Is Objectivism an open system or closed system? This was a debate between Craig Biddle and Stephen Hicks held in Europe on 4/10/2023. Craig Biddle is editor in chief of The Objective Standard, and director of education at Objective Standard Institute. Stephen Hicks is a Professor at Rockford University and Senior Scholar at the Atlas Society.
I am following this debate for two reasons. First, I have Objectivist leanings, so the debate interests me as my research into Objectivism goes deeper, and these smart debaters can teach me. Second, this debate signifies for me that schism inevitably springs up between the followers of a deity like Jesus, or a quasi-guru and brilliant philosopher like Ayn Rand.
It does not seem to matter if the schisms occurring are between secular intellectuals like philosopher from ARI and the Atlas Society, or among various interpreters of the Lutheran religion. It seems that the underlying dynamic is psychologically similar.
If I may speculate about that underlying dynamic: we humans do not like ourselves, so we dislike ourselves more than we love ourselves. Our low self-esteem or self-loathing leads to our hating ourselves, and hatred is moral sickness or evil. This self, focused on and drenched, in inner bitterness and sullenness, creeps destructively out into the world in a myriad of ways, tainting, besmirching even destroying all that it touches. It discolors all our social affairs, leading to schisms and fights.
Our low self-esteem sickens the way that we operate in terms of wielding power in the world, as a private person, and as how we wield power as social creatures in various formal or casual collective settings.
Because we are naturally selfless, do not easily self-realize and love to group-live, and our religious authorities instruct us that altruism is the moral system, we eagerly participate in sinful, dysfunctional private and interaction power relationships that corrupt all, and I refer to this power model as the power of powerlessness.
Most people, by choice, by nature or upbringing, are joiners, that run in groups or packs. They live in formal structured societies, constituted by groups, hierarchies, class stratifications, and living within institutions both public and private. The altruist-collectivist morality of these joiners is where the power of powerlessness model is supremely utilized. It is where groups of various sizes set up internal pecking orders where people practice sadomasochistic, negative competitive and cooperative games with each other. Each group, each class, each institution, and each nation seek absolute power over their neighbors—if not checked by equally formidable, power-hungry neighboring, rival tribes, individuals, or groups. If they have the know-how, luck, and potency to take over the world—or as much of it that others allow them to glom onto--on whatever level they are playing on. The way it works is that each member of the pack is ranked by power, status, and popularity.
The higher one rises, the more power that one has, and the more one hates oneself, the more cruel one becomes, the more one lies, the more fanatical one becomes and the more greedy to and addicted to evermore power acquisition is the power addict. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
The joiner at the bottom of the heap loves himself and has higher self-esteem than the dictator, guru or demagogue at the top of the group heap, whether the social arrangement in question is family a social club, or a corporation, a municipality, the state of Minnesota or the federal leviathan.
There is also a demonic spring at the bottom of this entire human enterprise that drives to control society for the Dark Couple.
Here is how this personal and personal collective model of power-wielding, the power of powerless, comes to play in the inception, the quarreling, and the victorious outcome of schismatic disputes.
People want as much power for themselves and for their clique as they can get, and they are in the collective sadistic to those below and masochistic towards those above, and all are slaves and all are trapped and suffering from this malevolent power model. Still, almost all are enthusiastic and ambitious to inflict this way of living and interacting upon the entire world. That means any individual rival or competing group or sect are offering worldviews, insights, opinions, and theories about living that differ from and vie for power with one’s own view or one’s group view. That cannot be endured. No rival opinion, theory, worldview, or culture can be allowed.
Fanaticism in values and narrative, held and jealously guarded and proliferated by all joiners, in person or when gathered in a clique, is a rigid stance, a temptation, tragically and often given free rein in action and policy towards others, is the addiction to raw power to force all to ones point of view, to wipe out all independent thinking, all written, spoken or behavioral independence visibly or socially, or privately or internal to the mind of each human being. As each joiner, each true believer, has soul-raped himself first, now he craves eagerly to soul-rape others below him, and be soul-raped by those above him in the pack, and together, united, and willing to fight to the death for their guru, their holy cause, they inflict their ideological pathology on as much of the word as they can reach or influence.
This is my interpretive model (the power of powerlessness) as to how a society of mendacious true-believers take the philosophy of any thinker or prophet and wastes the lives of all the sectarian rivals involved in these senseless, hurtful schism-engendering games. I fear the rival sects within the world of Objectivism are playing these same, ancient, biological, and spiritual, negative power games against themselves and against one another. As this occurs, Lucifer and Lera gain ground, and the Father and Mother lose ground.
The more true-believing or fanatical is the adherent of our doctrines, the more dogmatic and even violently intolerant the enthusiast is against any rival person or point of view. All people individual or group must completely give up their independent actions, thought word or beliefs, and even the slightest deviation is 100% evil, wrong and insufferable and to be vigorously attacked and crushed—even through violent suppression of “erring, sinful rivals” for the sake of our holy cause. It matters not whether a cause is most slightly, undetectably, negligibly deviant from our pure, true, unerring, perfect all right, all good point of view. We are never wrong, never immoral, never inferior, and never make a mistake, while our opponents are never right, never moral, never superior, and only make mistakes. If the opposing individual or group opposes us 100%, they are subhuman monsters to be crushed or liquidated by any means necessary to gain the upper hand, and the end always justifies the means, however bloody the massacre must be to inflict control on opponents and rival tribes.
In short, group-living fosters and breeds fanatical, false binary thinking in its members. They lie all the time, and their whole way of life is a lie. They think superficially but passionately, will and emotion is their thing. They are so insecure and anxious that they turn absolutist—always rights always noble, and the last word on everything and anything, exactly as stated by them. Any deviance, from the official version as spoken, will be severely censored and punished.
Thus, rival sects, ideologies points of view are wrong, evil, and inferior as are they advocates and must be crushed. Ideology and mass movements feed into this mania for complete control of people choice, thinking words and actions.
This is why sects occur and schism erupt. It is groups of quasi-zealots or full-blown zealots and acquirers after power. Only their metanarrative or myths will be set up throughout society to justify itself and to give the cowed, gullible, indoctrinated masses something to worship. Ideology and holy causes are pseudo religions, devil worship really, a unsatisfying substitute for truth, and faith in and worship of loving good deities, and this substitute its fanatical adherents can never say enough good about, or be unwilling to die for.
Schisms are natural and healthy if they are conducted peacefully and respectfully and bring about needed changes in thinking and behavior optimal to human survival and flourishing tomorrow, but this requires a different mode of power operations towards the self and towards others, what I refer to as the power of powerfulness.
To amass more power than one as an individual or group-member needs, naturally wields or honorably, honestly gained, this concentrated power of powerlessness undercuts our moral integrity, for us as individuals, and the groups or social organizations we belong to and promote. The addiction of self-renunciation is an innate sickness to gather all power to ourselves. If we can persuade, cajole, flatter, blackmail, beat down or intimidate towards, this intensifies our addiction to grab ever more negative power, and our inborn tendency to stifle or ever attack and force conformity, uniformity, and submission upon those with competing opinions that differ from our own is a matter of solipsistic, narcissistic bias, easily disguised and justified and brotherly love.
I am interested in following this intense quarrel, though as a moderate, I am naturally sympathetic to Hicks and The Atlas Society. My own conclusion is that as we advance as a society of individuating supercitizens, maximum diversity of thought or disagreement is desirable and inevitable so we can grow our knowledge, our technology, our civilization all benefit. Schism is natural, desirable and to be rewarded.
