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So a friend of mine and I were having a discussion about the proper meaning of words the other day. It seems like Rand's definitions for words sometimes differ with the dictionary or "commonly accepted" defintion. For instance, arrogance, in the Randian sense, seems to mean a complete belief in yourself and your own abilities. However, the dictionary defintion says: offensive display of superiority or self-importance; overbearing pride.

Could anyone please tell me which definition is correct (for lack of a better word)?

Thanks

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Fair enough. Is there a way you can do a more accurate search than just typing in "words" or definitions"?

Thanks

On what Objectivism means by arrogant? Sure, search for "arrogance" :thumbsup: . Or you could first make sure Ayn Rand did indeed redefine the term arrogant, and realize that there's no evidence she did.

On the broader point, Ayn Rand didn't try to define words for the English language. Because words have so many competing meanings in English, today, she simply had to define some of the terms she was using for her own philosophy. This was done to not leave room for ambiguity. It really shouldn't matter what sequences of sounds or letters she was using to describe things. What should matter is that those sequences are well defined, and used consistently, making readers able to understand the ideas she was expressing without any ambiguity.

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Is there a way you can do a more accurate search than just typing in "words" or definitions"?
In case of doubt, I would consult Webster's Third New International Dictionary, the American Heritage Dictionary, and the Oxford English Dictionary, and find what was common to these sources. They are fairly reliably researched and complete. They all share the defect of confusing connotation and denotation so that they may improperly attribute attitude to the word (e.g. some definitions of "selfish" imply that is it excessive self-interest, which is a value judgment that is not properly part of a dictionary).
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In case of doubt, I would consult Webster's Third New International Dictionary, the American Heritage Dictionary, and the Oxford English Dictionary, and find what was common to these sources. They are fairly reliably researched and complete. They all share the defect of confusing connotation and denotation so that they may improperly attribute attitude to the word (e.g. some definitions of "selfish" imply that is it excessive self-interest, which is a value judgment that is not properly part of a dictionary).

If I recall aright, and someone better check on this, Rand used the Random House Dictionary

For my definition of "libertarian" I used the World Book Dictionary 1963 and "objectivism" came from Philosophy Made Simple wich was a volume of something called "The Made Simple Encyclopedia", which we had since c1961. My home was filled with books and encyclopediae since I was 7 and we got The Book of Knowledge. We had Americana, World Book 1963 and one other that I forget. We had several dictionaries. All of these I would often read for pleasure. ONce I learned how to read text-only pages at about 8, having been highly motivated by the weekly magazines, I was always a voracious reader. Of course, I come from the days of Phonics

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Offensive display of superiority or self-importance; overbearing pride.

What would be an “inoffensive” display of superiority?

"Offensive" to whom, and for what reason?

What if the person is, actually, superior? How do you not "display" it?

What would it mean to be self- "unimportant"?

What would a "display" of self-unimportance look like?

What is non-overbearing pride? Overbearing to whom and for what reason?

--These questions are used to highlight that the definition provided is based on a certain moral code.

Having a definition based on a certain moral code is possible, but it is inappropriate to smuggle the code into the definition as if the underlying moral code is axiomatic, i.e., taken for granted.

In this case, the smuggled-in moral code is Altruism, and when we take the obverse of its elements, we get a hint as to the moral standard being suggested: humility, or non-superiority, i.e., inferiority; self-unimportance, i.e., low, little, or no-self-esteem; non-overbearing, under-bearing and/or no bearing pride...

Ayn Rand, stated in ITOE, the truth or falsehood of all man’s conclusions depends on the truth or falsehood of his definitions. So, she obviously believed definitions were very important.

How do we know if a definition is true or false?

We have to validate it, and if necessary, derive the definition ourselves, first hand.

Often in O’ist lectures, it is said a decent (non-circular etc) definition is a good place to start when trying to understand a concept; but that the dictionary is only a starting point.

What we want to do is use it as help to getting to the actual referents of the concept, i.e., we want to find the objects in reality the concept actually refers to.

Sometimes this is easy for concepts with a low level of abstraction and/or a high degree of specificity, e.g., concepts such as: ball, eagle, laugh, beside. Other times it’s very difficult, such as in the case of concepts like: justice, freedom, arrogance, honesty, good and/or bad.

Ayn Rand, in her lectures on fiction and non-fiction states one needs to be totally Aristotelian when dealing with concepts, as opposed to Platonic.

