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Tuesday, July 19, 2005 - 4:01pmSanction this postReply
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Hello,
I am new to objectivism but I am not new to philosophy. I do not understand the enthusiasm about objectivism or about Ayn Rand.I enjoy her books but her philosophy leaves much to be desired. The more I read  objectivism the more I realize that it needs to be subjected to questioning. Please let me know if this is the right place for it or if this forum is to be used only for objectivism enthusiasts. Thank you. Jbrad


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Post 1

Tuesday, July 19, 2005 - 4:14pmSanction this postReply
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Joshua,

Well, I'm certainly not an Objectivist enthusiast. I, too, am left with a less-than-full feeling regarding Rand's formulation of her philosophy. As to if you think you should be here, I suppose that all depends on if you're looking to pick a fight or looking for good company, the latter of which there is plenty around here. Questioning is always good, and, I think, questions are always welcome here as long as you're interested in satisfying curiosity rather than attacking everything that types.

Sarah

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Tuesday, July 19, 2005 - 5:21pmSanction this postReply
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Sarah,
Thanks for your response. I am definitely not looking for an argument. I am looking for the other side of objectivism. The downside,the cases against. I have only read the good stuff. For instance, I am confused about ayn rand and capitalism. I havent read alot on the subject but it sounds like she read Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations". I am having a hard time distinguishing any original idea from ayn rand so I joined this group to learn more and maybe help me not view objectivism as a "cowboy philosophy." Any posts that explain the core philosophy will be much appreciated. Thanks in advance. Jbrad


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Tuesday, July 19, 2005 - 5:33pmSanction this postReply
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Well, if you wish to propose a critical viewpoint, the "dissent" area would probably be best.  However, you didn't ask any question, really.  You also didn't address the title Old philosophy, new name of this post.  What did you mean?

Post 4

Tuesday, July 19, 2005 - 6:00pmSanction this postReply
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Rand was not an academic and didn't write with the rigor and detail of an academic.  This way she gave future Objectivists something to do.  Nor did she get around to everything (despite what the Peikoff/ARI axis claims).  For an example of contemporary academics taking up where she left off, see www.aynrandsociety.org.

If you want to argue then, as Kurt Eichert has noted, there's a place for you here.  I'm not very familiar with Smith, but my understanding is that he did not consider capitalism an ethical ideal as Rand did, but rather something that (perhaps unfortunately) yields useful results.  A lot of her individual positions did not originate with her; what's original is the rationale and systematic interrelation of these ideas.

Peter


Post 5

Tuesday, July 19, 2005 - 6:34pmSanction this postReply
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Hi JBrad and welcome to Solo.  I hope you find the answers you are seeking.  Have you checked out the Objectivist section and our sister site

Solo is a site by and for objectivists and is a pretty good place to hang as long as you accept our philosophy and are not a troll looking to save our soul or anything stupid like that. This is a great place to meet some wonderful people and I feel very fortunate to have met someone very special here whose opinions and values mirror my own.  Take a look around, talk to people and enjoy yourself. 

Cheers,

Kat


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Post 6

Tuesday, July 19, 2005 - 7:51pmSanction this postReply
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Joshua,

If you don't see much newness to Objectivism I think it tends to come from several things.

First being Objectivism (and by proxy Rand herself) doesn't put a lot of emphasis on original thought qua original thought (ie an idea you formulated that no one had any influence on in any way ever). Part of the beauty of Objectivism comes from the fact that you see there's nothing wrong taking ideas formulated by others and building from them (subtracting flaws and adding solutions where they are lacking).  This I think is an omnipresent factor in her writing.

Secondly I think the title Novelist/philosopher says it all.  Here she was having just come to America with a desire to create storys featuring heroes... only to realize her heroes would not be realized as such by popular standards so if she wanted them accepted that way she better have a damn good idea of what it means to be a hero.  She had to develop Objectivism in her own mind in order to create the standards by which her heroes would be judged.  After the process by which this was completed she realized Objectivism would have a lot of real world value and thus needed to start a program of education and further development, while I think she greatly enjoyed this at first it seems clear from just about every source that this got severely tiring after a while (which is why she always seemed so gung ho to hand it off to anyone capable of taking it further). This I think got typified by the attitude of contempt she displayed at the fact that "How in the hell am I the only one who sees this, it shouldn't be this hard to prove this. A is frickin A people."