The thinkers should agree to disagree without hating or hurting or going to civil war or using government to imprison and suppress heretics and dissenters—none of that nonsense.
We all should refute fanaticism—that there is only one point of view that is pure, and all other interpretations of the theology or philosophy of the founder are false and evil.
We want all points of view to be developed conceptually—unless they are pure evil itself (not put into action)—so we can learn all that we can. We then can us reasoning, argumentation, research and hunches to discover who is more right and who is more wrong. These are my recommendations.
Imagine and America in 60 years, a free-market, constitutional republic run from the bottom up by an upper middle class, mostly classless society, of anarchist-individuator supercitizens.
These great-souls and living angels, worshiping (Most of them—for there will always be unbelievers among us, to be left strictly alone—that is God’s command and will.) a benevolent deity/deities of their choice, will each think, live and exemplify radically schismatic and divergent points of view, personally and organizationally, in their thinking, maximizing diversity of thought, opinion and approach.
Now, being moderates, truth-lovers and respecting their neighbors right to live openly without objection in society, unmolested, heretical, free, equal, and able to enjoy their share of the world’s power of powerfulness (positive power), these cooperating and law-abiding and mostly nonviolent supercitizens will enjoy their schismatic share of social power and outlook, while tolerating their neighbors’ collective and particular, personal points of view.
These supercitizens will live under a social rubric that insists that each is free, unwilling to subjugate or be subjugated by any other individually, socially, or institutionally. People will compromise and negotiate common ground for acting, running society, and forming a common culture as best they can, and will agree to cooperate, coexist, and tolerate each other’s radical, diverse schismatic personal value sets, as accompanying a heathy social power distribution system. This should end the need for Objectivism or any other system of thinking to divide any longer into rival tribes of warring, unhappy, angry debaters, and quarrelers, hurt and hurting other by playing the power of powerlessness games, the reign of altruistic morality in the world where all must bow down to the reigning narrative of the clique or the institution.
THE DEBATE
I took notes on this 90-mnute debate and Q/A session, and then I will respond to my notes.
M is for the woman Moderator who introduces the debaters and debate topic: “Back in 1989 David Kelley responded with an open letter titled, A Question of Sanctions, responding to an article by Peter Schwartz. In that open letter David Kelley wrote Ayn Rand left us a magnificent set of ideas but it is not a closed system.
Shortly after that Leonard Peikoff publishes, Facts and Values, refuting Kelley’s argument, including the one about Objectivism not being a closed system. Peikoff states: ‘Objectivism is the name of Ayn Rand’s achievement. Anyone else’s interpretation or development of her ideas, including my own, is emphatically that, an interpretation, which may or may not be consistent with what she wrote.’
In 1990 David Kelley started an organization called the Institute for Objective Studies which is now the Atlas Society. It is an organization that claims to promote open Objectivism. Later that year Kelley publishes, Truth and Toleration, in which he expands on his argument in A Question of Sanctions, including his claim that Objectivism is an open system.
Up to now I don’t believe there have been any debates of this kind with both the open and closed sides represented. So, this is something special.
I have an introductory question for our speakers. Stephen, if you would like to go first. Here is the introductory question: There have been a lot of discussions among Objectivists about this debate. Some offer an opinion that this was already settled decades ago, that this debate is unnecessary, and that it was immoral and harmful to have this debate, especially in this forum.
Here is the question: Why is the question of open or closed Objectivism important, and why is this debate relevant?”
My response: That the purists from Ayn Rand Institute and their followers peppered the holders of the Event with objections that the debate was immoral, harmful, unnecessary—this is a clear indication to me that these people are true believers—that they militantly assert that only their interpretation of Ayn Rand’s teaching is correct and canon, and anything else is fraudulent and spurious. Since their interpretation of Objectivism is the gold standard, they assert, and that is their opinion, then Randianism is closed, and there is no question to debate about opening it up to false, immoral, inferior interpretations, especially the view held by followers of the Atlas Society.
Stephen (S after this): “It is an important, perennial question for a philosophy to state what it is about, what is its identity. That way it can communicate more effectively with other people.”
Craig (C after this): “I have nothing to add. Clarity about Objectivism can tell us if it is true or not, good for life or not.”
My response: I agree with the opening remarks of both Hicks and Biddle.
C: “Ayn Rand said in fiction: plot, plot, plot; and in nonfiction: clarity, clarity, clarity. Clarity is most important.”
M: “Before we start our debate, let us define our general terms. Is Objectivism is the name of Ayn Rand’s philosophical system. By a closed system we mean the ideas are limited to the thoughts of its author, and by open system maintains that ideas are not limited to the philosophical ideas of its creator, but open to revision.”
S: “It is a pleasure to meet people excited about ideas and Ayn Rand. If beneficence is considered when people share values, say fighting for liberty. When we are doing philosophy, it is complicated; philosophy is difficult. It is difficult intellectually and emotionally. When disagreements occur—and they will occur—when doing philosophy, remember benevolence with someone that likes, loves, and respects Ayn Rand. So, debate courteously.”
My response: Amen.
S: “My first proposition? Objectivism is a science. This is controversial within philosophy, and Rand insisted on a certain way of thinking.”
My response: I do not know for sure if Objectivism is a science, but Stephen makes the argument but obviously though Rand was an empiricist, realist and foundationalist, I do wish Stephen could provide a quote in her words by which she claims that Objectivism is a science.
Chemistry is a hard science, and sociology is a soft science, so is philosophy is a soft science, maybe? Or is it about speculation, metaphysics, and open-ended enjoyment of pure intellectualizing?
I googled a question this evening (1/8/2024) asking if philosophy was a science, and up popped an article from 4/5/2012, written by philosopher and PhD Julian Friedland; the article is entitled, Philosophy Is Not A Science.
I am quoting the last two paragraphs of Friedland’s article to explain briefly why he claims philosophy is not a science, and I think he is correct. Stephen has some explaining to do to make his argument work.
Here is what I took from Friedland’s article printed in The Stone: “In sum, philosophy is not science. For it employs the rational tools of logical analysis and conceptual clarification in lieu of empirical measurement. And this approach, when carefully carried out, can yield knowledge at times more reliable and enduring than science, strictly speaking. For scientific measurement is in principle always subject to at least some degree of readjustment based on future observation. Yet sound philosophical argument achieves a measure of immortality.
So if we philosophers want to restore philosophy’s authority in the wider culture, we should not change its name but engage more often with issues of contemporary concern — not so much as scientists but as guardians of reason. This might encourage the wider population to think more critically, that is, to become more philosophical.”
My response: Friedland’s article seems sensible, so I am skeptical that Stephen is correct that Objectivism is a science, but let us give him a chance to develop his argument.
S: “She insisted on a scientific way of thinking. A direct quote from Rand: Epistemology is a science devoted to the proper methods of acquiring and validating knowledge.
Quote 2: Ethics is a science dedicated to the proper method of living one’s life.
Medicine is a science dedicated to the proper method of curing disease. Science is emphasized by her repeatedly in epistemology and ethics, 2 of the 4 or 5 core issues, and science applies to metaphysics, human nature, and the proper system of doing politics.”
My response: She might have claimed, and it might be so that the various main branches of philosophy are sciences, but does this conflate with Stephen’s assertion that her philosophical system or theory of philosophy is a science. That is not clear to me.
