RoR: Forum

G. Whiz

<i>...but a withdrawal of sanction was indeed appropriate...</i>

OK. You win!

Regi

(Edited by Reginald Firehammer on 4/06, 12:20pm)

Post 21

Tuesday, April 6, 2004 - 12:21pm

Greetings.

I would like to address some of the earlier comments in this forum (as I understand that I became somewhat overly diverted with respect to Mr. Firehammer, and my present line of discussion with him is going nowhere).

Mr. Perigo: Wearing my editor's hat, I regard it as unnecessarily & often clumsily wordy. A declaration of this sort should *sing*, not stomp.

(Mr. Johnson concurred with this later on and used it as the principal area in which he considers the statement to require revision.)

Mr. Stolyarov: I am open to suggestions of this sort; I encourage either Mr. Perigo or Mr. Johnson or anyone else willing to bring to my attention the wording of a particular resolve and offer alternatives, so that I can see precisely what a "signing" declaration would entail. As Mr. Johnson had stated, a resolution of this sort cannot be legitimately transformed into a sonnet, and, stylistically at least, it has to find a middle ground between extensive but "dry" propositions and poetic language. I can employ both, but, I ask, for this particular situation, to what degree?

Thank you for your comments here, Mr. Johnson, and your discourse with Mr. Geddes. I see no reason at present to infer the existence of alternate intelligent life forms (meaning the proposition is arbitrary), but, if they did exist and possess volitional consciousness, they would have no more rights than man. Man's rights are absolute; the rights to life, liberty, property, and pursuit of happiness are merely guarantees that no one will impede on one's attempts to attain these; they are not guarantees of acquisition. That a super-intelligent alien may be able to reason swifter or procure property more efficiently does not alter the nature of the negative obligations of others with regard to the alien (they are the same as with regard to the human).

I will continue this in the near future.

I am
G. Stolyarov II

Post 22

Tuesday, April 6, 2004 - 1:56pm

Let me now address points of Mr. Reed's critique and show why it is irrelevant.

The sources of my previously stated "disgust" with it are the first and last sentence, which are clearly ad hominem attacks. In the first, he compares me to a "drunken carpenter." In the last, he demeans my intellect and the value of my contributions to Objectivism because he has no further reasons to back up his statement.

The middle of the critique could have been prefaced as follows: "I, Mr. Reed, consider this statement to be incomplete, as it lacks mentions of the following points, which are essential as foundations of Objectivism," and it would not have elicited any displeasure from me, just disagreement.

Metaphysics: Existence is identity. - In other words, to exist is to have an identity, to be is to be something. I think that can be inferred from Resolve 1: "Three fundamental axioms are universal to this reality: existence, identity, and consciousness." Axioms are self-evident premises; they are the starting point for all further reasoning-- if existence and identity are axioms, then they must exist simultaneously and inextricably from one another. The Statement of Resolves is not intended to present the entirety of Rand's filosofy, verbatim. It contains enough to be read and understood swiftly and to imply other important aspects that men who actively integrate this statement into their minds will grasp.

Epistemology: Knowledge is identification. To be aware is to be aware of something that exists. All knowledge is derived from the evidence of the senses. All principles, including axioms, come from induction. Objectivity starts with measurement. Concepts are formed by omitting measurements from objectively identified concretes. A logical deduction is only known to be valid within the contextual scope of the facts of reality from which the deduction is drawn.-

If existence is axiomatic, then awareness must be awareness of existence. This once again follows from Resolve 1. As for the theory of measurement-omission, I have seen it questioned by Objectivists (even, if I may recall correctly, on SoloHQ), and, though I consider it quite masterfully devised and agree with its essence, my purpose here is to present premises that I consider absolutely common to all Objectivists. (Though most will embrace measurement-omission, if I included it, that would pose a question of where to draw the line; would I then also include my stance on abortion, which is far more controversial, or the "conventional" stance, which is, too disputed?)

Ethics: "Value" presupposes "to whom" and "for what". For a living entity, life is existence, and therefore a precondition of any other value. Man has specific rights, in the sense of pre-conditions of human life. All other values depend on securing the pre-conditions of life. The "Barometer Principle": happiness of the self, Man's only built-in goal, is a biologically evolved measuring instrument that measures one's accomplishment of life.-

Read Resolve 4: "The life of the individual is the ultimate value, and no value exists outside the context of the life of the individual who is the valuator. " That amply implies, "'to whom' and 'for what.'"

As for the "biologically evolved" Barometer Principle, I question its universality.

Consider this:

* Sexual intercourse (so I am led to believe) is fysically pleasurable.
* Yet, by gauging this pleasure merely short-term and engaging in careless intercourse outside marriage, one exposes oneself to a myriad of STDs.
* STDs are painful and often lethal in the long-term.

