Objectivism Conference Day 6

Logic Course Day 6

Most of Day 6 was a “questions and answers” session, and I don’t have much in the way of notes.

The only notes I have concern “propositional fallacies”.

The first is “self-exclusion”, which was defined as a form of self-refutation consisting of a contradiction between the content a proposition asserts and the act of asserting it.

An example of “self-exclusion” was: “We cannot be certain of anything.” I’ve heard this before. And my understanding is basically that by saying this, you are stating something with certainty, but you just said that you cannot be certain of anything…so you wind up in a sort of paradox or internal contradiction by saying this. I’m assuming the speaker called it “self-exclusion” because the speaker is, consciously or unconsciously, looking to “exclude” their statement from the general principle it asserts.

The speaker noted that you almost never “reach” anyone by pointing out when they’ve stated a self-exclusion like this. That is also my experience. Marxists will say that your class determines your consciousness, and that you can never get away from that, yet these same Marxists came from the bourgeois, and not the proletariat that they claim to speak for. But, if that is pointed out, they’ll just come up with some sort of complicated rationalization for why they’re different. (Although this might be more of an example of the next propositional fallacy.)

The second propositional fallacy that I have in my notes is the “stolen concept”. As far as I know, this is a term coined by Ayn Rand. http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/stolen_concept,_fallacy_of.html

A stolen concept was defined by the speaker as a hierarchy violation consisting of the attempt to use a concept in a way that ignores or denies the prior concepts on which it depends for meaning. One example given by the speaker of a “stolen concept” was: “A fully free society is an impossible ideal.” I think what the speaker meant was that “ideal” is being used without considering what “ideal” means. An ideal is “the possible”, so to say that an ideal is “impossible” is to disregard the fact that the concept of “ideal” is hierarchically dependent on the concept of “possible”. Another example of a “stolen concept” given by the speaker was: “We have an obligation to preserve the environment.” Here, “obligation” is being used without considering its logical hierarchy. What I think the speaker meant was this: Objectivism starts out by asking “Why be moral at all?” or “Why do we need morality?” http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/morality.html
Without getting into the details, which can be found in “The Objectivist Ethics” in _The Virtue of Selfishness_ by Ayn Rand, Objectivism says the concept of “moral obligation” depends on the concept of “value”, which depends on the concept of “mans life”, and the fact that you only need moral principles if you want to live. If you don’t want to live, then no moral principles are necessary. (Not only that, but no thinking, definitions, or concepts are necessary -we need to be rational in order to live.)

The idea of “hierarchy” requires a bit of explanation for someone not familiar with Objectivism. In the sense that it was being used by the speaker, “hierarchy” is a concept from Objectivism, or, at least, that is where I learned the concept. In “Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology”, in the chapter on definitions, Rand says:

“Since the definition of a concept is formulated in terms of other concepts, it enables man, not only to identify and retain a concept, but also to establish the relationships, the hierarchy, the integration of all his concepts and thus the integration of his knowledge. Definitions preserve, not the chronological order in which a given man may have learned concepts, but the logical order of their hierarchical interdependence.” (See “Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology”, Rand, Page 40, Kindle Edition, https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Objectivist-Epistemology-Expanded-Second-ebook/dp/B002OSXD8C/
)

What Rand meant when she spoke of “hierarchy” of concepts was the idea that certain concepts must logically depend on certain other concepts. A probable example of this is the concept “organism” compared to the concept “dog”. If you introspect a little, you will notice how the concept “dog” seems much “closer” in your mind to that which you perceive around you. How is it “closer”? You can visualize a dog in your mind with a single mental image, but how do you “visualize” an “organism”? “Organism” is a concept denoting any type of living thing, whether it is a plant, an animal, or an amoeba. You could draw a simplistic picture of a dog, but you couldn’t draw a picture of an “organism” and really “get it”. You’d have to have multiple pictures of different type of living things that are organisms. (A question here might be *which* dog do you visualize? Do you visualize a German Shepherd or a Chihuahua? But, only as compared to the concept “organism”, the concept “dog” is easier to visualize because you could visualize any particular dog you’ve seen, while you couldn’t visualize any *particular* organism you’ve seen and “grasp” the concept -you’d have to visualize different types of organisms, and doing so simultaneously would be difficult due to the “crow epistemology”, further discussed below.)

In fact, even “plant” and “animal” are concepts that seem, in some sense, to be “further” away from what you observe in the world around you. “Plant” can mean a rose, or a blade of grass, or a a tree. “Animal”  can mean a squirrel, a wasp, an oyster, or a human being. Rand also seemed to believe that the concept “animal” is logically dependent on underlying concepts like “squirrel”. Although, I will note here, that Rand discussed this issue at a seminar with various people, and she seemed to indicate that it is possible a child could form a concept “in a very loose way”, like “living entity” versus “inanimate object”, and then later subdivide the concept into “man”, “animal”, “plant” on the one hand and “tables”, “rocks”, and “houses” on the other. (See Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, Page 204, Kindle Ed. This appendix is her speaking extemporaneously, in response to other people’s questions, so whether it would have been her definitive view on the subject upon further consideration can also be questioned.) Rand said there was the possibility of “options” in terms of how a particular child formed a concept and the chronological order in which concepts were formed. When we speak of “hierarchy” we are speaking of the “logical order” of concepts, from an adult perspective.

I think it is probably impossible to form the concept “organism” without first forming the concepts of particular types of organisms because the concept “organism” involves too much observational data to be formed as an initial matter. Your mind cannot hold all of the observations that would be necessary to form that concept without underlying concepts. This phenomena of our minds is called “the crow epistemology” or “the crow” in Objectivist circles due to a story that was told to Ayn Rand at some point. The story is found at the beginning of chapter 7, “The Cognitive Role of Concepts” in Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.

The concept of the “crow” can be grasped by way of the story in ITOE. You can read it there for the complete version, but here is my “run down”: Supposedly, a scientist ran an experiment in which someone hidden would observe another person walk into a clearing in the woods where a flock of crows had gathered. The crows would fly away at the approach of the person. The crows only returned to the clearing when the single person left the woods by the same route he came in. Then two people entered the forest, and went into the clearing. The crows left, and wouldn’t come back until *both* people had left. Then three people, to the same effect on the crows. Then, four people. Same effect on the crows. Then, when five people entered the woods and walked to the clearing, something different happened. Only four people left the forest, while the fifth person presumably hid somewhere in the forest near the clearing. The crows came back to the clearing because they couldn’t discern in their minds that while five people had entered the forest, only four had left.

Rand notes that regardless of whether this story is true, the phenomena can be grasped introspectively in your own mind. You can tell that “|||” is three, probably without counting. However, without counting, try to discern “|||||||||” from “|||||||||||”. It’s fairly difficult, without engaging in some sort of conceptual thought. (You might be able to discern a length difference in this example, but that wouldn’t be available to the crows in the forest, and measuring length is likely a form of conceptual consciousness anyway. If you made the lines I’ve drawn here nine random dots in a circle versus ten random dots in another circle, you probably couldn’t discern any difference without counting.)

Rand’s concept of “hierarchy” takes this fact about how our minds work, “the crow”, into account and then tries to develop a system of thinking based on it. So, she is not saying that the concept “dog” is somehow more fundamental than the concept “organism” in some sort of “metaphysical sense” -out there in the universe. http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/metaphysical.html
In reality, apart from human beings, there are just things. Human beings categorize them based on the needs of their minds and lives -which are also specific things with a specific identity.

I believe this feature of the human mind and the concept of “hierarchy” has practical consequences for how you should approach learning. For instance, if you want to study Biology, the science of living organisms, you have to learn something about individual living things. You study particular frogs by dissecting them. This helps you to learn about frogs. Then, you study particular pigs by dissecting fetal pigs. This teaches you something about pigs. Then, you see what frogs and pigs have in common, as animals. Then you study particular roses and particular trees and learn what they have in common as plants. Then you can discern what both plants and animals have in common as organisms. By way of contrast,  a Platonist will say there is an “ideal pig” somewhere in the Platonic realm and the pigs you see around you are just “shadows” of the ideal pig in the Platonic realm. http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/platonic_realism.html  https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/platonism/

Then, the Platonist will say that there is an “ideal organism” in the Platonic realm, and all organisms are just a reflection of the ideal organism in the Platonic realm, and so on. But, none of these concepts necessarily have any logical connection in the mind of a Platonist. There isn’t any hierarchy there. The “ideal features” of an organism exist in the Platonic realm in some “pure” form, while the “ideal features” of a pig also exist in the Platonic realm in their “pure form”. I doubt that a science of biology would even be considered necessary for a Platonist. The Platonist could study pigs at the same time he studies the stars and human consciousness. There is no greater or lesser connection in the mind of a Platonist between pigs and other animals than there is between pigs and the chemical composition of the interior of the sun.  They’re all just a reflection of their ideal form. Furthermore, the Platonist believes he can learn something about the concept of “organism” without studying individual organisms. He just needs to “tap in” to the Platonic realm somehow.

I by no means consider myself to be an expert on Miss Rand’s epistemology, so what I’ve stated is just my own best understanding at the moment. If you found any of this interesting, I’d recommend reading three books. First, read “Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology” by Ayn Rand. https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Objectivist-Epistemology-Expanded-Second/dp/0452010306/  Then read “Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand” by Leonard Peikoff https://www.amazon.com/Objectivism-Philosophy-Ayn-Rand-Library/dp/0452011019/
, especially the chapter on “Objectivity”. Finally, although I am only about halfway through it, you should read “How We Know: Epistemology on an Objectivist Foundation” by Harry Binswanger. https://www.amazon.com/How-Know-Epistemology-Objectivist-Foundation/dp/1493753142/

This last book is by the author who was speaking at the conference, and I think what he spoke on is covered in his book, so to the extent that I’ve misinterpreted anything he said, you can learn what he thinks by reading the book.

As far as other speakers were concerned on day 6, I don’t have any notes. I think I didn’t find the other topics covered that day of sufficient interest to attend any of them, when there were still things I wanted to see on what would likely be my only extended vacation of the year from work. (This gets into what Ayn Rand described as “the hierarchy of values”.  http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/teleological_measurement.html
)

Looking at the pictures I took on my phone, that was the day I took a bus south on Coast Highway to a place called Crystal Cove, near the beach. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Cove_State_Park  Although I had never been to that specific area, it reminded me of the Southern California beaches I would go to with family and friends as a child, so the geography, climate, vegetation, ocean, and wildlife all evoked strong memories for me from years that were probably fairly formative of my personality. There was a strong “nostalgia element” for me.

