August 30, 2021
The first lecture I attended concerned Ayn Rand’s view of the concept of causality. To be honest, I haven’t thought too much about this. When I look at the discussion of causality found in Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, I don’t find anything there I disagree with. I also don’t know enough about what the more “mainstream” view is on causality to say what the conflict is with Objectivism. The lecturer noted that most academic philosophers won’t engage, in any serious way, with Objectivists, so it’s difficult to even have a good discussion with them on that, or any subject. He presented what he thought the “mainstream” position was on causality, which he called “eventism” (a term he said he coined.). He then proceeded to compare and contrast that with the Randian position. Since I don’t have a very good understanding on this issue, I took notes, but they were not very good. It was like taking a class on Calculus without having taken the classes on Geometry and Algebra first.
I think that the “mainstream position” may best be exemplified by David Hume. (Although, I am not even sure of that.) At some point in the future, I’d like to write up an essay comparing and contrasting Rand’s view on causality with that of Hume. I started reading some of David Hume’s “Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding” to that end.
One thing that did come up at a couple of points, both in the lecture, and also in the Q&A, was the question of reconciling the concept of “free will”, or the volitional aspects of the human mind, with the concept of causality. Someone in the Q&A even used the very example I’ve used before in another blog entry: “If the human brain consists of nothing but atoms, and atoms are all predictably causal, then how can people be said to have ‘free will’?” Here was my blog response to that: http://deancook.net/2015/01/15/free-will-and-determinism/ I would also add that this argument is probably an example of the fallacy of composition. It’s no different than saying water is nothing but hydrogen and oxygen, so it should behave the same as hydrogen and oxygen -which it does not. (Expose pure oxygen to a flame, or pure hydrogen, and see what happens. Just make sure you are far away when you do it.)
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The next lecture I have in my notes concerns Ayn Rand’s view on atheism. (It was titled “Ayn Rand’s Intransigent Atheism”) This is a reference to what Ayn Rand said on the subject. She was responding to a Congressman from Texas, Bruce Alger, when she said this in a letter to him in 1963. I could only find part of the letter online, but it is in “The Letters of Ayn Rand”, which I remember reading in 1998.
According to the Texas State Historical Association, Alger was a Republican Congressman from Dallas. (How Dallas has changed!) https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/alger-bruce-reynolds. When Alger ran and won in 1954, he was the only Republican from the Texas delegation in Congress. (At that time, the South was almost entirely Democratic, as a sort of “historical relic” of the Civil War and Reconstruction. They were nothing like the modern Democratic Party.)
In 1960, when Johnson made a campaign stop in Dallas while running for vice president on the ticket with John F. Kennedy, Alger, carrying a sign that read “LBJ Sold Out to Yankee Socialists,” led a group of protestors who insulted Johnson and spat in the direction of his wife Lady Bird. https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/alger-bruce-reynolds
Sounds like my kind of man -on most issues. Unfortunately, like most of the right wing today, he was also a religious dogmatist. His letter to Miss Rand sounds like it was basically an attempt to convince her that religion was the fundamental basis of America and the Constitution. Miss Rand’s letter was a rebuttal, which she premised by saying “I agree with a large part of your political position and with many of the bills you introduced…I know and appreciate your voting record.”
During the course of Miss Rand’s letter, she said something like: “I am an intransigent atheist, but not a militant one.”