S: “Philosophy is science Rand says, and we need to think very seriously what it is to be a scientist, a scientist discovering truths about reality. There is content and a methodology process of observation, categorization, forming definitions, conceptualization, doing experiments, forming methods and logical methodology.
There are also character issues. When you are functioning as a scientist you are to think and behave as a scientist. To be a philosopher is to be a scientist. Science is a subset of philosophy.”
My response: I graduated from UND in 1979 and I was taught there that philosophy was the queen of the sciences, and that hundreds of years ago emerging, infant science was referred to as natural philosophy, so maybe Stephen has a point in insisting that science is a subset of philosophy. I am ambivalent still about his claim.
S: “Rand is complicated. In addition to being a philosopher, she is an artist. Art and science are related to each other but also distant in very important ways.
Art is a personal creation by an individual to bring something into existence that did not exist before and would not have existed without the unique effort of the individual that created it. A work of art is not created by the world, but by the individual that created it.
Science is different. Science is about stuff out there that exists and that it identifies, and this discovery is in the public domain. It is when doing science, we two researchers are doing the same thing, the same reality, our creativity to the side.
Science is about objective reality, we will identify it, and is about individual creativity. We will sometimes understand reality implicitly and explicitly. Why is this important?
A discovery cannot be potential; it must be owned by an inventor. A scientist or philosopher that identifies a principle or law of nature or a fact of reality not previously known; this identification cannot be the exclusive property of the discoverer, because he did not create it.
Objectivism is a philosophy or science about discovery. It is not created or owned by the discoverer. If the discoverer makes his identification explicit, he cannot demand that others follow his process except by his permission. He can write of it in a book, but he cannot copyright theoretical knowledge which philosophy and science are.
We need to see Rand in two ways: as a scientist and an artist.
Regarding Rand’s philosophy we should think about it the same way we think about Newton’s. Rand and her science are like how we should think about Darwin and Newton and Einstein in contrast to how we think about artists.
Michelangelo and Beethoven are artists. You don’t alter a work of art by Rand or anyone. Art is inviolable. You do not alter, add to, or subtract from it—but that is not the case with science. Science is about identified facts and the ongoing process of discovery and new discoveries when new facts are discovered. We do not touch Rand’s art but we can address her philosophy.”
My response: It seems sensible and logical that Rand’s works of art should be closed and not to revised, and if Hicks is right—he might be—then her philosophy or science is by nature unfinished, open and accessible to revision by those who come after her, and they can still refer to themselves as Objectivists as Kelley’s people are doing.
Is Objectivism a creation devised by Rand as Biddle will argue: her scientifically grounded, but a priori (imaginatively and intellectually constructed in her mind), conceptual, mental, brilliant philosophical theory, or can Stephen’s attempt be credible: to refer to her formal, philosophizing body of work as the intellectual end product of a field-active empirical scientist, whose hypotheses are tested in the world, and whose cumulative evidence from these conducted experiments in the world, entail directly and immediately her philosophical system?
I think Craig is right more than wrong and Stephen is wrong more than right here: Objectivism is not a science, though scientific or reality-based experience, reading, dialoguing, and pondering led Rand to construct her philosophical system as she did.
I argue that Stephen is right more than Craig, that Objectivism is open more than closed, but Stephen will need to adopt my positive power of powerfulness power model, believed, and acted out by moderate-thinking and moderate-acting individuating supercitizens, do provide a way to argue that Rand’s creation is open. Why is this? It is so because openness in power-sharing and power-wielding as a civil society ideal, accepted and lived up to by approximately equal supercitizens, is morally underwritten by the accompanying, parallel, socially enforceable ethos of holding views, from one extreme of declaring absolute rightness insistence in view, and then progressing towards a more approximate affirmation of one’s position along a sliding spectrum all the way down to agnosticism, indifference or nihilistic wishy-washiness about any right standard of belief adopted. The ethical import of this ethos is to agree to agree and disagree without the schism turning violent, vicious, or bitter. We leave each other alone in our points of view that rival each other ineluctably.
In the interest of moderate orientation to finding truth and clarity, we need not quibble about the revisionist’s right to use her name Objectivism to cover their revision of her beliefs. They should point out openly where her fundamental principles do or not cohere with their own views.
Both the open and closed Objectivists should stick with their points of view and lay those out for the public and each other with tolerance, good will, good faith, lots of dialoguing and disagreeing, while still disagreeing and living in harmony. That is the moderate point of view and humans thus will be happier, more peaceful and the diversity of points of view will increase the knowledge of rival parties of thinkers, and quarreling schisms can be downgraded to harmonious, divergent points of view, illuminating but not upsetting for much of anybody.
Encouraging schisms and divergence of opinion need not lead to intellectual chaos and social unrest, but, if the underlying social contract, agreed to by individuating supercitizens practicing moderate acceptance of endless, open, intellectual variety of opinion that we all hold and express publicly, is the social substrata, politically and social peace will be maintained, grounded in the individual power of powerfulness mode of existing and interacting. We vigorously disagree in a social and professional mode of courteous, respectful coexistence. Then we can allow the proliferation of expanding human knowledge quantitatively and qualitatively, to the benefit of all.
S: “Now to the question today of being open or closed: these words are metaphors, figures of speech like a door can be open or closed.
What are we trying to get to with an abstract, theoretical set of ideas, described as open or closed? When we are doing philosophy as science, we take the metaphorical words and put them in direct, literal language. We are defining what a figure of speech means in non-metaphorical language.
I will argue there are 3 things that are important and built into science, philosophy, including Objectivism.
One way we can say a system of science is open or closed is answering this question: Is it complete, all the domain of questions have been answered, all things in that domain are complete, so no more content or questions any longer need to be added. Let me throw out an arbitrary number. In ethics, epistemology, and other areas of philosophy there may be 10 to 12 questions to ask, so, collectively to have a complete philosophy, we must address say 100 issues. Of those 100 questions for Objectivism, did Rand address all 100 issues?
Did she make a statement about all 100 issues, and did she make an argument for each of them? Did she make each argument in a scholarly fashion up to whatever level is appropriate. The answer is no.
Rand did a lot. She had a great number of positions on the majority of these 100 questions for philosophy, but she did not do all of them. Her book on Epistemology was an Introduction, making it clear a lot more needed to be done.
To be complete it is not enough for philosophy to announce what her conclusions are. Rand, on these 100 positions, made her case but did not provide arguments for them. There is still work to be done. She would state a position, but implicit support was not stated so work needs to be done. That is an indisputable move for a philosopher to engage in.”
My response: If Stephen is right that Rand is a scientist and Objectivism is a science, then she needed to answer and argue fully all 100 questions, but she did not, so her Objectivism would remain open, and the revisionists could refer to themselves honestly as Objectivists. Is Objectivism a science? I think not.
S: “Second Question: We ask not only if Objectivism is complete but if it is correct. Is it true or perfect in that sense? Does Rand get everything right?
If we are serious philosophers or scientists, we have to go through all of her important propositions to check and see what is true, perfect, or what could be stated more precisely. Are there any changes in cognitive psychology since she wrote this to tweak her views? Are all of her terms up to a suitable level of precision? For the audience did she need to use and articulate technical language in a technical context? Did she make mistakes? Did she make mistakes of fact feeding into her arguments?
Did she make mistakes in her chains of logic? Are all her important propositions checked? One of the signs of her brilliance is her long chains of logic backed by huge amounts of philosophical logic, historical background, with scientific data feeding into and integrated into her arguments.
