That Kelley Creature

[Boydstun]

27 minutes ago, RationalEgoist said:

. . .

Also, when you write that “my stating it does not make it necessarily consistent with other parts of my philosophy”, it appears to me that you are saying a philosophy can hold no contradictions. Is that a correct interpretation of what you meant? 

. . .

Glad you asked.

I was thinking of bending over backwards to the point of foolishness trying to resolve what look like contradictions in a philosophy. Yes, one should interpret charitably, and it is standard work for philosophers to compose arguments on how something that appears inconsistent in some other philosopher is not really inconsistent when one gets in hand the right and fuller perspective of that other philosopher (based on text of that other). But sometimes the right conclusion really is that, having tried hard for resolution, a philosophy has an internal contradiction, and something in it is false for that reason. So if one finds what looks like a contradiction within a philosophy, don’t go the way of Bible-Believer interpretation and suppose that the philosophy must be without contradiction really—the philosopher was super-smart—and we are just unable to see how the contradiction is resolved.

[Boydstun]

Previously at Objectivism Online and pertinent to the windings of this thread, from KP:

Quote

 

In the introduction of “For the New Intellectual”, Ayn Rand stated that Galt’s Speech is the shortest summary of Objectivism. She was right, it’s a summary in the sense of covering all of the essentials of Objectivism. But she leaves out many technicalities that you don’t really need to study unless you’re hardcore about learning all of its elements. For example:

a). In the intro of FTNI she states that Galt’s speech barely touches on epistemology, and that she intends to write a treatise on it. She did, and the treatise was called “Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology”. While Galt briefly covers how reason and logic work, ITOE explores epistemology through her theory of concept-formation (children-friendly lessons on measurement-ommision, abstraction from abstractions etc.) You don’t need this unless you’re a philosopher, a philosophy student or really interested in Objectivism.

b). The theory of aeshtetics. You can get a few clues about her aesthetic views from the way she describes the works of art in her novels (e.g. the piece of modern music Dagny hears on the street vs. the music of Richard Halley), but incorporating an explicitly stated aesthetic theory into an actual work of art (novel) would be redundant. In the Romantic Manifesto she covers aesthetics in depth. Again, this is a specialized subject that’s not absolutely essential, even though it’s important. Obviously, if you’re an artist or art lover, it’s absolutely crucial.

There are many non-essentials that she covered implicitly (i.e. concretized and dramatized) in her novels, but were only made explicit later in her non-fiction works. In OPAR, Peikoff covers absolutely all the intricacies and technicalities, and he orders them hierarchically. He even includes things from his telephone conversations with Rand that she never got to write or publish. 

In a nutshell:
Galt’s speech is all of the essentials of Objectivism.
OPAR is a comprehensive and scholarly study of ALL of its elements - essentials and technicalities alike - from all of her written works and private philosophical conversations. The structure of Galt’s Speech was dictated by the context of the novel (which is why it took Rand 2 years to figure out how to structure it so that it’s perfectly integrated to the novel), OPAR is a systematic and logically ordered study.

 

 

[Harrison_Danneskjold]

On 3/14/2022 at 5:47 PM, RationalEgoist said:

Is the closed system idea truly so difficult a concept for people to adequately grasp? Forgive me, but I’m at a point now where I’m genuinely beginning to assume intellectual dishonesty when it comes to someone who has been an Objectivist for several years (or someone who claims to be well-read on Objectivism) and doesn’t understand what a closed system means. Speaking for myself, I grasped it fairly quickly. Reading the essay “Fact and Value” a few years ago was enough, if I remember correctly.

No; it’s not difficult to grasp.  Having been raised as a fundamentalist Christian I recognized the suggestion pretty much immediately upon reading Fact and Value.

But who says it’s a closed system?  Ayn Rand certainly didn’t.  So isn’t that already a posthumous addition to the system in and of itself?

 

Suppose one were to disagree on, say, the Pyramid of Ability; the principle that less intelligent and less skilled workers gain far more benefits from their betters than they are capable of giving in return.  Is that not a properly philosophical point?  Suppose one were not just to disagree because one disliked the idea for some silly reason, but were in fact able to rationally (within the bounds of the Objectivist view of rationality) disprove it?  According to Peikoff and yourself this would be the end of Objectivism.  Never mind that altering that one point would have very little impact on the rest of politics or ethics and none whatsoever on epistemology or metaphysics (the concept of Rational Selfishness, for example, would not be changed very much); the philosophy represented by that one alteration would be something entirely different and alien to Ayn Rand’s thinking.  Perhaps we could call it “Neo-Objectivism” or some such thing, in light of how very similar it would be to the original philosophy, but Peikoff would still urge its adherents never to mention Rand’s name in connection to it - for Public Relations concerns.

 

On 3/14/2022 at 5:47 PM, RationalEgoist said:

Objectivism is forever a closed system, and the book on it was closed the day Rand passed away. Does that mean it’s the end of [the] philosophy? No.

If you mean that it would exist in a state which lacks growth or motive power (which is the status of a corpse) then, no.  Catholicism did just that up until the dawn of the Renaissance and several strains of Islam have done so right up to the present day.

