word "metaphysical" to denote things "beyond our understanding of nature" but this is a total corruption of the term. Some religions do indeed hold that god is beyond our understanding but for Western religions God is supernatural as in definition 2. and 3. above (i.e., omnipotent and omniscient).

Woxor, The method that Euclid used in his Elements is a valid method in mathematics but it is emphatically not the proper method to use in epistemology. You will definitely have problems with Objectivism if you adhere to Euclid-like proofs of everything. If you are sincerely interested in learning more about Objectivism then I wish you good reasons in your studies.

Read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. If after reading these two novels you do not have enough information to induce the fundamentals of the Objectivist ethics, then we won't be able to help you here.

You must be or have been a philosophy student because in no other context has the "arbitrary acceptance of reality" "sat well" with anyone...the existence of reality is axiomatic and this is where your misunderstanding seems to lie. One does not simply "assume" an axiom as an arbitrary starting point. Aristotle, for example, introduced the notion of reaffirmation through denial. This means that anyone trying to deny an axiom assumes it in the very act of denial. If you deny that reality exists, you are making certain assumptions. A second important fact about axioms are that they are self-evident, i.e., they are implicit in every act of consciousness. Axioms are only defined ostensively and there is nothing more to them then just looking out at reality. This is far from making axioms an arbitrary assumption but perhaps you now see why one cannot prove an axiom: they are prior to any proof, in fact, they are a part of all cognition as such.

Although Jefferson is one of the most important figures in the founding of America, his views of religion were by no means his alone. See The Godless Constitution for a brief but conclusive demonstration of America's secular roots.

What do you call the person who labels everyone that disagrees with him "dogmatist?" It seems that person himself would be a dogmatist.

As an interesting sidenote, observe how long someone may understudy in other fields, e.g., theater, manufacturing, or even scientific fields, to the point of becoming independently able. Then observe the length of time needed to understudy an entire philosophic system, especially one as radically new to our culture as Objectivism. In fact, I think thirty years to learn from Ayn Rand was a relatively short amount of time. It certainly speaks for Leonard Peikoff's mental ability in addition to his character that he was able to undertake and, in my opinion, complete this monumental task. And thank god that he did!!

There really is no "fact" that there is no god. That would mean something positive is to be found in reality showing his nonexistence. Atheism simply means not-theism; it is just the denial of a particular view, i.e., that there is a supernatural being in control of the universe. To quote Dr. Peikoff:

I wasn't sure before I followed your link but he actually is in the movie. He plays Wilbur Wright.

I took the course when it was originally given some years ago, but I have recently purchased Objectivism Through Induction (OTI) and I am doing the course again. I found OTI fascinating then and I am finding it even more fascinating this time around. OTI's basic purpose is to get you to see principles as "summaries of concretes." I would like to learn how you fight floating abstractions in your own thinking. What techniques have you found useful? How do you identify those abstractions which are floating in your mind? And once you have identified them, how do you ground those abstractions?

I agree that Jackie wouldn't make a good John Galt but I love his movies! He isn't the best actor but that is to be expected from a foreign action star. It is his sense of life that keeps me hooked. He portrays benevolence in his films in the forms of humor, accomplishment, heroism and some of the best martial arts fights captured on film. In addition, he is so incredibly competent that he does his own stunts (most of which are breathtaking). On the other hand, I don't care much at all for Owen...

I'm still quite new here and I haven't gotten this impression at all. The only time that I have seen someone berated was when they did something obviously malicious. There has been a steady gain of activity here since I joined a month and a half ago and this includes many new faces that seem to be sticking around. I like to meet new people too.

Brent, If you are seeking a deductive proof/validation of volition and/or consciousness, I'm sorry to say that you will never find it.

