RoR: Forum

Robert, hello. There exists a situation: the percentage of women in objectivist circles is lower than the percentage of men. There seems to be an unstated conclusion derived from this (fact), namely, that it is a problem that must be understood and fixed. Am I understanding your point Robert?

As far as my own understanding of the phenomenon, of the many many variables that come into play, to conclude that it caused by X or Y is tricky.

In any case I couldnt care less if there are more women (or men) drawn to objectivism. I am quite happy with the ones that are *here* now.

For that matter, it is a value which must be sought, rather than sold.

John

(Edited by John Newnham
on 4/07, 8:46am)

Post 21

Thursday, April 7, 2005 - 8:32am

I suspect the cognitive style/philosophical differences within gender are as great or greater than the differences between. I have found this true on SOLO. The spectrum of debate and difference is huge on this site and is not gender specific.

Post 22

Thursday, April 7, 2005 - 8:41am

Jason, I know this is a sensitive subject, so please, no one jump down my throath. You say the problem most likely is not inborn. That's where I so disagree (although how we are raised undoubtledly does affect us all). I've watched little boys and little girls, and they DO react differently. I've had parents agree that they react and act differently. Is there a possibility that boys/girls men/women simply have differences? I'm not saying one is better than the other, I'm just saying might there not be differences that might ultimately complement each other?

Post 23

Thursday, April 7, 2005 - 8:41am

No, perhaps I wasn't clear, John. The opposite is the case: there are many more men in Objectivist circles than women. That is an observation based on my long-time experience with and exposure to a wide variety of Objectivist groups, in America and abroad.

Post 24

Thursday, April 7, 2005 - 8:42am

John,

Robert offers a hypothesis that bears the weight of realty:

While I was involved in planning events at The Objectivist Center, keeping those principles in mind as we designed programs helped to dramatically increase female participation.

It works. So do it. Of course, we can qualify that statement until the world ends, but at some point we have to say, Let's do it. Obviously, even throwing out the gender issue, there are two ways of approaching life and issues; these two approaches can be mixed within the same person, but identifying those two approaches is a great boon to understanding and dealing with people.

And there are those who would like more Objectivist women at Objectivist events, for obvious reasons. It's not a matter of attracting women to Objectivism. It's a matter of attracting women to Objectivist events - making them want to come back.

Jason

Post 25

Thursday, April 7, 2005 - 8:44am

Ginny, very good point. As a father and now grandfather, I've seen first-hand how many of these stylistic differences appear to manifest themselves in infancy. No "cultural influence" could explain why even babies display such differences, long before they could possibly be influenced by their surrounding culture.

Post 26

Thursday, April 7, 2005 - 8:45am

oops...typing too fast Robert, I meant in reverse order...greater percentage of men vs women.

Post 27

Thursday, April 7, 2005 - 9:01am

Robert,

I appreciate very much that you bore my rant so well.

But how can I make myself more clear?! (I think we should make an interest case study as to how you become a writer while I a scientist. ;-))

As a biochemist, I am probably much more aware of the reality of the biological difference between man and woman. That's not even an issue with me.

For starters, men are bigger, stronger, and have penis. Women are smaller, with weaker physical strength, but have uterus and breasts. By default these different physical attributes HAVE TO affect the approaches in pursuing a prosperous life for each sex. Many of the characteristics in women�s behaviors have to be connected to those facts. They may sometimes seem irrational to men, from a male perspective, but we shouldn�t just give up and dismiss them as some unaccountable �differences�. Unfortunately, there is a big gap in our understanding of the connection between one�s anatomy/hormones and one�s mind. And that has led to many false interpretations and extrapolations.

I guess the biggest problem I have with your article is that you threw in there a lot of statistics and observations, and somehow blurred the real biological differences with those that are resulted from environments.

In your P.S. post, you said that you don�t care about the source of these differences. But I DO care. And I think it�s very important that we separate those real biologically determined differences from the artificial ones. Because for the real biological differences, we can do nothing with them (well, almost) and should just go with them; while we CAN do something about the artificially imposed mentalities, in both males and females.