Once I got off the bus, I walked through scrub brush, trails, and down a hill to the actual beach, which was quite secluded. There were few people around, which gave the area a “magical” quality to me -like being the only person left in the world. This is a feeling that I think is nice to feel from time to time, although, if prolonged, it feels quite lonely. From there, I wandered down the beach for some distance until I found a series of dilapidated houses and a small bar and restaurant near the beach. From there, I had a beer, then walked back up the highway, and eventually caught a bus back. (The buses in the area were not great in terms of how often they ran, but I preferred a slow $4 bus ride to what might have been a $20 Uber ride.)

That night, I went to a West Coast Swing dance lesson and social dance, which I enjoyed a lot. I didn’t want to leave California without West Coast swinging.

Objectivism Conference Day 5

Logic Course Day 5

My notes show that we started with a  review of the homework. The first was coming up with the definition of “Rationalization”. Once again, I tried to work this idea out without using reference materials or the Internet for a definition.

The definition of “rationalization” I came up with prior to this class was: “An express explanation for something you do that hides or conceals your actual reason.”

The first thing that the speaker noted was that “rationalization” tended to be an “automatic thing”.

Examples the speaker gave were: (1)  a person who is dieting might say: “It’s all right to have that pie, it’s the weekend.” Or, (2) another person who wants to excuse his bad behavior might say: “I’m not to blame, because ‘freewill’ doesn’t exist.”

Facts giving rise to the concept of “rationalization” were: Freewill, “Honesty vs. Dishonesty”, “Rationality vs. Emotionalism”

“Near-relatives” of “rationalization” were: (1) “The check is in the mail” -Which I take as when someone says they have paid you when they really haven’t, but intend to do so very soon; (2) “Flattery” – which is where you complement someone with the motive to get something from them, or where you don’t really mean the compliment.

The “genus” or “rationalization” was described as: Deception.

The “differentia” of rationalization was described as: Deception of others and/or oneself about what’s really justified.

The full definition of “rationalization” given by the speaker based on the discussion was then: “Phony justifications manufactured to make emotionalism look enough like reason that one can indulge the emotionalism.”

The speaker then went over some “fallacies of conceptualization”.

According to my notes, which may be incomplete or not entirely accurate, the speaker discussed two broad categories of “fallacies of conceptualization”: (1) Insufficient Conceptualization, and (2) Mis-conceptualizations.

Regarding insufficient conceptualization, the speaker described three types: (a) Concrete-boundedness (i.e., non-conceptualization or non-integration); (b) Floating abstractions (i.e., “aborted conceptualization); and (c) “Frozen Abstraction” (i.e., insufficient conceptualization).

Regarding concrete-boundedness, I have no notes, but it is described some in the Ayn Rand Lexicon: http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/learning.html  http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/guild_socialism.html

The remedies for floating abstractions given by the speaker were to come up with: examples, definitions, and “reduction”. (This last term is an Objectivist term that you can find more information about in Leonard Peikoff’s book: “Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand”).

Regarding “frozen abstraction”, the speaker gave as an example: “Communism = Soviet Union”. I believe what the speaker was getting at here is that when you criticize communism by pointing to examples of the bad things the Soviets did, an apologist for communism will say “That was just the Soviet Union, I am a socialist, and my society will be different.” Basically, the speaker denies that what they believe is the same as what happened in the Soviet Union by saying in their mind: “Communism=Soviet Union”.

The example I came up with of “frozen abstraction” was “morality=altruism”, or “morality=religion”. So, you can only be moral if you are religious or an altruist. I got these examples from Rand. http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/frozen_abstraction,_fallacy_of.html

Within the category of “Mis-conceptualization” the speaker said these are “invalid concepts”. They either: (a) have no units, (b) have the wrong units, or (c) are what Rand called “anti concepts”. Keep in mind that “units” is an Objectivist term. http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/unit.html

Regarding mis-conceptualizations that have no units, I have no examples in my notes, but I think the speaker was referring to terms like “ghost”. Since ghosts have no units, it is a mis-conceptualization to have a concept of “ghosts”. Although, I think “ghosts” can be a valid concept in the sense of: “A mythological being that exists only in fiction and made-up stories.” Just like “Elf” is: “A mythological being that exists only in fiction and made-up stories.”  There is no referent in reality, but you can have the concept “ghost” as long as you have as part of your definition that the thing isn’t real.

Regarding mis-conceptualizations that have the wrong units, I have in my notes that the speaker spoke of “package deals”. This is a term adopted by Ayn Rand. http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/package-dealing,_fallacy_of.html  The speaker said a “package deal” puts together in one concept things that are incompatible. For instance, “extremism”.  The speaker said the solution to this was the rule of “fundamentality”. http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/fundamentality,_rule_of.html

Regarding “anti-concepts”, which is a term coined by Ayn Rand, the speaker said these are bad concepts designed with an “evil purpose”.http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/anti-concepts.html

The speaker said “socialization” is an example of this. “Socialization” was described by the speaker as a theory that the child gets his values and norms from other children. He says it implies that everyone is a “Peter Keating” and there are no “Howard Roark’s” http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/selflessness.html
. That learning is all “imitation” and that there is no observation of reality.

Another example given by the speaker of an “anti-concept” was “homelessness”, which is an attempt to destroy the concept of “bum”.

This isn’t in my notes, but I think what he was getting at was how you are throwing out all moral and ethical judgments that come with someone who chooses not to work and to just sit on the side of the road collecting money despite being able-bodied and able-minded to work. I think you have to distinguish between people who are not mentally-ill and have all of their limbs and choose not to work, who should be described as “bums”, versus people who are either mentally ill or missing body parts and can be somewhat morally excused for having no place to live and being unable to care for themselves. Calling both of those groups “homeless” destroys the moral distinction between those two types of people panhandling on the streets and sidewalks of most major American cities.

Objectivist 4th Of July Celebration
That’s all I have in my notes from July the 4th. Since it was a holiday, I believe there were no other lectures that day. There was an hour-long 4th of July celebration that I attended. Someone sang “America the Beautiful”, which I hadn’t heard since Elementary school in Texas.

One of the distinctions I remember between Elementary school in Texas versus when I attended it in California in the 1980’s, was the promotion of patriotism in Texas by saying the Pledge of Allegiance and singing “America the Beautiful” in Elementary school. (I have some criticisms of Texas Elementary schools too, but that is for another time.)

There was also a reading of the “Declaration of Independence” at the Objectivism conference, which I realized is probably not read in school any more, since it refers to “merciless Indian Savages” and also makes allusions to “domestic insurrections”, which is clearly a reference to slaves in the South. http://www.ushistory.org/Declaration/document/

Neither of these references bothers me at all -but I’m probably ‘out of touch’ with the cultural mainstream of America at this point. I’m certainly “out of touch” with most people who have a college degree -but I view this with pride.

I suspect if the Declaration is read in school today, it is with a heavy dose of retroactively imposing the knowledge-level of modern-day persons on people from the 18th century. Or, more likely, teachers in schools today emphasize the references to Indians and slaves in the Declaration of Independence in an effort to get students to mentally “throw out” the essential message of the Declaration of Independence, which is that all men have “unalienable rights”,  in order to make way for the “Progressive’s” collectivist ideology of socialism and the destruction of the sanctity of the individual.

As an aside, this is pretty much the same agenda associated with any effort to take down monuments to Thomas Jefferson and George Washington on the grounds that they owned slaves. It’s an attempt to take a non-essential of these historical figures and turn it into an excuse to destroy their essential meaning as historical figures  -which was that they advocated limited government, whose purpose is to allow people to pursue their unalienable rights to life liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We study and revere certain historical figures because of their effect on the present, not because they were entirely consistent or because they had views or activities that were common to many people of that era. For instance, Isaac Newton is studied and revered because he developed a system of Physics that is still widely used today, not because he believed he could transmute lead into gold through alchemy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton%27s_occult_studies

The notion that Newton had some unscientific views was a reflection of the era he lived in. The fact that he “rose above it” to develop the Theory of Universal Gravitation is why he is remembered today, and why he is regarded as a hero of science. That is the “essence” of Isaac Newton as a historical figure -even if the man didn’t always live up to that standard in some areas of his life.

Since Objectivism is explicitly an atheist philosophy, when the group-pledge was said at the conference, the words “under God” were explicitly removed. The guy leading the pledge of allegiance also somewhat “jokingly” noted that since half the audience was foreign, they were “excused” from saying it.

My own “relationship” with the Pledge of Allegiance is somewhat complicated, and I chose to simply stand while other Americans at the conference participated. (I have blogged before on saying the pledge, and I won’t re-iterate it here.)

Ayn Rand Institute Tour
I believe after the 4th of July Celebration, all I did conference-wise was go on a tour of the Ayn Rand Institute  that was being given. It was fairly interesting to see where the organizers of the conference worked on a daily basis. It had a lot of art work up on the walls, and various other things that would be of interest to Ayn Rand fans, so I enjoyed seeing it.

Trip to Balboa Peninsula
I then spent my afternoon touring the Newport Beach area, specifically Balboa Peninsula, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balboa_Peninsula,_Newport_Beach
, which appeared to be the heart of the local tourist industry, with numerous beach houses and public beaches. Since it was the 4th of July, it was very crowded. I was glad I took a bus to the base of peninsula and then walked in, since traffic made travel by car almost impossible.

I was pleased to see so many American flags on display around the peninsula, as I have a perception of California as an anti-patriotic, left-wing state. Although, I think Orange County, the home of John Wayne, is somewhat of a “cultural outlier” on the coast of California. Orange County has more in common with Texas than it does with Los Angeles, San Francisco, and other major population areas of the Golden State. One evening, I happened upon the web site of a local venue where dancing occurs, and I did a bit of a “double take” when I saw a Confederate Flag. (Even mentioning this somewhat concerns me, because I can see leftists now combing the dance venues of Orange County looking for Rebel flags so that they can ship in large numbers of protestors from Los Angeles to disrupt that business.)

Generally, my impression of the City of Newport Beach was fairly negative. I found it to have a “museum quality”, with few people, and very little “youthful energy”. I saw no production going on -just consumption, with a bunch of malls. It felt like a big shopping center or retirement community to me. A nice place for a vacation, but I don’t believe I’d enjoy living there. That day on the peninsula was an exception to my feeling. There were a lot of young people doing all of the things, both good and bad, that young people tend to do. The area felt very “alive” as a result.

Objectivism Conference, Day 4

Logic course, Day 4:

The importance of learning the method of definition – The genus-differentia method is the pattern of all conceptual cognition.  The genus integrates and differentia differentiates.

What is the distinction between the “genus” and the “CCD”?