The lecturer attempted to provide the context for what Miss Rand meant here. He noted that the expression “militant atheist” likely originated with Lenin and the Soviets, who the lecturer said spoke of “militant atheism”. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/9194/pdf The Soviet “League of Militant Atheists” initiated physical force to attempt to disestablish religion:
“The ‘Godless Five-Year Plan,’ launched in 1928, gave local cells of the anti-religious organization, League of Militant Atheists, new tools to disestablish religion. Churches were closed and stripped of their property, as well as any educational or welfare activities that went beyond simple liturgy. Leaders of the church were imprisoned and sometimes executed, on the grounds of being anti-revolution.” https://www.history.com/news/joseph-stalin-religion-atheism-ussr
I’m guessing that Congressman Alger probably said something in his letter along the lines of: “Atheists will try to force Christians not to be Christian with the power of the state, or by the use of physical force or violence.” Miss Rand was then responding that she was not “militant”, by which I suspect she meant she did not believe in the initiation of physical force, even if it was aimed at religion. Although she considered religion to be bad for the individual, and bad for mankind, her position would be that you cannot force someone to be rational. Each individual must choose rationality for themselves, according to Miss Rand. All atheists can try to do is persuade people with the spoken and written word:
“Since knowledge, thinking, and rational action are properties of the individual, since the choice to exercise his rational faculty or not depends on the individual, man’s survival requires that those who think be free of the interference of those who don’t.” http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/freedom.html
The speaker said that when Miss Rand said she was an “intransigent” atheist, what she meant was that she refused to speak with anyone on any basis but reason. He then compared and contrasted Miss Rand’s view on atheism with that of the “New Atheists”, like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins. (I don’t have in my notes what he meant on this, or how he thought they are different from Rand.) The speaker also referenced a “fireside chat” Dennis Prager had with someone who is in the “orbit of Objectivism”, which I had not seen. I went and looked it up, and found it here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vReb-quiAsY. (It’s over an hour long, so I doubt I’ll sit down and watch it, because I probably wouldn’t learn much new.) I am not sure if the lecturer at OCON agreed what was said in this YouTube video or not.
The lecturer then went over what Ayn Rand’s journals say about why she became an atheist at 13: (1) Theism is rationally untenable; and (2) it is degrading to man because it makes human beings imperfect by nature. It was the lecturer’s position that most of Ayn Rand’s later, adult, writings on religion relate back to these two things. I agree that these two themes can be found throughout her writings on religion:
“It has often been noted that a proof of God would be fatal to religion: a God susceptible of proof would have to be finite and limited; He would be one entity among others within the universe, not a mystic omnipotence transcending science and reality. What nourishes the spirit of religion is not proof, but faith, i.e., the undercutting of man’s mind.” (Leonard Peikoff, “Maybe You’re Wrong”, The Objectivist Forum, April 1981. http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/religion.html)
“What is the nature of the guilt that your teachers call [man’s] Original Sin? What are the evils man acquired when he fell from a state they consider perfection? Their myth declares that he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge—he acquired a mind and became a rational being…. Man’s fall, according to your teachers, was that he gained the virtues required to live. These virtues, by their standard, are his Sin. His evil, they charge, is that he’s man. His guilt, they charge, is that he lives.” (Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand, http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/religion.html )
The lecturer also contrasted Rand with Richard Dawkins. He noted that in “The God Hypothesis”, Dawkins says that the existence of god just has a “very low probability”. (I haven’t read this, so I don’t know if this is an accurate portrayal of Dawkin’s position.) The lecturer said that Rand wouldn’t put it this way. She would say the “god hypothesis” isn’t even a hypothesis. For instance, there is a hypothesis that there is life on Mars, which has evidence one way or the other. I don’t have it in my notes, but I think Rand would say that the concept of god, as presented, isn’t even capable of proof or refutation. A notion not capable of at least being refuted isn’t really a “hypothesis” at all. Also, Rand, and Peikoff, would note that the concept of god is something that is “arbitrary”, something that is neither true nor false, because there is no evidence presented for it by those making the assertion. Theists assert that such proof is neither necessary nor desirable, because it is a matter of faith. http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/arbitrary.html
The lecturer went over what is called the “cosmological argument” for god, which I think he said usually rests on the idea that existence itself, requires an explanation. It is exemplified by questions like “If god doesn’t exist, then who created the universe?” The Randian position is that the universe, that is the sum total of all existence, merely is. Existence, as such, can neither go into or out of existence. http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/universe.html
The lecturer then discussed some other aspects of the cosmological argument for god that I didn’t quite catch. But, I think he was basically saying they were taking certain ideas out of context, such as “consciousness”, “creation” and “nothing”. For Rand, “consciousness” is that which perceives that which exists, so to speak of a consciousness that perceived “nothing”, as religionists claim god did before he created the universe, is to speak of something that could not be a consciousness. To speak of “creation” for Rand is to speak of a rearranging of material elements human beings find in nature. For instance, we create a house by chopping down trees. We rearrange the wood in trees into the form of something that can protect us from the elements. So, to speak of “creating” the universe makes no sense. For Rand, “nothing” is always a sort of “relational concept”, or “contextual concept”. For instance, if someone says: “What do you have in your pocket?” and you say: “Nothing.” What you mean is you don’t have keys in your pocket, or a wallet, or any other thing of significance to your life. You don’t mean that there is some sort of “thing of non-existence” in your pocket. http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/zero,_reification_of.html. The example the lecturer gave on this last point was the concept of “uncle”. You cannot be an “uncle” without nieces and nephews. It is a relational concept to other people.