In part, what she meant is one needs to first look to the facts, then abstract from there, and classify and define first-hand from the data provided by our senses and/or direct perceptual concretes, and move progressively more abstract; that one’s abstractions must only be derived from actual referents, and not invented, or taken for granted.

If we want to know what “arrogance,” actually means, we need to actually find instances of the subject matter and observe, first hand to discover what subject matter is supposed to be referenced; we need to actually find people behaving as “arrogant,” (if possible) according to the best definition we can get our minds on.

If the concept is valid at all, we should be able to uncover, and gather the context in which the conventional concept is defined. If the concept is completely invalid, such as “god” or “Santa Claus,” we will run into problems immediately, and will not be able to find a context in which we can observe, e.g., god.

In the case of arrogance, we can infer some of the necessary context for which it is claimed that the phenomena of “arrogance,” occurs. For example, we can easily gather a basic “genus” of the claimed concept, i.e., we can find the wider category for which it is a specific member. We need to ask, what kind of thing is arrogance? Arrogance is supposed to be a certain kind of human behavior.

Next, we need to find what characteristics of “arrogance,” separates it from other forms of human behavior. We want to find the concept “arrogance” closest relative, i.e., we want to find the concepts which are not arrogance, but could be confused with it.

Even using the provided definition of arrogance, we can infer some helpful information. We probably get a sense the term in the current definition is intended to be pejorative, thus it is a normative concept, which means it is evaluative, which should key us to begin uncovering the moral standard, being used to make the evaluation.

I hope this is a helpful lead,

Regards,

I highly recommend, Harry Binswanger’s lecture on Logic, he provides a great set of pointers on how to build a definition first hand.

Edited by phibetakappa
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Even given the above analysis - and it is a fine system of methodology - I cannot see any way that 'arrogance' can be defined in anything but the pejorative sense.

It is apparent that it's a confusing word/concept for Objectivists, and I recall battling with it myself.

I think this came about on first reading Ayn Rand's novels. Most of us were fairly young, and still of course under the influence of the norms of society - parents, teachers and religion.

When confronted by Rand's characters, the sheer certainty and individualism they demonstrated in word and action, my reaction was "how arrogant, but how great!" By my 'borrowed' standards of that time, they just had to be arrogant.

After years of thinking about it, and studying Ayn Rand's non-fiction, ( and I can't recall any direct reference to this concept) I settled it for myself this way.

Pride, purposefulness, self-esteem, mind-independence, all of which lead to self-efficacy, confidence, and self-assertiveness, are the rightful virtues of the rational man or woman of action. They have to be earned, and can't be faked.

In the eyes of others - non-Oist's - this 'superiority' cannot be real. They are evaders who cannot grasp that one can be deserving of Pride.

But what about these evaders themselves, who somehow "know", in the recesses of their foggy minds, that being prideful is Man's purpose and reward, but won't ever get there? For them all that is left is to fake that confidence and that self-esteem; to counterfeit assertiveness and Pride. So, at least others just might fall for it.

My dictionary supplies : " The assertion of one's own importance, together with contempt for others; disdainful assumption of dignity or authority."

Mainly pejorative, and I think accurate of an evading second-hander.

The Objectivist does not fake reality, and should shun 'arrogance".

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I cannot see any way that 'arrogance' can be defined in anything but the pejorative sense.

It does not have to be defined in a pejorative sense.

It is only pejorative, if you hold an altruist morality.

From a perspective of an O'ist, calling someone arrogant, and really meaning it, may just leave them scratching their head, and saying to themselves, "What the heck is wrong with being arrogant, because everything you've described are all objective virtues of a person. Hey, so why do "arrogant" behaviors in others upset you?"

The only HONEST answer they could give, if they could introspect honestly, and report accurately, is,

"Well, it makes me FEEL bad about myself... his "arrogant" behavior makes me feel angry at him, because he seems to think he's better than me, and if he acts better than me, then... what is wrong with me?... and... and ... I don't want others to know... there's something wrong with me... I don't want others to know that... I've never legitimately, achieved any personal state, which could ever make me behave in such a confident way... the arrogant person is a rotten liar... the universe is a rotten place.. I... I just know it... its rotten... so don't pretend like you are so confident, and proud!"

Altruists need pejorative words to stifle legitimate, self-confident states of men, because if men can be confident and happy, the contrast implicitly blasts their own philosophy!