The “CCD” means the “conceptual common denominator”, and is an idea put forth by Ayn Rand in her book “Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology”. (http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/conceptual_common_denominator.html)

This was not said during class, but by way of my own explanation of the CCD:
When forming units in one’s mind, you do so on the basis of “commensurable characteristics”. So, for instance, when forming the concept “rabbit”, you do so on the basis of something like the length of the animal’s ears and its method of locomotion (hopping).  These characteristics of ear-length and method of locomotion are the “conceptual common denominator” that rabbits have in common with other animals that you are distinguishing them from. For instance, if you mentally isolate two rabbits into a mental group that is different from a dog that you see, then both the rabbits and the dog have a certain ear-length and a method of locomotion. This is the “conceptual common denominator”. (Ear-length and method of locomotion are *different measurements* for rabbits than they are for dogs, and this “measurement omission” is part of the process of concept formation for Ayn Rand. http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/measurement.html
)

Also, when you take two concepts and combine them into a wider concept, then you take one or more common characteristics that all of the units of that new, wider, concept have in common. For instance, when forming the concept “mammal”, you would see that dogs and rabbits have characteristics in common: lactation, fur, and giving birth to live young. From this, your mind has a “conceptual common denominator” of: “method of taking care of offspring”, “substance covering the body”, and “developmental status of offspring when mother gives birth”. Mammals share this conceptual common denominator with reptiles, birds, and fish. The distinction between mammals on the one hand and birds and reptiles on the other is that birds and reptiles both have different “methods of taking care of offspring”, “substances covering their bodies” and “developmental status of offspring when mother gives birth”. For instance, when it comes to “method of taking care of offspring”, in the case of reptiles, they abandon their young. In the case of birds, they take care of their young by catching food, eating it, then regurgitating it to their young in the nest. When it comes to “substance covering the body”, birds have feathers, and reptiles have scales. When it comes to “developmental status of offspring when mother gives birth”, reptiles and birds both lay eggs. (So, this would not be part of the CCD when distinguishing birds and reptiles.)

[Additional note made on 8/4/2018: I was thinking about the above example of forming the concept “mammal”, and realized I might be implicitly assuming one had already formed the concept of “animal”, since “animal” might be part of the “CCD” when forming the concept “mammal”. It didn’t seem likely to me that a child would form the concept “mammal” without first forming the concept “animal”. In that case the “CCD” would be the three characteristics I mentioned in the previous paragraph, and also the characteristic of “moves about in the environment of it’s own volition” or “animate things”, which mammals, birds, reptiles, and fish all share as “animals”. However, I think it is still possible for a child to form a concept of “mammal” without necessarily having the wider concept of “animal”. Rand also seems to indicate this in “Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, at page 24 of the Kindle Edition of ITOE:

“The chronological order in which man forms or learns these concepts is optional. A child, for instance, may first integrate the appropriate concretes into the concepts ‘animal’, ‘bird’, ‘fish’, then later integrate them into a wider concept by expanding his concept of ‘animal’. The principles involved and the ultimate choice of distinguishing characteristics will be the same, granting he reaches the same level of knowledge.”

Basically, a child could have a concept of “things with fur that move about in the world”. The child would likely use the word “animal” initially, then he would encounter birds and fish and say: “birds are things that have feathers and move about in the world” and: “fish are things that have fins and move about in the water”. From there, he’s essentially got the concepts of “bird”, “fish” and “mammal” (although he calls the later “animal”). Then he can form the wider concept of “animal”, as in: “a thing that moves about in the environment of its own volition” or “animate things”, which is closer to the adult-level definition of the concept “animal”.]

The speaker in the logic course then went on to make the distinction between the concept of “genus” and the concept of the “CCD”. His example was the definition of “boy”: “A boy is a young man.” In this definition of “boy”, “man” is the “genus”. “Age” is the CCD.

By way of my own explanation: “age” is the commensurable characteristic that boys share with adult men. The difference between a boy and a man is “age”. The concept of “boy” is formed in this case by mentally isolating two or more perceived boys from adult men by means of age, and then omitting the particular ages of the boys when forming the concept, on the premise that they must have *some* age within a certain range but, they can have any age within that range. (That is the “measurement-ommission” part.) For instance, when it comes to the two boys you perceive in forming the concept of “boy”, it may be that one boy is five and the other boy is ten years old.

We then went on to go over the unfinished homework from last time, which, was to define certain concepts. First up was the concept of “prize”. My notes get a little sketchy on this, but I think an audience member suggested that “prize” could be defined as: “A reward for an unusual achievement.” The lecturer didn’t like this definition because it wasn’t concrete and specific enough. We then went over examples of “prizes” to help “zero in” on a good definition. Examples of “prizes” included winning a gold medal and winning the lottery. We then went over things that are similar to a “prize” but slightly different. These included: (1) A college degree, (2) The Nobel Prize, (3) a reward for turning in a fugitive from justice. I think these three things were not considered “prizes” because they were all things you get that don’t involve a contest or competition, per se. Even though the “Nobel Prize” is called a “prize”, the speaker believed it is actually more accurate to call it the “Nobel Award”, because the scientists aren’t engaged in a contest to obtain it, like an Olympic medal.

I think you should also remember that the point of these exercises wasn’t whether you 100% agreed with the definition of “prize”, or how it was derived, but rather that you see the pattern of thinking that goes into getting a good, robust definition of a particular concept.

Based on these examples of “prizes”, as well as the examples of similar concepts, the speaker then said the definition of prize was something like: “A value offered in advance to the winner or winners of a competition to intensify the competition.”

The next concept to define in the lecture was “racism”.

My notes get sketchy on this, mainly because I personally don’t know what people mean when they say “racism” or “racist”, and I ignore it if someone describes me that way. I see the word “racist” as simply a word people on the political left use to try to silence anything you say that they disagree with, or that members of other races use as a way to manipulate white people into feeling guilty in order to get something from them. (A good comedic example of this is “Cabbage Head”, from an old Canadian comedy show “The Kids in the Hall”, where the main character tries to get women to sleep with him, and when they won’t, he says: “You won’t because I have a cabbage for a head.” Basically, he tries to make people feel guilty and then to manipulate them into doing what he wants. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKaP0Y_4COE&list=RDTKaP0Y_4COE&t=152 )

Stefan Molyneux makes the same point as me on the term “racism” and “racist” around 47 minutes into this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjYRH9FpiDA  He notes that, at this point, one should have the attitude that an atheist has if someone accuses them of being demonically possessed. The atheist is just going to say: “I don’t really believe in demons, so I don’t care if you call me demonically possessed.” Similarly, you should just ignore being called a “racist” because the word has lost all meaning in modern society.

But, what I have down in my notes are the  “similar but different” concepts for racism being “sexism”, “nationalism”, and “collectivism”. Of those three, I understand the concept of “collectivism” fairly well, and see it as a useful concept to hold -as distinguished from individualism. “Sexism” is like “racism” to me -a word that I ignore when people call me that because its an attempt to make me feel guilty in order to get something from me or to control me.

At any rate, the speaker gave a definition of “racism” as “a racial form of collectivism”. I believe this is the definition of “racism” that Ayn Rand had. (http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/racism.html)

If the term were used solely in the way that Rand used it, and not as a smear-tactic to silence members of the political right, then I suppose I wouldn’t have too much of a problem with it. Although, I think it is largely not a problem, and never has been, even when defined properly. The problem has been “over-blown” by the political left as “individualist window dressing” to cover up their vicious collectivist ideology and their desire to destroy the competent and the able.

The last concept to define in the logic class was “dignity”.

I had real problems coming up with a verbal definition of this concept. I simply had an image of an older man in a three-piece suit who stood resolute and, frankly, seemed a bit humorless. Sort of like Winston Churchill. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill)

Some of the words I used to describe “dignity” were: “the state of being without stain”, “without reproach”, “morally upright”, “upright posture”,  “unconquered”, and “stiff upper lip”.

To my surprise, in the logic class, the lecturer also started out with picture images. He first gave two “negative examples”. In other words, the speaker gave two examples of “undignified” people.

The first example of undignified was Howard Wolowitz from the TV show “The Big Bang Theory”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Wolowitz  I think this was based on the way that the character dresses or acts. I’ve seen enough of the show to know the character. I guess I wouldn’t describe him that way, and I also think the show is a comedy, so “dignity” isn’t something that comes to my mind in a comedy.

The other example the speaker gave of “undignified” were the “two wild and crazy guys”, that Dan Aykroyd and Steve Martin used to play on “Saturday Night Live”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recurring_Saturday_Night_Live_characters_and_sketches_introduced_1977%E2%80%931978#The_Festrunk_Brothers_(%22Two_Wild_and_Crazy_Guys!%22) I’m just old enough to remember them.

The speaker then showed a painting of a self-portrait by Rembrandt, I believe, as an example of “dignified”.

The speaker then gave a definition of “dignity” as: “The proud, calm, self-command that results from holding the full context in judging what is important and what is not.”

Our homework was then assigned which was: (1) Define “rationalization”, and (2) Identify the fallacy in the following statements: (a) “A fully free society is an impossible ideal”, and, (b) “We have an obligation to preserve the environment.”

Humor in the Fountainhead Lecture

The next lecture of the day was on humor in Ayn Rand’s novel “The Fountainhead”.

The lecturer noted that there was more humor in the Fountainhead than any of Rand’s other novels.

When I read this novel for the second time in law school, I had also noticed there was a lot of humor in it. There is more humor in the Fountainhead than in any of Rand’s other novels. Possibly this is because “We The Living” is set in 1920’s Soviet Russia, and its hard to find humor in living in a totalitarian dictatorship run by the likes of Joseph Stalin. Similarly, “Atlas Shrugged” is essentially a dystopian novel in which a near-future America has become such a heavily controlled-economy that the producers in it have no choice but to go on “strike”, destroy the established social and political order, and start over.

Unfortunately my note-taking for this lecture is almost non-existent. Going from memory, and from what I know about Rand’s attitude on humor in art, I think the central thesis was that humor in fiction is a “negative” element that should only be used against the “bad guys” in the novel. So, you shouldn’t use humor against the hero or against good ideas. Although, I also think Rand said it’s okay to “laugh with the hero”, as long as your not “laughing at him”. http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/humor.html

One interesting question from the audience I remember was “But, what about Monty Python? Would you regard that as “acceptable” humor?” The speaker said he had seen “Monty Python’s Search for the Holy Grail”, and remembered laughing a lot at the scene where the rabbit flies through the air and kills several knights, just because of the absurdity of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnOdAT6H94s   I think the speaker basically responded that he didn’t know how extremely absurd comedy like Monty Python would fit into the Objectivist aesthetics.

