Boydstun

.
The lines are given to Ellsworth Toohey, speaking to Kiki Holcomb at a party (in Part II, §VI – pages are from first edition):
“Toohey moved through the crowd, and smiled at his friends. But between smiles and sentences, his eyes went back to the man with the orange hair. He looked at the man as he looked occasionally at the pavement from a window on the thirtieth floor, wondering about his own body were it to be hurled down and what would happen when it struck against that pavement. He did not know the man’s name, his profession or his past; he had no need to know; it was not a man to him, but only a force; Toohey never saw men. Perhaps it was the fascination of seeing that force so explicitly personified in a human body.” (279)
“Kiki turned to him when Dominique had gone. 
“‘What’s the matter with both of you, Ellsworth? Why such talk—over nothing at all? People’s faces at first impressions don’t mean a thing.’
“‘That, my dear Kiki’, he answered, his voice soft and distant, as if he were giving an answer, not to her, but to a thought of his own, ‘is one of our greatest common fallacies. There’s nothing as significant as a human face. Nor as eloquent. We can never really know another person, except by our first glance at him. Because, in that glance, we know everything. Even though we’re not always wise enough to unravel the knowledge. Have you ever thought of the style of a soul Kiki?’” (281)
I imagine this last paragraph gets its “first glance” as a takeoff from the Hugo quote I gave in a post above. The “style of a soul” is likely lifted from Nietzsche, though put to a new service in which individual character is more fixed than in Nietzsche. It serves well the continual analogy in Fountainhead between fundamental themes in the architecture of a building and in the individual soul. That parallel is itself a parallel (acknowledged by Rand later in a letter) with Plato’s parallel in Republic between constitution of various sorts of souls and constitutions of various sorts of city-state government.* Indeed, Rand continues on 281–82 to have Toohey muse further about styles of civilization and their having underlying supreme determining conceptions.
Rand gave lines to Toohey, Dominique, and Wynand (and to Dr. Stadler in Atlas) that she agreed with or thought a delicious possible truth and anyway a good timber for her fiction and the philosophical views raised therein. I don’t know if this “first glance” picture of people has been taken to heart by readers and brought into their real-life interactions with people. As William has remarked, that would be a disaster. We do, of course, for safety and for other ends, try to read people in some elementary ways, even though the initial data is sparse.
At least after Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, she spoke often of individuals and of societies as being of “mixed premises” in real life.

Regardless of who said it, and whether or not it’s true, the quote states a matter of profoundest conviction for Rand, and I think it’s a key to the enduring hold she has over her readers.
When we meet a character in one of her novels, we get a physical description as we do in just about any novel. We come across Roark immediately in The Fountainhead and James Taggart and Dagny Taggart very early on in Atlas Shrugged. Rand’s descriptions are largely in terms of acquired, character-revealing traits such as facial expression, carriage, posture or eye focus. The impersonal narrator makes these matters of fact like hair color or eye color. On a few occasions we get this indirectly, through the words or thoughts of a character recollecting a first sight (Rearden’s first sight of Dagny Taggart, Galt’s first sight of Rearden). What these descriptions and the many others like them have in common is that they are never wrong. Rand’s characters turn out to be just what they first seemed to be. Sheryl’s first impression of James Taggart doesn’t fit this pattern, and she misjudges him disastrously, but: (a) she sizes him up on the strength of his name, not of his visible air; (b) we first saw him a couple of pages into the book, and he has amply lived up to the expectations that his appearance gave him.
In her theory of art Rand spoke of eliminating the inessential: in life, one ignores the unimportant; in art, one omits it. False visual clues are among those forgettable contingencies that have no place in her art. In the Randian universe, our first impressions are correct. People don’t let us down in this respect.
This habit spilled over into her personal life. In her obituary for Marilyn Monroe, she says Monroe had “the radiantly benevolent sense of life, which cannot be faked”. Readers have quoted this remark many times over the years, more times, I venture, than Rand expected. Yet I’ve never seen anyone ask why it can’t be faked. Monroe was an actress. Faking what she didn’t feel was her job. Elsewhere in the same column Rand says she “brilliantly talented” at it, but here she says Monroe couldn’t act. She wanted MM to be the person she saw up on the screen, and convinced herself that she was.
Rand herself and her biographers have told various stories of how often this acquaintance or that public figure “disappointed” her. She wanted people to live up to her expectations, and their failures to do so were a personal hurt. We’ve all known this feeling, and we’ve all been glad to meet somebody finally who is what we hoped, but it doesn’t loom as large for most of us.
Barbara Branden tells a story of Rand’s girlhood once in her 1962 biography and again in 1986. Young Alisa admired a schoolmate and wanted to get to know her. She asked, point-blank, what is the most important thing in the world to you? She replied, My mother, and Rand walked away in disappointment. That was the end of that.  In her earlier telling, BB makes this the other girl’s fault for not being was Alisa wanted her to be. In the later version, she says it’s typical of Rand’s failure to consider other people’s context before judging them. This failure on her part, and her idealism, may be closer than we realized.