Science grows.  Mathematics grows.  Hell, even Marxism and Kantianism have grown in scope and complexity, and they’re more-or-less opposed to it.  But every cult which is based on nothing more than blind faith has perpetuated itself, without much growth or change, in that corpselike state of any dogma.

And as soon as any minor point (such as the pyramid of ability) requires some sort of revision, in the same way that Newton’s laws had to be revised in the light of Einstein, I will expect every follower of Peikoff to renounce everything else along with that minor point.

 

On 3/14/2022 at 5:47 PM, RationalEgoist said:

Does that mean you cannot build on top of Objectivist ideas? No, it only means you can’t claim them to be a part of Objectivism (for the obvious reason that Rand is no longer with us to say if she would agree with an idea or not), although they can be consistent with the philosophy. I usually think of Peikoff’s theory of induction here.

I’m sorry; where in the Objectivist Epistemology is the requirement (or, indeed, any possibility for) the approval of the Authorized Representative of Ideology?  I must have missed that chapter of the ITOE.

 

On 3/14/2022 at 5:47 PM, RationalEgoist said:

I’m speculating here, but I suspect that many of the people who claim Objectivism to be an open system (whatever that even means) simply want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to cling on to the aspects of the philosophy that  they agree with, and then feel free to mix in their own ideas. But, sorry, it doesn’t work that way. You’re either an Objectivist or you’re not. Stop looking for a third alternative when such an alternative doesn’t exist. Obviously you are free to disagree with core parts (or even the entirety) of Objectivism, but then have the intellectual honesty to speak up and say you’re not an Objectivist. That is what Rand wanted. Speaking for myself, I do NOT  consider myself an Objectivist seeing as how I have disagreements with the core philosophy (in particular her aesthetics), although I still agree with the majority of it. I, however, never called myself an Objectivist unlike the open system advocates. 

This is exactly what I mean.

 

So you are saying that, despite agreeing with the entirety of Rand’s metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and politics, you don’t like Victor Hugo?  And because you don’t like classical music and Victor Hugo you do not have the right to call yourself an Objectivist?  Honestly, let’s imagine what Howard Roark would say if Peikoff told him that he wasn’t an Objectivist if he liked the wrong kind of music.

And let’s never forget that Ayn Rand did not write Fact and Value, nor did she ever have a chance to give it her official stamp of approval.  So the treatise which declares such stamps to be an absolute necessity is, itself, devoid of one.

 

As to our motives, however, you’re not thinking big enough!  Perhaps we want to slip ourselves into the Objectivist movement, twist its stated principles into straw-men and discredit it from the inside - not even to embezzle an unearned share of Rand’s prestige in the eyes of the world, but to strangle that prestige in its crib, for the glory of Mother Russia!

Or maybe what you mean by “mixing and matching our own ideas with Rand’s” is, in fact, thinking for ourselves.  And that this is a fundamental requirement of Objectivism, and that we must leave open the mere possibility of disagreement out of sheer principle (which is also a fundamental requirement of Objectivism).

 

I’m sorry you feel that you don’t have the right to call yourself an Objectivist since you disagree with a few aesthetic points.  But I respect that you’ve at least held on to that mere possibility, for your self.  It’s important.

[Harrison_Danneskjold]

On 3/14/2022 at 7:07 PM, KyaryPamyu said:

The part in bold is the category under which WW2, femininity and your other examples fall in. Rand herself changed her mind on some of these, such as homosexuality. More is explained here. As for the fundamental principles, they were gathered into a single volume by Peikoff (OPAR).

In the link you shared (as in Fact and Value, and elsewhere) Peikoff speaks of “abstractions” and “concretes” as if these are binary categories, instead of the spectrum we all know it to be.  How I feel about a particular person is a perceptual concrete.  My own sexuality is somewhat more abstract, sexuality in general is somewhat more abstract, the relation between thoughts and feelings is still more abstract, etc.  This is a case of a legitimate spectrum, and I still have yet to hear a satisfactory distinction between what is philosophical and what is not (including the one you linked to).

 

But let’s set all that aside.  Suppose the pyramid of ability (the principle that less skilled workers gain much more from their betters than they could ever get in return) was somehow proven to be false?  I don’t mention this example because I think it ever will be (I would be extremely surprised if it ever was) but because it is such a broad abstraction that it must surely count as “philosophical” and therefore is useful to think about.

What else would we have to change our minds about if that principle was ever disproven?  Certainly, this would affect a few other areas of politics, but not much - it would still be true that the principle of mutual consent must govern ALL interpersonal interactions and that every worker has the right to keep whatever he has earned.  Perhaps there would be a renewed interest in labor unions among Objectivist thinkers.  Our ideas about induction, logical integration or self-esteem, however, would not be affected.

To say that the philosophy represented by that one and only difference from Objectivism, as Ayn Rand herself explicated it, would be something fundamentally different from Objectivism - it’s like saying that a man with nine fingers instead of ten would no longer be a human being.  It would be an outrageous multiplication of concepts for no reason whatsoever.