I tend to think you’d need to start by looking at “comedy” as its own distinct subgenera of literature or cinema, and then think about how it is different from “dramatic” literature. There’s usually an element of absurdity in comedy. I’d have to think about it some more, but I have always been a big fan of Mel Brooks movies, like “Young Frankenstein”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sO3qJGKs9gw

It seems to me like there is almost a “cartoonish” element to Mel Brooks movies, in which no one can actually get hurt. For instance, in the scene with the candle stick from “Young Frankenstein”, Gene Wilder’s character gets caught between the rotating book case and the wall, which would seriously injure or kill you in real life, but it doesn’t cause the main character any long-term problems. So, its kind of like saying: “Nothing really bad happens in life, and you can just laugh at your problems.” This seems like a good attitude, rather than constantly worrying about the bad things that could happen to you. “Absurd” comedy like this sort of lets you live for a moment like you and your loved ones never have to worry about the bad things that can happen in life, and you can just “laugh at danger”. It makes the bad things that could happen in your life seem more distant.

Another interesting question from the audience was about the TV show “Parks and Recreation”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parks_and_Recreation The audience member asked if the lecturer had seen the show and what he thought of the character of “Ron Swanson”. The lecturer said he enjoyed the show, and that character.

I was familiar with the character of Ron Swanson only because a friend of mine had told me about the show. I’ve watched maybe one episode of it. My friend had told me that Ron Swanson is a “libertarian”, which is funny because he believes government is mostly bad and should get out of the way of the private sector. My friend told me that the character spends his day trying to “sabotage” whatever the Parks and Recreation people want to do in order to ensure that they don’t interfere with the free market. So, he tries to make his department as ineffective as possible, and only hires incompetent people.

I watch little TV, but at some point, I may try to go back and watch some of “Parks and Rec”, because the Ron Swanson character does sound pretty great, and I bet there is a lot of humor there.

Great Heroes of Literature Lecture

The last item I have in my notes from that day was a lecture describing the characteristics of a “hero” in fiction and then analyzing the heroes in five works of fiction: The Odyssey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odyssey
, Cyrano de Bergerac https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrano_de_Bergerac
, An Enemy of the People https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Enemy_of_the_People
, Shane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shane_(novel)
, and Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead.  The lecturer’s views on the themes and “plot-themes” of each of these was gone over.

“Plot-theme” is another term coined by Ayn Rand. http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/plot-theme.html

The lecturer’s characteristics of a hero included: (1) Holding values that benefit life on Earth, (2) the ability to overcome obstacles, (3) “dauntlessness”, (4) and the achievement of victory, although I think he said that could be a “moral victory”. I assume an example of the last would be Ernest Hemingway’s “Old Man in the Sea”, where the hero is “destroyed by not defeated”. Rand’s novel, “We The Living” has that sort of ending.

The next day, while waiting for a bus after I had gone to the beach, I started thinking about what it means to be a “hero”. I suspect this was inspired by this lecture and also by having seen a statue at the beach of a local lifeguard who was killed in the line of duty. According the plaque near the statue, the life guard had died trying to rescue a swimmer in distress. https://ktla.com/2014/07/07/he-is-definitely-a-hero-fire-chief-says-of-lifeguard-who-drowned-in-newport-beach/

This lifeguard would be regarded by most as “heroic”. I certainly think of him that way.

I’ve always struggled with the term “hero” and “heroic”, since it is used a lot in Objectivist circles. http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/man-worship.html  I’m not clear in my own mind what a “hero” is, and what it means to be “heroic”, especially since a lot of people seem to use it in the sense of someone engaging in an act of self-sacrifice. Running into a building to save a bunch of random strangers from a fire doesn’t seem particularly “heroic” to me. It seems irrational to risk your life for strangers.

That said, I would describe a lifeguard who risks his life to save a swimmer in distress, or a fireman who saves people from a burning building, as “heroic”. The difference there to me is that the lifeguard and the fireman have both agreed to risk their lives to save strangers in exchange for money, so that’s their job. If a fireman collected his paycheck every week and then refused to run into a burning building, I’d view that as cowardice. But, I have trouble articulating all of this in terms of words. It’s just my “gut reaction”, which can be wrong.

Also, another aspect of “heroism” that is rarely covered anywhere but in Objectivist circles is the heroism of people who don’t actually risk their lives. For instance, I’d describe a doctor who came up with a cure for cancer as “heroic”, and probably so would most other Objectivists. The doctor was never in danger of dying, but his years of effort and thought all amount to heroism to me. Based on this, I’d say a “hero” is probably something like a label that the rest of us bestow on someone who has produced a great value for mankind. Calling someone a “hero” is a way to honor that person. However, this seems to leave out the fireman who rescues a child from a burning building, which I also think is “heroic”. Perhaps the great value can just be bestowed on a subset of mankind, and still be described as a heroic act. So, the parents of the child rescued from a burning building by the fireman are going to regard the fireman as “heroic” and the rest of us do sort of by “proxy”, since we can imagine how thankful we’d be if someone saved our own child. At any rate, I struggle with this concept.

Objectivism Conference, Day 3

Logic Course, Day 3

Day 3 of the Logic course started out with a discussion of what “definition” is and why we need definitions for our concepts. I will note here that if you find my summary of the logic course interesting, you can read Ayn Rand’s book “Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology” to see a lot of discussion on the concept of “definition”. http://aynrandlexicon.com/ayn-rand-works/introduction-to-objectivist-epistemology.html

One thing I forgot to mention earlier is the speaker thought that most people don’t get their syllogistic, or deductive, reasoning wrong. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllogism
What they get wrong is their understanding of certain concepts. If these underlying concepts are wrong, then their deductive reasoning can be formally correct but lead to wrong conclusions. This is why I think so much of the course was focused more on methods for establishing correct concepts than on deductive reasoning, which you can get in most college courses.

Definitions were described as: “Devices for logically organizing concepts,” and as “tying the concept to its specific referents in reality by means of the genus and differentia method.”

“Differentia” was described as “The characteristic(s) that differentiate within the genus, the units from its nearest relatives.” (The concept of “unit” has a specific, and possibly unique, definition within Objectivism, which you can find in the online version of “They Ayn Rand Lexicon”. http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/unit.html
)  For instance, with “a triangle is a 3-sided polygon,” the genus is “polygon” and the differentia is “3-sided”.

One other point that was stressed about definition is that it should be regarded as the “label on the mental file folder”, rather than the “word”. (The “mental file folder” being an analogy for a concept.) The “word” is what binds the folder together. I think something similar to this is said in “Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology”, somewhere.

The function of a definition was then described as both “logical” and “psycho-epistemological”. (“Psycho-epistemological” is a term coined by Rand and is unique to Objectivism. http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/psycho-epistemology.html
) The logical function of a definition is is to give a concept a firm identity in your mind and to give an indication of the concept’s relationship to other concepts in its “family tree”. For instance, my own example of this is: “A dog is a four-legged mammal that barks.” This indicates in your mind that dogs are conceptually within the category of “furry animals” and that they are distinguished from those other animals by the fact that they emit a certain type of sound. That way you recognize that they are similar to cats and squirrels because they all have fur, feed their young by lactation, and are warm-blooded. It also maintains in your mind that dogs are more distant, conceptually, than lizards and snakes. (Also you should note that Rand did not believe that a “definition” for a concept can never change as you get more knowledge. So, for instance, you may define a “fish” as “a creature that swims in the sea”, and then later, when you discover the octopus, you may change the definition of “fish” to “a creature with fins that swims in the sea”, while “octopus” is “a creature with tentacles that swims in the sea”. In that case, it’s still true that a fish is “a creature that swims in the sea”, but you are now distinguishing it from your new observations about the octopus. http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/definitions.html
)

The psycho-epistemological function of definition was described as providing a fast and accurate filing and retrieving system from your “mental storage”. I took this as meaning that if you’re trying to remember what a “fish” is, you can start by mentally thinking: “Okay, a ‘fish’ is “a creature with fins that swims in the sea.” So, right there you can think of “fins” and “sea” and “swim”, and start visualizing the characteristics of a fish. Without that, you’d have to pull up individual “mental pictures” of fish you had actually seen before, then try to picture what they all had in common and different from other animals, etc. It would make any sort of advanced thinking impossible if you didn’t have the use of definitions.

The previous day’s homework was then gone over, in part. The speaker asked for people from the audience to give him their definition of the concepts “seven”, “window” and “war”. I had worked on these the previous night, and come up with some definitions for these terms. Once again, I considered it “cheating” if I looked up the terms, so I just went straight from what I already had in my head. For the number “seven”, I had drawn a picture. Basically, I drew seven periods, like: “…….”, then I drew seven squares, and seven circles. I somewhat sarcastically said to myself something like “seven is what comes after six and before eight”, but I thought that was a bad definition because it seemed kind of “circular” to me. But, the speaker did define the concept of “seven” as “what comes after six. He said it couldn’t be defined as “what comes before eight”, because then when you defined the concept “eight”, you would say it was “what comes before nine”, and it I gathered that would involve you in a sort of “infinite regress” on your definitions of numbers.

The discussion of the definition of “window” proved quite interesting. I had defined “window” as “an opening in a structure for looking out of or in to.” But, I had definitely left out a key function of windows from this definition. Another gentleman in the audience who sounded like an Indian gave a definition of:  “An opening in a car or home for letting in light or air.” So, first of all, I had forgotten about the windows on cars, and I’d also forgotten that windows can be opened to let in air. Now, note, that my definition is not “wrong”, at a certain level of knowledge. If a kid had lived his whole life until then in skyscrapers, where the windows didn’t open, and had never seen a car, he might have my definition of window. My definition just didn’t take into account my full context of knowledge about windows -so it was only a wrong definition given my overall knowledge level.

The speaker then asked anyone if they had defined a “window” as something like “glass in a structure”, or had used a definition involving “glass”. A few people raid their hands, and he said that was not a good definition, because glass windows was fairly new historically. Windows had long existed before we invented glass, and many third world countries still have houses with open windows or windows with cloth coverings. He said using glass to define windows was too “parochial” – too specific to one’s own social and technological context.

An interesting observation was then made about the definition of almost all man-made things. Almost all man-made things will be defined in terms of their purpose. For instance, when you define “window” you talk about it being used to let light or air into or out of -which is the purpose of that device. The speaker said the only man-made concept that didn’t seem to be defined in terms of it purpose was the concept of “junk”. I assume this is because “junk” would be defined as something like: “items of human technology that were intended to serve a useful purpose, or that once did serve a useful purpose, but no longer does.” So, for instance, everything at the landfill is “junk”. As long as it has its present form, and given present human needs, it’s useless to us and just takes up space. It has no purpose and is actually detrimental to human purposes, but it is also man-made.

The speaker then went on to ask for audience member’s definitions of “war”. I had defined “war” as “A violent conflict between two or more armed groups of people who both claim political sovereignty or a right to hold territory” I had originally wanted to say “armed conflict among nations”, but I decided this was too narrow. A “civil war” is a war within a nation. The two sides are both claiming to have political sovereignty over a given land. I had also wanted to include the possibility of “gang war”, like when one street gang tries to push another one out of a given area of a city.