In the Q&A, I have that there was discussion about “meaning” and “purpose” in religion. I don’t remember what the question and answer were, exactly. But, I think this is a big part of the appeal of religion for the good people who are religious. (As opposed to the religionists who are power-lusters and/or hate reason.) There was also a question about how to deal with theists, but I don’t have any notes on what the lecturer’s response was.
Overall, I could have “taken or left” the lecture on atheism. I’m pretty familiar with the arguments, and counterarguments, and I’m confident that atheism, as presented by Ayn Rand and Leonard Peikoff, is correct.
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The next lecture I attended that day involved a discussion of the Montessori Method, but applied to personal growth for adults, rather than explicitly for education of children. I am not overly familiar with the details of the Montessori Method, although my parents sent me to a Montessori school from about age 4 to 6. I have no children of my own, but I have heard enough good things about it that I’d want to send children to a Montessori school, if I had any.
According to the lecturer, Maria Montessori had the following guiding principles when it came to educating children: (1) A vision of the human potential; (2) A method for nurturing this potential. In practice the lecturer said the teacher must be on the lookout for signs of “calm focus” in the child, even if infrequent. This should be encouraged. For instance, a child poking at a bug, or trying to get into a chair. She said that the furniture and other items in the Montessori school should be “child sized” to allow children to manipulate them in accordance with their physical and mental capabilities. It is also important to create a model of the larger world: a world that is ordered and changeable through the child’s rational efforts. (Hence the tiny tables and chairs.) Regarding discipline, I got the impression that the child should be left alone when they are engaged in “calm focus” and “purposeful action”. The educator should only intervene if the child “misbehaves”, which I assume means things like acting physically aggressive towards other children, or engaging in some sort of destructive activity towards property. (Although that is my own interpretation. I really haven’t studied this much.)
I do think that this sounds like the best way to educate children. I think another aspect of the Montessori method is having “learning stations” set up for children to use when they want to, but they are pretty much free to learn at their own pace. I guess the counterargument would be that if you don’t ever make a kid sit down and actually learn, for instance, simple arithmetic, he might never do so. I would guess the Montessori people have a rebuttal to this, but I don’t know what it is. Overall, though, I think I’d rather let a child learn as they want to, rather than forcing it. They can learn arithmetic, or whatever, when they decide it is useful for their life.
At any rate, the lecturer then went on to discuss how the Montessori method might be helpful for adults. (The task of “self-parenting” that all adults must do.) She discussed various principles for achieving the “vision of our own potential”. We are capable of achieving happiness through independent rational work, and are therefore worthy of reverence. The method for achieving that potential, according to the lecturer, was to practice “rigorous self-observation” and “loving self guidance”. (These were terms she used in describing the Montessori method for education of children, I think.)
The lecturer then asked the audience to use this method in practice, in our own heads. She said we should think of a current situation on which we could use some “self-parenting”. For me, I chose social situations, and meeting new people. I tend to be fairly taciturn around new people, especially large groups of people. (I’m sure this comes from a lifetime of habits and attitudes, -some good, and some bad.) I have down in my notes that I have difficulty coming up with “icebreakers” for new people. Now, I usually try to have a repertoire of “small talk” programmed into my subconscious that I can draw on. This would be things like the weather outside, or “common questions” like “Where are you from?” or “What do you do for a living?” This way, I can try to start up a conversation with someone based on topics that almost everyone will have some sort of response to. (As opposed to starting off with: “What is your view of quantum mechanics, and its implications for free will?”, which are questions most people haven’t even thought to ask.) The lecturer then said you should ask yourself what emotions you are usually feeling in this situation? For me, it is usually some degree of anxiety, especially in large groups. But, also, it tends to be some level of “sense of futility”, that no one in this group of people will be worth my time, so: “Why bother?”.