If the universe is not a malevolent place, where success, happiness and confidence is not possible, i.e., if the universe is benevolent, where success and happiness is possible and self-esteem, and self-confidence is natural, then the altruist philosophy, and all its psychological rationalizations are wiped out like a shadow in broad daylight! And suddenly the sacrifice advocates and/or sacrifice collectors have no place to hide. Need/lacking/loss is no longer the standard of rights and morality.

Men no longer need mystical mechanisms of rationalizations, to set up places like "heavens" or "eutopias" they can dream about when they are wallowing around in their own self-defeat, self-hatred, negativity, pessimism and/or malevolence.

Also, men aren't willing to hand over their products to moochers and looters based on rationalizations like... "oh, hell what does it matter, I'm going to die anyway... what is this product going to matter... what does it matter... the world is a rotten place... and this product doesn't make me feel any better about it... if I give it way... maybe someone else can get something from it... because I don't feel good about having produced it...."

The true altruists no longer have a moral "get out of jail free card," they don't get a free pass, i.e., moral judgement is no longer suspended, under the premise, "people in glass houses should not throw stones," and/or "judge not least ye be judged."

Because men will feel good about themselves and they will feel like they have earned that state of joy; then like all earned products men feel responsible and right for producing; such happy men are not going to want to give up their state of self-esteem, to the first moocher who comes by, trying to make them feel bad about themselves for being objectively good and productive.

Regards

Edited by phibetakappa
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Even given the above analysis - and it is a fine system of methodology - I cannot see any way that 'arrogance' can be defined in anything but the pejorative sense.
"The assertion of an attitude of superiority as to authority, knowledge or ability".
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Granted, except that then we would all lose - us, and non-O'ists alike - a good word, as nothing quite comes close to 'arrogance'. In the accepted, traditional, dictionary, sense.

The base definition given by all dictionaries, should remain in place. To Objectivists it will have the pejorative sense I outlined of being undeserved superiority ie, assumed posturing. To all others, whether it is true, earned and hard-won, self confidence; or merely a fake 'front' ---- well they are not going to recognise the difference, are they? And of course pejorative, too.

What other word can you think of, for Objectivist use only, that we can refer to for a person who puts on social or intellectual superiority he does not warrant? Or is needlessly, irrationally, and gratuitously cutting and contemptuous in his behaviour?

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What other word can you think of, for Objectivist use only, that we can refer to for a person who puts on social or intellectual superiority he does not warrant? Or is needlessly, irrationally, and gratuitously cutting and contemptuous in his behaviour?

I think the official term is "asshole" :P

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I think the official term is "asshole" :)

Yeh, but 'arrogant asshole' is so much more descriptive!

pbk gave me some food for thought on this. My initial reaction to giving back the non-pejorative, non-altruist meaning to 'arrogance' - as applying to the Man of self-esteem - was "damn! just got 'selfishness' straightened out, now O'ism is going to have to 're-do' arrogance, too."

To restate the obvious, words matter; but definitions vary, and connotations creep in. There are many excellent words that have become ineffective or tainted; often I guess, because of those early Christians who commandeered Latin and applied it to their own ends.

I follow your excellent reasoning "Altruists need pejorative words to stifle legitimate, self-confident states of men....the contrast implicitly blasts their own philosophy!"

However.. I still feel that O'ism (especially) requires a concept that illustrates UNearned self-confidence, of a posturing kind.

I foresee another problem. Actually, I've already seen it. It has to do with many young Objectivists who still carry the 'stigmatized' version of 'arrogance' with them from their past. (I well know this, since I was in the same place once).

Their full appreciation of the virtues of pride, independence, self-assertion, self-worth etc.,is not yet grasped, but they speak and behave with the attitude of 'Hey, Ayn Rand says(?)it's right to be arrogant!" And arrogance - in the normal and traditional sense, the one they know - might become a convenient shell for any insecurity, and become confused with true confidence.

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I'm very new to Objectivism so I may be off base here and corrections are welcome.

I've noticed that arrogant is a term used by jealous people when someone else asserts themselves in a competent manner.

To me it is similar to the term smart-ass rather than asshole as mentioned above. Because smart-ass is also a term used by jealous people when someone is asserting something correct but perhaps in a curt or funny manner.

My point is I don't think arrogant is or should be a negative word.