Thus the fact that there are several parts of the philosophy that remain undeveloped and under developed (or in some rare cases badly developed).

That's my take

---Landon


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Post 7

Tuesday, July 19, 2005 - 8:47pmSanction this postReply
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Joshua, here is my definition.

Objectivism:
You individually can gain information about reality to make better decisions and achieve your goals.

Everything else, like morality etc... is derived from the context. Here, I'll start you off building a reliable context: A is A. Existence exists. You (Joshua) have consciousness.

Now... what do you want? What are your goals? Do you have any? (Well some people don't. At one time I didn't.) If not, you can make some. A goal/want that many objectivists share is to live long and enjoy life to the fullest.

What makes you happy? What makes you live long? What information do you have about the current situation? Which actions have you discovered will further your goals to the greatest extent? What are other short and long term goals you would like to achieve?

Post 8

Tuesday, July 19, 2005 - 6:19pmSanction this postReply
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Oh, the Dissent area. Thanks. I will kick over the ant bed in there. Jbrad

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Post 9

Thursday, July 21, 2005 - 1:33pmSanction this postReply
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Joshua-

If you haven't, maybe read the novels? It's huge, but commit to reading Atlas Shrugged. I think a lot of people say start with something else first, but I always say read Atlas first. If not, The Fountainhead. I am convinced the only way to get the full impact is to read those books.

Best,
rde


Post 10

Friday, July 22, 2005 - 8:55amSanction this postReply
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Joshua ,

Objectivism is The Philosophy of Ayn Rand.

You write “I do not understand the enthusiasm about objectivism or about Ayn Rand”

Your observation above seems to imply that objectivism was not originated by AR?

Is that what you mean?

When Ayn Rand was asked why she taught that objectivism was the only right philosophy  there is, she answered “ Because It’s true”

And that’s where all our enthusiasm comes from, because objectivism is true.!

Best dc

 


Post 11

Friday, July 22, 2005 - 9:14amSanction this postReply
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Josh,

I think its true that the substance of objectivism is not original. It is generally accepted that Rand strung together separate and distinct concepts and ideas, presented by other philosophers, into a single coherent and flowing philosophy, e.g. objectivism. I studied political theory in college and when reading objectivist material I often found myself asking, "Didn't Aquinas make this same argument? Nietzsche said this too... Adam Smith touched on this... This is TOTALLY Aristotle!!" I once heard someone compare objectivism to Quintin Tarentino's movies...old plots, old directing techniques, old characters, all brought together into a funky new flick that appeals both because of its familiar feeling and its novelty.

There is a thread in the "general" forum on "emergent properties" or something to that effect. I'm not really into that realm of thinking and do believe it is an intellectual waste of time to ponder it (I tried to lighten the atmosphere with a question about South Park) but in reading through the posts for the funniest one liners, i.e. "I've been thinking for some time about writing an article about the ontology of emergent properties" I figured out that what they mean about emergent properties is essentially what objectivism is: Hydrogen + Oxygen = Water...water being the "emergent property." In much the same way, Aquinas + Smith + Nietzsche + + + + + = objectivism.

As for whether Adam Smith's Wealth of Nation's rooted capitalism in ethical considerations, I would argue that it did. However, one must understand that Wealth of Nations was essentially a successor to Smith's work "Theory of Moral Sentiments." I think its pretty clear that Wealth of Nations cannot be fully understood and capitalism cannot be successful without an understanding and acceptance of a certain morality based on self-interest and reason. Theory of Moral Sentiments presented that morality. In fact, Theory of Moral Sentiments discusses, a few hundred years before Rand, the role of sensory perception ("sentiments") to cognition and how this ties into "morality."