Here, the fysical barometer fails to accurately identify a deleterious activity from the onset, and cannot detect the presence of infection in an act that it identifies as pleasurable. Similar arguments can be made for drug consumption, and abuse of Twinkies :) .

Even if some SOLOists disagree with me here, the fact that the controversy exists is sufficient to exclude a formulation one way or the other from a statement supposed to represent the commonalities among Objectivists.

More is to come in the next post.

I am
G. Stolyarov II

Post 23

Tuesday, April 6, 2004 - 2:15pm

Continuing on with Mr. Reed's reported "omissions":

Politics: Cooperation and trade enhance one's life only as long as one's rights, in the sense of conditions appropriate to human life, are preserved. Therefore rational men engage in cooperation and trade only with those who respect their rights - and this is why legitimate limits on men's freedom of action in a social context correspond to respect for the rights of other men. Political rights are secondary to, and derived from, individual rights and Capitalism.-

Read Resolves 7, 8, and 9:

Resolve 7. The proper purpose of government is to protect individuals against the initiation of force. It is not the function of government to initiate any sort of force against its own citizens, nor to extort from its non-force-initiating citizens any action to which they would not have freely consented.

Resolve 8. Every individual possesses absolute and inviolable natural rights to life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, and property. These rights are not granted by any external agency, but rather are an attribute inherent to beings of volitional consciousness. These rights are negative obligations upon others, only. They require that others abstain from depriving an individual of his pursuits and property, not that they furnish said individual with any concrete gains.

Resolve 9. Any intervention of the government in the economic sfere is immoral and intolerable. A consistent advocacy of liberty and individual rights calls for complete, unadulterated laissez-faire capitalism.

Additionally, on cooperation and it tie to value-trading:

Resolve 14. As self-interested entities, we, Objectivists, hold it of value that the settings surrounding us be as thoroughly infused with the above principles as is within our capacity to bring about. It is in our interests to propagate said ideas and, at the very least, not to impede their propagation. For sake of our own self-interest, we promise to abstain from claiming any others who propagate the above principles to be worthless, or otherwise insult those individuals in a manner that absolutely denies the legitimacy of their contributions to the ideological arena.

This is an affirmation that those who have values to contribute to the spread of Reason will at least be recognized as having those values (i.e. not being absolutely worthless); as for cooperation, it is advantageous, but voluntary, and Resolve 13 expresses the idea of seeking to cooperate with others in the context of persuading them to change their ways in the event that their course of action does not meet the highest moral standards.

Aesthetics: The function of Art is to provide Man with a concrete representation of his metaphysical value judgements, and thus to make it possible for Man to experience his senses, emotions, knowledge and judgement as an integrated whole.-

Read Resolve 12:

Resolve 12. Works of art are reflections of the metafysical and ethical premises held by their authors. The purpose of a rational esthetics is to convey those impressions and values that are in accord with a universe where man can and should exist as a free, prosperous, active entity.

Some of Mr. Reed's alleged "omissions" are precisely what is mentioned in the Resolves, only not using his words, verbatim. Having reviewed my explication of the above, I gather than Mr. Reed has likely either not read the Statement or skimmed through it superficially, only obtaining enough "impressions" to try to disparage me once again.

This is not the first time Mr. Reed has done this in the event of a mere disagreement. I am apparently not only a drunken carpenter, but a neo-Stalin as well. See http://solohq.com/Forum/ArticleDiscussions/0310_1.shtml.

I am
G. Stolyarov II

Post 24

Tuesday, June 8, 2004 - 1:46pm

Mr Stolyarov:

"I am glad that we agree on the basic premises within this statement and see the need to actively evaluate and develop Rand's ideas. But, though you wish to undertake this extrapolation, you still seem to view "Objectivism" per se as a "closed system."..."

I respond:

It is. Objectivism is Ayn Rand's philosophy. The core of it is hers and immutable, unrelated to whether you or I or anyone agrees or disagrees with any portion of it. It is what it is. She left plenty of room for finer applications and application of the philosophy to the rest of the world. So while a particular Objectivist may write a paper on some aspect of reality not specifically or exhaustively defined by Rand, it may be a proper Objectivist application of ideas, or a proper Objectivist perspective on an issue, but it then does not become part of the underlying philosophy.

Sense of Life Objectivism takes the core and builds upon it. It tips its hat to Objectivism, but does not irationally bow down to every word that issued from Rand's mouth. That's my understanding, anyway. By all means, illuminate me if I am incorrect. I would appreciate it.