.
Early Responses to Korzybski
Sidney Hook is in that survey of responders - The Nature of Discourse. Hook was Leonard Peikoff’s dissertation advisor. Peikoff has been asked about General Semantics, and he flatly rejected it. Peikoff has mentioned a conversation between Rand and someone who subscribed to GS (whomever it was, it was not Hook, who was a champion of John Dewey). My only exposure to GS was through a man who subscribed to it and who was a big poster on the site Objectivist Living.*
Nathaniel Branden 
 

Copied from the Ayn Rand lexicon, here is a relevant quote from Ayn RAnd.
A given person’s sense of life is hard to identify conceptually, because it is hard to isolate: it is involved in everything about that person, in his every thought, emotion, action, in his every response, in his every choice and value, in his every spontaneous gesture, in his manner of moving, talking, smiling, in the total of his personality. It is that which makes him a “personality.”
Introspectively, one’s own sense of life is experienced as an absolute and an irreducible primary—as that which one never questions, because the thought of questioning it never arises. Extrospectively, the sense of life of another person strikes one as an immediate, yet undefinable, impression—on very short acquaintance—an impression which often feels like certainty, yet is exasperatingly elusive, if one attempts to verify it.
This leads many people to regard a sense of life as the province of some sort of special intuition, as a matter perceivable only by some special, non-rational insight. The exact opposite is true: a sense of life is not an irreducible primary, but a very complex sum; it can be felt, but it cannot be understood, by an automatic reaction; to be understood, it has to be analyzed, identified and verified conceptually. That automatic impression—of oneself or of others—is only a lead; left untranslated, it can be a very deceptive lead. But if and when that intangible impression is supported by and unites with the conscious judgment of one’s mind, the result is the most exultant form of certainty one can ever experience: it is the integration of mind and values.
There are two aspects of man’s existence which are the special province and expression of his sense of life: love and art.

“Philosophy and Sense of Life,”
The Romantic Manifesto, 31

For example, here Ellis speaks on behalf of Korzybski:
First of all, Kozybski is also concealing an all-or-nothing outlook called Aristotelian vs. Non-aristotelian. You are either in the first or in the second system; there is nothing else, according to Korzybski. Such form of concealment is similar to the kind of pathological egoism that all collectivist/altruist tyrants deny and want us to believe they don't have.
And second, considering especially that Ellis has written a book denying self-esteem, called The Myth of Self-esteem: How Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy Can Change Your Life Forever, then he is on the side of quite a pathological 'altruism' of these collectivist folks we all know from the 20th century, although he would of course deny this, just as would Korzybski, by making us believe that their systems would lead us away from such atrocities, even by making them approach so much closer. That's the essence of the non-identity mentality.

Replaced it with a quote from Howard Roark, rather than Ellsworth Toohey:
I've always demanded a certain quality in the people I liked. I've always recognized it at once --- and it's the only quality I respect in men. I chose my friends by that. Now I know what it is. A self-sufficient ego. Nothing else matters.

Here's a quote I came across in the sidebar, attributed to Ayn Rand:
Google indicates that this quote comes from The Fountainhead.
I don't think this should be in the sidebar, because it is patently false - your first glance doesn't tell you everything about a person. Rand probably intended for this fictional ability to play some role in the world of The Fountainhead, but the quote doesn't say that it's from a work of fiction, and it isn't particularly insightful out of context.