Is every single logical connection in those long lines perfect? And not only that. For a complete philosophical criteria to be met, we must satisfy this criteria for every individual one defined perfectly, once the argument for each is done perfectly, there is still the question of bringing in the 100 questions and implementing them into the system.
We want to say Objectivism is a systematic system so are the arbitrary number of propositions (say 100) integrated completely and perfectly. That is an enormous amount of work? Did Rand accomplish that?”
My response: No, Rand did not accomplish this, nor could any philosopher accomplish this, except perhaps Plato or Kant. Stephen seems to argue that her system is largely complete, largely correct, but more work needs to be done, to Objectivism is an open system, and revisionists at Atlas Society are entitled to refer to themselves as Objectivists.
S: “Those two senses of open and closed, these questions are ones we as scientists, philosophers and thinkers do for ourselves. We also do philosophy in public as intimate one-on-one discussions, as small group discussions, as formal discussions, as courses between teachers and students. We also discuss these questions as organizations or institutions doing philosophy socially to activate these ideas out in the world. Thus, open or closed apply socially.
Question 1: Is one open to all these questions, or are these questions not open, no discussion, no communication?
Question 2: Are these questions open to discussion, or is it but a one-way street?
Question 3: Are we open to being questioned about certain things, not protected?
Question 4: Are you open to being challenged? You will be challenged?
Question 5: Are you open to the idea of being wrong? If the arguments go against you, will yyou change your mind as good philosophers and scientists do?
Question 6: Are you open to debate?
Question 7: Are you open to the other person that you are doing this with?
The interchange may not be perfect, but the iteration can be undertaken to work through it. Within that social context a couple of sub-questions; you are doing philosophy real hard. I am a PhD and you are a student and we disagree, or you disagree with Rand: are you open to that exchange?”
My response: I do like these 7 questions that Stephen asks to indicate that the more a philosopher answered yest to some or all of these questions, the more open intellectually and less rigid and authoritarian would be the thinker and his philosophy.
I also agree that everyone can maverize, and that amateurs should challenge their mentors.
S; “Rand’s answer to this question is found in an essay she wrote: Who Is The Final Authority?
When disagreement occurs between peers or thinkers of differing rank in the hierarchy of an organization, who is the final authority?
The answer offered must be your mind interacting with reality, not a PhD’s mind or Ayn Rand’s mind. Your mind interacting with reality is the central thesis of Objectivism.
Finally, the issue of elites. Rand, by the 1960s is worried about quarreling in philosophical, scientific and religious circles, and elite social forces stop being open as philosophers and scientists.
There is no room in Objectivism for hard or soft coercion. Just use your own mind. Rand is astonishing but we must not turn her into a god or demigod. There is a lot of water under the bridge; you young people stay out of the debates of the last 50 years and not waste your intellectual or emotional energy.”
C: “Thanks Stephen, for that clear, concise statement of your position. I agree: do not go back into history. Look for essentials. Think for yourself.
I am a Marxist but not that Marxist. I take Marxism and substitute a few elements and add a few elements to my real Marxism. I take the economic determinism of Marxism and replace it with free will. I take the labor theory of value and replace it with people making values with their minds and labor. I replace total state ownership of production with partial government ownership. I have government control banking, health care and education. I replace from each according to his abilities to some according to their needs, replaced as from some according to their abilities to some according to their needs.
Finally, I replace class struggle with social harmony orchestrated by the government. What did I just lay out for you? Is it real Marxism? It is a hodgepodge. It is conceptual chaos packed into the world Marxism.
Marxism is precisely what is happening and is happening in the world and in America; why some are gravitating towards Marxism is because they don’t know what Marxism is. They think Marxism is the government being nice to people, so people play fair, so people have clean water and a house to live in.
But that is not what Marxism is. Marxism is something specific Everything is something specific. Everything is what is is and has an identity, or it is nothing at all. That is the Law of Identity.”
My response: Though there is occurring a decade-long schism and dispute between the thinkers at ARI and Craig Biddle (His treatment by them seems unjust and appalling to me, but, in fairness to the hardliners at ARI (followers of Peikoff), I do not know fully their side of the story.), it is obvious that he is a traditional Randian, following Leonard Peikoff in arguing that Objectivism is a closed system.
Craig’s take that Marxism is something specific with an identity and name that are clearly, precisely definable, and demarcated, or it is nothing at all. He analogously will apply this line of reasoning to Objectivism to prove and convince us, he hopes, to accept that Objectivism is a closed position.
This morning is 1/9/2024, and I am going to quote two paragraphs from today’s Wikipedia entry on Objectivism: I am doing this to indicate that Leonard Peikoff was her designated intellectual heir and the executor of her will, so his claim to be the world’s authority on Objectivism carries weight, and it is hinted here that he has long considered Objectivism to be a closed system, and likely Rand herself would agree with his assessment. Still, David Kelley and Hicks, as dissenters from that world view, seem to me to have the right to revise Objectivism while self-referring to themselves as revisionist Objectivists, nonetheless. To deny their right to be called Objectivist strikes me as fanatical and doctrinaire. Peikoff and his intellectual descendants at ARI would insist that they are upholding rigorous, precise standards for laying out what Objectivism is in terms of terms defined, basic principles and boundaries being set up and enforced.
That such a pursuit of standards can veer over into dogmatism, purges of, cancelation of and persecution of heretics is a dangerous, immoral, and unproductive (cutting off new lines of thinking adding to human knowledge) is a worry that these professional thinking zealots do not seem to contend with. I do not like or accept purity tests: I like big-tent thinking.
Here are the first two paragraphs of that Wikipedia entry: “Objectivism is a philosophical system developed by Russian-American write and philosopher Ayn Rand. She described it as ‘the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.’
Rand first expressed Objectivism in her fiction, most notably The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957), and later in non-fiction essays and books. Leonard Peikoff, a professional philosopher and Rand’s designated intellectual heir, later gave it a more formal structure. Peikoff characterizes Objectivism as a ‘closed system’ insofar as its ‘fundamental principles’ were set out by Rand are not subject to change. However, he states that ‘new implications, applications and integrations can always be discovered.’”
From Rand herself, through Peikoff to Onkar Ghate and Craig Biddle, it seems that there is serious inherited intellectual basis for asserting that Objectivism is a closed system, at least regarding its fundamental principles, and from their point of view, David Kelley was wrong and immoral to insist that he could insert or remove from these fundamental principles, or, to do revision while still referring to himself as an Objectivist.
I am not saying that I accept the Peikoff/ARI take that Objectivism is closed, but they make a strong argument for their view.
C: “So you see there is a problem of me taking over Marxism of what Marx and Engel said it was. If I take over and coopt Marxism it leads to confusion and catastrophe, and that is what is going on today.”
My response: I like Biddle’s appeal to clarity and strict definitions. I also know that we do not want to be fanatical and force false dichotomies upon those with open Objectivist views. We want clear definitions, but we also want to identify clearly where borderline cases and problems crop out, issues not easily resolved into binary, either/or resolutions. This is the principle of moderation. I urge that the rival views of Objectivism agree to disagree and state their opposing views as clearly and intelligibly as possible.
The moral aspect of moderation is that proponents of rival schismatic outlooks all agree to live and let live peacefully, and dialogue about their issues in tolerance, mutual respect, mutual affection, and allow the public to shine light on the whole debate and that is the just way to act, not purging or canceling or imprisoning or exiling heretics. That is evil, totalitarian, hateful and inexcusable. All need to calm down and behave themselves for cruel attacks against other humans over doctrinal differences had led to holy wars forever in religious and secular forums, and that must cease for humans to survive, let alone advance.