 

And incidentally, Peikoff is absolutely right.  In Truth and Toleration David Kelley explained how we can advocate for pure subjectivism under the cover of Objectivism (which is a far less socially acceptable cover than open, crusading subjectivism - most people would react with less hostility to the advocacy of baby-eating than to that of actual selfishness) for the glory of Mother Russia!  Although Alex Jones explains it better than he did.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JRLCBb7qK8

 

Quote

Nothing wrong with trying to complete a system. IMO Kelley’s additions are at odds with several important O’ist principles. Maybe somebody in the future will author a system that is in line with Rand’s but much more comprehensive.

What would a “complete” system even look like?  Surely, in order to be “complete” we’re talking about some Universal Theory of Everything, and that’s not a possibility I think we’ll need to consider any time soon.  In any case I literally cannot imagine any such thing beyond the concatenation of the noises “complete” and “system”.

 

PostScript:

 

Suppose I were to write a book in which a heroic architect, who loves his work as nobody else does and builds his buildings like nobody else ever has before, fights a lonely battle to do the thing he loves?  Suppose he was in love with a newspaperwoman but couldn’t be with her, because she was convinced he would lose that battle, and had to fight against a brilliantly malevolent author who continuously tried to ruin him?  It ends with the architect blowing up his own building (because it wasn’t built precisely as he designed it) and had to argue for the moral righteousness of his own actions in court.  Suppose I changed the name of the main character to Harrison Ragnar, changed a few other details (perhaps rewrote some of the dialogue) and published it under the title: The Wellspring of the Soul.

Would that be a different book than the Fountainhead, because it didn’t have precisely the same text throughout the entire book (as well as a different name)?  Or have I just described an act of plagiarizing The Fountainhead?

 

If I agreed with everything else Ayn Rand said except, say, the Pyramid of Ability, I would consider it disingenuous for me to call myself anything other than an Objectivist.  Just as the book about the architect Harrison Ragnar should be called The Fountainhead (because that is exactly what it is) Objectivism should be called Objectivism.

And since human beings are fallible and the proper, rational pursuit of knowledge leads to an ever-growing and occasionally-revised body of such knowledge (precisely as we see in science) Objectivism cannot be anything other than open-ended.

 

“Closed Objectivism” is a contradiction in terms.  It’s an attempt to treat a Rational philosophy as a dogma or a cult, and these two things are mutually exclusive.  They cannot coexist in the same brain or the same ideology.

[RationalEgoist]

1 hour ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

But who says it’s a closed system?  Ayn Rand certainly didn’t.  So isn’t that already a posthumous addition to the system in and of itself?

I think the burden of proof lies on you to prove Objectivism is an open system. Given how fiercely protective Rand was of the name “Objectivism”, I seriously doubt that she would approve of what it is you’re doing. 

1 hour ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

So you are saying that, despite agreeing with the entirety of Rand’s metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and politics, you don’t like Victor Hugo?  And because you don’t like classical music and Victor Hugo you do not have the right to call yourself an Objectivist?

First of all, I never said that I agree with the entirety of Rand’s metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and politics, so that’s just sloppy reading on your part. I said I disagree “in particular” with her aesthetics, which doesn’t mean I exclusively disagree with the aesthetics. 

But, more importantly, this is a blatant misrepresentation of what I said. You’ve created a strawman. My disagreements with her aesthetic theory are significantly wider than you imply in your post. It’s humorous because I even said you are free to disagree with Rand’s views on a specific work of art (and, by extension, her views on a specific artist) and still call yourself an Objectivist. So why make the silly point about not liking Victor Hugo? 

1 hour ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

Or maybe what you mean by “mixing and matching our own ideas with Rand’s” is, in fact, thinking for ourselves.  And that this is a fundamental requirement of Objectivism, and that we must leave open the mere possibility of disagreement out of sheer principle (which is also a fundamental requirement of Objectivism).

Did I say you can’t think for your yourself? I’m saying you may not bring in your own ideas and conceptions into the philosophy of Objectivism and claim them as being part of it (even if they’re consistent with it). 

On a sidenote, I almost didn’t reply to this part because it’s such an obvious smear on your part in the sense that you assume anyone who thinks Objectivism is a closed system must have thrown out their own independent thinking. Nonetheless, I thought it was worth it just to clear up your misunderstanding to any honest reader. 

57 minutes ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

What would a “complete” system even look like?  Surely, in order to be “complete” we’re talking about some Universal Theory of Everything, and that’s not a possibility I think we’ll need to consider any time soon.  In any case I literally cannot imagine any such thing beyond the concatenation of the noises “complete” and “system”.

This part wasn’t geared towards me (and I’m sure KyaryPamyu will answer you with clarity as always), but I wanted to touch on what you wrote nonetheless. Objectivism being a closed system does not at all mean it is a “theory of everything” and that it is the end of all knowledge. Again, this is very belittling on your part because you can’t seriously think that any of us would hold such a ridiculous view.

