tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33499942011-04-21T12:59:17.823-07:00Questions for ObjectivistsQuestions for anyone interested in discussion the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Run by a non-Randian, so you know.Evehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10072598901082683876noreply@blogger.comBlogger311100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3349994.post-1115755032771191882005-05-10T12:55:00.000-07:002005-05-10T12:57:12.776-07:00WILL WILKINSON'S "LETTERS TO A YOUNG OBJECTIVIST"1. free will2. society and family3. ethicsEvehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10072598901082683876noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3349994.post-1093320157084231182004-08-23T21:00:00.000-07:002005-05-10T12:55:40.023-07:00OBJECTIVISM AND SOCIAL LIFE: Will Wilkinson (excerpt)...This brings me to my main thrust of today's letter. Objectivism has risibly inadequate picture of human nature. It is therefore unable to provide truly useful practical guidance for non-fictional human beings. Objectivism's most serious problem in this regard is in seriously addressing the essentially social nature of human beings and Evehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10072598901082683876noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3349994.post-845677442002-11-15T00:02:00.000-08:002003-02-21T06:41:55.000-08:00Hsieh's essay on capitalism (see next post) reminded me of something I'd meant to blog about a while ago: What are my responsibilities toward someone who is unlikely ever to be self-sufficient? (Examples: severely retarded people; elderly disabled people; people with serious mental problems, like the homeless woman I knew in college who had intense and terrifying hallucinations and who was helpedEvehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10072598901082683876noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3349994.post-845675562002-11-14T23:55:00.000-08:002002-11-14T23:56:59.000-08:00THE MOST COMMON AND THE BEST: This post and the next two are cross-posted at EveTushnet.com. I'm posting the Diana Hsieh ones here for the obvious reason that they're about Objectivism; the one about why I'm Catholic is more out of left field, but I figured it might be at least slightly helpful for anyone who's wondering what my deal is.
My main problem with Diana Hsieh's essay/lecture "The Evehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10072598901082683876noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3349994.post-845675422002-11-14T23:54:00.001-08:002002-11-14T23:54:46.826-08:00FIDES ET RATIO: Last night I read Diana Hsieh's essays/lectures "The Philosophical Underpinnings of Capitalism" and "Why Be an Atheist?". I'll get to the capitalism one in a moment; for now I just want to address the atheism one. Hsieh is a good, clear, fluent writer, and I found many of her analogies both helpful and entertaining.
As far as convincing me of stuff, the lecture didn't do much, Evehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10072598901082683876noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3349994.post-845675162002-11-14T23:54:00.000-08:002002-11-14T23:54:06.856-08:00ZORAK's post about her journey to the Catholic Church has gotten me thinking about my own bizarro path to Rome. I'm not going to blog about it now, because I haven't got the mental energy (operating on four hours of sleep, blah)... but I did write a table of contents! So you can experience some small portion of my ongoing wigginess.
EARLIEST MEMORIES: Consciousness of personal sin. I wrote a bitEvehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10072598901082683876noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3349994.post-841053402002-11-05T23:33:00.000-08:002002-11-05T23:33:23.566-08:00I sent this description of what's on the site to Arthur Silber, and he thought it might be useful to Qs for Os reader more generally: I hope this is clear on the site, but I intend Qs for Os to be a VERY wide-ranging resource. So some of the questions are things that I straight-up think Objectivism cannot answer (for some of those I also give my own arguments; for others I just throw out the Evehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10072598901082683876noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3349994.post-820781452002-09-24T20:55:00.000-07:002002-09-24T20:55:31.906-07:00AYN RAND AND ENRON: Simultaneously posted at EveTushnet.com. I saw this interesting USA Today article on the newsstand, and then found a link via the ever-helpful Agitator. I find this article interesting because it shows both Rand's admirers and her detractors creating a fantasy-Rand that isn't really in tune with what she wrote--even though the article is about a subject where Rand is Evehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10072598901082683876noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3349994.post-803248752002-08-16T10:02:00.000-07:002002-08-16T10:02:09.300-07:00What have you found to be true that you absolutely wished was not true? In other words, when have you overcome a desire for comfort over truth, or personal happiness (even short-term happiness) over truth? When have you "wrestled yourself and lost"? And, to get to the heart of the matter, why did that conflict arise?Evehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10072598901082683876noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3349994.post-781365442002-06-24T09:16:00.000-07:002002-06-26T07:53:34.000-07:00TWO CRITIQUES of Leonard Peikoff's Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. Objectivist Diana Hsieh takes on Peikoff's discussion of honesty (poke around on her site for her own treatments of honesty and self-interest), and non-Objectivist The Chickpea Eater teethes a bit on issues of survival, causality, emotions, and "living death."