Tibor Machan died this past week, at age 77. In 2011 a festschrift to honor his life work in ideas was issued under the title Reality, Reason, and Rights.*
At the end of the twentieth century, Tibor delivered a paper in Boston to the APA session of the Ayn Rand Society. The theme of the session was “Teaching Ayn Rand in Introductory Courses.” Allan Gotthelf delivered a paper on teaching Rand on free will, and Tibor Machan’s was on teaching Rand’s ethical egoism. Tibor’s paper was published in 2001 in The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies (V3N1). See also on his layout of Rand’s ethics Chapter 3 of his book Ayn Rand (1999). The dedication page says “For Kate.” My deepest sympathy to Kate and Erin and Thomas and all who loved and admired Tibor. 
In 1975 I studied Tibor’s fine book Human Rights and Human Liberties.* Lately I’ve gotten his Individuals and Their Rights (1989) and his Objectivity – Recovering Determinate Reality in Philosophy, Science, and Everyday Life (2004). I’ve more to learn from him in the days not yet broken.
Chapter 2 of Tibor's Ayn Rand had appeared in my journal Objectivity (V1N4) in 1992. The essay title is "Evidence of Necessary Existence."* (Abstract) 
From the Introduction of Tibor’s Ayn Rand (1999):
“In addition there have been specialized journals, such as Objectivity—edited by Stephen C. Boydstun—in which Rand’s work is the animating idea for most papers, while others such as Reason Papers—edited by myself—pay frequent attention to works that develop or criticize Rand’s ideas. Any serious student of Rand needs to take a look at the wide array of topics with which the authors of Objectivity grapple, as well as at some of the study groups in cyberspace that regularly conduct extensive seminars and produce substantial papers on or inspired by Rand’s work.
. . .
“In choosing a given person for consideration when that person isn’t hailed by one’s culture, the author reveals his own esteem or respect for that person. The charge often follows that objective treatment of the person is impossible.
“Yet to think this way, to deny objectivity when it is coupled with respect or even admiration, is to confuse objectivity with neutrality or nonpartisanship. A doctor needn’t be neutral about a patient’s ailment in order to be objective in deciding what treatment it requires.”

.
Tibor Machan - his closing argument - Individualism in the Right Key (August 2015)
.

A high ranking White House official wrote a little essay on the subject of this thread:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/opinion/trump-white-house-anonymous-resistance.html
He didn't leave his name, which should only fuel Trump's paranoia about his subordinates undermining him.
Best quote:
Another quote:
This is not a liberal. It's not a Democrat. This is a conservative Republican. One of many, sitting in a position of power, waiting for the right time to finally end this absurdity.

There's a substantial number of Trump voters who still think Trump was the right choice as President.While some might have soured on him, only a small minority of those who voted for him would want him gone. I've spoken to Trump voters who seemed reasonable in political conversations 4 or 5 years ago, and who are wary of Trump being over the top, but who would feel disenfranchised if he were removed.

The idea that the U.S. is controlled by a "deep state" has spread to a wider section of people. I believe the numbers are substantial, even though not a majority. A large number of people feel out of control and alienated from the system. They do not see it as a system they want; but as a system that is imposed on them. Of course, they're the cause of the system, but there's little hope they will ever figure that out: it's an intellectual feat that is beyond most of them. 

Some of these folk might actually be happy that a few Trump advisers are acting as dampers to his worst gut instincts; yet, they would only want them to act as dampers, not to do anything fundamental.

Scientists identify protein that may have existed when life began
The primordial peptide may have appeared 4 billion years ago
Date: August 30, 2018
Source: Rutgers University
Summary: How did life arise on Earth? Researchers have found among the first and perhaps only hard evidence that simple protein catalysts -- essential for cells, the building blocks of life, to function -- may have existed when life began.
 