One of the audience members defined “war” as “the pursuit of political ends through force”, but the speaker believed that was too broad because an assassination of a political figure could be included in that definition, and no one thinks of that as “war”. Another proposed definition was “a means of setting disputes between nations”, but the speaker noted that the aboriginal Americans living here before the Europeans arrived would have wars, and they weren’t really “nations” -just tribes or groups.

The speaker also noted that “war” is probably distinguished from “skirmish”, which I hadn’t thought of. For instance, every once and a while, I think India and Pakistan will trade shots at each other across their borders, but they aren’t really “at war”.

Various rules of coming up with a definition were then gone over. (The other homework examples were left until the next lecture, I think due to time constraints.) For instance,  a definition must have a “genus” and “differentia”, and the definition must specify a group of referents in reality. One important rule of definition was called the “rule of fundamentality”, which was defined as “the definition must state the fundamental distinguishing characteristics. This was credited to Aristotle. (I’ve also heard that term “fundamentality” used in “Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology”, so I’m guessing Rand got it from Aristotle. http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/fundamentality,_rule_of.html
)

The rule of fundamentality is considered so important because following it will prevent you from defining things in terms of non-essential characteristics. For instance, “man is the animal possessing a thumb” is a bad definition because it completely ignores the human mind and its unique features in the animal kingdom. The rational faculty makes our technology and way of life possible. (This doesn’t mean that we could never discover organisms with a rational faculty, it simply means that, as of right now, we see that faculty as unique. If we ever met beings with a rational faculty, we would need to redefine the definition of “man”, which is perfectly acceptable in Objectivism.)

The speaker noted that defining things in terms of “non-essentials” is the reason there are so many “package deals” in politics. (This is a term Ayn Rand coined: http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/package-dealing,_fallacy_of.html)

A question was asked by an audience member about the “mental file folder” that is a concept. The question was: Does the “mental file folder” hold the knowledge or the units? The units would be the actual mental images that were used to form the concept. So, when you first form the concept of “bird”, you hold in your mind the image of two or more particular birds you perceive, and note they have characteristics that are more alike one another than the characteristics of another type of animal you perceive, like a squirrel. (In that case, you’d notice the birds both have feathers and walk on two legs while the squirrel has fur and walks on four legs most of the time.) The answer to the question was: the “mental file folder” you have of the concept “bird” does not hold the mental image of the two or more birds you originally perceived in forming the concept.

A formal method of coming up with a definition was then given: (1) Give some examples of the concept, (2) Ask what facts of reality give rise to the need for such a concept, (3) Give some examples of the concepts “nearest relatives”, for instance when defining “marriage”, you might think of “love affair” or “girlfriend”, (4) Identify the “genus” (5) Identify the differentia, (6) Formulate the definition, (7) Test the definition versus the rules -I assume this means the rules for definition that were set out in the course, like the need to define things in terms of their essential characteristics.

Characters From the Fountainhead Lecture

The next lecture was regarding Ayn Rand’s novel “The Fountainhead”. My notes look like it was some sort of analysis of some of the characters from the novel, but I cannot remember what the overall topic of discussion was now, and I cannot discern it from my notes, which are not extensive.

It looks like there was a discussion of the different things that motivated different people in the novel. So, for instance, Peter Keating was described as very “status conscious” -he cared what other people thought of him in a fundamental way. He cared more about what others thought than he did about truth, or justice, or reality. (This is my take on Peter Keating.)

The speaker noted that Guy Francon was also “other-regarding” in his approach to life, but not in the same way as Keating. He was concerned with “dignity” or “tradition”, which was exemplified by his “classicist world-view” when it came to architecture.

Elsworth Toohey was described as regarding nothing important on Earth but human beings and their relationships with each other. The speaker also noted that Toohey saw people who were better than him as a threat, and he wanted to gain power over them.

I think the psychological principle of Toohey was that he regarded himself as incompetent and corrupt and anyone who was competent and rational made him feel bad about himself. The way he got over that feeling was to try to destroy the person who was better than him. (I am not sure at this point to what extent my analysis of Toohey is consistent with the speaker’s.) Toohey is probably not someone that could exist in real life in that “pure” of a form. I think he’d either destroy himself or be “boycotted” by others who would at least sense the evil of someone like that. However, there are people who have some “Elsworth Toohey” in their thinking and actions to a greater or lesser degree. The character from the novel is just a “purified” version of this feeling of extreme envy and the will to act on that envy. (I think there is nothing wrong with feeling envy, as long as you don’t go out and try to destroy people who are better than you in an effort to eliminate that feeling. What makes Elsworth Toohey a villain is he always acts on that feeling of envy by trying to destroy whoever he regards as good, and that methodology has become habituated for him.)

The speaker then went over some of the “good guy” characters from the Fountainhead, other than Roark, and what mistakes they were making in the novel. For instance,Steven Malory was a great sculptor, but he toiled in obscurity thanks to the likes of Elsworth Toohey, and was very frustrated by it. The speaker said the problem with someone like Steven Malory is they see the irrationality of other people in the world, and it bothers then greatly. Roark tends to just dismiss that sort of irrationality, but someone like Steven Malory gets sort of, mentally and emotionally, “hung up” on it.

The speaker said Gail Wynand saw the incompetence of a lot of people around him, and it made him a little “crazy”. His solution to the problem was to try to “rule the mob” by pandering to their irrationality with his newspaper.

In the novel, Wynand’s paper, “The Banner”, simply put out articles expressing ideas that 99% of the population already agreed with, and without attempting to challenge any of those ideas that might be incorrect or in need of being re-considered.

The speaker said Dominique Francon, Roark’s “love interest” in the novel, thought that a person is so interconnected with others in the world that you cannot achieve anything in the face of all the irrational people. Her solution to this perceived dilemma was to “detach” herself from society. Her “awakening” comes when she is married to Gail Wynand and sees how this supposed “ruler” of the mob is really miserable. She sees that Wynand is also a frustrated lover of the best in people, but his “solution” merely empowers the likes of Elsworth Toohey. (For instance Toohey used “The Banner” to run a campaign against Howard Roark and his architecture. So, Wynand empowered Roark’s destroyer, despite the fact that Roark was the only friend Wynand had ever had.)

I will note that I tend to doubt that there are that many people in the world that I would describe as “irrational”. I think most people are “mixed” when it comes to their level of rationality, or they “compartmentalize” and are rational in some areas of life, and not rational in others. I think many average Americans are just ignorant of the truth rather than explicitly irrational. The difference between “ignorance” and “irrationality” to me is this: An ignorant person can be taught and is open to learning, while an irrational person is “closed” to hearing anything contrary to what they believe. I think too many Objectivists regard themselves as being alone in a sea of irrationality, which I think is going to lead to misanthropy. (People who self-describe as “Progressives” often have similar tendencies, I’ve noticed, so this isn’t unique to Objectivism. Although, I think “Progressives” have the added disadvantage that their political views are largely incorrect.)

Relationships Lecture

The next lecture I attended that day was titled “Deeper Connection Through Mutual Selfishness” and was given by a psychologist. There was a lot that was covered here, and my note taking was light, so these are just some of the highlights that I caught on paper.

“Connection” was defined as “mutual understanding and valuing between two human minds”. One of the things that was stressed was “learning to say the ‘I’”, which I believe is a reference to Rand’s novel “The Fountainhead”, where someone says something like: “To say ‘I love you’, you have to be able to say ‘I’.” For instance, the speaker noted you have to “have a self”, which means you have to be able to ask someone out on a date, and get rejected without it completely “destroying” you. You have to have a sure enough sense of your self and self-worth to be able to handle rejection.

I’ve heard the expression “dating is a numbers game”, and I think this is applicable. As a man, or at least a man in Texas, since women almost never ask men out here, you’ve got to ask a lot of women out, and get turned down a lot, especially in Dallas. As a woman, it probably means going on quite a few first dates with some “toads” before you can meet “prince charming”.

Another interesting aspect of this idea of “learning to say the ‘I’” was what you get out of different relationships. The speaker said a relationship can provide “spiritual value” or “instrumental value” -although it was noted that most provide at least some of each. What was meant by a relationship deriving “spiritual value” is when it is more of an “end in itself”. For instance, you like spending time with the person because you have interesting conversations. “Instrumental value” was when the relationship was more of a “means to an end”, like someone you’re friends with at work, primarily because you collaborate on work projects together.

Anther example of an “instrumental value”, according to the speaker, was “He/she might make a good husband/wife.” I can certainly see how this is more than just a “spiritual value”, but I had never really thought about it. When picking a wife, you probably want to take into consideration whether she’ll be a good mother to the kids, isn’t going to spend every dime you make, etc. And, when picking a good husband, you’ve got to consider if he has a good job, or at least *a* job, will treat you and the children well, etc. (This is not to say men couldn’t stay home and take care of the kids while the wife worked -that’s just not as common.)

A “framework” was presented of three different personality types: “Passive”, “Assertive”, and “Aggressive”. The passive personality was defined as “self-deprecatory”, “bottling up feelings”, and a “pushover”. The Aggressive personality was defined as “self-centered”, I assume in the sense of disregarding the fact that others have their own lives and goals, “domineering”, and “pushy”. The assertive personality, which was considered ideal was “self confident”, “directly and calmly expresses his feelings and needs”, and “respectful, yet firm”.

I’m not sure if this was said, or I just thought it, but in my notes, it says this framework has pitfalls. I wrote that “maybe you should be ‘aggressive’ with a mugger.” I think this must have been my thought, because I seem to recall Colonel Jeff Cooper in his book on personal protection talking about the need to act aggressively with someone initiating physical force against you because they’ve already got the advantage of being the first to strike against you. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Cooper) But, leaving aside emergency situations, the framework makes sense in every day “civil society”.

I also suspect that many “aggressive” personalities would claim they are just being “assertive”, and that many “passive” personalities would claim that they are “kind”, which they would say is good. You have to be careful to really consider reality and facts when trying to determine what your personality type is and when trying to address any flaws that you may have -that’s probably where a psychologist can be helpful.

The speaker also discussed premises that can lead to “fear-based” motives. Such as “if this person breaks up with me, I’ll be alone forever,” or “no one would love me if they knew I had these flaws.” I agree that this is a problem to be aware of in your own thinking, and that it can cause you to act in a manner that is not always entirely rational. I see this in others, and, without getting too personal, I sometimes become aware of it in myself.

