RoR: Forum

James,

I called it vicious.

Post 21

Friday, October 14, 2005 - 6:52pm

Robert-

James,

I called it vicious.

When we agree, we agree. Sanction for calling this just what it is. Even as viciousness, I might at least respect it if it had any intelligence about it.

Post 22

Friday, October 14, 2005 - 7:29pm

Yes, you guys are correct. This parody is a parody of another vicious parody -- Jeff Walker's "The Ayn Rand Cult". It is obvious that Mr. Prescott has read and really enjoyed this one and thus decided to use it as an outline for his blog posting. Many interesting and outragous things can be said about the Objectivist movement but Walker's book is so over the top that even the biggest critics of Rand and Objectivism who have any intellectual ability would likely write the whole thing off as a silly and mean spirited parody.

Prescott, in some discussions I've had with him seems to be a big fan of Scott Ryan, the author of a book critiquing Objectivism. Ryan is in turn one of the pettiest and hardest working Rand bashers on the internet. For example, he regularly goes out of his way to make sure his reviews of her books on Amazon.com are always at the very top of the review lists by regularly re editing them. In any event, Prescott didn't just decide to drop Objectivism, it looks as though he still has heavy emotional ties to the point where he feels to need to launch silly ad hominem attacks.

- Jason

(Edited by Jason Quintana on 10/14, 7:32pm)

Post 23

Friday, October 14, 2005 - 7:52pm

Regarding Scott Ryan, I relied heavily on him for my argument against Rand's rationalizing. It was pointed out to me that what Ryan has done is to attack the weakest interpretations of Rand's theories. In light of Valiant's book, I'm inclined to agree with this a bit more.

Post 24

Saturday, October 15, 2005 - 10:11am

I've got Ryan's book and it's bunk. One day, I plan to formally trash the sucker right here on SOLOHQ.

Ed

Post 25

Saturday, October 15, 2005 - 10:54am

Ed, I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on Ryan's book. I've always intended to read it myself at some point. Ryan strikes me as very well read and he is a follower of a philosopher whom I have a great deal of respect for -- Brand Blanshard so I have always assumed that his critique is at least competant considering his major influence. If it isn't though I will gladly skip it. The problem with Ryan of course is not that he is critical of Objectivism, but that spends a strange amount of time and effort attempting to tarnish Rand's legacy with petty smear attacks (much like Prescott) I recall him at one point making efforts to shorten the Rand article on Wikipedia because in his opinion she wasn't important enough to have an entry that long. If Rand's ideas are so silly and unimportant why spend so much time concerning yourself with them?

- Jason

Post 26

Saturday, October 15, 2005 - 2:52pm

Ryan does expend considerable energy trashing Rand, and it takes forever for him to get around to discussing his points.

Post 27

Saturday, October 15, 2005 - 7:26pm

Jason,

Ryan, the panentheist (God is in ALL things!) collectivist, just goes on and on -- on a tirade against Rand. Sometimes he gets things straight, but much of the time his argument plainly -- ie. transparently -- a fuming frenzy of fallacious folly.

For example, he attempts to advance a case that Rand is a nominalist. The criticisms he uses have already been blasted by me in an old SOLOHQ thread I created: here

Somebody (and I don't yet know who) poisoned 'conceptualism' after Abelard's introduction of it -- while keeping the name: conceptualism. When I read Abelard's words, he seems right on to me -- but all future work on conceptualism seems off. Differentiating post-Abelardian conceptualism from Intentional Conceptualism was hard for me, and this work could use much more polishing than I had put into it.

Anyway, here is a sample from Ryan's book (p 39):

He quotes Rand:
===================
When we refer to three persons as "man," what do we designate by that term? The three persons are three individuals who differ in every particular aspect and may not possess a single identical characteristic (not even their fingerprints. ...
===================

Now, notice the apparent contradiction in her words -- and how to be fair-minded and level-headed in a proper interpretation of them.

"The three persons are three individuals who differ in every particular aspect ... "

Just because folks can differ in particular aspects DOES NOT imply that folks differ in general aspects. Also, Ryan ignores the internal contradiction of calling the three entities PERSONS -- which ALREADY logically includes a differentiated category of entities (our potential rationality differentiates us from other things).

Now that we've seen a fair-minded way to look at Rand's words -- let's see Ryan. He follows up on this Rand quote with an unfair & unbalanced view:

================
She clearly intends to offer a theory of "concept-formation" (ie. abstraction) that does not depend on two entities' common possession of any identical attributes ("particular respect[s]" or "characteristics").
================

Ryan is stuck in what I call the Nominalism-Ontological Realism dichotomy (a false dichotomy).

Ed

Post 28

Sunday, October 16, 2005 - 6:27pm