Post 25

Tuesday, June 8, 2004 - 5:43pm

Scott,

You wrote:

It is. Objectivism is Ayn Rand's philosophy. The core of it is hers and immutable, unrelated to whether you or I or anyone agrees or disagrees with any portion of it. It is what it is.

I have always thought of "Objectivism" as analogous to "Aristotelianism." That is, as a school of thought for people sharing the same fundamental philosophical ideas and building on them, the way that Aquinas and Bacon built on Aristotle's own work.

If you want to define Objectivism as a static set of ideas (or as a static set of texts) then what name do you propose for the resulting school of thought, to distinguish its practitioners from Kantians, Hegelians, Utilitarians, etc? This question is particularly acute, I think, because Rand's most fundamental achievements lay in philosophical method. Presumably, other thinkers mastering and utilizing her mature methods should now procede to soar past Rand herself as well as their own contemporaries from other schools. They should be racking up new insight upon amazing new insight, creating a flourishing school. What will this movement be called?

Notice how little emphasis has been placed on this simple question in all the internet debates on the subject and in all the tracts that have issued from ARI.

To my way of thinking, that is a much more interesting question than what to call Rand's ideas (why not just call them "Rand's ideas"?) and that movement a much more fitting object to signify by the term "Objectivism." I believe that to call the dynamic school "Objectivist" is also completely in keeping with Rand's own stated wish.

The idea that the word "Objectivism" should apply merely to the static set of its founder's ideas, and have no other meaning, is a corruption due to Peikoff. Not wishing to lose his mentor's intellectual legacy, but unable to understand it fully himself, he focused all of his care and attention not on creativity, but on homogeneity. He saw his job not as a composer, putting new notes on paper, but as a kind of choirmaster, dedicated to making sure that every boy in the choir was turned to the same page in the songbook, singing the same song. To enshrine his definition as the sole meaning of the word "Objectivism" comes near to saying that the Objectivist intellectual revolution died in 1982 on the same day as Ayn Rand. It is akin to the Bolsheviks' placement of the embalmed body of their founder Lenin in a mausoleum on Red Square to stand as the symbol of their World Revolution. The Peikoffian understanding of the word "Objectivism" represents the attempted embalming of Ayn Rand's body of thought.

(The harshness of wording in that last paragraph is solely to express my disgust for Peikoff, not in any way to react to your post or anything else in this thread.)

Objectivism does mean something definite in philosophy, but as more people become more familiar with it, it will become increasingly obvious who is and who isn't an Objectivist without the need to draw up a finite, all-inclusive list of beliefs to serve as a litmus test. The definition will be a definition by essentials.

An earlier comment of mine on this subject is on Diana Hsieh's Noodlefood website. Her original post is at http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog/2004/04/questions-and-comments-on-closed.html. My main comment to it can be found by scrolling down to April 26 and finding the longer of my two entries that day.

-Bill

Post 26

Tuesday, June 8, 2004 - 8:54pm

William - you wrote:

" ... Rand's most fundamental achievements�lay in�philosophical method.� Presumably, other thinkers mastering and utilizing her mature methods should now procede to soar past Rand herself as well as their own contemporaries�from other schools.� They should be racking up new insight upon amazing new insight, creating a flourishing�school.� What will this�movement be called?"

Based on the movement's history to date, I would reply: "A miracle."

Linz

Post 27

Wednesday, June 9, 2004 - 5:27am

Regarding what stands for "Objectivism", although it would be great to focus on method and build on core ideas, it was Rand's words that designated it as everything she put out and personally claimed was her position (like Peikoff's course or whatever), wasn't it? It really could not be separated into essentials and inessentials, but must encompass everything ~she~ put out under ~her~ Objectivism (and agreed was hers), including her mistakes. Of course there's nothing that can be done with a situation like that, and when Peikoff says that the only Objectivist is Rand, we all get confused as to how we can make it a philosophical movement. But I think I'd have to give it to her---it was her system, and if her paranoia made her want to freeze it into just her perspective with no flexibility with even inessentials, perhaps some of the ARI's insanities were what were called for. I don't care about copyright laws in this sense, but I do think we may be taking something that is not ours if we pretend that there is some flexibility. I really do think we need another name, because I hate saying I am not an Objectivist and consider the ARI immoral, yet still feeling as though I agree with Rand ~essentially~. 'Objectivism' will never become a leading paradigm (if I am right in calling it merely hers), but movements like those that SOLO represents as well as TOC, and the academic scholarship in JARS and the like, should inevitably make a philosophy based on what stands for the methods and essentials of Objectivism (even if it is the entire philosophy as a whole, just with the flexibility that is NECESSARY to keep challenging and growing with any philosophical movements) a revolutionary paradigm--and one that may never die (because it is right! :) ).