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1573928003/qid=1122047721/sr=2-3/ref=pd_bbs_b_ur_2_3/002-2401511-6624056
(Edited by Lyman Bradford
on 7/22, 10:38am)


Post 12

Friday, July 22, 2005 - 11:38amSanction this postReply
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Lyman, if philosophy is the study of man in relation to the given, for many, "OPAR"is the answer .

Objectivism was not created in a vacuum. AR   also learned from other philosophers, however if we are not able to grow and improve on concepts and ideas formulated by our predecessors where do we start?. Don’t we all have parents? Does that make us less original?

Objectivism is based on three axioms Existence, Identity, and Consciousness, every philosophy, future or past, based on these three axioms is  objectivism.

dc

 

 


Post 13

Saturday, July 23, 2005 - 9:56amSanction this postReply
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"Objectivism is based on three axioms Existence, Identity, and Consciousness, every philosophy, future or past, based on these three axioms is objectivism."

Its a good point..I agree with it. Unfortunately, many objectivists wouldn't. I think the ARI would take issue with a statement to the effect, "Kant was an objectivist in the sense that he believed..."

/\
\/

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Post 14

Sunday, July 24, 2005 - 3:19pmSanction this postReply
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Jbrad,

Rich's suggestion that you first read the novels is excellent. I would argue that, for pure literary art and for an example of how the philosophy applies to one man, that you start with _The Fountainhead_ before going on to _Atlas Shrugged_. _Atlas_ is more explicitly philosophical and tackles political philosophy as applied to a whole society as well as more technical issues at the root of philosophy.

Most people come to Objectivism from first being fans of these books, along with maybe the novella _Anthem_. They present the philosophical ideas in a coherent, living way so that you can see what Rand meant with concrete examples, rather than trying to deduce yourself what she meant from a naked academic presentation of her ideas. All of the advanced nonfiction works on Objectivism assume a thorough knowledge of the two major novels. Almost all serious commentary on her work references passages and characters from them.

Leonard Peikoff's book _Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand_ (called OPAR) by contrast would be a very bad place to start. Not least because many scholars of Objectivism argue over whether its presentation of certain fundamental issues is even correct. And its organization is very top-down in important ways. This is in contrast to the fact that Objectivism is very much a bottom-up philosophy that relies primarily on observation of the world to back up its claims. This top-down organization makes it difficult for those new to the philosophy to get its flavor adequately.

At best, OPAR is a very challenging book that should only be used to sharpen and systematize your knowledge after you have familiarized yourself with the novels and Rand's own non-fiction and preferably taken a course or listened to a set of taped lectures on 'Objectivism 101' or something of the kind.

Sorry, there is no royal road to Objectivism without reading the novels. This is actually good news, because the novels are very beautiful and inspirational on their own.

The first thing to know about Objectivism as a system of thought is that it is a _system_. It is not a collection of isolated statements on politics, economics, etc. which you might have heard and which might have influenced you to refer to a "cowboy philosophy."

Ayn Rand taught that philosophy has five fundamental branches:

i.) metaphysics: the study of the world as a whole
ii.) epistemology: the study of the means of human knowledge
iii.) ethics: the study of choice (i.e. the science of how conscious beings should make decisions about how to live in the world.)
iv.) politics: the study of a specialized branch of ethics as it pertains to relationships between human beings
v.) esthetics: briefly, the philosophy of art. (A more thorough definition of esthetics would require first delving into Objectivist epistemology, ethics, and esthetics far enough to justify the following claim: That art is a requirement of the human method of consciousness insofar as it uniquely presents us with a concretization of abstract ideas that is necessary for us as conceptual beings to focus on our long-range goals.)

Objectivist scholars such as Peikoff teach that various individual philosophers have advanced one or another branch of philosophy, have more rarely produced an entire system of thought in one branch, and have more rarely still produced an entire integrated system of thought that united two or more branches. But in the history of Western philosophy, only four thinkers have produced entire original systems that combined and united all five branches: Plato, Aristotle (reacting to Plato,) Immanuel Kant (building on Plato,) and Rand (reacting to Kant and building on Aristotle.)