Researchers have designed a synthetic small protein that wraps around a metal core composed of iron and sulfur. This protein can be repeatedly charged and discharged, allowing it to shuttle electrons within a cell. Such peptides may have existed at the dawn of life, moving electrons in early metabolic cycles.
Credit: Vikas Nanda/Rutgers University-New Brunswick
 
Hard Evidence?
The scientists used computers to model a short, 12-amino acid protein and tested it in the laboratory. This peptide has several impressive and important features. It contains only two types of amino acids (rather than the estimated 20 amino acids that synthesize millions of different proteins needed for specific body functions), it is very short and it could have emerged spontaneously on the early Earth in the right conditions. The metal cluster at the core of this peptide resembles the structure and chemistry of iron-sulfur minerals that were abundant in early Earth oceans. The peptide can also charge and discharge electrons repeatedly without falling apart, according to Nanda, a resident faculty member at the Center for Advanced Technology and Medicine.
"Modern proteins called ferredoxins do this, shuttling electrons around the cell to promote metabolism," said senior author Professor Paul G. Falkowski, who leads Rutgers' Environmental Biophysics and Molecular Ecology Laboratory. "A primordial peptide like the one we studied may have served a similar function in the origins of life."

ARI has just uploaded all of Peikoff's FHF lectures, with the Q&A's, to YouTube. 
https://www.youtube.com/user/AynRandInstitute/videos?disable_polymer=1
This one was of interest to me, not for the lecture (it's the same as what Rand delivered) but for the material before and after concerning her illness and death.  It's been available before, but I'd never heard it.
 

I didn't see a forum where I thought this post fits well. If the moderators want to move it to another forum , that's okay. Anyway, I've been posting to this blog for a while, and believe some would find an interest in a couple recent ones.
LeBron, Trump, Altruism

Marconi #6   This is one of a series of 11 that I wrote while reading a biography of Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of wireless technology and often credited with inventing the radio. The post refers to John Galt.
 
 

One of the greatest regrets of my early life is cutting off ties with a girl I loved, and several of our common friends, because I couldn't have her.
Yes, staying friends would've been painful...and, back then, I thought pain was a hindrance to any kind of accomplishment or success, and therefor to be avoided at all cost...but, as I found out later: pain is a part of life. A necessary, and therefor GOOD part of life. It would've TAUGHT me a lot, about both myself and the nature of the human experience in general.
So just take the pain. Don't betray your values, by removing a good person from your life, because you're scared of a little pain. If you take the pain of a short term, probably illusory heartbreak, you will be rewarded for it with a learning experience you can't access in any other way... and possibly a lifetime of friendship as well.
P.S. You DO want to stay away from any kind of an exploitative relationship. My post assumes that your relationship with her is a straight forward friendship (like mine was), and she is not taking advantage of your feelings in any way.

.
I’ve had Scott Ryan’s 2003 book critiquing Rand’s epistemology about four years, though I’ve not gotten to work through it fully. His book displays considerable knowledge of Objectivism and some other philosophy as well. I have the impression that his is one of the two most substantive book-length critiques so far of the Objectivist philosophy itself (the other being Kathleen Touchstone's Then Athena Said). The material quality of his book, paperback, is excellent. The quotation from Intrinsicist is from page 41 of Ryan’s book.
Mr. Ryan died in Feb. 2016 at age 52. He had a degree in mathematics, and late in life, he earned a JD. He was an esteemed participant in a blog of Edward Feser, who is author of a very helpful book Scholastic Metaphysics – A Contemporary Introduction (2014).
Greg Salmieri observes in his 2008 Ph.D. dissertation Aristotle and the Problem of Concepts: "It may be that the dominant non-realist theories of concepts in the history of philosophy all render concepts subjective, but it does not follow from this that all non-realist theories must. There is room for theories that hold that concepts have an objective basis, without having univesals as their proper objects." 
The qualification “proper” in Greg's phrase “proper object” is meant as in Aristotle's speaking of a given sensory modality's proper object. So as an Aristotelian conceives of sound as the proper object (dedicated object, we would say in engineering) of hearing, the Platonist conceives of universals as if they were proper objects of concepts. Greg argues that Aristotle did not think of universals as “proper objects” of concepts. 
In his 1964 Ph.D. dissertation, Leonard Piekoff has a footnote on page 107 in which he cites an old jewel. That jewel is The Theory of Universals by R. I. Aaron (Oxford 1952). In this work, the author treats the varieties of realism, conceptualism, and nominalism across the history of theory of universals. He argues the sound points and bases of each and what each of them of itself leaves out of account. In the end, like Rand, but earlier, Aaron rejects all realism, conceptualism, and nominalism as inadequate. He then sketches what he takes to be the right theory, so far as it goes. I add that last clause because he had not got onto Rand’s idea of measurement-omission analysis of general concepts (and related analysis of similarity relations). This book, and of course Peikoff’s dissertation, is work to which Peikoff would have exposed Rand in those years leading to her publication in ’66-67 of her own theory of universals and concepts.
Aaron titles his sixth chapter “Is There a Real Problem?” He responds to various reasons for thinking there is no such problem. He proposes that it is not wise, given the history of the problem and reasons against there being any problem, to begin with the questions “Are there universals?” or “Is the universal a word?” He begins, rather, with the question “How do we use general words?” which engenders more narrow questions such as “What past experiences are necessary to successful use of general words?” and “What sort of objects and what sort of arrangement of objects in the experienced world enable us to use general words successfully?”