C: “You all know I am not an advocate of Marxism but of capitalism, but not THAT capitalism. I favor a capitalism where people with political pull get favors from the government . . . it is the government that protects everyone’s rights but not completely, since we need to work things out for the greater good.
You see the problem. Nobody knows what capitalism and Marxism, with some government regulation. They do not keep words defined clearly and concisely. Nobody is using words today in ways that make sense.”
My response: I am for clarity and sharp definitions, but there is a way, if successfully and carefully done, for revisionists to offer altering core principles while insisting upon some open-endedness being logical, moderate, acceptable, tolerated, and allowable.
C: “Capitalism and Marxism have become indistinguishable. Rand wrote a book for this reason, a book called Capitalism. The unknown Ideal, not defining terms well because no one is using words concisely in ways that make sense. If I define capitalism the way I just did, by being for parts of it, and against parts of it, then Obama and Pelosi get their own versions too. We must have clarity and distinction when we use concepts, especially philosophical concepts.”
My response: Yes, we must strive to gain clarity and distinction for philosophical concepts, but complete, true, accurate, perfect, and pure clarity when defining terms and concepts in philosophical argument, be it formal language or ordinary language is never achievable by any human being, though some come closer than ours. Our thoughts, our language, our strong but limited intellects prevent us from verbally, formally, or mathematically expressing or laying out arguments that are absolutely clear and conveying directly certain, objective knowledge all the time. We can mostly get there but never completely, though the Father and Mother do. This is why some moderation and humility about the stances we take is obligatory if we love truth.
For these reasons, those arguing closed positions need to be careful, less their totalistic take on things lead to willful blindness and persecution of heretics, who may be right or wrong, but it may be impossible to know sure, and, besides that is no way to treat any intellectual dissenter.
C: “If we want to know what we are talking about, we need to paint bright lines between the things we are talking about. What is to be included and what is to be excluded. This is the purpose of concepts and definition, and it is the purpose of your mind to make these distinctions to know what you are thinking about, what you are talking about. This all holds for Objectivism or any complex term—they need to be handled properly so we know what we are thinking and talking about. We will look at open and closed Objectivism from three different angles:
1. Clarity;
2. Justice;
3. Self-esteem.
If we package under the term Objectivism ideas that Ayn Rand developed and integrated, plus ideas that David Kelley developed and interpreted, plus Stephen Hicks ideas, we have mental chaos. We cannot define Objectivism; it splits our heads open: we cannot have this.”
My response: Reality is infinite, and God is infinite, so the human potential for developing exciting, new, productive, enhancing concepts and helpful heuristics is so rich and fecund in open-ended potential that chaos can be creative, not just destructive. We want every human to be a philosopher, most amateurs and a few professional, expert, narrow and specialized. Throw open the doors I say and let concepts, definitions and argument run wild. The benefit will far outweigh the cost. We want the masses to self-realize and live and think as self-generators of ideas plentiful, oncoming, so brilliant and evincing of personal genius that the powerful insights that live in every human heart are encouraged with little reserve or hesitation to be presented as of cash value prima facie, before the wheat is separated from the chaff by sober, meticulous thinkers and definers like Ghate and Peikoff and Biddle, to bring levitating humanity back to earth. That is my moderate, open-philosophy take on this Objectivist controversy over philosophy being opened or closed.
In the marketplace of ideas, we do not want to bottleneck or stifle free exploration and expression of divergent lines of thinking, and, indeed, in the future, with individuating supercitizens becoming average and common among American citizens, controlling the speech, thought and legal action of any citizen will be nigh impossible.
Where Biddle and Ghate can provide great philosophical service to humanity is to devise and refine language and mathematics so that it becomes so the words, we use to argue our points are ever more precise, accurate, concise and rigorous, though never reaching perfection.
First, we need to give philosophy to the masses to play with as they will, the liberating, advancing way that Martin Luther did when he translated the Bible into Germans so the masses could read and interpret sacred text for themselves. We open the flood gates and let lot of ideas proliferate, and then we start to winnow them out and make strong, coherent arguments out of the concepts and principles that we have harvested and organized.
C: “Objectivism is the one thing, and we need to think of it as it is. If I was to remove from Objectivism the concepts of honesty, integrity, and pride, and add in benevolence and pride, and subtract the principle of measure omission and the essential mechanism of concept formation, etc., can we call that Objectivism? I will have created a mental monster that is nothing like Objectivism. I am doing the same thing I did with Marxism at the beginning of my presentation. Objectivism is simply the philosophy, the ideas that Ayn Rand discovered and integrated under the term Objectivism in her lifetime.
She gave her philosophy the name. It is not a concept but a proper name like Stephen, Craig, Isadora or Belgrade. There is only one Belgrade; it is not a concept; it is the name of the capital of Serbia. It is comprised of homes, streets, and parks, but these elements are not the defining characteristic of Belgrade. We can take out a park, but the city still is Belgrade.
Objectivism to be clear is not a concept but is a proper name, and proper names are described, not defined.”
My response: He is not totally wrong or totally right in concluding that Objectivism is not a concept to be defined by a proper name to be described. Craig is arguing that it is closed because Objectivism closed when she died, because it is a name and not a science, and it is a closed, final proper name, not an open-ended, organized set of philosophically, organized concepts to be revised forever, destroying its coherent, meaningful, interlocking set of fundamental principles, named by Rand, to present her philosophy in its entirety to the public and posterity. To attempt to revise Objectivism is to do non-Objectivist conceptualizing and arguing, and that one then is not an Objectivist, and should not claim to be an Objectivist, for Objectivism is a closed, proper name.
C: “Rand discovered a couple of fallacies that are helpful in working our way through this.
The first fallacy is package dealing. We have already seen it going on. If I package into Marxism a lot of things that are not Marxism, you can’t function with the idea of Marxism. It doesn’t work. Selfishness: if I treat selfishness as people that are honest, productive and trade for what they want, that what they want is to be wealthy and happy, as the same as the selfishness of criminals that steal stuff from producers, I have packaged them all together. After all, they are all going after what they want, so they are all selfish. I have treated a superficial similarity as if it is a fundamental similarity, but it is not and is superficial. We have to make these distinctions. We must focus on essential characteristics of things.”
My response: Though I favor open-ended philosophy and Open-Ended Objectivism legitimately called Objectivism by its users, (I admire Ayn Rand but my disagreements with her fundamental principles are large enough, that it would seem unfair to her or me for me to self-refer as a revisionist Objectivist.), Craig Biddle, in warning us to steer clear of the package dealing fallacy, provides a useful reminder to enthusiastic thinkers to be cautious about introducing foreign, incoherent, contradictory, revised content into a settled philosophy (the author is deceased), and then appropriate the name of that philosophy as the same as its founder’s name and intent.
C: “The same applies to Objectivism, though it is a proper name, it has essential characteristics. Objectivism is Ayn Rand’s philosophy and we package stuff into it. We create mental and conceptual chaos. This will not serve us well. We will not ever be able to study or evaluate what we have named. Who knows next who will add or subtract, and what or who has the authority to do that. We will turn to the authority later.”
