Don, I want to tell you that your post is again consistent with my previous evaluations of your intellectual honesty.
Taking this to mean that you judge me as intellectually honest, I thank you for saying so and shall endeavor to live up to it. The fact that I choose to engage you in the manner that I do (which I will not do for all) hopefully conveys my likewise esteem for your intellectual honesty.
I recognize that these are contentious issues we’re discussing. I think that a basic level of such mutual respect, even over disagreement, is required for profitable discussion. Or at least it is required for my participation. 
Pretty much all of the exchanges between you and I in the moderator thread is at issue in the Kellyist vs Oist debate. I have not been evading that discussion…
Just to clarify, there’s no concern on my part that you’re “evading” anything. Take all the time you need and respond if/when/where you see fit.
I don’t think that is the implication. The implication is that if a philosophical principle is held as a floating abstraction that person will have the psychological result of worrying that “maybe I am wrong”. A person who knows that a concept is floating in their mind is not the person who thinks they know that philosophical principle is true because knowledge entails a process of validation that ends in certainty (a virtuous act). A person who is not aware that a certain concept or principle is floating will not be able to say about that principle or concept, “I _need _to be “open” to revising this because I hold it as a floating abstraction”. Likewise a person who rejects the arbitrary will not, as a principle, say," I should worry about being wrong about anything I currently think is true because I “might be wrong” ". This is precisely why Ms. Rand rejects “open-mindedness” for active-mindedness. The differentia here is exactly the rejection of the arbitrary. “Open-mindedness” is a species of arbitrary skepticism. An active minded person has nothing to worry about.
I want to try to express my meaning here more fully. If I advocate for “arbitrary skepticism,” then I either do so through mistaken language or unawares. The term “worry” also poorly expresses me; I had chosen it to reflect the Hsieh quote, though it was a mistake to do so without commentary.
In an effort to clarify, then: I do not “worry” about the things I believe, and neither do I doubt them (and neither do I advocate doubt for the things you believe – not “arbitrary” doubt, at least, though in arguing as I do, I do hope to raise certain specific doubts, for what I believe to be good reason). For instance, I am not “worried” that Capitalism might not be a proper political philosophy, and I entertain no doubt on that score, either. I do not suspect that I may be wrong about things; I am confident in my conclusions.
Yet, and as my anecdote was meant to convey, I was not worried when I ascribed to a “liberal” philosophy either, and neither did I doubt myself at that time. It had never seriously occurred to me that “I might be wrong,” until it was clear that I might be wrong, and then clear that I was wrong.
Whether “open” or “active” better describes the process by which I was able to entertain arguments which assailed my positions (even in the midst of the “certainty” I’d felt) – and I agree with Rand’s description of the preferred mental state being a "mind able and eagerly willing to examine ideas, but to examine them critically," – this is the very thing that I’m arguing ought to be preserved and promoted. I suppose the distinction (if any exists) is that I mean to be willing to examine ideas that I consider myself already to be decided upon, in certain scenarios (of apparent contradiction); I hold this to be the very meaning of “check your premises.” Am I wrong about that?
Having said all the above it is important to point out that on our previous exchanges on your “openmindedness” on the axioms, that, even David Kelly doesn’t consider them open to revision. (they are “acontextual”)
This is important because the issue of having truly grasped the axioms is different than arbitrary skepticism. A true grasp of the axioms makes such a worry impossible_._ No one who understands the axioms can doubt them. Once one understands what a contradiction is they cannot see one as a meaningful statement or possibility.
I don’t mean this to be rude (and hope it isn’t taken rudely), but it doesn’t much matter to me what David Kelly thinks.
With respect to our earlier discussion on the axioms, I never felt as though I completely expressed myself to your understanding. To try to arrive at “brass tacks,” we have also found ourselves (not coincidentally) in discussion with respect to QM from time to time. I don’t understand QM sufficiently, and do not have the science background, to tackle the issue head on, for which I apologize. But I take it askance when I find people appearing to dismiss certain scientific claims on the seeming basis of “disagreement with the axioms.” Scientists and their work cannot violate the axiom of identity, and scientists who believe so (or commentators or philosophers who interpret the work of scientists as to say so) are mistaken. But neither can any philosopher, qua philosophy, dictate the rules or behavior of any scientific phenomenon, such as a quark (whatever that is and whatever it does). That is the work of scientists to determine, whether they communicate themselves clearly to laymen or not. And what I mean with respect to “checking one’s premises,” and how that relates to the axioms is thus: if an Objectivist (or anyone else) understands the axiom of identity as meaning that some quark cannot behave as the quark does, in fact, behave, then that person needs to reevaluate his understanding of the axiom of identity.
To further clarify, I do not mean specifically to implicate you, your understanding of the axioms, or your opinion on QM, a subject upon which I have no opinion (befitting my knowledge). It may well be that scientists are wrong about quarks and their behaviors entirely, and I do not insist that you and I disagree on the different roles that philosophy and special sciences play. But it is against this potential misstep that I am trying to cast my meaning, wherein a person might have a conception of some “axiomatic principle,” or an application of the same, and yet be mistaken.
I too embraced horrible premises before discovering Objectivism and also had implicit psycho-epistemic methods that enabled me to get out of them. Actually I held that reality was inherently contradictory and that it had been “proven”, while also realizing that this was self refuting but did not understand how that made one of these premises necessarily wrong. It was the knowledge of the perceptual basis of meaning and validation that freed me from this circle of senseless and purposeless existence. The validation of Identity cannot be truly done without this.
The beautiful thing about the fact that existence has primacy is that false beliefs, even those one is ignorant of and held as certain, will be contradicted by experience and that fact eventually slaps people awake and out of ignorance of falsity in spite of their methodological faults. This is the very basis for condemning certain explicitly held beliefs as a negative evaluation of the one holding it, because at a certain point one must knowingly evade the fact that their beliefs are causing them to be slapped repeatedly up against the stone wall of reality…
Right. But I believe that the “implicit psycho-epistemic methods” you describe are important to cultivate (if this is possible), because it does not seem to me to be the case that everyone who is “slapped” by reality yet wakes to it. Far from it, actually.
And while you’re laying that down as the basis for just condemnation, what I’m saying is that I believe that a particular orientation towards “certainty” functions itself as a bulwark against a person’s willingness to reexamine their beliefs in the face of being slapped; that it aids and abets evasion.
This is the whole of what I’m arguing against, and also the reason.
Again, “check your premises” is something one does with an activeminded process. One who is activeminded and has checked their premises does not worry that they might be wrong. Yet, when that same person is slapped in the face by reality they notice this and then have a _ reason _ to reevaluate some premise. But again one who grasps the axioms will not even consider them as the premises up for evaluation.
This paragraph is near to expressing my position entire.
The only contention I maintain with respect to the axioms, and a person who “will not even consider them,” is hopefully expressed above to your satisfaction.