The next aspect of creating “connection” that the speaker spoke on, that I have in my notes, concerns the Objectivist idea of “trading value for value”. In other words, for Objectivists, relationships should be “win-win”, and not a “zero-sum game”. The speaker said for any given decision, ask yourself: What for?” In other words, what values do you seek to gain by the relationship, and what values will you offer in exchange for the relationship? She discussed when you should argue or voice disapproval in a given situation. I take this to mean, “picking your battles”, although my notes are a little sketchy on this. She also discussed when you may need to “break off ties” with someone in a particular relationship, and this depends on what you are gaining from the relationship, or if the relationship is no longer a value to you.

The third thing I have in my notes from this lecture has to do with communication as a necessary aspect of “connection” in a relationship. The speaker noted that “connection” does not mean “mind reading”, and that you should beware of “projection” -which I think means, assuming someone believes or thinks what you do without having sufficient information to make that assumption. I’m guessing this also probably means you shouldn’t assume someone has characteristics that they may not actually possess based on too little information. I think Sandra Bullock does this with the man she sees every day at the train station in the movie “While You Were Sleeping”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW-_UDU7Kdw  Basically, she falls in love with a man she knows very little about that she sees every day at work on the train station, despite knowing very little about him.

The last thing I have from this speaker is that you have to make your mind known and “put yourself out there” if you’re going to “connect” with people.

Objectivism Conference, Day 2

This was “day 2” of OCON. I didn’t take any pictures on this day, so I’m’ just putting it on my blog. “Day One” can be found on my Facebook page, which has pictures: https://www.facebook.com/dean.cook.5011/posts/10156994148213968

My written journal says I went to day 2 of the Logic class and learned about “example”, by which, I mean, the concept of “example” -what you use when you are trying to explain or elucidate a concept. This was done by examples of, well, example. Various principles of what makes a good “example” were gone over. For instance (and by way of example), a good “example” is concrete and specific. I take this as meaning if someone wants an example, of the concept, “love”, you present them with a mother taking care of her child or newlyweds kissing. You don’t start out by telling them “love is compromise” or “love is a change in brain chemistry that creates a positive association about another person”, even though those are probably true statements.

The previous homework was gone over. One example of “Philosophy determines history” that I really liked involved an attempted counter-example of this assertion. Economists will say that the Roman Empire fell because it became a welfare state and the Romans inflated their currency, which destroyed their economy and made them weak militarily. Then, the Gauls and the Visigoths invaded and sacked Rome. This is all true, and I’ve heard Economists say this before. But, it doesn’t disprove that “philosophy determines history”.  If you look “behind” this Economic explanation for the fall of the Roman Empire, you ask: “Why did the Romans think they could inflate their currency without bad consequences in the long run?” This had to do with the move away in Roman thinking from the “empiricism” of Aristotle and towards the “other worldliness” of Plato and his “world of forms”. In other words, the Romans turned away from accepting that reality is what it is and has a specific nature, and began to believe that there is a “higher” or “truer” nature that is somehow more “pure”. This means you cannot trust your senses and your logic to tell you that if you inflate your money supply, there will be bad economic consequences and that the barbarians to the North will kill you if they think they can get away with it.

The homework assignment was pretty interesting and really stimulated my thinking. It involved defining certain concepts, including: (1) The number “seven”; (2) “war”; (3) “prize”; (4) “Dignity”; and (5) “Racism”.

According to my journal, the next lecture that day had to do with Burnout and Rational Self-Interest. I believe there were three speakers on this one. Burnout was defined as: (1) Exhaustion; (2) Cynicism; and (3) Diminished sense of self-confidence. There was a discussion of how adopting an other-regarding, altruistic morality will create “burnout” as it had been defined, although external causes of “burnout” were noted as also possible – specifically the fact that the government interferes in some professions to such a degree that it makes it difficult to avoid burnout. (Medicine was given as an example -with its massive amounts of bureaucratic controls and “red tape”.)

There was also an interesting discussion of “selfishness in the moment”, in which you never think “I have to do this.” I’ve heard similar things, and I think it’s basically the idea that if you need to do something to achieve some goal, like studying for a test, but you feel great reluctance to start, you remind yourself that you don’t “have” to do anything, and then ask yourself why you’re feeling this great reluctance, and try to see if there is some other important thing in your life that you might feel like you’re neglecting. Then, you may need to alter or amend your goals, or adjust your work schedule to account for this other important thing.

I will comment on this a little bit, and say that I think the speakers are assuming you’ve got a basic level of wealth and can survive okay in this moment. Sometimes, you may be so impoverished or broke that you just need to work a job you dislike in the short term in order to make money, and it takes an act of pure “will” to get up in the morning, and you hate everything about the job and the people you work with -which I’ve done before. But, that’s not sustainable long-term, and probably will lead to “burn out”. But, over-all, I think what they’re saying makes sense in most situations.

The next lecture was on creativity. The overall argument seemed to be that creativity is really an act of the conscious mind rather than something that comes out of the subconscious. The speaker explicitly said he wasn’t talking about the arts, so I don’t know if he thinks this about fiction writing, music, and painting.

Several examples of highly creative people were given. Steve Jobs being one.

Although the speaker didn’t believe the subconscious was “primary”, it is necessary. Basically, he said when engaged in creative activity, you should engage in active thinking and work, and then take a break periodically as there seems to be something about your mind that will engage in some sort of “mental consolidation” while you’re resting, and then make your next round of work more productive. I’ve noticed this myself in my own work. He also noted this sort of thing works well in collaborative endeavors, where you sit down with colleagues and discuss the problem and solutions, and then you all separate and do some individual thinking and work, and then get back together later, and the next round of collaboration will be better.

He also said expect to fail a lot. Failure was described as a signal to keep moving. He said that geniuses fail a lot because they try so many ideas.

He also noted that the “10,000 hours to competence” assertion you hear sometimes is a myth. I think he said the studies that have been done just don’t support that.

He also noted that “experts” can only be experts about the past, so “experts” aren’t likely to generate new ideas.

The final lecture of the day in my notes wasn’t a lecture per se. It was a panel discussion between Jordan Peterson, a philosophy professor from the Ayn Rand Institute and the Institute’s CEO. A fourth person steered the conversation with questions for all three people.

I’m uncertain of Jordan Peterson’s level of “sympathy” for Ayn Rand and her philosophy, and he said several things that made it clear he wasn’t in line with key aspects of her philosophy. The biggest one had to do with him saying something like religion is necessary in order to give you a basic framework from which to organize the factual data you observe. He basically said the universe is too complex, and you need some sort of “narrative” to have it all make sense, and that for most people that need is fulfilled by religion. I would need to hear more about what Peterson means here than just an hour-long, somewhat “freewheeling” discussion, and I don’t want to misrepresent what he said. He referenced Sam Harris, and said he is having a similar sort of debate with Harris, and that Harris says you can derive “oughts” from “what is”, so I’d like to hear his debate with Harris on this point. (Harris also has explicitly disagreed with key points of Rand’s philosophy, so his view isn’t going to be Rand’s.)  I also haven’t read any of Jordan Peterson’s books. I cannot find the complete discussion online, but here is a youtube channel with “outtakes” from it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMEBQJoPumc

Frankly, I’m not sure that the “problem” Peterson is pointing to is a real problem at all. The universe isn’t “complex” or “simple”, these are concepts having to do with human action and the things we create. Also why do you need the universe to “make sense”? Is it in order to live successfully? Then wouldn’t that imply that your own life is your ultimate goal? I think when you start thinking about ethics, you can start from the perspective of a normal adult with a normally functioning mind who has basic knowledge, and who has made the choice to live. I start from this point because you’d have to have basic knowledge and be a normally functioning adult to really be in a position to think about ethics at all. (A child has insufficient knowledge, and a mentally retarded person doesn’t have the intelligence level to even ask the questions, much less find any answers.) Such a person, if he wants to live, is going to have to observe reality, organize his thinking into certain normative concepts like “rationality”, “virtue”, and “ultimate value”, which must have some connection to reality for success, and then he must act on those normative principles. But, maybe I’m missing Peterson’s point.

Is the Male Gender The Reason There is Violence In the World?

A few years back a girl told me she was watching some reality TV show where a guy was being physically confronted by another guy, and, rather than fight, he ran away. She said if that were her boyfriend, she’d break up with him. Recently, while listening to a lecture on the American Civil War, I learned that women would send women’s clothing to men who refused to fight in the war. The implication being that these men were not ‘truly masculine’. There are other instances of this in history. I read at this web site that women would belittle men who refused to fight for their clan in ancient Scotland.

Why am I bringing this up? Because I occasionally hear women say something like: ‘Men are responsible for the violence in the world.’ While I agree that men are the gender more likely to actually initiate physical force (and to commit crimes), I think this completely ignores the social reality of the relationship between the genders. I think plenty of women who would not use violence themselves want their men to do so, and male willingness to use violence is tied to their conception of masculinity. As such, these men feel great social pressure from women to initiate violence. Men who refuse to do so will find they don’t have sexual access to women, which is an enormous penalty to pay. It means no wife, no family, and a great deal of social isolation.

The problem of the initiation of physical force by men is as old as mankind, but I have no doubt that when our Paleolithic ancestors, living in caves and huts, decided to take by force the goods of another tribe, their female mates were there egging them on. Even when a tribe decided to capture women for sexual purposes, I’m sure the mothers of the men in the tribe were there pushing their sons to give them grandchildren by any means necessary. So, I think the notion that men are the only gender responsible for the level of violence in the world is undue self-congratulation by females.

Ayn Rand Institute Article on “Morality Without Religion”

I found this article to be good, and there isn’t anything major I would disagree with. It’s a response to people who say without religion, there would be no prohibition against murder, or other violations of people’s rights. However, I think the author didn’t explicitly state with sufficient “weight” what I think the fundamental Randian response to such an argument would be. If someone says: “Without religion, there could be no prohibition on murder, therefore we need religious faith to keep people from committing murder,” I think the Randian response would be to start with a discussion of why murder is bad. I think this is where Objectivism would start in discussing this because it’s where Rand starts her discussion of morality in general:

“The first question that has to be answered, as a precondition of any attempt to define, to judge or to accept any specific system of ethics, is: Why does man need a code of values?

Let me stress this. The first question is not: What particular code of values should man accept? The first question is: Does man need values at all—and why?” (“The Objectivist Ethics”, _The Virtue of Selfishness_ Ayn Rand, http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/morality.html )

When it comes to a discussion of murder, I think it’s probably socially taboo to even ask this question, which is why I think theists use it. It’s like people are afraid to address the question: “Why is murder bad?” because they’re afraid they won’t be able to come up with a satisfactory explanation other than just: “It’s bad.”

I do, in fact, think murder is bad. But, I also try not to be afraid of any question (or the answer), and I don’t think Rand was either. So, why is murder bad?