Hong

(Edited by Hong Zhang on 4/07, 9:07am)

Post 28

Thursday, April 7, 2005 - 9:10am

Robert,

I think differences in cognitive styles are much more influenced by early childhood experiences than sex per se. I grew up in a dual language environment and learned elementary Spanish before English up until the age of three (our father was a Latin American historian doing dissertation work in Argentina). My thinking style is much more of a pattern recognition/synthetic style. My brother has more of a visual/analytical style. Most of his early childhood was spent planning and going on hunting and fishing trips while we were living in rural Georgia.

In my own family, my brother and I are both Objectivists although we respond to vastly different aspects of the philosophy and for different reasons. I encountered Atlas Shrugged first and introduced my brother to it. In general, I first responded to the system-building, everything fits together aspect of the philosophy and my brother responded to the deductive, analytical element. It took some time for me to be convinced to go to an Objectivist conference because the Objectivist thinkers I was exposed to weren't very adventuresome in terms of exploring new ground or challenging old assumptions. Once I did go to my first IOS conference in 1994 I was blown away by the new ground being covered and how much I had to learn.

People need to experience Objectivism in different ways and philosophy-oriented conferences and experiences are just one of the ways. Incidentally, I think Objectivist conferences could be improved by encouraged participant participation in dramatic readings, plays etc. A feeling of experiential inclusiveness is important in attracting and retaining those who are more emotionally or otherwise connected to the philosophy.

Post 29

Thursday, April 7, 2005 - 9:10am

John,

I suspect the cognitive style/philosophical differences within gender are as great or greater than the differences between. I have found this true on SOLO.

Well observed! And that's a fact. That is...as long as we don't start a weight lifting contest. ;-)

Post 30

Thursday, April 7, 2005 - 9:24am

The fact that objectivism is rational, linear and reason/achievement based does not mean that its members are. This is especially true for the "men of objectivism" (there may be a calender idea here).

Robert what I liked best about your article is that it generates thought on these matters. Thanks for writing it.

John

Post 31

Thursday, April 7, 2005 - 9:45am

Great article Robert!

This article brings up key learning points that are very important and straightforward, but I believe that the empirical application of these learning points--as you had presented them--IS NOT so straightforward. Hong brings up good points that make applications less clear.

If the final end (final aim) is for an objectivist male to meet another woman, then the heuristic, "problem"-solving applications that you presented--are entirely appropriate. I think that this article can be (ought to be?) expanded to include a connection to first principles and final ends. It is awfully pragmatic (in a negative sense) otherwise.

From a past post:
How many pragmatists does it take to screw in a light bulb?"

There's no way to know, so let's try changing one, and see if it works for us--this one time.

Ed

Post 32

Thursday, April 7, 2005 - 9:55am

Hi Hong,

Clearly, no statistical surveys can demonstrate, for certain, some causal relationship. They are at best suggestive of a possible causality, but not proof.

As for your other point, though, about whether we should do something about culturally-influenced differences -- why? Some of my male friends have mental inclinations and abilities that differ from mine: Some are much better than me at deductive logic, for example, while I tend to be more empirically-oriented. I sort of go against the tendencies of my sex in terms of how my mind works. Maybe that was a matter of genes. Maybe it was a matter of upbringing. Who knows? But either way, which among us has the "problem" requiring mediation? Do other guys have a problem with lacking some of what I have, or do I have a problem lacking some of what they have?

Or is it better to conclude that we all have our unique strengths and talents, and means of communicating, and that we should just notice and recognize and accomodate to those facts whenever we deal with each other?

Similarly, let's hypothesize that women, in greater percentages than men, demonstrate superiority in "intuitive" intelligence -- that is, in their ability to notice and integrate perceptual information, and to have easy access to their emotional responses to that information. This means that they're "better" at this than men are...on average. Let's also suppose, for sake of argument, that men have a statistically greater likelihood of being good at deductive logic than women.

So which is the "better" thinker: the women who have relatively better skill at factual observation and generalization, or the men who have relatively better skill at applying concepts and drawing logical inferences? Which aspect of "thought" is more dispensable, and which more important: generalization or differentiation, concept-formation or concept-application?

What's the "problem" to be solved here? And if there IS one, how would we possibly go about solving it?

Let me conclude with a story. Recently there was a case of a serial killer on the run who kidnapped a female hostage and hid in her apartment. This untrained, unarmed woman managed to do what nobody else could: she convinced the armed murderer not only to release her, but to turn himself in to the cops!

