Objectivism -- Which areas still need work?

First off all, for the purposes of this discussion I will assume that "Objectivism" is an "open system" that is subject to correction and open for clarification and expansion but cannot not deviate in any very important way from Rand's own key positions.  My main question is which areas of "Objectivism" still need work? 

I am also looking for examples of writings that I may not be aware of that have been successful in expanding the scope of "Objectivism" or have succeeded in plugging up weak spots.   I am specifically looking for responses only from people who consider themselves to be veteran Objectivists.  This is not meant to be a dissent thread.

So what needs work?  Epistemology would seem to be the first area of need.  I know that David Kelley wrote The Evidence of the Senses but has anyone else done extensive work in this area?   And where are the continued trouble spots?

Binswanger and Smith have written their on different issues pertaining to Objectivist ethics, The Biological Basis for Teleological Concepts and Viable Values -- both of which I have yet to read.    Many of Branden's works expand upon Randian ethics and focus upon personal application.  Machan and some others (whom I have not read) have also done work here.  Ethics seems to be Objectivism's strong point.

In Politics we also have a good deal of good work by authors arguing for pure Capitalism -- specifically by those who have taken Austrian Economics and married it to Objectivist ethics and roughly to Objectivst Epistemology.  By far the best example here is George Reisman's Capitalism though there are examples of this approach on a smaller scale by other authors.  There is also the recent Schwartz book on foreign policy that I suspect I will find very serious problems with if I ever get around to reading it based upon summaries that I have read and based upon the ARI's approach to foreign policy and warfare.   

Esthetics also seems to be an area that requires expansion.  I've never really looked, has anyone attempted to build upon Rand's ideas here?

For a summary of Objectivism Peikoff has done a fairly good job with Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand but I would like to see someone write what amounts to a philosophical treatise that uses a scholarly approach to attempt a more broad and thorough integration (I REALLY wish that Ayn Rand would have done this herself) and which does not presuppose a closed system mentality.   

 - Jason 

(Edited by Jason Quintana on 8/20, 4:52am)

Jason,

Like Adam, I think of Objectivism as a system of ideas that has already become part of the history of philosophy.   Additions or corrections to that system of ideas will not be Objectivist; they will be something-else-ist.  Besides, if coming up with a better theory requires us to deviate from some claim that Rand made, why should we hesitate to deviate?  We ought to be placing allegiance to the facts above allegiance to some thinker or school of thought.

I agree with Adam's list of issues... and, as long as the above caveat is kept in mind, I agree with Jim's as well. Rand herself admitted that she needed, and lacked, a philosophy of science.  She also admitted that she needed, and lacked, a philosophy of law.

You mentioned The Evidence of the Senses. Even though Kelley's book develops the hints about perception that Peikoff gave in some of his lectures--with great breadth and depth, working in the ideas of James Gibson--it has fallen down the memory hole as far as the Ayn Rand Institute crowd is concerned.   Yet they have come up with nothing to replace it, let alone surpass it.

A source of trouble, in my opinion, is Rand, Peikoff, Kelley (and Gibson's) insistence that perception must be error-free.  In The Evidence of the Senses, perception is claimed to be error-free.  Anything that looks like a mistake is said to be due to "perceptual judgment."

To the list of epistemological issues, I would also add questions about skill, or “implicit knowledge.” Rand talked about skill and emphasized its importance, but kept it out of her formal epistemology, and remained uncomfortable with anything that we human beings might know without knowing that we know it. She never stopped putting scare-quotes around “instinct,” “just knowing,” “stomach feeling” (a phrase that shows up in her journals, as quoted in Valliant's book), and so on.

In parallel, to the list of ethical issues I would add questions about prudence or practical wisdom or practical intelligence. Real live moral decision making requires an assessment of the good thing or the right thing or the best thing to do in a particular context. Aristotle considered practical wisdom a virtue.  He insisted on the skilled element, denying that the assessment of contextually appropriate action could be reduced to a cookbook procedure. The other ancient Greek schools also considered practical wisdom to be a virtue. But Rand kept practical wisdom out of the Objectivist ethics.

The Virtue of Prudence, by Doug Den Uyl, is well worth reading on this subject.  It remains completely unknown to most Randians.

The doctrine of the “premoral choice to live” (Peikoff's phrase, but the idea comes straight out of Atlas Shrugged) is a source of trouble for Objectivism because we human beings don't often make a conscious choice to live—and we essentially never make such a choice in advance of all of our moral choices.

Meanwhile, you're of course right that everything that Nathaniel Branden has written about self-esteem is at least indirectly about ethics.

On rights and their relation to the ethical sphere, there is a slew of publications by Tibor Machan, by Eric Mack, and by Doug Den Uyl and Doug Rasmussen. (The Dougs' new book, Norms of Liberty, is due out soon.)

On esthetics, I have a substantially higher opinion of Michelle Kamhi and Lou Torres's work than Adam does (despite my disagreements with K and T over the esthetics of music). There is also work by Roger Bissell, Stephen Cox, Kirsti Minsaas, and Mimi Gladstein that is worth reading.

You mentioned Harry Binswanger's book on teleological concepts.  The issues that Binswanger is tackling are extremely important--he's trying to account for the emergence of norms--but the book disappointed me, in surprising ways.   If you strip away the bristly rhetoric and the devaluation of work that non-Randians might have done on the subject, you'll find Binswanger taking the exact same position as several analytic philosophers.  And it is vulnerable to the same basic objection: It's important to explain how lions came to have hearts, through the course of evolution.  But that isn't the same as explaining what this heart does for this lion.

Robert Campbell