We should strive to preserve the concept of Objectivism, and this is done by first giving Rand’s philosophy the name “Objectivism” as a way to safeguard the concept with all its philosophical content. The name actually has to mean something, it has to refer to something. Bringing in a bunch of other ideas (in particular ideas which are essentially different from Rand’s) from other people destroys the whole concept understandably leaving people confused as to what and what does not belong to the philosophy. 

[Harrison_Danneskjold]

5 minutes ago, RationalEgoist said:

First of all, I never said that I agree with the entirety of Rand’s metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and politics, so that’s just sloppy reading on your part. I said I disagree “in particular” with her aesthetics, which doesn’t mean I exclusively disagree with the aesthetics. 

But, more importantly, this is a blatant misrepresentation of what I said. You’ve created a strawman. My disagreement with her aesthetic theory are significantly wider than you imply in your post. It’s humorous because I even said you are free to disagree with Rand’s views on a specific work of art (and, by extension, her views on a specific artist) and still call yourself an Objectivist. So why make the silly point about not liking Victor Hugo? 

Well, I would use “in particular” as synonymous with “exclusively”, but that’s neither here nor there.  It probably was a sloppy reading anyway.

The reason Victor Hugo comes to mind is because a month or two ago I actually bought The Hunchback of Notre Dame on Audible specifically because of Rand’s praise for what a great author he was, and I hated it.  Given how I now know it ends I have not been able to wrap my head around what she liked so much about his writing.

 

I’m not surprised that it came across that way, though.  I’ve been upset about this issue for a long time, and now that I’m trying (for the third or fourth time now) to bring it into the open once again, I have been trying to keep a lid on the urge for snarkiness.

Honestly, I know I’m being more aggressive than I should be, and it’s not because of you.

 

10 minutes ago, RationalEgoist said:

Did I say you can’t think for your yourself? I’m saying you may not bring in your own ideas and conceptions into the philosophy of Objectivism and claim them as being part of it (even if they’re consistent with it). 

On a sidenote, I almost didn’t reply to this part because it’s such an obvious smear on your part in the sense that you assume anyone who thinks Objectivism is a closed system must have thrown out their own independent thinking. Nonetheless, I thought it was worth it just to clear up your misunderstanding to any honest reader. 

No: I’ll say it for you.

 

You cannot make any sort of commitment to agree with all of anyone else’s ideas.  The moment you do that, you’ve signed a blank check on your own brain and can no longer claim to think for yourself.  That is why it’s important to leave open the possibility of honest disagreement.

I truly do respect the fact that you gave up the label of “Objectivist” before you signed such a blank check.  I don’t think you needed to (since I don’t hold a high opinion of the ultimate conclusions reached in Fact and Value) but since you thought you did, I think you made the right call.

 

20 minutes ago, RationalEgoist said:

Objectivism being a closed system does not at all mean it is a “theory of everything” and that it is the end of all knowledge. Again, this is very belittling on your part because you can’t seriously think that any of us would hold such a ridiculous view.

No; seriously.  For a system of thought to be “complete” would either mean that you literally know everything which can be known or that you’ve given up on thinking and your “complete system” is, in fact, a cult.  That part was not hyperbole.

 

22 minutes ago, RationalEgoist said:

We should strive to preserve the concept of Objectivism, and this is done by first giving Rand’s philosophy the name “Objectivism” as a way to safeguard the concept with all its philosophical content. The name actually has to mean something, it has to refer to something. Bringing in a bunch of other ideas (in particular ideas which are essentially different from Rand’s) from other people destroys the whole concept understandably leaving people confused as to what and what does not belong to the philosophy. 

Ideas which are essentially different from or contradictory to Rand’s?  Absolutely.  To call subjectivism, Marxism, Mormonism (etc) “Objectivism” would be absurd.

56 minutes ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

Suppose I were to write a book in which a heroic architect, who loves his work as nobody else does and builds his buildings like nobody else ever has before, fights a lonely battle to do the thing he loves?  Suppose he was in love with a newspaperwoman but couldn’t be with her, because she was convinced he would lose that battle, and had to fight against a brilliantly malevolent author who continuously tried to ruin him?  It ends with the architect blowing up his own building (because it wasn’t built precisely as he designed it) and had to argue for the moral righteousness of his own actions in court.  Suppose I changed the name of the main character to Harrison Ragnar, changed a few other details (perhaps rewrote some of the dialogue) and published it under the title: The Wellspring of the Soul.

Would that be a different book than the Fountainhead, because it didn’t have precisely the same text throughout the entire book (as well as a different name)?  Or have I just described an act of plagiarizing The Fountainhead?

 

If I agreed with everything else Ayn Rand said except, say, the Pyramid of Ability, I would consider it disingenuous for me to call myself anything other than an Objectivist.  Just as the book about the architect Harrison Ragnar should be called The Fountainhead (because that is exactly what it is) Objectivism should be called Objectivism.

And since human beings are fallible and the proper, rational pursuit of knowledge leads to an ever-growing and occasionally-revised body of such knowledge (precisely as we see in science) Objectivism cannot be anything other than open-ended.

