Kathleen Touchstone

Study/Reading Groups
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Works of Kathleen Touchstone Engaging Objectivist Philosophy

 

Objectivity (1993) - Can Art Exist without Death?

I.             Mortal Man

II.            Limitations Other than Death

III.           Would Unlimited Time Have Value?

IV.           Physical Infinities

V.            The Psychological Make-Up of Immortal Man

VI.           Art Among the Immortal

 

Objectivity (1993, 1994) - Intuition, the Subconscious, and Knowledge - Part 1, Part 2

I.             The Objectivist View

II.            Intuition and the Act of Discovery

III.           Biology and the Unconscious

IV.           Cerebral Dichotomization

V.            Right-Brain Links to Intuition and the Unconscious

VI.           Hemispheric Speculations

VII.          Right-Brain Learning

VIII.        The Art of Seeing

 

Objectivity (1996) - Mathematics and Intuition

I.             Mathematical Invention

II.            Intuition and Self-Evidence

III.           Intuition and Realism

IV.           Intuition and the Innate

V.            Nativism Considered

VI.          Children and Number

VII.         Computational Synapses

VIII.        Implicit Learning

IX.          Priming and Perception

X.           Mental Representations

XI.          Neural Networks

XII.         Left Brain – Right Brain

XIII.        Problem Solving and Intuition

 

Objectivity (1998) - Attentional and Perceptual Disorders and the Nature of Consciousness

I.             Nonreductive Explanation

II.            First-Person Approach

III.           Measuring Consciousness

IV.           Global Aspects of Consciousness

V.            Anomalies of Consciousness

VI.           Brain Correlates of the Conscious and Unconscious

VII.          The Seat of Consciousness

 

**Then Athena Said - **University Press of America (2006)

 

Reason Papers (2008) - Ethical Principles, Charity, and a Criterion for Giving

I.             A Principle Is a Strategy that . . .

II.            Survival Is the Basis for Success

III.           To Sustain One’s Life, Productivity . . .

IV.           The Principle of Reciprocity Results in . . .

V.             Production Should Equal or Exceed . . .

VI.           In Deciding between an Ethical Action and . . .

VII.          / . . . A “Heuristic of Giving” Is Useful Because . . .

 

The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies (2008) - Economic Decision-Making and Ethical Choice

I.             Utility Theory

II.            Principles and Long-Term Success

III.           Decision Theory and the BUP [Ben. Univ. Pr.]

IV.           Human Capital and Productive Purpose

V.            Choice among Ethical Alternatives

VI.           Decisions when the Expected Loss Is Large

VII.          Beyond the Call of Duty

 

The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies (2018) - On Life and Value within Objectivist Ethics

I.             Value and Life

II.            Life and Life

III.           “Consume to Live” or “Live to Consume”

IV.            Life’s “Value”

V.             Decisions Involving Competing Values

VI.            A Few Comments on Ethically Neutral Values

 

Is it ethical to sacrifice your life in order to uphold a principle of ethics?
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New from Kathleen Touchstone~

Freedom, Eudaemonia, and Risk**** - An Inquiry into the Ethics of Risk-Taking

(Lexington Books 2020)

From the back cover:

Kathleen Touchstone uses economics, game theory, and probability theory in the arguments assembled herein concerning enduring issues in theory of ethical value and virtue and individual rights. What aspects of human life commend which standard of ethical value? Is one’s moral scale singular or multidimensional if it accords with that standard? Is certainty of mortality under uncertainty of end date required for taking life as a whole as ultimate value? For having meaningful chosen values at all?

Are there reasons answering to life as a whole, as ultimate value, for bringing children about and up? Why follow ethical principles uniformly? What are the relations of civic norms and individual ethical virtue? What makes rightness in inheritance and in charity? Rightness in risking life and limb for moral principle?

Thinkers arrayed and employed in major ways—and often challenged—in this theory of rational ethics: Ayn Rand, Leonard Peikoff, Murray Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises, Henry Hazlitt, Friedrich Hayek, Aristotle, David L. Norton, Douglas Den Uyl, Douglas Rasmussen, Lawrence Becker, David Kelley, and Tibor Machan. Freedom, Eudaemonia, and Risk puts the reader at high risk of light and delight.