Now if that killer were running loose on the streets, I might prefer to select a male sniper to shoot him.

But if I were taken hostage by that same killer, I think I'd prefer a female hostage negotiator -- like that woman.

Whether these mental differences or habits or preferences are innate or acquired, we really need to stop making them a matter of collective, demographically-based self-esteem. If we do, we'll begin to perceive them as relative strengths and abilities, rather than weaknesses and flaws, and our appropriate response to them will be:

Viva la difference.

Post 33

Thursday, April 7, 2005 - 10:10am

Leonard Peikoff identified the fact that women in this culture tend to be empiricists and men tend to be rationalists years ago, in his "Understanding Objectivism" course (a course designed in part to try to eradicate the rationalism he saw in the movement). He also identified the fact that Objectivists tend to have rationalist tendencies. I think he also may have guessed at the cause, but it's been years since I heard the course so I don't remember it in detail. A bit sloppy on Robert's part not to cite the course I think. Maybe his empiricist style is giving him amnesia?

I think it may have been a later talk where Leonard Peikoff identified the fact that rationalism is one way to wrongly deal with information overload (just toss out information that doesn't fit); empiricism was another wrong way to do it (don't bother integrating the pieces). This may have been his course on induction.

I do not agree with the implication that everyone is of one "style" or the other. They aren't different styles they're different errors. And each of us may have the tendency to make one kind of error or the other, or no particular tendency at all. The fact remains that we can revise our thinking methods and if we find that we tend to be rationalist we can learn to take care in examining all the relevant facts, or if we tend to be empiricist we can focus more on integrating the facts. Or, we can be lazy and just write off our harmful tendencies as a "style".

Post 34

Thursday, April 7, 2005 - 10:15am

James, great comment. I don't doubt for a minute that early upbringing experiences can help "train" our mental habits and value-responses, perhaps much more so than biology. If the latter were the dominant factor, then the statistical correlations I cited earlier might be higher. Right now we just don't understand the causality. But Jason's approach is the one I agree with. If we treat the statistical correlations as simple facts, whose causes we don't yet fully know, we can still respond to those facts in sensible ways.

Ed, the practical value of understanding these differences is much broader than merely helping male-female relationships--though John Gray and others have made fortunes teaching people how to accomodate those differences in order to improve relationships. For Objectivists, the practical value also includes general public communication of their ideas. If you wish to reach a broad audience, slightly over half of whom are women, then you'd better realize that your style of communication matters. The same goes for crafting social institutions -- groups, clubs, schools, etc. The attitude of "one cognitive style fits all" guarantees that you will fail to relate to a huge segment of your potential audience or participants.

Post 35

Thursday, April 7, 2005 - 10:48am

Regarding sources...

Some, whose reading lists apparently are as limited as their imaginations, would prefer to believe that my only possible sources of knowledge about issues of cognitive psychology must have been Ayn Rand and Leonard Peikoff. Well, I have a revealing confession to make: My book shelves are far more expansive than that.

Many years ago -- the mid-70s, I recall -- I gave a talk titled "Objectivism and Styles of Thinking." In it, I cited Rand's "Attila" and "Witch Doctor" epistemological archetypes, and Peikoff's analysis in "Understanding Objectivism" of the distinction between the objective, subjective and intrinsic in epistemology and ethics. But those writings only peripherally concerned psychology.

Regarding that latter field, I drew mainly upon Liam Hudson and Arthur Koestler, among others. Hudson's Contrary Imaginations and Frames of Mind were written outside of any Objectivist perspective, and were empirically based studies initially sparked by his own personal observations, as a teacher of British schoolboys, of two distinctly different mental styles. Koestler's observations on the nature of creativity were also invaluable for me to understand one of those styles, the "synthetic" one.

But none of these writers discussed in any detail any differences in male-female psychology, let alone any possible causes. I picked up a lot on that topic from various books by psychologists about relationships. A valuable, practical one is Intimate Connections by Dr. David Burns -- a non-Objectivist who nonetheless traces most relationship problems to self-esteem issues. Readers of my essay will also note that I drew on David Kelley's identification of "three cultures," and upon demographic surveys supporting that analysis, to relate the theoretical and empirical studies about psychology to wider cultural phenomena.