 

“Closed Objectivism” is a contradiction in terms.  It’s an attempt to treat a Rational philosophy as a dogma or a cult, and these two things are mutually exclusive.  They cannot coexist in the same brain or the same ideology.

I rest my case.

 

24 minutes ago, RationalEgoist said:

I think the burden of proof lies on you to prove Objectivism is an open system. Given how fiercely protective Rand was of the name “Objectivism”, I seriously doubt that she would approve of what it is you’re doing. 

Arguing that anyone who takes her ideas seriously must think for themselves, which necessarily makes the daily practice of such ideas (call it, if you will, Objectivism) necessarily open-ended?

 

I mean … Do you really need that proof?  It seems a bit pedantic but I am confident I can prove it.

[Eiuol]

2 hours ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

But who says it’s a closed system?  Ayn Rand certainly didn’t. 

She was very strict and hard-nosed about it because she want anyone to misinterpret what her philosophy is. I mean, she never talked about Objectivism as anything besides exactly her views and what closely follows from those views. Especially since she was even resistant to acknowledging her influences besides Aristotle. What does it matter though? Why do you need_ _to call yourself an Objectivist? If a closed system would make you not an Objectivist, who cares, it’s not like I’m going to call the Spanish Inquisition on you. 

 

1 hour ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

“Closed Objectivism” is a contradiction in terms.  It’s an attempt to treat a Rational philosophy as a dogma or a cult, and these two things are mutually exclusive. 

It doesn’t encourage you to always agree. It just means acknowledge when you disagree. You don’t need to be so concerned about how you label yourself. 

[Harrison_Danneskjold]

1 hour ago, Eiuol said:

What does it matter though? Why do you need_ _to call yourself an Objectivist? If a closed system would make you not an Objectivist, who cares, it’s not like I’m going to call the Spanish Inquisition on you. 

Because it’s the truth.

 

Granted, as I stated in the OP I’ve been having some trouble applying it to my own life of late, which is precisely why I’ve also been trying not to grandstand about it.  Maybe I’m not currently living as an Objectivist; that’s sort of how I think of it, since I know I’m not using my time in the best ways I possibly could.

But I still believe in all those core ideas.  And I fully intend to start enacting them again soon.  And if I won’t be able to call myself an Objectivist, when I get back to the point where I’m doing all of that on a daily basis, then I really don’t see who can.

 

And you know, maybe I shouldn’t be so concerned with the label.  It’s ironic because it does seem to parallel the concept of Intellectual Property (which is one of my only disagreements with Rand) but I still feel that I ought to give her some sort of credit, even if it’s only within my own mind, for everything I’ve gotten from her for essentially free.

But maybe not.  Maybe I should just call myself Eclectic and deny any one person having an outsized influence on my current philosophical framework.  It would certainly be much easier.

 

But I still don’t feel that it would be true.

 

PostScript:

 

I mean, of all the things I currently think, almost all of them can be traced back to Anton Szandor LeVay, Ayn Rand and Elon Musk.  And when you learn that LeVay’s ideas were basically just Ayn Rand’s ideas, stripped of any epistemological basis, that leaves Ayn Rand and Elon Musk (the latter of which has managed to change my mind about maybe 5% of what the former has).

Granted, many of them are originally my own - which isn’t consistent with a “closed system”.  But to deny how many of them I got from Ayn Rand just feels like outright plagiarism.

[RationalEgoist]

3 minutes ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

but I still feel that I ought to give her some sort of credit, even if it’s only within my own mind, for everything I’ve gotten from her for essentially free.

By all means, give her credit. It doesn’t imply calling yourself an Objectivist. Rand stated this straightforwardly when she said that “If you agree with some tenets of Objectivism, but disagree with others, do not call yourself an Objectivist; give proper authorship credit for the parts you agree with”.

[Harrison_Danneskjold]

27 minutes ago, RationalEgoist said:

By all means, give her credit. It doesn’t imply calling yourself an Objectivist. Rand stated this straightforwardly when she said that “If you agree with some tenets of Objectivism, but disagree with others, do not call yourself an Objectivist; give proper authorship credit for the parts you agree with”.

Yeah; maybe.  I’d like the source if I could have it.  And, more importantly, who could the term apply to?

 

There was a time, from 2012 to 2014, in which I spent every minute of every day being productive.  I worked a full-time job, helped to raise my son and taught myself how to program on the side.  And in 2015, when I realized that my wife wasn’t actually interested in Objectivism (certainly not in the way I was) I gave myself a month to program an extremely profitable Android app, to fund the transition from marriage to divorce (while still working a full-time factory job for most of each day, mind you).

In those moments where 100% of my time and energy was devoted to my own ideals (which were also Ayn Rand’s ideals, apart from the issue of intellectual property and maybe one or two others) I was being an Objectivist.

 

Now, according to Peikoff (in Fact and Value) I was not an Objectivist.  Although I was giving everything I had to give to what I, after thinking it through, considered to be my best possible life - that’s irrelevant.  I don’t see IP the way Rand did, so that means that I wasn’t being an Objectivist, even then.