[edited to add that the Chickpea Eater is going strong: a Evehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10072598901082683876noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3349994.post-111785312002-03-27T09:33:00.000-08:002002-05-21T07:47:11.000-07:00MARRIAGE AS AN ACT FOR GREAT SOULS: I just posted this excerpt from G.K. Chesterton's "Defence of Rash Vows" over at EveTushnet.com, but I originally went and looked it up because it hits on some of the problems with the changing of the marriage service described in the previous post.
"The man who makes a vow makes an appointment with himself at some distant time or place. The danger of it is Evehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10072598901082683876noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3349994.post-109425392002-03-20T12:46:00.000-08:002002-03-20T12:46:31.163-08:00TWO MORE SHORT QUESTIONS: For the list at the bottom of the page. (If it hasn't scrolled off by now...)
First, what is productivity? It's one of the Objectivist virtues; does it mean producing things other people want? That seems way too dependent on other people's value judgments--only popular architects would be productive under that definition. Does it mean producing anything that makes a Evehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10072598901082683876noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3349994.post-109422152002-03-20T12:36:00.000-08:002002-03-20T12:36:44.983-08:00DOES ANYBODY REMEMBER LAUGHTER?: The Fountainhead begins, "Howard Roark laughed." Yet some observers of Objectivism have called it humorless or unable to laugh at itself. An ex-Objectivist reader writes about Rand and humor. Several points, some more Rand-specific than others. She's in bold, I'm not.
"Rand's claim was always that if you acted as she prescribed--if you acted as the kind of 'Evehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10072598901082683876noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3349994.post-109414242002-03-20T12:12:00.000-08:002002-03-20T12:13:21.000-08:00QUID EST VERITAS?: Perry de Havilland, of Samizdata fame, weighed in on the ethics-'n'-metaphysics questions explored in "Without God, All Is Permissible" below. Excerpts from his comments are in bold; mine in plain text.
Here is my 'off the top of my head' view of the post: Regarding "EXECUTIVE SUMMARY #1: The condensed version of the post "WITHOUT GOD, ALL IS PERMISSIBLE."
If God is truth, Evehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10072598901082683876noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3349994.post-109407862002-03-20T11:49:00.000-08:002002-03-20T11:49:44.150-08:00INFINITE JESTS: Mark Byron has waded into the infinity debate. I don't have the math-theory to be able to confirm or deny his statements, but they're very intriguing, so if you're interested in the "Rand disproves God" thread you should check them out.
Oh, and in general, everyone who's written about this site rocks. More comments! More criticism! I don't know how often I'll be able to update Evehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10072598901082683876noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3349994.post-108329802002-03-17T12:58:00.000-08:002002-03-17T12:58:08.143-08:00IT'S ST. PATRICK'S DAY, and I have spent many hours compiling stuff about Objectivism. It's time to go to Church and feast a bit. It's said that a medieval monk, after working all day on a manuscript, wrote in the margin, Nunc scripsi totum, pro Christo da mihi potum: I have now written everything, for the sake of Christ give me a drink.
So you'll have to wait until tomorrow for the post about Evehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10072598901082683876noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3349994.post-108328822002-03-17T12:54:00.000-08:002002-03-17T12:56:11.000-08:00MORE ON ABORTION: Continuing the previous post. Here's excerpts from an exchange between me and a friend who, in general, supports both Objectivism and (limited) legal abortion. Her comments are in bold; mine are in plain text.
"It's true that it's a big problem to say when someone becomes a human being. The first problem one runs into is that a zygote is really not that different from a sperm Evehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10072598901082683876noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3349994.post-108324722002-03-17T12:41:00.000-08:002002-03-17T12:41:29.740-08:00IS ABORTION PRO-LIFE?: This site thinks so.
To approach abortion from an Objectivist perspective, it's helpful to remember that Rand based her definition of "man" on the potential for rationality, rather than the actual attainment of rationality. (Cf. Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology--I'll try to get page number soon, but it's in the bit about the Rational Spider from Mars.) It's obviousEvehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10072598901082683876noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3349994.post-108314502002-03-17T12:02:00.000-08:002002-03-17T12:02:35.023-08:00DISPROOF OF A DISPROOF OF GOD: Rand and Leonard Peikoff have presented a quasi-mathematical argument against the existence of God. A friend summarized it as: "Everything that exists in reality is finite. Imagine if that were not true. Then there would be a thing (call it God) that is infinite in some attribute. But infinity contradicts all laws of reality (e.g. if N is a finite number, N-N=0, Evehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10072598901082683876noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3349994.post-108308592002-03-17T11:42:00.000-08:002002-03-17T11:42:14.836-08:00EXECUTIVE SUMMARY #1: The condensed version of the post "WITHOUT GOD, ALL IS PERMISSIBLE."