My response: I assert that every person, as a self-realizing intellectual and doer, has the authority to add or subtract to any ism what she thinks, but she must be patently, scrupulously honest about what she is doing and why, and openly admit how what she thinks is like and unalike the ism she is revising.
C: “Then there is the fallacy of the frozen abstraction. This is at work here a lot, though she noted it only once in her writings, but it is very illuminating. The fallacy of the frozen abstraction is committed when you take a broad abstraction and take one of the constituents subsumed under that abstraction as equivalent to that whole abstraction.
There is an open question if any of these systems are demonstrably true, but that is a secondary question. All these ethical systems fit under that word (morality), but you commit a frozen abstraction if you take one of these systems and freeze it at the level of morality.”
My response: I assume that broad abstraction for Craig is equivalent or synonymous with a proper name like Objectivism.
C: “If you take that broad abstraction morality and freeze it at the level of one of the constituents under it, namely altruism, you get morality=altruism. That is a frozen abstraction. Rand wrote of this fallacy at the beginning of her book, The Virtue of Selfishness; it is responsible for more than anything, the arrested development of mankind.
If you believe in altruism, we are toast: we get communism, fascism, and sacrificing ourselves for others. Altruism rests on a frozen abstraction.
Frozen abstraction applies to this open/closed debate about Objectivism. I don’t like the attitude that you are evil if you disagree about these things; it is an innocent error. Put that to rest. I don’t think these things are obvious. I think it requires thinking through. People that see Objectivism as an open system are an example of this. Stephen is freezing the abstraction of true philosophy or truth in philosophy at the level of one of its constituents: the body of ideas called Objectivism.”
My response: Craig disagrees with Kelley and Stephen but does not call them evil, whereas the ARI thinkers call Kelley and Stephen not only erroneous but evil, and maybe they are erroneous and evil (I think not.) but Craig is more moderate than ARI for he tries to give the Atlas Society thinkers a way out, that they are in error but not evil. That effort is courteous and a gesture for peace, whether it is more accurate than the hard-hitting, unforgiving approach towards open Objectivists by the closed Objectivists at ARI, or not.
C: “Truth is philosophy is a big umbrella. General truth in philosophy is open and will never be closed. Ayn Rand’s Objectivism—if its principles are true and I think they are—is one truth under that big umbrella, and if you freeze the abstraction at the level of Objectivism, you are treating the broader abstraction as if it is equivalent to something under that unit. That is an error, a really bad error because you want to be able to think clearly about Objectivism.”
My response: It seems as if Craig is attributing to Stephen the fallacy of the frozen abstraction, insisting that all philosophy, when true and universal, open and vast, absolutely can not all be packaged into one of its true and solid constituent elements, Objectivism, which is limited and closed. It is an interesting criticism, and I do not know if it applies to Stephen’s approach to Objectivism or not.
C: “Someone discovers a new truth, and it might not even be a new truth and it gets packaged in there. To keep adding and subtracting is now how concepts or Proper Names work.
Ayn Rand gave us Rand’s razor. It says concepts are not to be multiplied beyond necessity. Do not make up new concepts for concepts are not to integrated beyond necessity. Don’t put things together that do not belong together. If you make up concepts that don’t exist in reality, like saying extremism has no content.
Extreme about what? Extreme happiness, extreme prosperity. Extreme being bad because it is extreme is a senseless concept with no content in reality. Extremism is a senseless concept, an anti-concept Rand says.”
My response: I agree that we do not concepts multiplied beyond necessity or integration in the sense of artificially forcing our revisions into Rand’s philosophical theory. But I generally favor empowering and giving final authority on all questions to each supercitizen to decide all philosophical issues for herself in her own unique way. For society to develop and thrive, we demand and require a radical openness towards independent thinking as self-realizing supercitizens given themselves the authority and justification to crank out millions and millions of creative ideas for, out of enormous quantity, by accident and without selection and focus, the quality of concepts and the quantity of quality concepts will multiply like rabbits, without design or effort. Then the sober, careful thinkers and systematizers like scrupulous Craig Biddle can bring some order, understanding, clarity and discipline to this avalanche of thought explosion, this profusion of incoming ideas.
I am not much interested in anti-concepts as dismissible because they do not reflect reality. They may not but conjuring up conceptually what is and what does not exist in the physical or in the spiritual realm, allows for a wondrous new set of orientations to metaphysics and all areas of research.
Craig, ARI thinkers and Rand herself likely liked extremism (I have not become authoritative enough on her or their opinions to outright label them as intellectual, schismatic extremists.) for them it meant intellectual excellence, honesty, love of truth, integrity, clarity, good and bad defined and called out, true and false clearly defined and called out, all in the name of the high standards being kept, and ideally that does occur. I fear that the zeal for excellence, though admirable, is easy to convert to ultraist passion wielded as a reign of terror by true believers in an intellectual cult, mandating that all wholeheartedly swallow their ideology and interpretation of reality. Zealots promoting intellectual and moral purity standards upon society, need, at the same time and right away, promise and perform to allow voluntary compliance or noncompliance without social or legal sanctions for disobedience to the “one true faith.”
The moral truth that few grasp—let alone live by--and these failure does grave damage to people (this lack of understanding), is that being moderate is being mostly nonviolent and tolerant, and being rational, individualistic, and civilized.
Rand is for reason but may not be against excess and Aristotle could have taught her that.
Rand is for reason but wondrous, miraculous, uplifting reason can be mishandled: the Nazis running the crematoriums were quite logical and kept flawless record of their evil deeds.
It seems as if fanaticism is coupled with ideology and passionate chauvinism, then reason turns destructive. Objectivists need to be careful here, for they are playing with fire.
Too often a resort to evil analysis, moral outraged couched in those values, and then a collective or governmental crusade to enforce those decisions upon enemies is the cause of most malevolence in the world.
The secret police and torturers under Robespierre, Mao, Hitler, and Stalin all were vicious and cruel. They were purists, as extreme and fanatical as they could be, so the most wicked ideologues in the world were moral monsters, so I have a moderate’s hatred of and solid rejection of the value of extremism. Extremism ordinarily is wholesale pure evil that lives existentially as the thinking of the evil humans and sinister demons that guide them. Extremism is evil for them as it manifests itself as a social construct and as an ontological reality, both material and spiritual.
I am not totally with Craig that a concept is an anti-concept if it has no referent in reality. Reality, for example, could be an object identified and contact in the immaterial world, and if such sources of ideas generated in the mind would be referenced to such spiritual entities.
Anti-concepts could discredit our fertile, imaginative benefit gained from self-generated ideas without referents in the material or spiritual worlds.
Craig is smoother than the ARI zealots but he is still a zealot, and the Atlas Society thinkers seem more rational, more moderate, which is smarter and more moral. People that are extreme can be very brilliant and rational, but their group-oriented love of uniform thinking and speech can make them very emotional, excessive and without restraint, so their behavior can go to great lengths of harm and hurt in the name idealism, ideology and a holy cause. Rand is for reason, but her love of extremism can make her reasoning extreme and extreme thinking leads to sentimental excess or enthusiasm and all manners of evil and error enter human thinking and acting that way.
C: “Extremism is an illegitimate concept because it blows up in your mind. You do not want to lose legitimate, real concepts, like being extreme as principled about what is right or wrong. Duty is what Rand called an anti-concept (unclear obligations do not exist). Social justice is an anti-concept. We do not need social before justice because it is already social. Justice is about how people interact with each other. The idea of putting social before it is to force people to redistribute wealth and for the government to force some groups to do things on behalf of other groups.