 

I say to Hell with Peikoff.  When I’m back on top of things (the way I was then) I will call myself an Objectivist again, and I couldn’t give a single pubic hair what he thinks of it!

 

And that’s because I never would’ve started putting 100% of my effort into anything if I hadn’t read Atlas Shrugged.  As far as I’m concerned she deserves some credit from whatever I can do because of that.

[RationalEgoist]

3 minutes ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

I’d like the source if I could have it

To the Readers of The Objectivist Forum, The Objectivist Forum, Vol. 1, No. 1

4 minutes ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

In those moments where 100% of my time and energy was devoted to my own ideals (which were also Ayn Rand’s ideals, apart from the issue of intellectual property and maybe one or two others) I was being an Objectivist.

 

Now, according to Peikoff (in Fact and Value) I was not an Objectivist.  Although I was giving everything I had to give to what I, after thinking it through, considered to be my best possible life - that’s irrelevant. 

It seems to me that you’re too caught up with calling yourself an Objectivist. Even if, in fact, you were not an Objectivist, does that take anything away from the highly virtuous actions you took during that period of time? I think not. Living virtuously in pursuit of your own happiness is the most important thing in the world. If you’ve rationally (and I cannot emphasize this enough) concluded that a departure from some of Rand’s ideas will enhance your happiness, then you are in the right to act on that. 

[KyaryPamyu]

5 hours ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

What would a “complete” system even look like? 

It’s not complete. In her late years, Rand was planning a theory of induction:

Quote

[…] If my hypothesis is true, then algebra might give me the clue to the objective rules of induction—to a kind of “Organon of Induction.”

(Journals of Ayn Rand, chapter 16)

Any kind of essay, book etc. is complete if it fully covers what the author intended to cover. It’s his decision how in-depth that treatment is.

A system is a collection of interconnected principles. It is not a theory, but it can contain any number of theories, completed or not. The system is the main work, and is distinct from any presentation it might receive in full books, short essays, spoken lectures and many more.

With Objectivism, Rand was concerned with the essentials regarding five fundamental needs: the status of reality (mind-independent); proper cognition; survival; protection of individual rights; condensing our widest principles. 

Systems that cover this many branches are not commonplace in history. The system craze reached its peak in the 19th century.

Everything in the universe is interconnected (and thus all knowledge). We can expand any subject we want until we exhaust it completely. This is obvious to anyone. Protestations for ‘openness’ are simply calls for such expansion.

If you fiddle with the core ideas behind a worldview, you reach a different worldview (even if it’s a close sibling of the original). According to my judgement, Kelley’s corrections are not congruent with, and misinterpret, parts of Rand’s system.

When Fichte become involved in a scandal, Kant had to publicly repudiate his philosophy because Fichte kept suggesting that his own system was simply the Kantian system, with a few rough edges softened.

(It wasn’t).

[Harrison_Danneskjold]

On 3/16/2022 at 8:38 PM, RationalEgoist said:

It seems to me that you’re too caught up with calling yourself an Objectivist.

Maybe.  And maybe, if we accept the idea of a “closed system” then there are no Objectivists at all; plenty of “students of Objectivism” and “fans of Ayn Rand” and “people with Objectivist sympathies” but not a single Objectivist.  That’s certainly the tortured sort of language your side seem to consistently resort to in order to describe themselves.

And that is better than chucking any possibility of ever rationally disagreeing with Ayn Rand (which is the option to which the analogies to a cult are applicable).  But it is a tortured way of using concepts which we don’t use for other philosophies.

 

When we meet someone who declares that the real world is unknowable to us; that all we can ever know is how things appear to our specific set of senses, and that the height of virtue is an adherence to duty for duty’s own sake, we call them a Kantian.  And if they declared “no; I can’t be a Kantian because Immanuel Kant argued for a limited government which respects individual rights, while I am a Communist” I could possibly see calling them a Neo-Kantian ( maybe ) but not discarding the label altogether.

 

If the shoe fits then wear it.

 

Incidentally, this is precisely why I don’t run around calling myself an Objectivist when I know I’m not living up to the standards demanded by that philosophy.  If the shoe doesn’t fit then I can’t wear it.

And no; refraining from the specific use of the “O” label wouldn’t take anything away from the virtue I’d be practicing.  But labels matter because concepts matter.  It doesn’t matter whether we call a certain type of thing Arsenic or Arseeni or the element As - but it matters one Hell of a lot that we can distinguish that thing from food, or Objectivism from Kantianism.

[Harrison_Danneskjold]

On 3/16/2022 at 9:55 PM, KyaryPamyu said:

We can expand any subject we want until we exhaust it completely. This is obvious to anyone.

No, it’s not!  The expansion part is certainly obvious (as is the fact that this is what calls for “openness” are meant for) but the exhaustion part is precisely what I was asking about, because it’s far from obvious to me!