.
I’ve had Scott Ryan’s 2003 book critiquing Rand’s epistemology about four years, though I’ve not gotten to work through it fully. His book displays considerable knowledge of Objectivism and some other philosophy as well. I have the impression that his is one of the two most substantive book-length critiques so far of the Objectivist philosophy itself (the other being Kathleen Touchstone's Then Athena Said). The material quality of his book, paperback, is excellent. The quotation from Intrinsicist is from page 41 of Ryan’s book.
Mr. Ryan died in Feb. 2016 at age 52. He had a degree in mathematics, and late in life, he earned a JD. He was an esteemed participant in a blog of Edward Feser, who is author of a very helpful book Scholastic Metaphysics – A Contemporary Introduction (2014).
Greg Salmieri observes in his 2008 Ph.D. dissertation Aristotle and the Problem of Concepts: "It may be that the dominant non-realist theories of concepts in the history of philosophy all render concepts subjective, but it does not follow from this that all non-realist theories must. There is room for theories that hold that concepts have an objective basis, without having univesals as their proper objects." 
The qualification “proper” in Greg's phrase “proper object” is meant as in Aristotle's speaking of a given sensory modality's proper object. So as an Aristotelian conceives of sound as the proper object (dedicated object, we would say in engineering) of hearing, the Platonist conceives of universals as if they were proper objects of concepts. Greg argues that Aristotle did not think of universals as “proper objects” of concepts. 
In his 1964 Ph.D. dissertation, Leonard Piekoff has a footnote on page 107 in which he cites an old jewel. That jewel is The Theory of Universals by R. I. Aaron (Oxford 1952). In this work, the author treats the varieties of realism, conceptualism, and nominalism across the history of theory of universals. He argues the sound points and bases of each and what each of them of itself leaves out of account. In the end, like Rand, but earlier, Aaron rejects all realism, conceptualism, and nominalism as inadequate. He then sketches what he takes to be the right theory, so far as it goes. I add that last clause because he had not got onto Rand’s idea of measurement-omission analysis of general concepts (and related analysis of similarity relations). This book, and of course Peikoff’s dissertation, is work to which Peikoff would have exposed Rand in those years leading to her publication in ’66-67 of her own theory of universals and concepts.
Aaron titles his sixth chapter “Is There a Real Problem?” He responds to various reasons for thinking there is no such problem. He proposes that it is not wise, given the history of the problem and reasons against there being any problem, to begin with the questions “Are there universals?” or “Is the universal a word?” He begins, rather, with the question “How do we use general words?” which engenders more narrow questions such as “What past experiences are necessary to successful use of general words?” and “What sort of objects and what sort of arrangement of objects in the experienced world enable us to use general words successfully?”