After you’ve analyzed your emotional response, you are supposed to consider the “content of the value judgment” you are making, and what “underlying core premises” you are operating from. For me, the sense of anxiety probably comes from a fear of being an outcast, or a sort of visceral fear of violence or death at the hands of the “tribe” or “mob”. Most of us deal from an early age with groups of bullies in public schools, so this is likely an “echo” from my childhood fears. Additionally, I certainly don’t like feeling lonely. Sometimes, that feeling cannot be avoided. If a group of people are sufficiently irrational, then it is preferable to be alone than to be with that group. If an inner-city teenager’s only choice is to be alone or join a gang, then being alone is preferable. That “tribal impulse” is probably an impulse inherent in the human mind that must be resisted at times. This is part of the reason people can be susceptible to cults. They have an irrational desire to belong, that overrides their desire to live. (See, for instance, what happened at Jonestown in 1978. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/mass-suicide-at-jonestown )
The other feeling I tend to have when amongst large groups of people is the feeling of “futility”. This likely stems from going for long periods of time without finding people with whom I share enough in common to really “connect” with them on anything but a superficial level. You can master “small talk”, but if that is all you ever have with anyone, it becomes boring pretty quickly. “Small talk” is a means to an end- a way of getting the conversation going to see if you can have “big talk” with someone.
I tend to interact with two groups of people in my day-to-day life: Other lawyers and people who dance. I’ve made friendships from both of these groups, but that leaves out the other important thing in my life -Objectivism. Unfortunately, most of the dancers and lawyers I encounter are religious, which means I am unable to discuss an important aspect of my life with them. I had one former dancing friend who gave me a Bible and tried to “convert” me when he found out I was atheist. When he realized I was uninterested, I think he started resenting me a bit, and the friendship eventually fizzled out. I’ve also had a few “leftwing lawyer” friends in the past, but the things that would come out of their mouths tended to horrify me. For instance, one lawyer friend told me something to the effect of he hoped a virus would wipe out all white people as payback for slavery and imperialism. (This was pre-COVID-19.) The naked expression of nihilism was shocking to me. That relationship also didn’t last. The sense of “futility”, especially when it comes to dating women, can be quite strong. (I will add that just because someone is interested in Objectivism doesn’t mean I will connect with them either. I’ve met some fairly dysfunctional people interested in Objectivism, who had nothing else going on in their lives.)
So, what is the value judgment I am making when it comes to my sense of “futility” about meeting people? Probably, I tend to expect the worst from people, or maybe I focus too much on the worst in people. I probably need to learn to practice the old legal adage: “Innocent until proven guilty,” more. But, also, I think you’ve just got to recognize that making friends and lovers is tough. It’s tough for everyone, Objectivist or otherwise. I just need to keep trying. It points to the need for practicing the virtue of resilience or pride.
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The next event that day was a sort of panel discussion between some of the lecturers at the conference. One of the people on the panel was Peter Schwartz, who I hadn’t seen in person before. That was pretty exciting for me, since I remembered listening to a lecture by him back in the 1990’s when I was at the University of Texas. Back then, you still had to order cassette tapes via mail order from a company associated with the Ayn Rand Institute, known as Second Renaissance Books. I sent away for his lecture “The Politics of Pragmatism”, and listened to it on a Sony Walkman. Now, you can download it: https://estore.aynrand.org/products/the-politics-of-pragmatism-mp3-download
I listened to it over and over in my car, especially when I was driving to and from Dallas to Austin. I was too broke to be going out and buying a bunch of taped lectures, so I listened to the ones I had repeatedly. Seeing him in person was pretty fun for me -kind of nostalgic. The last night of the conference, at a reception, I approached him, said hello, shook his hand, and told him I used to listen to this particular lecture a lot. I’m not really into sports stars or rock stars, but meeting him in person was kind of the equivalent of that for me.
The panel discussion was called “Conservatives Versus Capitalism”. The discussion seemed to center around two things: (1) The history of the conservative movement, and Rand’s rocky relationship with that movement; (2) whether the conservatives, as a group, are better or worse than the socialists in the Democratic party.