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While a "perfect" altruist would assume anyone speaking any form of truth to be "arrogant" I do not believe this is the matter at hand. The key to deeming one to be arrogant is not in the context but in the presentation. Arrogance is a psychological concept, not a practical or an objective one. The difference in speaking the truth arrogantly or not is whenever the other party is offended. This is subjective and hence cannot be systemized but one can be deemed arrogant in any mode of morality. Being unyielding about an objective fact is not arrogant but making someone feel ignorant, deliberately, for not knowing what you may deem as common knowledge is arrogant.

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While a "perfect" altruist would assume anyone speaking any form of truth to be "arrogant" I do not believe this is the matter at hand. The key to deeming one to be arrogant is not in the context but in the presentation. Arrogance is a psychological concept, not a practical or an objective one. The difference in speaking the truth arrogantly or not is whenever the other party is offended. This is subjective and hence cannot be systemized but one can be deemed arrogant in any mode of morality. Being unyielding about an objective fact is not arrogant but making someone feel ignorant, deliberately, for not knowing what you may deem as common knowledge is arrogant.

I agree. Never for one second am I advocating going easy on persistent people with evasive, altruistic, or irrational premises. These deserve and must get the full weight of rational judgement, and if this is deemed arrogant, so what?

We are either talking here of arrogance as an Objectivist virtue, or of the perception of arrogance by an observer.(And as you say this is mostly subjective.) It's a three-way situation, really: the value one stands by; how you wish it to be perceived by others; and how it is actually perceived. The first is objective; the next two contain elements of subjectivity, and even 'second-handedness'.

But should 'arrogance' even be considered as a virtue?

I have seen arrogance operate, in myself and in others, and I have always, in every case, seen that it accompanies low self-esteem. By whatever definition and connotation it comes with, and with all the rationalisation and justifying in the world, it is always a poor imitation of the real thing: quietly assured confidence, certainty and self-respect.

This Pride is what Objectivism upholds as a cardinal Virtue. It does not just 'arrive', as soon as one says 'I am an Objectivist now'. It does take years of rationality, integrity and productiveness, to earn it.

Psychologically, we all need to feel right; to ourselves, and our place in the world, and so it should be. But there is also a regrettable human tendency to want to feel superior to others, which is the province of the 'second-hander'. Arrogance is a fake short- cut to both these ends .

For those people who 'tar with the same brush' both a confident man, and an arrogant one, well, that's their problem. For those - possibly with mixed premises - who sincerely want to learn from us, I believe we will gain far more for our cause, and far more respect personally, by portraying our hard-won Pride, than cheap arrogance. Objectivism is superior - all on it's own - and it has no need of a superior attitude to convey it.

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Perhaps tying a few things together here . . . I think “arrogance” is a legitimate concept for starters. I’ve looked it up in the dictionary that came with my word processing program and in the Oxford English Dictionary to see some definitions already available.

One other thing mentioned earlier in the thread was about looking at words it is in some way close to and often confused with perhaps as something of a starting place to look to separate it from. So to begin, I think things like pride and confidence are often mixed up for arrogance. Namely, I think pride and confidence are names for senses of worth and certainty that are merited, but arrogance is when there is an unmerited assumption of worth and certainty. We here may be having some mix ups on if arrogance is something which should be seen as bad due to a sort of guilt by association fallacy, seeing that it is commonly used by people we don’t like (altruists namely) in a negative way about things we think are actually good. So we may mistakenly try to say arrogance must be a good thing then when it looks to be used to refer to things we support. * This though, as was explained some earlier, is really more a case of altruists using the word in ways we wouldn’t really agree with I’d think. I said earlier it is arrogance when it is unmerited senses of worth and certainty and altruists just think in general people can’t really merit high senses of worth and certainty in much of anything, so they can typically label as arrogant things which we would know to be proper cases of pride and confidence. Altruists may be working to destroy the legitimate distinction between these things by basically lumping them in with arrogance in order to destroy the concepts of pride and certainty.

Another thing mentioned was about the manner in which these things are held and conveyed. It might also be arrogant (unjust) if something is technically true of you , but you try to get unmerited boost snuck in there by treating others lower than they merit. For example, maybe you did get a great return on your investments this year due to good planning, but then you go around saying that everybody else around didn’t get as good of returns on their investments because they were just so much stupider than you, forget that one guy there was robbed, another attacked by unjust laws forcing a good company to break up, and another went through a long period of serious illness where they were unable to do much more active control on their investments over most of the year. This person in this example isn’t just saying they were smart and did well (which is true), they are trying to get an idea of themselves as somehow better still by saying so many other people are not as intelligent as the direct reason for why they didn’t do as well. The conclusion drawn was unwarranted and inaccurately low of an assessment of those other people in order to try to gain an artificial inflation to their sense of their intelligence and achievement. You can’t really become any better by other people being worse, so this is a second-handed kind of mistaken tactic here of course.