In Objectivism, these five fields are tightly integrated. For example, in studying the world of everything around us (metaphysics,) we find that there is an important special case of beings, namely humans, that are different from everything else that we are aware of. In studying what makes them different, we find that they uniquely have a conceptual consciousness. (Objectivists call this the study of the metaphysical nature of man, the highest subfield within metaphysics, and one that unites metaphysics with epistemology at a different level.) In studying this conceptual consciousness (epistemology,) we find that it has unique requirements for proper functioning but that it also can produce results not available to members of any other species. Thus we are led towards a conception of the nature and purpose of human life (ethics.) In studying these requirements of a conceptual consciousness, we find that physical force directed against the consciousness in question or threat of the same can only retard or halt the conceptual process. Thus we are led towards conclusions about the use of force by one person against another (politics.) As we study them further, we find that a concrete representation of the world, embodying abstract ideas, can give a conscious being, among other benefits, a greater ability to function in the world by, among other means, making it easier to relate the abstract to the concrete (esthetics.)

Mathematics and the physical sciences are specialized fields that deal with the same basic subject matter as metaphysics but focused on more detailed aspects of the world than metaphysics does, and using specialized methods of gaining knowledge that collectively represent an advanced application of epistemology. (i.e. the scientific method.)

Economics is a specialized science that is related to ethics in approximately the same way that the physical sciences are related to metaphysics, with the proviso that economics to date has typically limited itself to the study of quantitative optimization of human choice as applied in the realm of material gain. In principle, it could also study optimization of the pursuit of non-material human values. Objectivist economists reject as a false dichotomy the separation of "macro" from "micro" economics, and teach it as an integrated field of knowledge.

The second thing to know about Objectivism as a system of thought is the following: Some philosophers have believed that metaphysics comes first and epistemology is derived from it. Others have believed the reverse. Rand, by contrast, believed that metaphysics and epistemology are both basic and intimately related, so that their study of their fundamentals must proceed in tandem. She compensated for this complexity by keeping her metaphysics very simple and rejecting from the field of metaphysics various subfields that had traditionally been classified with it, such as cosmology, which she consigned to the specialized science of astronomy.

The third thing to know about Objectivism is its claim that most important arguments in philosophy ultimately resolve to a difference in epistemology. Most of Rand's most important and original insights were in this field.

The fourth thing is that we have values as a result of being living beings, because only living beings are responsible for their own existence. (Non-living matter can change from one form to another, but we have never observed it coming into existence or passing out of existence. Living beings, otoh, take steps to preserve themselves and are uniquely subject to death.) Because we are living beings with a conceptual consciousness, we have an ability to pursue our values and thus to preserve ourselves that other living beings do not. The need for a science of ethics results from the desire to maximize this value-pursuing ability of the conceptual consciousness. (This paragraph summarizes Rand's greatest theoretical insights outside the field of epistemology. And notice how even they veer into the epistemological.)

The above represents my own attempt to summarize ideas I learned in studying Rand, Peikoff, Kelley, and others. It is only the sketchiest of outlines. Any errors, omissions, or poor wording are purely my own.

Hope this helps you get started!

-Bill
(Edited by William A. Nevin III
on 7/24, 3:32pm)


Post 15

Monday, July 25, 2005 - 7:37pmSanction this postReply
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Thanks William.

One of the tenets of objectivism that I am having the most trouble with is that reason is absolute. I do not know if I can grasp this.? Can one live by reason alone? 

How does reason apply to the subjective things in life? Is it logical to be subjective? Do I have to use reason to explain everything? WHy can't I just say I like something because I want to?

For me, personally, I know that being reasonable is the best thing to be in certain cases. But when is it time for reason to step aside for the emotions? Can reason overcome emotions? Or is reason a "reasonable emotion'?

For instance,  saying that art is objective is way beyond me. Does art have to be reasonable to be enjoyed? Most artists or painters are not reasonable people yet they produce exquisite art.  I will be the first to agree that most modern art sucks but does that mean it isn't valid?  Once I grasp the reason is absolute concept then perhaps I will become an advocate for objectivism.