.
I’ve had Scott Ryan’s 2003 book critiquing Rand’s epistemology about four years, though I’ve not gotten to work through it fully. His book displays considerable knowledge of Objectivism and some other philosophy as well. I have the impression that his is one of the two most substantive book-length critiques so far of the Objectivist philosophy itself (the other being Kathleen Touchstone's Then Athena Said). The material quality of his book, paperback, is excellent. The quotation from Intrinsicist is from page 41 of Ryan’s book.
Mr. Ryan died in Feb. 2016 at age 52. He had a degree in mathematics, and late in life, he earned a JD. He was an esteemed participant in a blog of Edward Feser, who is author of a very helpful book Scholastic Metaphysics – A Contemporary Introduction (2014).
Greg Salmieri observes in his 2008 Ph.D. dissertation Aristotle and the Problem of Concepts: "It may be that the dominant non-realist theories of concepts in the history of philosophy all render concepts subjective, but it does not follow from this that all non-realist theories must. There is room for theories that hold that concepts have an objective basis, without having univesals as their proper objects." 
The qualification “proper” in Greg's phrase “proper object” is meant as in Aristotle's speaking of a given sensory modality's proper object. So as an Aristotelian conceives of sound as the proper object (dedicated object, we would say in engineering) of hearing, the Platonist conceives of universals as if they were proper objects of concepts. Greg argues that Aristotle did not think of universals as “proper objects” of concepts. 
In his 1964 Ph.D. dissertation, Leonard Piekoff has a footnote on page 107 in which he cites an old jewel. That jewel is The Theory of Universals by R. I. Aaron (Oxford 1952). In this work, the author treats the varieties of realism, conceptualism, and nominalism across the history of theory of universals. He argues the sound points and bases of each and what each of them of itself leaves out of account. In the end, like Rand, but earlier, Aaron rejects all realism, conceptualism, and nominalism as inadequate. He then sketches what he takes to be the right theory, so far as it goes. I add that last clause because he had not got onto Rand’s idea of measurement-omission analysis of general concepts (and related analysis of similarity relations). This book, and of course Peikoff’s dissertation, is work to which Peikoff would have exposed Rand in those years leading to her publication in ’66-67 of her own theory of universals and concepts.
Aaron titles his sixth chapter “Is There a Real Problem?” He responds to various reasons for thinking there is no such problem. He proposes that it is not wise, given the history of the problem and reasons against there being any problem, to begin with the questions “Are there universals?” or “Is the universal a word?” He begins, rather, with the question “How do we use general words?” which engenders more narrow questions such as “What past experiences are necessary to successful use of general words?” and “What sort of objects and what sort of arrangement of objects in the experienced world enable us to use general words successfully?”

Rand was successful at explicitly blasting false dichotomies and reusing language to her own purposes ("morality" being the perfect example).
I find her use of the phrase "end in itself" makes complete sense to me in the context of a "self", whose end IS itself, but makes little sense to me when referring to something other than the self.  X can be an "end in itself" to itself, but I cannot find the conceptual basis in reality for what anyone could mean (Rand included) by an "end in itself" for anything other than that "self".  A fly is an end in itself to the fly, but to the sun, the universe, or to me... it is a fly (which I could still love and value... but "it" is not "me").  I find Rand's use of the term "end in itself" (hopefully a re-use of the term which I cant quite put my finger on) not as illuminating as her retooling of other various terms, which clearly have been given a meaning by her markedly different from the standard meanings accepted by the culture.
I also suspect there is a sort of false dichotomy of "means" and "ends" in certain contexts (voluntary contexts?) which allows Rand to use terms such as "end in itself" when relating disparate identities without implying intrinsicism.  [If I know anything about Objectivism, it is that Rand was not an intrinsicist.] If I "use" a person in ways which are voluntary and desired by them, to mutual benefit, they are not "abused" by me and hence are conceptually "means" to my end only in a benevolent sense of the term.  Rand's holding that there are no conflicts among rational men, implies that on some level "means-ends" (as commonly interpreted and implied in popular moral hypotheticals) IS a false dichotomy, and the false dichotomy only arises when one colors the term "means" with "abuse" rather than a mutually beneficial and desired "use".
When I am asked to act as a means to someone else's end to which (and possibly with which) I agree and during which they act as a means to my ends, and I note that mutual benefit occurs, then the act of being means (acting to benefit) repeatedly becomes an end... and the repeated completion of those ends (mutual benefit) becomes a means to life.
There are no ends, which are not means, TO (and FOR) the self.  Any such purported end would not be an end.  So for X to be an "end in itself" to me, means the same thing as "X is an end to and FOR me (my life)", but any apparent dichotomy between means and ends is illusory (in that instance).  IF this last is so, I could conclude, my son is "an end in himself" to me, BUT I could not ever conclude that a complete stranger is an end in himself to me, precisely because my son is my life, but a stranger is not.
 