If you ask most people, and they are willing to discuss the question with you at all, then I think most of them will say murder is bad for at least one of three reasons: (1) They don’t want to be murdered. (2) They don’t want anyone they care about to be murdered. Probably, a third reason that will be commonly posited is something along the lines of: If murder isn’t prohibited, then the social order will break down. This is also true, although I don’t think it’s fundamental, since I think society exists because it is beneficial for each individual living in that society. So, this really becomes: “Murder is bad because without it, I can’t live in society, which is bad for me.”

Once you have elicited one of these three responses from someone, it becomes fairly easy to explain to them why we don’t need religion to explain why murder is bad. Murder is bad because it isn’t consistent with the requirements of their life. “Man’s life” is the standard of morality for those who choose to live. When you combine this with a discussion of the the fact that “nature to be commanded, must be obeyed”, and with the fact that human beings have a certain nature, which gives rise to the need for long-range principles of action and conduct to live successfully long-term, then virtues, values, and individual rights become fairly easy to explain. Additionally, government can then be explained as the institution that is intended to protect individual rights, and to enforce an absolute prohibition on murder, assault, and property crimes, which must be prohibited for the individual to live in a social environment.

But, note that this explanation is based on the choice to live. It is only because one chooses to live that one needs morality at all. The choice to live was regarded as “basic choice” by Rand, that precedes morality. Murder, and all moral vice, is bad because it is not consistent with man’s life:

“Life or death is man’s only fundamental alternative. To live is his basic act of choice. If he chooses to live, a rational ethics will tell him what principles of action are required to implement his choice. If he does not choose to live, nature will take its course.” (“Causality Versus Duty,”
Philosophy: Who Needs It, Ayn Rand, http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/morality.html )

Another discussion that would have to be had in conjunction with “Why is murder bad?” is: “What is ‘murder’ and how do we distinguish it from killing in self-defense?” The distinction is: Who initiated or started the use of physical force? There are many complicated scenarios that we can get into in terms of distinguishing a particular set of facts as “murder” or “self-defense”, but in general, it comes down to who initially uses force to gain a value from another person, or to destroy another person’s values. (In the case of murder, that value is one’s life.) A person who acts in self-defense only does so to preserve their own life from being taken, not, primarily, to deprive their attacker of their life -that is just an unfortunate “by-product” of self-defense.

A dedicated Platonist/Religionist won’t be fully satisfied with this explanation, of course. They want a commandment handed down from above saying: “Thou shalt not commit murder,” and they want anyone who violates it to spend eternity in hell. They want a commandment for all moral principles. But, the vast majority of modern-day Americans, I think, will find the Randian explanation perfectly acceptable for living our every-day lives -even some of the more religious ones.

Gun Control: A State-Sponsored Initiation of Physical Force

On July 14, 2016 a terrorist drove a cargo truck into crowds of people celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, France, killing eighty-six people and injuring 458 others. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/14/84-killed-in-nice-by-lorry-during-bastille-day-celebrations—ho/

Mass-murders using a multi-ton vehicle are simply viewed as tragedies for the victims, and acts of viciousness by the perpetrators. Politicians and activists on the left do not attempt to change our attitudes towards trucks and automobiles. There are no calls for criminal background checks before owning a car, no calls for psychological screening before you can get your new Toyota, and anyone seriously suggesting that cargo trucks should be banned would be laughed at.

On the other hand, any time there is a mass-murder involving a firearm in “gun friendly” United States, and not in countries with massive firearms restrictions, like France or Belgium, it becomes time to trot out the “gun control” arguments. The latest mass-shooting in Florida has brought forth the left’s usual call for an “assault weapons” ban. As with any blanket governmental prohibition on the ownership of any device or substance, the problem with “gun control” is this: The only way to enforce it is to turn government into a force-initiator. Although, in our already very un-free society, it means turning our government into an even greater force-initiator.

I’ll start with a discussion of the difference between murder and self-defense. This is primarily a moral and philosophical discussion of the distinction, not a legal one. Laws are made by men, and can be changed or reformed to better reflect moral and philosophical truth, so keep that in mind as I go over this. I am speaking more as a political philosopher than as a lawyer.

First, the use of a weapon to commit murder is bad, while the use of a weapon to defend yourself from murder is good, if you value your life. I doubt there are many who will dispute the notion that you can rightly defend yourself, so I won’t discuss it any further. Most of us seem to understand it on a “gut level”, but what exactly is the difference between murder and killing someone in self-defense?

It’s not the mere use of force that distinguishes murder from self-defense. A murderer uses force, but so does the person who acts in self-defense. The difference lies in the fact that a murderer is the first to act, while a person acting in self-defense reacts to an articulable act of force by another. Another critical distinction between murder and self-defense is: the person who acts in self-defense is not attempting to gain another person’s values nor to deprive another person of their values. The robber starts the use of force against others to gain their property or money -to gain what they have produced through their thought and labor. The person who acts in self-defense is reacting to preserve his values. When someone tries to murder him, the man who acts in self-defense is attempting to preserve what can be considered an important value, and, I think, his ultimate value -the value that all his other values are aimed at achieving and maintaining. The murderer or the robber initiates physical force, while the person who acts in self-defense, or defense of others, uses force in reaction or retaliation to the initiation of physical force.

Next, what are “gun control laws”? They are “preventative law”. They attempt to prohibit a certain action that is innocuous in and of itself -the ownership of a gun. “Preventative law” prohibits actions that, standing alone, are not an initiation of physical force. The mere ownership of a gun doesn’t kill or injure anyone. This blanket prohibition is imposed in order to prevent some evil that can potentially be committed with the gun -murder, robbery, or rape. If everyone who owned a gun were to somehow magically loose the free will to choose to use a gun to commit crimes like murder, then there would be very little talk of “gun control laws”. This is because such laws would be unnecessary.

The problem with “preventative laws” is that they: (1) Legally prohibit actions that are good if you value your life -the ownership of a gun for purposes of self-defense; and (2) They turn government agents into force-initiators. Now police are ordered to go out and initiate physical force against those who have not used force to deprive others of their life or property. In fact, the police are ordered to deprive people of their right to self-defense by arresting anyone who possesses a gun for the purposes of self-defense.

In the last twenty or thirty years, most of the “gun control” debate has centered around so-called “assault weapons”, although this name is a misnomer. What is being described as an “assault weapon”, like an AR-15, is a semi-automatic long gun with a detachable magazine that can hold anywhere from five to 50 rounds. The term “assault weapon” is a cunning choice of wording used by left wing politicians. It implies that semi-automatic long guns with detachable magazines can only be used to commit initiations of physical force, i.e., an “assault”. But, as I will discuss below, these guns can sometimes be the best option for self-defense, and defense of others. (For brevity, I’m going to call a “semi-automatic-long-gun-with-a-detachable-magazine ban” a “semi-auto ban”.)

The calls for a “semi-auto ban” center around the fact that this type of gun tends to be the mass-shooter’s weapon of choice. I question that if these types of guns were to magically disappear, it would prevent any mass-shootings or even significantly reduce casualty rates in such events. Simple pump-action shotguns, holding fewer than six rounds, have been used in mass shootings in recent years. (https://www.scribd.com/document/233531169/Navy-Yard#from_embed) At any rate, the use of a these guns in high-profile, but statistically rare, mass shootings accounts for a lot of the political push for a semi-auto ban. (http://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-myths/mass-shootings/)

People on the political left also tend to call for a semi-auto ban because it seems, at first blush, to be more difficult to justify the ownership of such a weapon. A lot of people might see that you need a handgun for self-defense, but they will ask: “Why does anyone ‘need’ an ‘assault weapon’?”

A concrete example of the utility of semi-automatic long guns for self-defense was demonstrated in the Los Angeles Riots of 1992. (https://www.britannica.com/event/Los-Angeles-Riots-of-1992) The LA Times reported that Koran store owners used “…shotguns and automatic weapons…” to defend their stores from looters. http://articles.latimes.com/1992-05-02/news/mn-1281_1_police-car (Likely the journalist reporting in the old LA Times article didn’t know the difference between a semi-automatic and an automatic, and these guns were likely semi-automatics, the precise type of gun that people push to ban after almost every mass-shooting.)

During the LA riots, Korean shop owners were targeted, and their small businesses were often destroyed. They were an immigrant minority group singled out because of the color of their skin by members of other racial minority groups engaged in mayhem and destruction. But, more fundamentally, rioters went after them because they were successful property owners. The Korean small businessmen were everything the rioters weren’t: hard working, ambitious, and devoted to making something of their lives. The store owners were the “producers”, as Ayn Rand would say, and the rioters were, literally, “the looters”. Rather than have their life’s work destroyed, many of these shop owners armed themselves when the police and the government abandoned them. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCYT9Hew9ZU)

Now, at this point an advocate of a semi-auto ban will say that riots like the one in LA are statistically rare. That is probably true, but, then again, so are shootings that involve the use of a semi-automatic long gun. Far more people are killed with handguns than long-guns of any type. https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-2012/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded-homicide/expanded_homicide_data_table_8_murder_victims_by_weapon_2008-2012.xls (For instance, in 2012 6,371 people were murdered by handguns, versus 232 people killed by rifles, whether semi-automatic or not.)

Now, lets turn to the consequences of a law prohibiting the ownership of semi-automatic long guns. The first thing to note is that the passage of a law is not like waving a magic wand that makes the outlawed thing go away. The drug laws have been on the books for over a hundred years now, but cocaine, heroin, meth, and marijuana are still readily available. Most people could acquire any drug they want in about 24 hours if they have enough money to pay for it. Furthermore, a semi-auto ban isn’t simply a law that says people can’t use guns to deprive others of their lives because we already have that: It’s called a murder statute. As already discussed, a semi-auto ban is what is known as “preventative law”. It involves the government threatening to use force against those who have not initiated physical force, and never would, because they possess the weapons for self-defense.

A semi-auto ban means that people who possess such weapons for morally legitimate reasons like self-defense will be threated with jail time if they continue to possess them. Like all laws, when the police come to arrest violators, if they resist, the state is authorized to use anything up to and including deadly force to subdue them. In other words, the state will use its guns to kill those who want to have the capacity to defend their lives. The initiation of physical force by the state will be required to enforce a semi-auto ban. Government agents become authorized, and ordered, to commit the moral-equivalent of murder to enforce preventative laws such as this.