After reading the Foutainhead, I don't recall anyone using reason to their advantage. Maybe I missed the use of pure reason in the book but it seemed to me that the characters were driven by something other than reason. Roark seemed driven by something but I do not know what to call it. Anywho, I hope you see my point and can respond with words of explanation. Thanks in advance. jbrad


Post 16

Tuesday, July 26, 2005 - 1:58pmSanction this postReply
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Joshua, I sent you a pm. Joe

Post 17

Tuesday, July 26, 2005 - 8:41pmSanction this postReply
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Jbrad,

I'm going to be leaving soon to study abroad for a couple of weeks, so unfortunately I don't have time now to answer your questions at the length that they deserve.

Briefly, be careful to understand Rand in her own terms. When she says that reason is absolute, she doesn't mean that it is the only thing in life. In fact, Rand and Objectivism uniquely among modern Western systems of philosophy reject the Platonic mind/body problem as presenting a false dichotomy. Therefore, they reject the "Mr. Spock" lifestyle of denying emotion.

(Yeah, I know on every college campus you can always find a couple of Mr. Spock soundalikes spouting passages from the Fountainhead and Atlas. This doesn't disprove my point, it just indicates that they are young, new to Objectivism, and are having a hard time digesting it and learning how it can be applied correctly. They have unfortunately swallowed the "mind" side of the mind/body dichotomy from the Platonic elements of the culture around us as a reaction against the "body" side so evident in the world today - the hippie, "do your own thing," pro-drug abuse, "art" made by monkeys throwing paint at a canvas, Islamists watching their children blow up so quickly, etc. aspects of the current scene. The correct Objectivist position is to reject the dichotomy entirely rather than to pick the less popular side of it. This leads to living life fully, emotions and all, "the total passion for the total height" as the SOLO masthead quotes from the Fountainhead. The simplest proof of this is how intensely emotional an experience it is to read Rand's novels.)

So much for what Rand didn't mean by "reason is absolute." What she did mean is that we can't go through life behaving in a rational way one day then make life-altering choices by consulting a palm-reader the next day. To live life fully is a full-time job. Every major decision has to make sense at some level. When you feel a conflict of emotions in deciding what to do, or what is commonly called a conflict between "heart and mind," you should probably hold off making the decision until you can get more facts and then reconsider the decision objectively. It might be best to calm down, get a second opinion, etc. If you are forced to act immediately, it is usually best to go with what the "head" says.

But be careful, because sometimes a strong emotional reaction against doing something that you think you "should" is an indicator that there are other relevant facts that you are aware of at some level but which have ramifications that are not fully in focus yet for you. This is sometimes referred to as "intuition" or having a "gut feeling." Objectivism acknowledges that such feelings exist, and that sometimes they even lead to correct action. What it rejects is the idea that they have anything to do with the supernatural or with the gut. Or that they should be the final guide to action. They result from conflicts in the mind -- between ideas that are not fully grasped and of which at least one is incorrect. Reason has to have final say, in some cases by a process of critical, contemplative thought in which you consider what it is you truly believe and what the implications of each idea are. By this means, you can come to realize that some things you previously thought were in fact mistaken. So you can correct mistakes, in effect cleaning up your act mentally.

But ultimately "heart vs. mind" conflicts will tend to recede in importance for a healthy person. This is because, as you learn to use reason as your guide, the process will become habitual and more natural. (Putting the process into operation will become habitual -- the contents of new ideas by definition will never be habitual -- you can't live life on autopilot! The creation and the validation of each new idea will always take work. But you will become accustomed to the work, and therefore better at it, with time.) When you realize that you are responsible as an adult for the actions that you take, and that those actions are guided by the ideas in your head, you will be more careful about swallowing whole the ideas that other people try to palm off on you. Eventually you will root out many or most of the mistaken ideas that you unconsciously accepted before, and you will be very careful about what new ideas you put into your head and eventually act on. You will be aware of whom you really are. You will, in short, be your own man. And you will develop a very active mind, constantly seeking out new evidence and thoughts, and using imagination to make new connections between things that you know. Then, when you do choose to act, it will be with 100% power, undiminished by self-doubts and inner conflicts.

That's what she was getting at, but much more eloquently than I could put it.

-Bill

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