How should major Objectivists address informed criticism of Objectivism?

Questions about Objectivism
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On 4/10/2016 at 3:32 PM, Plasmatic said:

I’d say that any aspect of Objectivism, the  name that denotes Ayn Rands premises on philosophy, that is wrong needs to be rejected and replaced with whomever does the rejecting’s own premises and denoting word…

That seems like the gravest sort of desecration I could inflict on Rand.

This is what I mean by that.

 

I’ve been opposed to the idea of governance (of any kind) since I was 16. When I first read about Galt’s Gulch, it felt like I was seeing exactly the sort of world I’d always wanted to live in. When I read that line from their Judge, about how easy it was for rational men to live together, I sincerely thought it was meant as a nod towards anarchism. I was truly shocked when I learned otherwise.

 

So, I could take your advice; make a philosophy which consists of Objectivist metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, conception of man’s “rights” and anarchism on top, and call it something brand-new.

But it wouldn’t be new. The epistemology; the contextuality of knowledge; my own life as the standard of morality; I didn’t come up with any of that, on my own; I learned about it from Ayn Rand.

 

For me, calling myself an “Objectivist” is the highest sort of tribute I can give to her; it’s the declaration that I’ve chosen to live my own life according to her ideas. In light of everything she’s given me, she deserves at least that.

 

That’s why I believe that calling my own beliefs by some other name would be a desecration. And not the cool kind of desecration, either (the kind that Indiana Jones might participate in), but something low and dirty and shameful.

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You’re right, Jonathan, that public speeches or discussions are proselytizing. But the novels and essays are not. Her essays are the closest thing to how the academy usually does philosophy, and novels are pretty untraditional for that. But when I say growth, I mean the growth of a philosophy so that people acknowledge it. I’m quite aware of how the academy does philosophy, engaged with academics to some extent, enough to at least appreciate it. It is fine to use a high degree of detail to do philosophy. But sometimes such a degree of detail makes people get lost in the actual point of what they’re after. To be sure, this can be scientific in the sense of exact, and objective in the sense of thinking about what is true regardless of your feeling about it. But if essentially everything you say can only be talked about in a highly academic and detailed way, I don’t think it speaks well for treating philosophy as a life furthering endeavor.

No, Rand didn’t exactly have the time to philosophize in the academic way, but that isn’t to say it’s even inferior. Or less objective. Kant didn’t even think of the word “objective” in the same way as Rand, so to him, the only way to philosophy is to be academic.  

I only mention not having to abandon principles was just for other readers to see who may be thinking about this. Personally, I’m fine with being wrong, and being wrong doesn’t mean fixing it would require abandoning principles that I’m not wrong about. I intend to look at it more carefully though sometime in the future.

On 4/12/2016 at 11:49 AM, Jonathan13 said:

The only way to get those readers to reconsider the value that the philosopher can bring to their lives is to correct the philosopher’s errors.

Do you mean the errors of the philosopher being quoted, or the philosopher misunderstanding the quoted philosopher?

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On ‎4‎/‎12‎/‎2016 at 10:49 AM, Jonathan13 said:

Rand took a different approach to promoting her ideas, and she fleshed them out through art, but she did actual philosophy by following the same method as Kant.

I understand that this is actually what she claimed she emphatically was not doing with art. She rejected the “didactic” view of art as a vehicle of proselytizing.

Quote

In regard to all its distinctive functions, I must now stress, the role of art is not didactic.

Even when art does project a moral ideal, its goal is not to teach men that ideal. The purpose of art is not education or proselytizing, neither in regard to ethics nor to metaphysics. To teach these subjects is the task of philosophy, for which art is not a substitute; an art work is not a textbook or a propaganda vehicle. “The basic purpose of art,” writes Miss Rand, <opar_423> “is not to teach, but to _show—_to hold up to man a concretized image of his nature and his place in the universe.”(17) Since the function of art is to bring man’s concepts to the perceptual level, the task of the artist is not to present conceptual information, but to provide man with a definite experience. It is the experience not of thinking, but of seeing, as he contemplates the artistic concrete: "This is what reality is like."

One can learn a great deal about life from a work of art (from its philosophy and theme)—just as, Miss Rand notes, one can learn a great deal about flying by dismantling and studying an airplane. But in both cases the knowledge one gains is a fringe benefit, not a primary. The purpose of a plane, as of an art work, is not to provide material for a classroom, but to do something. The purpose is to make possible to man a certain kind of action.

OPAR

 

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29 minutes ago, Plasmatic said:

I understand that this is actually what she claimed she emphatically was not doing with art. She rejected the “didactic” view of art as a vehicle of proselytizing.

 

I’m thinking if you want to find the voice of reason, you need to learn where to go and how to listen for it. When the music is playing, the voice is inseparable without the ability to conceptualize it. Stopping the music to try to listen to it is futile as well without that same ability..

As one song goes “I can’t stop the music, I could stop it before”

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On ‎4‎/‎11‎/‎2016 at 1:29 PM, William O said:

What was the “super-integration” view that he abandoned? (For accuracy, please stay as close to his actual statement as possible in your explanation.)

Here is the promised excerpt as an example from the lecture Induction in Physics and Philosophy:

Quote

Human consciousness is inherently an integrating faculty and therefore there is no possibility of selecting from its content a unit to serve as a standard of measurement. The ideas or contents of consciousness are always a part of a single total state. […] a “one in the many” And that state has no counterpart in the world of material objects. You can imagine material objects as merged and blended as you want but in principle the constituents of the table were you put parts together, or a cocktail where you blend liquids together, or a metal alloy ,or even of an atom, the constituents of all those things can be separated out again in principle and can exist without there conception to their form or whole. The parts contain some independent, self contained identity of their own and therefore they have the ability to exist apart from the whole to which they belong. But the constituents or contents of a mind are not like that.

He applies this premise in various ways throughout the lecture…