Is what I’m saying here just “hypothetical”? Are there any concrete examples of how “preventative” gun laws lead to the killing of those who have not initiated physical force? I think the incident at Ruby Ridge is an example of this. Ruby Ridge is an illustration of the fact that gun-prohibitions have life and death consequences. (The facts I outline here are all found in a britanica.com article called “Ruby Ridge Incident” https://www.britannica.com/event/Ruby-Ridge-incident)

Randy Weaver was a white separatist who moved to Idaho in the 1980’s. While attending an Aryan Nations meeting in the late 1980’s he was approached by what turned out to be an ATF informant, who convinced Weaver to saw off two shotguns. A shotgun with a barrel below a certain length is illegal under Federal law. The ATF then threatened Weaver with arrest for possessing a short-barreled shotgun. They told him he could either face prosecution, or he too could become an informant for the ATF. Weaver refused to become an informant, so the ATF pursued the prosecution on the Federal weapons charge. Weaver was arrested, and after his trial was set, he was released.

Originally, Weaver’s trial was set for February 19, 1991, but the trial was then moved to February 20th. Weaver’s probation officer sent him a letter incorrectly stating that the new trial date was March 20. (Similar to the latest mass-shooting in Florida, Federal Government Officials demonstrated their incompetence. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5401101/FBI-knew-Nikolas-Cruz-stockpiling-weapons.html)

When Weaver failed to appear on February 20, the court issued a bench warrant for his arrest. Weaver was then indicted by a Federal grand jury for failing to appear at his trial. The US Marshal’s service was then tasked with arresting Weaver. On August 21, 1992, six heavily-armed Marshals entered Weaver’s property. The Weaver family dog discovered the Marshals in hiding, and one of the Marshals shot the dog. Weaver’s 14-year-old son, Sammy had been walking the dog, and he then got into a gunfight with the Marshals. The Marshals shot Sammy Weaver in the back, killing him. One of Weaver’s friends, Kevin Harris, who had also been with Sammy, then shot and killed US Marshal William Degan.

At that point, the FBI was brought in to assist the Marshals, and there was a standoff centering around Randy Weaver’s house. On August 22, 1992, an FBI sniper shot Weaver in the arm, and accidentally shot his wife, Viki Weaver, in the face, killing her while she held the Weaver’s infant daughter behind the front door of the cabin.

Weaver and Harris eventually surrendered. Weaver was charged with numerous crimes, including murder, conspiracy, and assault. Kevin Harris, who had shot US Marshal, Degan, was acquitted of murder. Weaver was found not guilty on all charges, except the original failure to appear for the original firearms charge.

To sum up: Viki Weaver, Sammy Weaver, and a US Marshal were killed because, back in the 1930’s, Congress arbitrarily decided that a shotgun was okay, but having a sawed-off shotgun was so bad that the Federal Government should be free to initiate physical force against anyone who was found to be in possession of one.

I doubt that the law against possessing a sawed off shotgun has ever saved a single life -although I obviously don’t know that for certain. What I do know is that Viki Weaver and her son Sammy are dead because the government saw fit to initiate physical force to prohibit the mere possession of device whose only difference from a legal device is a shorter barrel. Randy Weaver hadn’t initiated physical force against anyone, and whatever one thinks of some of his odious political views, I don’t think that justifies what I consider to be the moral-equivalent of the murder of his wife and son by agents of the state.

The death of Viki and Sammy Weaver is the price we pay when we direct government agents to initiate physical force in an attempt to ban the mere possession of a device. The death of innocent people who cannot defend themselves from criminals because guns are banned is another price we pay. Mass murders are horrible. But, then again, all initiations of physical force are horrible, especially when they are committed by armed agents of the state against a disarmed population.

I’ve heard death penalty opponents say something like: “How can the state say that killing is immoral by killing people?” They are noting an apparent contradiction, although it isn’t a genuine contradiction, since the death penalty is actually the state saying murder is immoral -and it is killing the murderer to demonstrate that. “Murder” and “killing” are different things. “Murder” is killing by the initiation of physical force. It is starting the use of force to deprive another of their most important value, which is their own life. However, this slogan by death-penalty critics can be repurposed when it comes to gun control into a true statement: How can we say that the initiation of physical force is immoral by initiating physical force against those who own a gun to protect their lives? Because that’s what “gun control” is.

Affirmative Action Penalizes The Rational

When I discuss the injustice of affirmative action programs, some will retort that such programs are necessary because not everyone is as rational as I am. The assertion seems to be that there are people out there who will make decisions on school admissions or job hiring based on racial discrimination, so the affirmative action programs are necessary to counter-act that.

But, do affirmative action programs in hiring and educational admissions encourage or discourage rationality? In actuality, they discourage people from acting rationally by destroying the benefit of behaving rationally.

First, I will start with some definitions:

Affirmative action– are policies by private employers, government employers, or universities in which individuals are admitted or hired over more-qualified persons because of the less qualified individual’s race.

Rationality– is the act of conforming one’s actions to the goal of promoting and sustaining one’s life. Such conformance of one’s actions to that goal requires one to recognize the facts of reality and then act accordingly. Reality, to be commanded, must be obeyed. Ayn Rand summed up the purpose of rationality:

“My morality, the morality of reason, is contained in a single axiom: existence exists—and in a single choice: to live. The rest proceeds from these. To live, man must hold three things as the supreme and ruling values of his life: Reason—Purpose—Self-esteem. Reason, as his only tool of knowledge…These three values imply and require all of man’s virtues, and all his virtues pertain to the relation of existence and consciousness: rationality, independence, integrity, honesty, justice, productiveness, pride.” Galt’s Speach, _For The New Intellectual_ Pg. 128, http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/morality.html)

Justice– is the virtue of judging people in accordance with a rational standard and then treating them accordingly. For example, in a fully free society, a criminal is put in jail because he is judged to have violated the rights of some other person to live and act in accordance with their rational thinking. The criminal is put in jail to restrain him from violating the rights of others going forward into the future. An employer hires the most productive employee he can at a given wage because such an employee will maximize the profitability of his business. The profitability of his business is the rational standard by which the employer judges employees. His act of hiring the most productive employee is treating someone in accordance with that standard.

The best way to see that affirmative action programs discourage rational behavior is by looking at some concrete examples:

(1) Affirmative action in college admissions. There are a limited number of spots for students in each freshman class per year. Affirmative action means a less qualified student will be admitted over a more-qualified student based on the less qualified student’s race. This isn’t necessarily a less-qualified non-white being admitted over a white in the United States. Asians would probably have greater admissions rates at some universities if affirmative action were done away with -which I am fine with. If they are the ones that have the best grades and SAT scores, then they are the ones that deserve to be there. https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/jeff-sessions-justice-department-goes-after-affirmative-actions

Such race-based admissions mean students and their parents are going to be forced to pay for universities through their taxes, and then their children are going to be denied admission based on their race, even though they have studied harder and done things to cultivate their rationality and expand their knowledge. (Leaving aside the fact that many public schools often seem to do the opposite of encouraging knowledge and rationality in their students.)

Students that are more rational will be penalized in favor of students that are less rational. Furthermore, to the extent a four-year degree is required to obtain a professional license for many areas of work, such as lawyers and doctors, those of us in the public will be forced to use the services of less-qualified minority doctors and lawyers who were admitted not because they were the most intelligent or qualified to work in those professions, but because of their race. This means our rational choice as consumers of things like medical services and legal services is thwarted by affirmative action programs in university admissions.

(2) Affirmative action in hiring. This involves a business hiring or retaining a less-qualified employee over another more-qualified employee based on the less qualified employee’s race. Since any one employer only has a set number of employees at a time, it means some people who are harder-working, more diligent, more productive, and, in a word, more rational, will be excluded from employment based on their race.

This doesn’t just hurt the employee who was not hired, but should have been hired if the business went on the basis of productivity of employees exclusively. Business customers will receive a sub-standard product over what they could have had. Investors in the business will receive a lower return on their investment than they could have obtained. Managers at the business who insist on hiring on the basis of productive ability, i.e., the more rational managers, will be penalized for doing so. The affirmative action program in hiring penalizes rationality and rewards irrationality.

Furthermore, if the business is a government contractor producing goods and services for governmental functions, then the taxpayers are being forced to not only pay taxes, but to pay taxes to employ people who are less competent at their jobs than other job candidates, and getting a substandard product in return. A funny consequence of affirmative action programs would be some of the employees at the United States Post Office. A less funny example would be what happens when less qualified people work on things like military equipment, where the lives of soldiers are at stake, as well as the ability of our country to defend itself from enemy attack. Our free and good society’s very existence is put at risk by affirmative action programs in military equipment contracts. Our continued ability to exercise our freedoms and liberties guaranteed under the constitution is contingent on our military’s ability to protect us from invasion by people who would not respect our right to be rational. Affirmative action programs in defense contracts are therefore a huge threat to those of us who want to be rational in order to sustain and maintain our lives.

If you look around, you can see other examples of treating less qualified people better than they deserve because of their race. Some are more subtle than the above and get into complex social dynamics. For instance, what happens when you invite someone to a party because of their race –you don’t want to be perceived as racist- but they are an obnoxious boor? I won’t go through the details, but the party is less fun.

These examples illustrate my overall point. Affirmative action programs discourage and penalize rationality. To claim that affirmative action programs are necessary because “everyone isn’t rational” is the opposite of the truth. In reality, affirmative action programs destroy incentives to be rational because they destroy the principle of justice -of judging people in accordance with a rational standard and then treating them accordingly.

The Left Is Making A “Mountain Out of a Molehill” Regarding Neo-Nazism

My Facebook feed is currently full of people declaring their opposition to National Socialism (Nazism). This is presumably arising out of the rioting and protests currently going on in Charlottesville, Virginia.

To me, this is like declaring your opposition to people who go around randomly shooting strangers for no reason, or just for the thrill of it. The number of people that engage in thrill killing is incredibly small. Furthermore, there is zero academic, cultural, or media support for thrill killing.

The same is largely true of National Socialism or white supremacy ideas in general. If you include white supremacists with all National Socialists, I think they are an incredibly small number of people. Furthermore, in modern America, National Socialism and white supremacist ideas have no academic, cultural, or media support. There are no university professors advocating National Socialism, and there are no major or local newspapers advocating it.

So why all of the opposition on Facebook to something that, like thrill killing, has no political, moral, or social legitimacy, and is not likely to become a political force in America? There are probably a variety of reasons. I have a few theories, all of which, I admit, are just theories. Partly it may be “virtue signaling”, although publicly proclaiming your opposition to Nazism doesn’t take that much courage, because no one is likely to disagree with you. Part of it may be because the left has so completely conflated Donald Trump and his supporters with Hitler and Nazism, that they can see no difference. In which case, they need to study the history of Germany more. A more ominous possibility is that the left wants to use the activities of an extremely fringe group -neo-Nazi’s and white supremacists- to advance their own political agenda of things like more injustices in the form of affirmative action programs and racial quotas in jobs and university admissions. The left may use the activities of a very small and unimportant group of people, white supremacists, to push for more government power, especially more Federal Government power, in an effort to further erode Federalism and the Constitution.