As long as psychology has been brought up I’ll throw in my two cents thought here that superiority complexes like the above example are just a form of cover ups for inferiority complexes. I think they’re a neurotic obsession with other people where primacy-of-consciousness second-hander types think they can gain worth by being better than or sort of “winning” against other people like it was a contest instead of “winning” against the challenges presented in reality.

*(As far as Rand’s use of the word “arrogant”, I think it maybe was used to describe how many people who aren’t yet familiar with things outside typical altruistic uses of terms would see as the only word they could come up with, that they were used to hearing for something, even though somehow it didn’t seem quite right to them, that they knew what they were seeing wasn’t something bad. I think I recall there being other similar cases in her writings.)

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I agree there, bluecherry. What you described, partly, is the common belief that life is a "zero sum game"; my gain has to mean your loss. O'ism shows how irrational this is.

Look, it's obvious that we are living - worldwide - in a disgustingly, grey, egalitarian era. The rebuke we hear from all sides is "who do you think you are? You aren't so special."etc., ad nauseam.

It isn't 'cool' to insist on your own individuality or Individualism.

Therefore, the tendency and temptation is to hit back with a sort of "I'll show them who I am!" And so just end up buying in to their game.

This results in nihilistic arrogance, among other things, i.m.o. This is 'reality- faking', and it will eventually be exposed as that.

But far worse, in my experience, is that thinking and acting in this way, obstructs one's development towards genuine pride and confidence.

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Yeah, arrogance really is an obstacle to actual pride and certainty. Before you can get real pride and certainty you'd need to go through a period of breaking down the illusions in arrogance first, where you have to face openly where you aren't feeling well, and many people are very afraid and hesitant to swallow that medicine.

I think the "zero sum game" thing you mentioned is really good to bring up for something like the latter part of my post was about. I think at least a significant part of the error here may be an epistemological mistake of confusing how a concept like "value" works with how percepts work. Objects in reality have at least a fairly immediately apparent case of conservation of matter/energy going on where such things may go places and change forms, but they don't get created or destroyed. Some people think of "value" this way too incorrectly and so they may think we couldn't create value that didn't exist before and so if we have something like a mansion it must be taking an unfair share and be coming out of what should go to starving children in Africa and that that constitutes robbery and is unjust. They may think of it like "value" exists in a static quantity and isn't created so everybody that exists (and maybe everything that exists in the case of environmentalists) has a right to an equal slice of that value pie. Now the arrogant person on the other hand who wants to feel superior and get there by putting other people down, this is looking at it similarly, but in reverse -- they think if you lose some of your share in this mythical value pie, or just don't get as much to begin with, this leaves value for the taking and that it has to go somewhere. They think if they try to knock down your value they can take it from you and raise their own value just like stealing your lollipop to add it to their own pile of candy to increase their stash.

So if you don't think value can be created you probably won't make much of a conscious effort to do so and instead just try to see what you can take from others or moan about how other people who have more are keeping you down. If this were done by everybody, you really wouldn't see value increase -- you could see it shrink though when people try to divvy it up thinking they can just take it and relocate it and they actually end up destroying it, not realizing the context under which the value can exist.

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Thanks. :lol: On the other hand, people with more naked low self-esteem and insecurity would probably be also equally well explained for why they may see other people with high self-esteem and security and want to "knock them down a peg." They feel threatened by those other people as at least one part of the thing here perhaps in their motive to not like successful people. They may look at it like those other people by having so much in the way of good feelings are why there is not enough left to go around for those people who don't feel good about themselves. They then can figure that person has an unfair and undeserved amount (as if nobody CAN possibly deserve more than anybody else) and so they can make it more fair by putting lower judgements upon that other person and maybe by being the one to "take" that value from that other person they think then it will become theirs for being "good enough" to knock that other person "back down to their proper place." They figure as primacy of consciousness people and second-handers that if other people don't judge you well, then you just aren't well. Value being static and not created, they don't recognize where it comes from, that you can't just allocate it and say, "So and so! Here's your portion, Jane Doe! Here's your portion! John Galt! You have too much, give me my share of it! D<"

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