Boydstun

Additionally, given my later, more considered examination, I should take back my earlier, imprecise statement: “Galt’s Speech confined itself to what a person needs for an integrated full framework for living in the modern world.” Rather, that confinement is what remains of GS when one sets aside “psychologies and motives of religionists and of materialists (e.g. Marxists, Behaviorists) / psychologies of savages and of dictators.” I said also earlier in the reflections in this thread that the doctrines in Galt’s Speech “suffice to cover all the essentials of the philosophy. (Amplification

Notice that my immediately preceding post contradicts what I said in the first post of this thread, in respect of OPAR containing the essentials of the philosophy. It is the later post that is the more considered assessment and that demarcates some inessentials of the philosophy that are included in OPAR. That the book contains more than the essentials is no demerit to its aim. If one goes, as many do, in looking at who is an Objectivist in their philosophy by whether they concur with the essentials of the philosophy, I should not want to leave the impression that everything in Peikoff's

Peikoff’s book on the philosophy of Ayn Rand covers all of the basics of the philosophy. Is every point the book includes as part of the philosophy essential to that philosophy? I should say No. As I mentioned earlier, Rand’s measurement-omission theory of concepts (which I have championed and developed further in my 2004) as well as her theory of esthetics are not essentials of the philosophy. Those things were not in Galt’s Speech, whose doctrines suffice to cover all the essentials of the philosophy. (Amplifications of those essentials Rand subsequently published could also be taken as

The thoughts in OPAR move smoothly. It is as easy to read as GS. The two have the same range of readers to whom they are significantly understandable. Peikoff begins OPAR with remarks on the nature and function of philosophy (1–4). Rand had taken on that issue in her 1974 address at West Point, and Peikoff excerpts from that speech for his springboard into what is philosophy, in Rand’s conception of it, and how he will proceed to present the areas of philosophy hierarchically in his book. He then proceeds in his first chapter to point out that philosophies build on starting points, and th

There are reviews of OPAR by Henry B. Veatch and by David Ramsay Steele (along with their critiques of the philosophy) in the January 1992 issue of Liberty, pp. 60–68, available here. Detailed critique of a particular point in epistemology in OPAR and beyond is given by Robert Campbell in the fall 2008 issue of JARS here. David Kelley’s 1992 review of OPAR is here. By the way, in summer of 1992, I attended an Objectivist conference in which Peikoff was delivering a series of lectures. I recall conversing with a middle-aged woman there, who surprised me when I asked what books of

What sort of book on Objectivism, written by herself, would Rand be envisioning as she was releasing ITOE in The Objectivist in 1966? By the early ’70’s, Rand had released ITOE as a monograph privately printed by The Objectivist Inc. and available for purchase. My copy was printed in 1973. In the Preface to her series of articles composing “Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology,” a Preface retained in the monograph, Rand wrote not only that ITOE was a cardinal element in the epistemology of her philosophy and that it was a window into her planned book on her whole philosophy. She remar

Rand’s 1961 book For the New Intellectual has the subtitle The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. FNI includes Galt’s Speech from Atlas Shrugged. At the head of the Speech as displayed in FNI, Rand wrote: “This is the philosophy of Objectivism.” She had explained in the Preface to FNI that she had chosen the name Objectivism as the name of her philosophy. In that Preface, she wrote: “This book . . . . contains the main philosophical passages from my novels and presents the outline of a new philosophy. “The full system is implicit in these excerpts (particularly in Galt’s speech), but its f

Celebrating 30 Years of OPAR

The essentials of the essentials gets one to the standing-on-one-foot essentials of a theory. So for relativity, special and general, one gets the standing-on-one-foot essentials: frame-invariance of the form of physical laws, frame-invariance of a finite upper limit of velocity, and the equivalence of gravitational and inertial mass. For the standing-on-one-foot essentials of the philosophy of Epicurus, one gets: don't worry, pursue modest pleasure. But for a statement of the essentials of these theories back at the first level, before the distillations of the distillations suitable for

Eiuol, The translations in The Complete Works of Aristotle (Barnes 1984) are evidently the most well-known by modern readers. It has by now made its way into a lot of personal libraries. In reading the parts of ORGANON of interest to you, sooner or later one can also have the companions in Blackwell’s A Companion to Aristotle (2009) in: Chapter 3 - Deductive Logic Chapter 4 - Aristotle’s Theory of Demonstration Chapter 5 - Empiricism and the First Principles of Aristotelian Science Chapter 6 - Aristotle on Signification and Truth (Sometimes there are line-by-

Political Philosophy Political philosophy, capitalism, rights, law For current topics, post in Current Events ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ It looks like this thread may have been more properly "Current Events" than here, as I see little to no political philosophy in the thread, all through it. Be that as it may, DA, here's my two cents worth on your post two before last. (Sorry I couldn't get back to you sooner; my hands were simply out getting dirty pulling weeds.) No. Do not suppose Atlas in its producers-going-on-strike is the world you live in or ever h

There is a striking difference in psychologies that I now have realized, apparently for the first time. I don't know why this is so. I realized this morning that if I had to communicate extensive ideas to people under a name not my own, I'd have no interest in making the communication at all. I can see that some participants here, using a name not their own, use their communications sometimes to help people interested in specifics in an area and appreciating the help. That has some sense to me, even were the exchange under anonymity. But the kind of communications that Devil's Advocate has mad

Oh, that's fine. It was only the term I'd not heard. One poster here had told me by private communication that he didn't want his real name used because he had in the past been physically threatened by some Objectivist quarter. Another has mentioned he didn't want his real name used because of employment situation. Some here, I've surmised, also don't want their real name used due to career, particularly professional academic position and reputation. I imagine (though in this I don't have a definite participant in mind) that some may be well-known names in the subculture who enjoy participatin

In July 1986, I was with my first life-partner Jerry (d. 1990) sitting in the bleachers that had been set up in Manhattan along the Hudson. We were watching the Tall Ships sailing by. In the evening, the President would throw a switch, sending a laser beam across the river to activate the illumination of Liberty, which was reopening after a long refurbishment. The night sky would be filling with glorious fireworks on and on as if an umbrella over Manhattan. That afternoon was sunny, as the ships sailed by. There were smiles and friendliness all around. Behind us a woman wore a classy T-sh

HD, I looked up "doxxing" - hadn't heard that term before. My name is Stephen Craig Boydstun. I've never used any other name on the internet. (I came to be shown as another name -Guyau- on the the posting site Objectivist Living, but that was due to a glitch that happened when they updated their program a few years back; not my doing.) Anyone has been able to google my name and find out all about me, from posting sites, publications, Walter's blog for us, and on Facebook. No problems from bigots or anyone here at our home. My Story