 
 
 

I think it is funnier (and more likely true) the other way around.  

.
A Rejection of Egoism —Excerpts from this linked article:
The first strand in Rand’s move from agent egoism to beneficiary egoism was the thesis that if one does not hold one's own life as the motive and goal of one’s actions (at least indirectly), one is acting in a self-destructive way. The second strand, wound together with the first, is that if one does not hold one’s life as the motive and goal of one’s actions, one is acting in a disintegrated way, and integrated life is better life.
. . .
The third strand in the cord by which Rand ties beneficiary egoism to agency egoism is the stress she lays on the self-sufficiency of organisms in general and individual humans in particular.
. . .
In the Strand One section, I interpreted Rand as holding to an egoism in which some right actions are not directly for the actor’s sake, only indirectly so. Directly, they could be for the sake of one not oneself, nonetheless count as egoistic. By this interpretation, Rand’s type of ethical egoism would fall outside Kraut’s exceptionally restrictive definition. “Egoism holds that there is only one person whose good should be the direct object of one’s actions: oneself” (WGW 39).
My interpretation of Rand on this point is in some tension with her text that I quoted (AS 1059–60). Further tension is added by other text of Rand’s:
“The rational man . . . . recognizes the fact that his own life is the source, not only of all his values, but of his capacity to value. Therefore, the value he grants to others is only a consequence, an extension, a secondary projection of the primary value which is himself.” (VoS 46–47) 
She goes on, in that 1963 essay, to quote Nathaniel Branden:
“The respect and good will that men of self-esteem feel towards other human beings is profoundly egoistic; they feel, in effect: ‘Other men are of value because they are of the same species as myself.’ In revering living entities, they are revering their own life. This is the psychological base of any emotion of sympathy and any feeling of ‘species solidarity’.” (VoS 47)
Rand’s contrast of secondary to primary might suggest the contrast of indirect to direct. I think, considering the layout of the psychology to which Rand points, that suggestion should be rejected.
 
