| | Laurie, I agree - this is an important insight. I like to see it discussed.
Dr. Sciabarra's work, The Russian Radical talks about Rand's style of thinking being strongly oriented towards context, and 'layers' (with the layers being like the levels of abstraction, and some of then having a specific name, like 'ethics' or 'epistemology'). Every proposition has these dimensions present: context and multiple layers. (only one layer may be explicit, but it has implied layers in addition) A sensible thought could no more exist without them the a table could exist in the real world without length or mass.
Look at this quote of Ayn Rand's that Manfred brought to our attention with his recent article: ""If one upholds freedom, one must uphold man's individual rights; if one upholds man's individual rights, one must uphold his right to his own life, to his own liberty, to the pursuit of his own happiness - which means: one must uphold a political system that guarantees and protects these rights - which means: the politico-economic system of capitalism." (From "Conservatism: An Obituary", by Ayn Rand)
She starts at the metaphysics level and, has at times, talked about the conditions of existence required for man's life (and at that level, it is so, with or without society) and then she has moved from there to the level of ethics as she discussed individual rights. There is a bridge that forms where human natures' required conditions of existence can be extended into rights. Sometimes thought seems like a fractal, where one can zoom the 'microscope' in closer and whole new 'shore lines' appear, or back it off see the whole made of those finer details.
There are some basic understandings that arise from our examination of the fact that all knowledge is hierarchical. Koestler talks about the two-faced nature of all things biological - that, for example, a cell can be viewed as a whole made of parts, or as a part that makes up a larger whole - this is a part of how organic hierarchies are structured. It gives us some interesting things to look at - like teleological considerations where each unit has a 'self-interest' that does not conflict with the 'self-interest' of that to which it belongs. The stolen fallacy concept is a test of the integrity that must exist in the relationship of a part to the whole it belongs.
There is so much that should be looked at. There are some things only 'exist' as a relationship between things, and the things may be physical existents, and their interactions are real, but that relationship, isolated as such, only exists as a concept. Zooming in closer, that interaction of the units occur at an interfaces, and it is the the physical representation of relationships. Thoughts have relationships to one another and there is a measure of the validity of that relationship that is 'context.'
There are so many areas yet unexplored in the structure of knowledge. I hope these very fuzzy and incomplete thoughts don't put people off.
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I'd go so far as to say that recognition of the invalidity of the stolen concept is Objectivism in its essence. Rand's ethics depends upon it - her identification of the concept of value depending upon the concept of life is an example. Attempts to deny her axiomatic concepts based upon more derivative ideas such as doubt are another example of the fallacy. Almost every denial of one of Rand's formulations is based upon the stolen concept. 