When you multiply concepts beyond necessity, you get anti-concepts and Rand’s razor says don’t do it.”
My response: We should let the ideas just bubble up by the millions: applying Rand’s razor should be more a gatekeeper tool or a channeling tool of ideas as true or false, good, or evil, gibberish or potent, useful or frivolous.
The razor is not to suppress free and open-ended brainstorming but to channel, rank, categorize, integrated, or not integrated, and to provide patterns and evaluation for new ideas.
C: “The second half of Rand’s razor is even more important. Concepts are not to be integrated in disregard to necessity. What happens when you integrate things that do not belong together, you get package deals and frozen abstractions. Altruism and morality do not belong together. That is a frozen abstraction. Truth and philosophy are a frozen abstraction because truth and philosophy and Objectivism do not belong together and must not be integrated together.”
My response: Craig is attributing to Atlas Society thinkers the philosophical fallacy of the frozen abstraction, that they are packing in and attributing all kinds of extraneous, inconsistent, trivial, and irrelevant concepts (anti-concepts) into Objectivism, but of necessity these foreign elements do not fit with and cannot be inserted into Objectivism without making Objectivism unrecognizable and complete junk. Furthermore, revisionists have no right to assume the name Objectivism covers their thinking and philosophy.
C: “Ayn Rand’s ideas on Objectivism and everyone else’s ideas on Objectivism don’t belong in the same package. Here is Craig’s razor: Proper nouns are not to be multiplied beyond necessity and are not to be integrated beyond necessity. To multiply proper nouns beyond necessity is to come up with several names, so you do not know who you are referencing. This is what occurs when you integrate proper nouns like Objectivism beyond necessity, integrating it with other concepts beyond necessity. Necessity is the requirement of human cognition. Clarity is keeping things apart when we need to keep them apart, so we know what we are talking about.
Don’t pack things into the proper name of Objectivism, the name Ayn Rand came up with. It does not matter if her philosophy is complete or not; it makes no difference.”
My response: Craig is wrong here. It does matter if her philosophy is not complete or is completely correct or contains some errors. I am a moderate, and I think Kelley and Hicks lean my way a bit. We do not expect the works of any thinker to be complete, perfect, always correct, always consistent, without some errors, lies, contradictions built into it.
As a moderate I would rank Rand’s Objectivism as pretty good and that is a great compliment but pretty good is about as far as any limited mortal mind can devise new ideas and powerful arguments and compelling narratives.
Because her philosophy is incomplete is what allows Hicks to expand on it, and he is right to do so, and can refer to himself as an Objectivist while revising her work, if he has not packaged in new principles in contradiction to her closed set of fundamental principles. It is open in that sense. Objectivism is closed in the sense that it closed when she died. That I can accept.
C: “Don’t put things together when they don’t belong together, and do not multiply concepts beyond necessity. That is Rand’s razor.
Objectivism is closed. So, what is open? Philosophy and truth in philosophy are open. If you come up with your own ideas and they integrate with Objectivism, that is a beautiful thing.
My system, Objectivism, other ideas, and my ideas are open now, but will close when I die.
What do we call ideas that are not Objectivism but integrate with Objectivism? Ideas that integrate with Objectivism are what we call them. But integrates with does not mean a part of.
Leonard Peikoff’s Theory of Induction integrates with Objectivism. This debate is about clarity, justice and self-esteem.
New ideas are a credit to the one who came up with them, but we are not to give these ideas to Rand’s ideas. Ideas in the Aristotelian tradition and Locke’s and Rand’s ideas are in the liberal tradition. These ideas and future ideas that integrate with the Randian tradition are not of it but work with it.
Discovering new ideas that integrate with other ideas is wonderful, and what we need more of. At the Objective Standard Institute, we seek to teach people principles of Objectivism and other true ideas. We need to know how to think clearly to live better lives.
So, if you devise your super-system: you own true philosophies from other and add your own ideas, and that comprises your super-system. It will include but not be Objectivism.”
My response: I love his idea that we learn from the philosophies of others and absorb their teachings and insights (giving them always credit for what they have taught us) into our view of things, and then we add our own ideas, so we come up with our own philosophy, a super-system. Just think how emancipating Craig’s suggestion here will be for future anarchist-individuator supercitizens as they develop powerful, rich super-systems, a high civilization where every amateur thinker is as versed in philosophy as any PhD professional thinker, plus personal creative input.
C: “Something is something specific or nothing at all. Objectivism is something specific or nothing at all. If you have new ideas that integrate with Objectivism, okay, but you are not allowed to insert your frozen abstraction or package deal into Objectivism.
If you change Objectivism, you destroy it. Our lives, happiness and work depend on ideas, so make crucial distinctions, so you know what you are talking about. Speak clearly and distinctly.”
M: Stephen, you have 5 minutes to comment.
S: “Thank you Craig, that was useful. The issue of definition and concept formation defines the concept boundaries so we can come up with a definition. I would suggest that we look at borderline cases. If we go into philosophy with the supposition that all concepts have a hard border line with bright lines that you have talked about, that is not quite right.
Some definitions are hard and fast, and some array along a spectrum. For example, for humans that are overweight, or endomorphic over to ectomorphic, it is a range, not a hard and fast distinction. Some definitions are like a digital computer, either on or off, and some are like an analogue computer, definitions or answers are along a spectrum. Reality is not always coming along in hard and fast distinctions; the juncture point is more hazy so hard and fast distinctions often are not quite right.”
My response: Craig and the Peikoff followers see the world and Objectivism in black and white categories and terms, and they have a point. Their insistence on clarity, sharp distinctions and evaluating everything as right or wrong, true or false, existent or fantasy is the world and questions in it viewed by them through a strict, unwavering scrutiny through the lens of the Law of Identity. They claim their take is the whole philosophical story and truth. Ultimately, their claims cannot be proven or disproven (at least at this time) by argumentation, nor by scientific tests conducted, but they are more wrong than right, I believe, we should use words carefully and accurately to spell out their view, versus the moderate view, and lay out for the public in simple, clear language what are opposing positions are, what are the pros and cons of our arguments, and what what is the agenda of both sides, and that each member of the public must decide for herself how to land on either side or not.
Those more intellectually moderate or aware of a spectrum of potential answers about reality and Objectivism, thinkers like I think, or the followers of David Kelley, are more open and open-ended thinkers and I believe we are more right than wrong.
S: “Are Objectivist concepts more analogue or digital? The color spectrum is a range, but either a woman is pregnant or not. Reality gives us both analogue and digital aspects, and it is hard to set up hard and fast border line distinctions in reality.
Here is my second point. Clarity is important, and the nature of science is organizing discovery.
I like the Marxist example. If you see basic principles and change them, admit it, and change the name. With Objectivism, if you identify basic principles, admit it. If you change these fundamental principles, then, of course, change the name. When to do this is an open question to be decided in a case by case basis”
My response: Understand what Hicks is saying at this juncture in the debate is critical: Craig and the closed Objectivists are accusing Hicks and the Open Objectivists of changing Rand’s fundamental principles, and that act, makes it incumbent upon them to give up the Objectivist label for themselves and their philosophizing. Hicks is agreeing, that if a later thinker alters the fundamental principles of a system, he should, for clarity, out of a sense of honesty and integrity, must confess to the public that he will no longer claim that name for his own thinking.