The fact that truth is not "out there" is all over the Objectivist literature but it is covered explicitly in IOE on page 48: "Identification" is the essence of Ayn Rand's view of consciousness and it is this relationship between a mind and reality that constitutes truth. Dr. Peikoff expands on this in OPAR (p. 165): Dr. Peikoff ties in the Objectivist view of truth to the traditional correspondence theory of truth but I would be very careful about futher relating it to "justified true belief" as found in contemporary philosophy. You cannot have a correct theory of truth without a correct theory of concepts and it is here that contemporary philosophy is most out of touch with the truth. Observe how one of the better philosophers in this regard, Keith Lehrer, spends almost two-hundred pages developing his theory with no reference to a theory of concepts. Once you understand how concepts are formed and why they are objective, then you don't even need a "theory" of truth. It just naturally falls out of the process of concept-formation.

The single best thing that you can do is to make your ideas clear to yourself. To be convicing you have to make your ideas real to others; you have to lead them--at least partly--down the inductive path that you yourself traversed. Give simple examples of why you believe that something is true and make your argument in simple terms. It isn't very convincing when you listen to someone rattle off a deductive proof that they have memorized, even if the argument is true. To the extent that one offers blank premises to others as an argument, others will--and should--stop listening to what you have to say (I'm not saying that you're doing this). I also think that a firm knowledge of grammer and the dictionary are crucial to both others' and your own understanding of ideas.

Well put. It's been my experience that the self-evident isn't always the easily grasped. This is especially true for students of philosophy who have been steeped in wrong views of what free will is. A simple example to introspect is the difference between your autonomic breathing (what you have hopefully been doing while you have been reading this) and holding your breath by an act of will. The act of stopping your breath is the exercise of the volitional aspect of your mind. On the other hand, when you are not focusing your mind on controlling your breath, it occurs automatically. Thus, the same process can be observed as it occurs automatically and then under volitional control.

Welcome to the board, Fireworks! And how! Intelligence is a great gift but the power that consistent principles bring to thought far exceeds that of the genius intellect. I speak from my own experience as a 3.0 GPA student prior to discovering Objectivism. After taking a break for a couple of years and returning to school with my new philosophy, I found it easy to maintain a 4.0 GPA. I'm no genius of intellect but by thinking in principles I was able to at least feign one. Most importantly, the criticality of principles is most evident in the "tortured genius" that can comprehend profound knowledge but is miserable and unhappy in life. Meanwhile, the principled man of average intelligence has attained a consistent and unshakeable happiness in his life because he thinks and acts on principles. E = mc^2 is meaningless when you look at it that way...

There are valid applications of mathematical logic, to be sure, but for the most part it is used in philosophy as a tool of obfuscation. Joseph and Ruby would give one more than enough background in philosophical logic but you could move from there to Dr. Peikoff's excellent audio course, Introduction to Logic. There are also many fine books out there by other authors but they are usually written under the heading of "critical reasoning." If you desire still more on the subject I would recommend these texts far ahead of anything on symbolic logic.

I think that grading homework is just the proper expression of the spiral nature of knowledge. This means that one does not acquire knowledge in the pattern of a straight line with one endpoint. Knowledge is gained in stages and each stage reflects upon the other—the chronologically later reflects on the earlier and vice versa. During a typical class, you will traverse several loops in a spiral rather than a straight line leading to a definite end point. To grade students’ homework is just the expression of this fact. Teachers must be given evidence that students are traversing the spiral not just to gauge the performance of the students but also to gauge the methods used and the material covered in class. If teachers only sampled their students’ understanding at the end of a class, they would have no means to correct or modify the content and method of their teaching. Feedback is crucial for all teachers. And for rational students, the feedback gained from graded assignments is just as important for their own understanding.

What Bob meant by "rights" is rejecting the White Man's world, smoking lots of pot, praising God, and growing really long and smelly dreadlocks. He was a Rastafarian which is a far cry from being an Objectivist. Or maybe you were just kidding.

I agree. See Dr. Gotthelf's book On Ayn Rand for an excellent example of how true this is!

That's basically it. Think about how Miss Rand put it in: Both animals and man share the first three parts of this process. My cat hears the shriek, experiences fear, and this is appraised as bad so it runs away. I hear the same shriek and I experience contempt which I also appraise as bad. This turns into a conceptual understanding of Schoenberg's approach to music and the utter destruction that he unleashed on that art form just as intellectuals of his era assaulted truth and reality. Then I run away to join my cat.