I drew upon all of this wide-ranging thinking, constituting over thirty years of reading, in order to conclude what I've concluded here.

Anyone who would reduce all of that to one or two supposedly purloined paragraphs from a long-forgotten lecture course by Leonard Peikoff embodies a unique mindset, too -- one that I need not discuss further, since that task already has been ably accomplished by the late Eric Hoffer.

Post 36

Thursday, April 7, 2005 - 11:04am

Another good source discussing differing thinking styles is Harrison and Bramson's The Art of Thinking. While I don't agree with everything said, they put together a schema which includes 5 different thinking styles: Realist, Idealist, Synthesist, Pragmatist, and Analyst and also analyze personality types that combine more than one thinking style.

Post 37

Thursday, April 7, 2005 - 11:18am

Ok, I just have not much time, because of my duties at the university and a local soccer game (*g*), so I will try to come back with more material tomorrow.

What I can say in this short period is, that there were several "feminist ethic"-thinkers throughout history, like John Stuart Mill, who conducted test on men and women to see if they have "natural" differences that either depend on education or on birth, but are inherent to the majority of both sexes. They concluded that there are different ethical systems that are applied by men and by women. There is also a number of both sexes who are crossing the line and use the other sexes ethic (which can help exlpain, why there are at least some women in Objectivism). Whether this is a consequence of birth or education is still to be determined, but the tests showed that there are two different (broadly speaking) systems of ethics that can be defined.

The "men" system is the underlying principle of Objectivism and has been the focus of attention almost solely from the beginning of philosophy in ancient greek. We just call it the rational analytic ethik. The "women" system is different, because rather than concentrating on overall structures it concerns itself with human relationships and the impact of decision-making and the violence/power resulting from it. They define their environment as a net of relationsships that interact and have to be preserved to have the lest negative impact.
Don't get me wrong, I am yet unconvinced that this is 100% true, but it is what Mill among other philosophers found out (Another one would be Annemarie Pieper).

They used a selected test environment with 12 year old children who were above average in intelligence from public schools and gave them a rational "problematic" situation:

F.e.: A husband has to steal a remedy form a local apothecary because his wife is ill and he can't afford the medicine. The two participants (one male, one female) have to conclude whether this is a rightful action or a wrong doing and why it is so. At last, they should give a solution to this problem and how the man could have solved his dilemma with accordance to an ethical behaviour

Both children concluded that the man was the wrong doer, but both said they could understand it. But they both defined the guilt and the solution very differently. While the boy said that it might have been the only option to the man or that he should have tried working to get the money, he still conceived it as a wrong, but he should be punished kindly, because of the extraordinary situation.
The girl, however, said the man is not to blame, but he should have asked the doctor and the doctor should have given the remedy to the man in return for nothing or on a credit, because it is the job and the duty of a doctor to perserve life and it was an emergency situation.

I know such artificial scenarios are not the best way to test ethics, but still they can deliver factual evidence on different ethical systems. The test series concluded after an interrogation about the background and the overall marks of the two children, that they were both highly intelligent for their age and thus could assess the situation with clarity.

I hope to retrieve some documents and further reference until tomorrow, but my time is limited and those are old things I have not touched for quite a while..

Post 38

Thursday, April 7, 2005 - 11:24am

Shayne, what excellent insight regarding optimality, and the potential malevolence of premature labelling!

On a related point--on another thread, when Marcus pressed me to justify the use of a theory (game theory) in advancing capitalism, a point was made that the theory is unnecessary (objectivism already proves capitalism's supremacy in reality).

At this point, I argued that, while "we" can "know" that capitalism is right and good, we have used a "healthy admixture of reason and experience" to arrive at this necessary truth.

And, while this works for us, there are many other folks ("vulgar empiricists") who, operating from a less healthy admixture, will not "see" the good of capitalism--until and unless it is presented in a pragmatically-empirical, trial-and-error format.

Some folks will need to see their hands bitten, before they will stop feeding crocodiles.

Ed
(Edited by Ed Thompson
on 4/07, 11:36am)

Post 39

Thursday, April 7, 2005 - 11:34am