Hicks is saying, without saying, that open Objectivists claim to right to keep Rand’s proper name for her philosophy because the revisions they are adding to her philosophy are in addition, do supplement and integrate consistently and smoothly with her system, but DO NOT alter the fundamental principles that populate Rand’s body of work.
Of course, Craig is going to reject this answer and repeat his accusation against open Objectivists, which they will deny forever.
Do the revisionists change Rand’s fundamental principles as Craig insists that they have done? I am not an expert in Objectivism so I cannot answer this question definitively and authoritatively. I think they have not, but accept that it is somewhat open to debate, and if they had, it would seem that they are no longer Objectivists, and should renounce that name for their philosophizing.
For me, the issue of them being legitimate or fraudulent (they are not as the ARI zealots assert) is not that important. The revisionists do agree with much of Randian thought and admire her immensely, so that is enough for me as a moderate to believe them when they claim not to have transgressed her fundamental Objectivist principles. I agree that they may claim the name of being Objectivists, though revisionist unapologetically.
For me these secular sectarian squabbles are interesting and informative, but we must not lose sight of our objective: to introduce the world to the thinking of Ayn Rand, and to champion her thinking (especially her love of rationality, objectivity, egoism, capitalism, foundationalism, democracy, science, and classical liberalism) as critical to human survival, happiness and advancement.
These hardliners (closed Objectivism) and the soft-liners (open Objectivism) need to keep their positions presented and clearly stated, while learning to accept that others are doing useful philosophy too, and schisms among thinkers are natural and to be invited rather than suppressed, for more thinking in more ways can lead to higher civilization for humans.
S: “Objectivism is a science. Rand says so. The way to think about these conceptualization issues and the change issues (To change the name of one’s philosophy—Ed Notes.) is not a matter of chaos. To change minds and to change terms is not chaos but that is the normal scientific process, for science is never completed.”
My response: Stephen is arguing that Objectivism is science (It may be but there is room to interpret as just her philosophy or that her philosophy is science at work,), and that science inherently seems chaotic (productive, temporary chaos leading to more refined, factual ordered science) but is just open-ended, and always becoming for science is never completed.
Stephen’s case is stronger if he can firmly establish that Objectivism is a science, but he cannot, so, though I think he is wrong: Objectivism could be Scientism, but that equivalence is tricky to prove, if easy to formulate.
S: “A better analogy would be to take someone like Newton. He founded a new physics we call Newtonian physics. Newton says or is saying here is a set of propositions about the world, and I want you to go and judge it for yourself. Here are some methodological principles, so you can go judge for yourself. Then 310 years later, Albert Einstein comes along.
Is Einstein new or Newtonian? I don’t know but this is the right way (The right way is the open-revisionist way of doing Objectivism—Ed Notes.) to do Objectivism. Think of yourself as a Newtonian physicist or as an Objectivist philosopher.
Proper names or naming rights: Rand named her philosophy Objectivism. She is saying it is hers but not in the sense of exclusivity or ownership. I offer my philosophy to you as colleagues, not as followers or stooges as we are embroiled in this open-closed scientific process.”
M: “Craig, you have 5 minutes to rebut.”
C: “Objectivism is not a science. It is a philosophy. Rand did do science as a systematic inquiry of a subject. She did science to discover the ideas and to integrate the ideas of science.
Objectivism is not a science. It is a product of science. Newtonian physics: if it is vague, define it or quit using it. It is confusing if you do not have a specific definition.
Objectivism is just Rand’s ideas. It does not matter if it is right or wrong, or she could have done more, or if it is not perfectly defined. It does not matter. It is still her philosophy. If you have new ideas that integrate with Objectivism, great. It is open in that sense.
It is an equivocation to say Objectivism was out there and Rand found it. Rand created it by the integrating and identification Rand made using her mind that involved discovery, but her philosophy was not a discovery.”
My response: An equivocation is an error on Hick’s thinking, Craig suggests, that occurs when a speaker or thinker uses one word to mean to separate things. He accuses Hicks of equating Objectivism not just as Rand’s system but also with being science to justify making Objectivism open-ended as science is, and thus subject to revision. Craig is counter-arguing that Objectivism is not a scientific discovery out there in reality that Rand found, but that it is her personal creation, though discoveries about the natural world triggered her imagination and genius.
Craig is alleging that revisionists equivocate when they use the word discovery to cover the fact that Rand’s created theory of philosophy was not science but was her unique intellectual creation. Her knowledge of scientific discovery, which it was not her creation, but her scientific inquiring did inspire her to create the system that she did.
C: “We need clarity so a package deal will not mess you up. Rand did copyright Objectivism. It does not belong to her, she originated it. She created it; once she died, Objectivism closed. It is not copyrighted or trademarked.
Her ideas were complete as well as she could make them before she died, but she did not add The Principle of Induction. Complete or incomplete, true or perfect—it does not matter.
You should always challenge her or any philosopher with your independent mind. If groups treat Objectivism as a dogma, shame on them. That is not philosophy for independent thinking.
Who has the final authority? You. True but that is too abstract. The final authority is the principle of human cognition to set the standard whether we include units in a concept or proper name or not. If you pack in a bunch of stuff that does not fit conceptually, that is chaos. You are violating the law of human cognition and that is what makes it wrong.
There is a standard here and your independent mind has to apply this standard. That is not dogma, but there is an objective standard about what goes into a concept or not.”
My response: The dogmatism, authoritarianism, and willingness to fight and condemn by the fanatics associated with closed Objectivism is a bigger problem than Craig allows. Dispute passionately but courteously and never seek to destroy intellectual dissenters.
I noted that, at the end of the debate, I noticed that Craig and Stephen, seemed visibly upset with each other, or at least firmly convinced they each of them were right, and the opposition was wrong, but they at least met, debated and were formally courteous. That is enough if all involve agree to coexist peacefully and nonviolently with those of other beliefs.
Throughout the debate, I noticed that Craig is smooth and great at public relations. He praised Hicks openly for his lecture on classical liberalism at this Randian Seminar in Europe at which the debate occurred, and Craig conceded that Rand was influenced by classical liberalism stemming from the Age of Enlightenment.
He also complimented Hicks to his face for his brilliant book and absolute, first-class, leading authority expertise on Postmodernism.
Hicks did not respond with thanks or gracious acknowledgement of Craig’s praise, I think for two reasons. First, Hicks is not a prima donna and grandstander. Second, he realizes that Craig is very smooth in public, that he is willing and intentionally able to butter up Hicks a bit by saying kind words about Hick’s accomplishments in domains completely unrelated to the debate.
Concerning open Objectivism, Craig takes a hard line, and Hicks knows that is who Craig is and will so argue that he believes Hicks equivocates and makes grave conceptual errors in thinking. Hicks knows that is what is coming, and is not fooled for a second by Craig’s reaching out to him in a congenial mode.
I wonder too if Stephen Hicks and the thinkers like Onkar Ghate, Harry Binswanger and Yaron Brooks, who are all I believe professional thinkers with PhDs are tempted to look down on Craig Biddle, with a master’s degree and a background in furniture design and fabrication, not a professional philosopher, but is not a professional thinker, self-taught. If they look down on him as an inferior thinker due to his less impressive philosophical credentials, that would be unfortunate and wrong.
We need millions and millions of individuating of American supercitizens as independent, challenging and contrary as the polite but steely certainty of amateur philosopher Biddle who is a first-rate thinker, an asset to Objectivism and Rand herself.
He is wicked smart and he needs take a back seat to none of these professional philosophers.
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