 

Is there any field of science which has been “exhausted”?  One could speculate that perhaps physics might be at some point but there’s still plenty that we still don’t know about physics, and that’s the most advanced scientific field I can think of.  Everything else is behind it - often multiple millenia behind it. And the fact that General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics are mutually exclusive (that we can model and predict the behavior of very large objects or very small objects with amazing accuracy, but that either model breaks down into incomprehensible gibberish in the presence of the other) leads me to suspect that even that still has plenty left to learn about.

One can imagine some future theory of physics which can accurately model and predict the motion of literally any physical object, which would presumably be the “exhaustion” of physics.  But I’m not aware of a single subject which has ever been exhausted in all of human history (including human history!) and we should remember that the assumption that it can happen is, in fact, an assumption.  Maybe it can’t happen.

 

Furthermore, what I was specifically asking about was a “complete system”.  Not a single subject, but a “system of interconnected theories and principles” in which every member is complete.  That’s a slightly taller order than even the exhaustion of a single subject.

 

On 3/16/2022 at 9:55 PM, KyaryPamyu said:

If you fiddle with the core ideas behind a worldview, you reach a different worldview (even if it’s a close sibling of the original). According to my judgement, Kelley’s corrections are not congruent with, and misinterpret, parts of Rand’s system.

So if I published The Wellspring of the Human Soul, about the architect Harrison Ragnar, you would not consider it an act of plagiarism?  Maybe it would be a close sibling of The Fountainhead (since I literally described the act of changing a few proper nouns and maybe a bit of the dialogue while retaining essentially the same story) but since it wouldn’t be identical there wouldn’t be a problem.

[Harrison_Danneskjold]

@RationalEgoist

@KyaryPamyu

@Eiuol

 

A six-fingered man is still a man.

[KyaryPamyu]

17 minutes ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

Is there any field of science which has been “exhausted”?

You equate a philosophic system/worldview (a limited treatement of a set of issues) with the entire field of philosophy.

In other words, you’re arguing for the latter, to people who mean the former.

43 minutes ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

Incidentally, this is precisely why I don’t run around calling myself an Objectivist when I know I’m not living up to the standards demanded by that philosophy.  If the shoe doesn’t fit then I can’t wear it.

One can only judge by himself, by studying the system and determining which principles add up to the total worldview.

I am copying my own summary. Anybody who is at home with the following, I personally call an objectivist.

Quote

1. The refutation of supernaturalism, the primacy of consciousness, and coherentism.
2. All knowledge is contextual.
3. Existence is not an attribute of existents, it is the existents.
4. Consciousness is not an attribute of a given state of consciousness, it is that state.
5. Causality is the relation between an object and its activity.
6. Achieving life is enabled by performing cognition to gain awareness (beyond mere sense perception). Reason is the sole means of such cognition.
7. Why skepticism about reason, volition, correspondence, and the base of cognition (sense perception and its corresponding axiomatic concepts) is invalid.
8. Life does not need justification, i.e. its existence and needs are a natural fact. The purpose of life is happiness (lack of happiness depletes the will to live).
9. Crow: the need to essentialize, to see the core idea.
10. Why the goodness or badness of an action is calculated in relation to its effect on life.
11. Individuals are the proper beneficiaries of their own virtue; any deviation from this introduces the dynamic of lives being sacrificed to other lives.
12. The need to produce in order to earn one’s needs.
13. Virtuousness is objective cognition of the value (goodness) of things. Evasion is suspension of such cognition
14. Morality is not difficult. Positive results increase our determination to be consistently virtuous.
15. The initiation of physical force suspends reality-oriented cognition for both the victim and the perpetrator, thus is anti-life.
16. One must judge how a view was formed, treating it as a product of free human action (which might hold evasions), and not as a given. One must not help evil perpetrate by sanctioning it.
17. The universe is not against you (it’s neutral).
18. Happiness is the normal situation for a living being. Unhappiness results from pursuing goals that contradict our actual needs.
19. The mind needs its virtuous action to be matched by a corresponding reward, and not less than that. If the result is less, motivation becomes weak. Some achievements, such as personal efficacy (self-esteem), do not produce a pleasure that is commensurate with what is attained; sex is an appropriate supplement, since it is achieved based on personal value.
20. The need to protect one’s life from interference by other individuals, by means of a limited government and a free market.
21. The need to hold in mind the large context in which one acts, i.e. the kind of world one lives in. Unlike a regular material object, an artwork is an embodied concept of what life is like. Facts are structured into artworks the same way referents are structured into concepts, i.e. according to essentials and a theme. Failure to do so leads not to concepts, but to strings of disconnected objects and nothing being refered to.

 

[Eiuol]

2 hours ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

And maybe, if we accept the idea of a “closed system” then there are no Objectivists at all; plenty of “students of Objectivism” and “fans of Ayn Rand” and “people with Objectivist sympathies” but not a single Objectivist. 

I think it would be weird though to say that if you overall disagree with Rand’s aesthetic theory that you are still an Objectivist. You might disagree with how fine-grained a distinction should be, but I doubt you would object much to saying that a broad distinction like this is important. 