Every code of ethics (if it's to make sense) must have some overarching principle that organizes the different rules/precepts and arbitrates between them when they conflict. That principle can be something immediately perceivable (ex.: I'll do whatever gives me the best chance of survival). If it isn't Evehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10072598901082683876noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3349994.post-108307802002-03-17T11:39:00.000-08:002002-03-17T11:39:21.833-08:00SO WHAT'S WRONG WITH HAPPINESS AND SURVIVAL? Why can't I just say, OK, my definition of reason, or justice, or whatever, is based on loyalty to myself? (The first of two executive summaries of that long post below.)
Go ahead; that position is coherent. You don't a Person as standard of value in three cases (all of which still involve loyalty):
1a) You're loyal to yourself, which means your Evehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10072598901082683876noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3349994.post-108304582002-03-17T11:26:00.000-08:002002-03-17T11:44:18.000-08:00WITHOUT GOD, ALL IS PERMISSIBLE. It seems to me that there are only a limited number of possible bases for ethics. This is my account of which bases require belief in a personal God and which do not.
First, let's define ethics as a code of conduct. OK, but what holds that code together? When certain values within the code conflict, which trumps? What overarching principle gave rise to the Evehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10072598901082683876noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3349994.post-108273722002-03-17T09:18:00.000-08:002002-03-17T09:20:02.000-08:00BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE PRUDENT PREDATOR: The "Prudent Predator Problem" is a basic question that comes up again and again in criticisms of Objectivism. Here's the setup: Rand derives her ethics from self-interest rightly understood. (I'll get into what "self-interest" actually means--survival? happiness? some combination of the two?--later.) From self-interest, she derives a list of moral rulesEvehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10072598901082683876noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3349994.post-108263262002-03-17T08:27:00.000-08:002002-03-17T08:27:07.640-08:0025 LEAST APPROPRIATE THINGS FOR OBJECTIVISTS TO SAY DURING SEX.Evehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10072598901082683876noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3349994.post-107407972002-03-14T14:23:00.000-08:002002-03-15T07:02:59.000-08:00SATAN SUM, NIHIL RANDIAN ME ALIENUM PUTO: Why Satanism is not Objectivism. A critical must-read.Evehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10072598901082683876noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3349994.post-107407292002-03-14T14:19:00.000-08:002002-03-15T07:02:45.000-08:00LINKMANIA: Here's a rich trove of resources. First, some humor--Objectivist Pickup Lines, and two jokes. I, uh, can't really vouch for the har-har potential of these links, but there they are.
A general Objectivism reference site, which also includes a page of links to criticism.
A vast tome criticizing Rand's epistemology. Unsurprisingly, I have not read this. The same guy has other things I Evehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10072598901082683876noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3349994.post-99769022002-02-21T14:14:00.000-08:002002-02-21T14:14:38.980-08:00Oh, and this is a general resource site on Objectivism. It's where I found the critical essay linked in the previous post.Evehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10072598901082683876noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3349994.post-99768042002-02-21T14:11:00.000-08:002002-02-21T14:11:35.036-08:00Oh and one final goodie.. an article arguing that Rand is guilty of unlawful derivation of an "ought" from an "is." That'll be $500, ma'am, and don't let me catch you again...Evehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10072598901082683876noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3349994.post-99766932002-02-21T14:08:00.000-08:002002-02-21T14:08:40.426-08:00TOPICS for Objectivist study groups...
Do you exist? Prove it!
Tribalism
Sexual ethics
Capitalism: The Workers' Paradise
Does induction exist? (Even in order to know which examples should prove which theory, you need an enormous edifice of prior theory--in other words, deduction.)
Is Rand a secret Kantian? (more on this later, maybe)
Sweatshops: Good/Bad?
Vigilantism
Eros
"On a Woman Evehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10072598901082683876noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3349994.post-99765192002-02-21T14:02:00.000-08:002002-02-21T14:03:02.000-08:00QUESTIONS FOR OBJECTIVISTS... AND OTHERS.
Do you have the right to sell yourself into slavery? Why/why not? (How is military service any different?)
How do her views on women and gender roles (cf. Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, "On a Woman President") relate to her general view of rationality?
Rand argues that we must use reason because if we don't, we won't survive. But then she actually Evehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10072598901082683876noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3349994.post-99752772002-02-21T13:28:00.000-08:002002-02-21T13:28:07.863-08:00WELCOME. This site is intended as a resource for anyone who wants to explore the ideas of Ayn Rand in detail. Note: I am not and never have been a Randian. I'm Catholic. I wanted to put this site together in order to point others toward interesting questions and problems in Objectivism. Specifically, this site is for people interested in wide-ranging discussion groups like OSGAY, the Objectivist Evehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10072598901082683876noreply@blogger.com