Responding to David:
You’re right, I read, “your dogma” to mean not my definition of dogma but the particular dogma that I hold, thus directing the whole thrust of my response.
As for Bernstein, I made a mistake. I meant Binswanger. Bernstein I saw give a lecture, and I was impressed neither with his speaking ability nor with his knowledge of philosophy, but I did not find him particularly dogmatic. I have no videotape, nor have I read much (if any) of his work, but I did attend an ARI conference in Boston where he and other ARI figureheads presented a few discussions and opened to Q&A. During the Q&A I, being at the time relatively new to Objectivism, asked a simple question out of curiosity and perplexity. I asked about a brain-in-a-vat and what the Objectivist solution was to it. It was years ago, so I don’t remember verbatim, but I believe my question went something like, “How do you know to trust your senses?” He fires back, “You are misleading about what reason is. What is reason?” I didn’t have an answer ready, so with a wave of his hand he goes into how my claim is nonsense, and attack on reason, humanity, and life–ignoring that I made no claim but merely asked a question. At one point, he even made an off-handed remark about how the convention they were holding was not to espouse non-Objectivist ideas (!). And even his rant on why the brain-in-a-vat problem was not a problem was entirely unsatisfactory, which ought to be surprising if it is such a simple matter that I can be guilty of not knowing the answer.
So still not knowing why the brain-in-a-vat problem was not a problem, after Q&A had ended I went up to speak to Brook. After a lot of prodding and progressively getting answers that were less unsatisfying, at the conclusion I find that their answer was exactly my answer, simply worded differently. Up to that point I had some disagreements with Objectivists, whom I took to be simple blemishes on the Objectivist society as a whole rather than the rule. After this encounter, I wasn’t convinced. The ad hominem and emotional attacks that they made to argue their points did not impress me. While those in the audience who didn’t question and seemed to swallow and parrot Randian answers were treated like cronies, people asking questions were treated skeptically, like Soviet spies who had blown their cover. I can’t say that I approved of that atmosphere to say the least.
And I don’t claim that Binswanger evades reality, but that he has a poor method of investigating it. Even dogmatic people can be right, they just have the wrong method of obtaining a bottom-line.
Add on top of that other Objectivists whom I’ve met who also get hostile at merely asking questions and being unsatisfied with less-than-exacting argument, I conclude that some are dogmatic. You say I attacked Objectivism, but that is wholly false. I said some ObjectivISTS are irrational. I never once in this discussion contradicted a word Ayn Rand has said. If you want to argue that, because they behave this way, they are not truly Objectivists, fine. But granted that these figureheads of the ARI and some people on this board who are a little more than just passionate (I’m trying to be polite enough not to point fingers, and I do think it is rather evident [though not self-evident] who they are) are indeed Objectivists, they are of the dogmatic variety. If not granting that, then certainly there may be no class of dogmatic Objectivists.
I, like all of you, have also found it strange that a person can, as soon as he is identified as an Objectivist, be labeled a dogmatist. I agree that that is a dogma itself. If you want to see the very topic I started months ago on that subject in a MySpace forum, I can post the link.
“That’s a pretty dogmatic conclusion on your part, to claim that you are infallible on this point.”
I claim that it could never be false that A = A. That’s not dogmatism, that’s direct knowledge. I know that there is no belief I hold, which I hold in the face of evidence to the contrary. Show me evidence to the contrary and I will not hold any given belief. That I am not being dogmatic is something I know quite directly, and no such proof to the contrary could be given. As soon as proof is given, I drop unreasoned beliefs. There is my proof to myself that I am not dogmatic, and by it I don’t believe it could ever be shown that I am.
[Edit: Rather than going through the whole post to change what I’ve said, I should qualify that I only find one person on this forum to be overtly dogmatic.]
and these ideas cannot prove true because it do not generally fit every situation and explain its excepetions. I do not think they know enough to write as detail as that. 