2 hours ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

But labels matter because concepts matter.  It doesn’t matter whether we call a certain type of thing Arsenic or Arseeni or the element As - but it matters one Hell of a lot that we can distinguish that thing from food, or Objectivism from Kantianism.

Objectivism is a proper noun. According to Rand, these are not concepts in the full sense where the definition can expand, more information can be found about particulars, and formed by some comparison of units. There is exactly one Eiffel Tower, the word is only used to tell people what you are referring to concretely. You can’t expand the definition of Eiffel Tower, you can’t go and make more Eiffel Towers, and you don’t require multiple Eiffel Towers to form a concept of them. You cannot later find a better definition of Eiffel Tower. Philosophy is more abstract of course, but that doesn’t change how proper nouns work. Proper nouns are supposed to be relatively rigid. There are different degrees of understanding, sure, and we might disagree about what counts as fundamental. After all, a philosophy is something you hold in your mind, so multiple people can decide to agree or not. But the philosophy would still be closed because we are referring to a proper noun, not a broad method of doing philosophy. 

 

[Harrison_Danneskjold]

On 3/23/2022 at 4:47 PM, KyaryPamyu said:

Quote

Is there any field of science which has been “exhausted”?

You equate a philosophic system/worldview (a limited treatement of a set of issues) with the entire field of philosophy.

In other words, you’re arguing for the latter, to people who mean the former.

This is so confusing to me.  I can neither agree with what you’re saying nor name any arguments against it because I literally do not  know what you mean.  Could you please elaborate?

On 3/23/2022 at 4:47 PM, KyaryPamyu said:

I am copying my own summary. Anybody who is at home with the following, I personally call an objectivist.

WHOA!

 

You know what this is?  This is an attempt to define what “Objectivism” is in terms of essentials.  This is precisely what I’ve been arguing for this entire time!

I hesitate to present any such list of my own (since I am arguing the Essentialist position and assume it will only be met with “but O’ism = every little thing Ayn Rand ever wrote”).  But I see no problems with the list you’ve presented.  I don’t see the “pyramid of ability” on that list - and I concur.  Issues like that are truly philosophical but non-essential to the core of the philosophy, itself.

Much like the issue of Individual Rights being nonessential to the philosophy of Kantianism.

[Harrison_Danneskjold]

On 3/23/2022 at 6:10 PM, Eiuol said:

I think it would be weird though to say that if you overall disagree with Rand’s aesthetic theory that you are still an Objectivist. You might disagree with how fine-grained a distinction should be, but I doubt you would object much to saying that a broad distinction like this is important. 

Far from it.  I think people like Isaac Newton and Thomas Jefferson were Objectivists before we discovered the proper word for it.  I know that neither truly agreed 100% with everything Ayn Rand said, and both probably presented contradictions in their own viewpoints which we could (and should) nitpick in retrospect.

But if the measure of a man is more of what he DOES rather than what he CLAIMS TO BELIEVE then I maintain that such figures were enacting Ayn Rand’s ideals long before we fully understood why they should’ve.

On 3/23/2022 at 6:10 PM, Eiuol said:

Objectivism is a proper noun. According to Rand, these are not concepts in the full sense where the definition can expand, more information can be found about particulars, and formed by some comparison of units. There is exactly one Eiffel Tower, the word is only used to tell people what you are referring to concretely. You can’t expand the definition of Eiffel Tower, you can’t go and make more Eiffel Towers, and you don’t require multiple Eiffel Towers to form a concept of them. You cannot later find a better definition of Eiffel Tower. Philosophy is more abstract of course, but that doesn’t change how proper nouns work. Proper nouns are supposed to be relatively rigid. There are different degrees of understanding, sure, and we might disagree about what counts as fundamental. After all, a philosophy is something you hold in your mind, so multiple people can decide to agree or not. But the philosophy would still be closed because we are referring to a proper noun, not a broad method of doing philosophy. 

Where did she say this?  Because she also said in one of her discussions of Intellectual Property Rights (I believe it was the one about radio broadcasts) that philosophical “discoveries” cannot be owned, and explained why.  So if she said both then this is a blatant contradiction which not only explodes any notion of a “closed Objectivism” but on which only one of our sides can be right.

 

I’ll see if I can track down where she mentioned that philosophical discoveries cannot be owned tomorrow.

 

---

 

This is totally irrelevant.  But I’ve had a bit to drink (as I said - I’m not living up to my own standards) and it is very good.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLTXQxiQPgE

 

[Eiuol]

1 hour ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

I think people like Isaac Newton and Thomas Jefferson were Objectivists before we discovered the proper word for it. 

But these people are philosophically very distinct from Rand, it’s not like they believed the very important things that she believed but simply lacked a common name. By the sounds of it, you seem to equate truth with Objectivism, where anyone who holds correct ideas is an Objectivist. Which might be why you seem to think the closed system view is the view that there is no disagreement to be had about what is true. 

1 hour ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

Where did she say this? 

You can infer that easily from the first page of chapter 2 of ITOE.

1 hour ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

But I’ve had a bit to drink (as I said - I’m not living up to my own standards)

I won’t bother then.