Rand in Full —Excerpts from this linked article:
Catherine Halsey learns to greatly curtail her personal desires and to devote her efforts to helping others. This she does because she wants to do what is right and because she accepts the idea that selfishness is evil (ET XIII 384). 
Catherine also accepts the idea, advocated by Toohey (ET XI 342), that selfishness leads to unhappiness. I have been unable to recall or locate any major thinker who advocated this proposition, but it will follow from the premises that happiness requires morality and that selfishness is immoral.
Catherine’s success at unselfishness makes her unhappy and resentful. She speaks with her Uncle Ellsworth about it. She acknowledges that he is much brighter than she and that “‘it’s a very big subject, good and evil’” (ET XIII 384). Rand then uses their dialogue to argue the incoherence and pointlessness of absolute unselfishness. Rand’s lead into her case for the goodness of pure selfishness consists of the sensibleness and pleasure of having personal desires (together with having one’s own thoughts and choices) and guiding one’s own actions. (ET XIII 384; GW II 454). We have seen this way of entering the case for egoism before, in the development of Andrei after he meets Kira.
After her deep conversation with Uncle Ellsworth, Catherine gets together with Peter Keating. He is feeling dirty because of his testimony against Roark at the court case over the Stoddard Temple. Peter and Catherine reaffirm their love, which is a first-hand personal preference satisfying their own identities. They kiss. “Then he did not think of the Stoddard Temple any longer, and she did not think of good and evil. They did not need to; they felt too clean” (ET XIII 391). This suggests that at least one reason the concept of good and evil is needed is the human potential for betraying egoistic innocence.
. . .
I should pause over the necessity of intended self-benefit for correct values. Not all of one’s potential selves are worth benefitting. Among those who are, Rand maintains that only potential selves whose every value is intended to benefit themselves hold entirely correct values. “Concern with his own interests is the essence of a moral existence, and . . . man must be the beneficiary of his own moral actions. / The actor must always be the beneficiary of his action” (VS ix–x; also OE 46–47).
One is a beneficiary in ways other than by one’s resulting positive feelings, because one is a self that is not only feelings. Man’s self is “‘that entity that is his consciousness. To think, to feel, to judge, to act are functions of the ego’” (HR XVIII 737). It is the self—one’s soul—that has thoughts, meaning, will, values, desires, and feeling (GW II 454).
Roark loves the buildings he designs not only because of the positive responses they elicit in him. Dagny loves diesel-electric locomotives and the minds that create them not only because of the positive responses they elicit in her. It is not plausible that when she finds that man at the end of the rails, the one for whom she has longed since her youth, she will love him only because of the positive responses he evokes in her.
There is, however, a thread of subjectivity in Rand’s conception of value and love and normative selfishness that is puckering up the fabric. In my judgment, that thread is unnecessary and should be removed. Speaking metaphorically, the solemnity of looking at the sky does not come only from the uplift of one’s head (HR V 598). In extreme desire for another person, the other does not recede in importance compared to the desire (GW IX 539). A rational desire to help someone in need is animated not only by “your own selfish pleasure in the value of his person and struggle” (AS 1060, emphasis added). Rather, it is enough for rational egoism that, by design, no actions be contrary self-benefit (of a self worth benefitting). The requirement that all actions should intend primarily self-benefit should be dropped. In this way, one can love persons simply for the particular ends-in-themselves that they are.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Those linked articles (and those excerpts just shown) are old one's of mine (2010). I've still some settling out to do, particularly on what are the most liberal restrictions on what could still be called ethical egoism, consistent with the long history and varieties of it in ethical theory.

It might be worth distinguishing between the cost to oneself and the benefit to another.
I'm reminded of Rearden's thought in some cases when dealing with businessmen he respects, but who are not on his level.  "it's so much for him, and so little for me."

Thank you for your post, Stephen B. I will comment on one part of it.
I think that interpretation is consistent with most, but not all, of what Ayn Rand wrote. I think my clause "but not all" can be based on a number of things she wrote, but I will limit myself to two. One is the passage in VoS quoted in the third post of this thread. Two is from Atlas Shrugged, p. 29, as follows. Taggart Transcontinental has lost a shipping contract with Ellis Wyatt to a competitor. Dagny Taggart: "We've lost the Wyatt oil fields" (p. 16). 
Dagny Taggart: "Ellis Wyatt is not asking anybody to give him a chance. And I'm not in business to give chances. I'm running a railroad." 
James Taggart: "That's an extremely narrow view, it seems to me. I don't see why we should want to help one man instead of a whole nation."
Dagny Taggart: "I'm not interested in helping anybody. I want to make money."
How is it that Dagny is not interested in helping Ellis Wyatt? She wishes that Taggart Transcontinental still had Ellis Wyatt as a customer. If that were still the case, her making money is helping herself, and she would be helping Ellis Wyatt achieve his goals. 
Returning to your passage I quoted, I like a little different wording, indicated by brackets: "an egoism in which some right actions are not [solely] for the actor’s [benefit], only [partly] so. [Partly], they could be for the [benefit] of one not oneself, nonetheless count as egoistic."
While X can help Y when X and Y are trading partners, X rationally helping Y is not limited to trading. For example, X and Y could be co-workers for the same firm Z. X and Y each have the same goal of Z's goal/success. Similarly, in basketball player X could assist his/her teammate Y to achieve their mutual goal of their team winning the game.

Patrick, I have a hypothesis about how Dr. Binswanger might answer your question.
In HWK (p. 262), he writes:
He then gives an example of a deductive derivation, a deductive proof, an inductive derivation, and an inductive proof. (This happens on p. 262-264.)
Now, let's try to answer your question:
As the above passage makes clear, reduction can be inductive. Reduction is nothing more than walking backwards through the derivation that originally led to the idea. If the derivation was inductive, the reduction or proof will be inductive as well.