Another idea I have regarding this subject: I really don't know how else we can all come to agreements to the ~conclusions themselves~ other than through the use of principles like G.S. listed, because really, since the system is all tied up and integrated (as it should be), we cannot go through all of the implications, and the vantage point doesn't have to be so much from what covers all of the ground, but may also consider what comes near the boundaries where many get close to disagreeing, I would think. Regardless, this is a REALLY difficult task, and I think that it is too demanding. Perhaps it would be easier to just focus on our using the same rational methods, and coming to the same ~essential~ conclusions. It gives the necessary room to come to different conclusions, as it is focused more on the thinking than the results, and its damn easier to do! I think there are people here more capable of me at doing that, so I won't even try, not now. :-P

Also, I love the 'filosofy' way of going, because although it sometimes makes me imagine that Daffy Duck is talking, it seems to add some sort of charisma or something to the words. Keep it up, G.S.!

-Dominic

Post 28

Friday, June 11, 2004 - 9:51pm

Linz,

Well, I meant "soar past" in the sense of standing on the shoulders of a giant, rather than surpassing her in ability. Your reply is very witty and apt.

I did phrase that paragraph with a certain amount of sour irony in mind, owing to my frustration with the whole cultural legacy of ARI and NBI, and with Rand's own foibles in dealing with people and in launching a movement. I think these have helped to stymie creativity in the field for decades.

But in all fairness to Rand, her system of thought is very far from that of the people we deal with in everyday life and from what we (most of us) were brought up on. That makes it is enormously difficult for most people to develop an integrated understanding of it all the way down. Such a level of understanding is, of course, almost a prerequisite for making original contributions.

My hopes are placed on the new generation. I think they will fare better. I am more optimistic with each passing year, especially with the explosion of book titles! And also with the web culture developing around sites like this one.

I'm very much looking forward to meeting you in person in Vancouver.

-Bill

Post 29

Wednesday, June 16, 2004 - 12:30pm

Greetings.

Dominic, thank you for your comments. My impression of you is that of an original thinker who does not hesitate to propose a "middle path" or his own creative solution where he sees one. The idea of the name "Objectivism" as designating a dead filosofy has already been brought up by one, Eddie Wood, who argued that, due to the closed-system elitism of the Peikoff faction, there is essentially no room for Objectivism to expand into a viable cultural force under that name, given that those who name themselves adherents of a filosofy cannot quite get over a ludicrous schism. (Peikoff excommunicated Kelley for speaking to a libertarian forum; if he had known me, I would not only be excommunicated, but hanged, quartered, burned at the stake, eaten, and my bones dissolved in acid with the acid evaporated under extremely hot conditions. :) ) I disagreed with Mr. Wood's conclusion at the time, though I very much saw the legitimacy of his analysis of the situation. The schism needs to be transcended. This Statement was meant for such a purpose-- Objectivists could voluntarily consent to recognizing certain fundamental principles and judge adherence to the filosofy by adherence to these principles. This would encompass everyone from Peikoff (the strict orthodox Objectivist) at one end to myself (the tolerant intellectual exploration and innovation-oriented Objectivist) at the other and even permit the open/closed system debate to continue civilly, without anyone being disparaged or alienated.

Mr. Nevin, I also find myself greatly in agreement with your comments. I still see value in some of the activities and intellectual contributions of Peikoff and the ARI, but the closed-system mindset may well be their fatal flaw if it is not remedied soon enough. Protracted exposure to the Objectivist movement's status quo continues to convince me that Kelley was right to a greater degree than I could have initially foreseen. I would like to offer thanks to you to earlier communications between us that gave me some of the evidence necessary to form this conclusion.

Whether the name "Objectivism" is still viable remains to be seen. The next year or two in the history of the movement should reveal a definitive answer. If a new name is necessary, it will need to be something that could never possibly undertake a "closed-system" designation.

By the way, the Statement is due to be translated into German for examination by a growing group of Objectivists who speak that language. I will post updates here concerning this development as it unfolds.

I am
G. Stolyarov II

Post 30

Wednesday, June 16, 2004 - 3:25pm

Thank you for your kind words, G. Stolyarov II. I greatly appreciate them. The issues that you talked about in your last post, and of course your reasons for the Objectivist Statement of Resolves, really center around the issues I've been dealing with the last month or so. I have to go right now, but please watch your back, because none of us want to see you "hanged, quartered, burned at the stake, eaten, and my bones dissolved in acid with the acid evaporated under extremely hot conditions!" LOL...
-Dominic

Post 31

Monday, June 21, 2004 - 11:50am