The First Valid Criticism

[MisterSwig]

In your view what was the first valid criticism of Rand's philosophy (or a part of it)? Who offered the insight and when/where did they publish it? I'm not talking about criticisms of her personal views on small matters, but her important principles and applications articulated in her works. I imagine the first was probably during her lifetime, but I'm having trouble coming up with an example.  

[Boydstun]

I’m afraid I remember little on the whens of them, MS. None are from reading or listening to criticisms of others, only from my own reflections across the years. (I became familiar with Rand’s literature and philosophy in ’67-’68.)

Some core things here.

Concerning biological function of mind here.

Egoism suffering some pinch here.

To the preceding one, I should add that resort to the subconscious, packing it with purely selfish aim, to egoistically explain what Branden/Rand named the Visibility Principle, is packing the subconscious with an untested, evidence-absent conjecture.

Some divergence here over context of knowledge and meaning of truth.

I’ve written objections to Rand’s definition of logic as “the art of non-contradictory identification”. Those objections concern the incompleteness and secondary standing of non-contradiction in elementary deductive inference, in proof procedures, and in rationale behind the proscription of some informal fallacies. Still, my own supervening definition of logic does not toss hers away, and her grounding of logic and its rudimentary function and normativity remain sound all the same.

Edited October 12, 2020 by Boydstun