There was a lot of discussion of Donald Trump, with most of it being hostile towards Trump and anyone who voted for him. I get the impression that the majority of people associated with the Ayn Rand Institute are so hostile towards Trump that they do not think there is any good reason to vote for him. However, there are some notable exceptions to that. I was rather surprised to learn after this conference that Leonard Peikoff voted for Trump, gave money to his campaign, and also stated publicly that he was voting for Trump. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phxhzlWsl0o (Full Disclosure: I, very reluctantly, voted for Trump in 2020. http://deancook.net/2020/10/24/i-voted-for-donald-trump/ )
One of the best bits of analysis I heard about conservatives came from Peter Schwartz. He said that conservatives did not want to give up the ethics of altruism. ( http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/altruism.html ) Instead, conservatives wanted to reconcile that belief system with capitalism, which is impossible. People rightly saw this as contradictory, and so they found the conservatives’ arguments unconvincing. Conservatives had no answer to the statists in favor of socialism, other than to say that altruism should be voluntary. But, as Schwartz noted, if you see the individual as a servant, then how could he be free to choose? The result, according to Schwartz, is that when the conservatives do take a stand, it tends to dissipate very quickly. He noted how the Tea Party, which was pretty strong in opposing the Obama administration, and helped bring the Republicans back to power in Congress in 2010, quickly dissipated. Schwartz said the dead end of conservatism today is “Trumpism” – which doesn’t even pay lip service to capitalism. It’s just mindless nationalism and tribalism. Unfortunately, I think this is largely true. I just thought that empowering the progressive left when their base was destroying major cities with rioting was beyond the pale, and had to be rebuked by re-electing Trump. I also thought Biden was so old that he might die in office, and we’d have Kamala Harris as President. (I think a Harris presidency would be a disaster.)
The last thing I have in my notes was a recording of Ayn Rand giving a Q&A session. I tried to write down some of the more interesting questions and answers, but I cannot guarantee the accuracy of my transcriptions. There were some interesting questions about Howard Roark from The Fountainhead:
Q: “How does Roark remain untouched in his struggle?”
A: When Roark had bad stuff happen to him, he would merely regret it.
Q: “How are Roark and Henry Cameron different in this regard?” https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/f/the-fountainhead/character-analysis/henry-cameron
A: Cameron started drinking to deal with it. Basically, he became an alcoholic.
Q: “Why did Roark never cry?”
A: Rand said it’s okay for men to cry, but she didn’t see Roark doing it, because “pain only goes down so far” for Roark. But, Roark would admit that he is suffering.
(I have been known to cry, so, I was interested in this. Although I try to do so only in private.)
Then there was a question about how to develop a good ability to use metaphors in writing. Rand defined a metaphor as a comparison of two concretes based on an abstraction they have in common. For instance, “the snow was white as sugar”. She said she would walk around and, if she saw something, she would try to come up with a metaphor. I try to do this some myself. I always have a tough time with metaphors when I write. I think I’m too “literal”. So, to me, if the snow is white, I’m just going to think: “The snow is white.”
There was also the following question: “Could there be an honest communist?” Rand quickly answered that question with a definitive “No.” The follow-up question was then: What about Andrei the ‘good communist’ from her novel We The Living. https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?kn=we%20the%20living%20by%20ayn%20rand&sts=t&cm_sp=SearchF-_-TopNavISS-_-Results
The answer Ayn Rand gave “floored me”, since it wasn’t what I’d always heard on Internet forums over the years: She said she “stretched a point” for the purposes of fiction, although she said that she liked that character. She said something about Andrei growing up poor and in a backwards country, which somewhat excused it. I had read on an Internet forum in the 1990’s that Ayn Rand thought there were “honest communists” at the early part of the Russian revolution, but they were eventually all killed off or exiled. (That will teach me to listen to what some random person says on the Internet.)
There was also an interesting question that was something like: “Is a principle invalid if it cannot be applied in every conceivable context?” Miss Rand said that was an example of “context dropping” and “philosophical rationalism”, but I didn’t quite understand the answer, or the question, and I’d like to hear it again.
Later that evening, there was a talent show, called “OCON’s got Talent”. It was quite the show, and I’ll leave it at that.
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