Randianism

Consider this list of philosophies:

Rationalism,

Empiricism,

Analytic philosophy,

Existentialism,

Phenomenology,

German Idealism,

Socialism,

Anarcho-Socialism,

State-Communism,

Libertarianism,

Moral Realism,

Solipsism.

Next, consider this list of philosophies:

Platonism,

Kantianism,

Hegelianism,

The philosophy of Nietzsche,

The philosophy of Sartre,

Aristotelianism,

The philosophy of Wittgenstein,

Marxism,

The philosophy of John Locke.

Each of these things are what ordinary people would call a "philosophy." But these are not one thing, these are two types of things, the first set of which, from the first list, is what I call a systematic philosophy, and the second set of which, from the second list set forth above, I would call an individual's philosophy. A systematic philosophy is a philosophical system comprised of a set of philosophical views, while an individual's philosophy is the philosophy of one individual philosopher. Note, however, that each systematic philosophy is formed by importing a set of ideas and views from a set of individual's philosophies, or else one individual's philosophy could form its own entire one systematic philosophy. For example, the philosophy of John Locke contributed views to Empiricism, and Marxism contributed views to socialism. Multiple individual's philosophies can contribute to the same systematic philosophy. For example, the philosophy of Nietzsche and the philosophy of Sartre both contributed to Existentialism. One systematic philosophy can also have multiple systematic philosophies which are variations or sub-parts of it as a whole. For example, Anarcho-Socialism and State-Communism are both coherent systematic philosophies in their own right, but each is also a sub-part of the broader systematic philosophy of Socialism.

Now, the question is: What is Objectivism? Is it a systemic philosophy? Or is it an individual's philosophy?

Within the Objectivist movement, there is a great debate and conflict between the open-system and closed-system Objectivists. Closed-system people believe that Objectivism is limited to the philosophy created by Ayn Rand, and it ended with her death. Open-system people believe that Objectivism can be added to and expanded by other people and is not only limited to Ayn Rand's ideas.

I have come to believe that the conflict arises from linguistic imprecision, that the closed-system people understand Objectivism to be an individual's philosophy, merely another name for Randianism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand, while the open-system people believe that Objectivism is a systematic philosophy, a set of philosophical views united around the theme of a common worldview in philosophy, and therefore obviously it could be added to by anyone, although at its time of original creation, 100% of the ideas in systematic Objectivism came from having been imported from the individual's philosophy of Ayn Rand, Randianism.

The two sides in the debate do not understand each other and cannot understand what the other side is saying, because they are using two different definitions of the same word, "philosophy," so it is impossible for the two sides to communicate, and neither side understands what the other side means. If Objectivism is an individual's philosophy, then it is the philosophy of Ayn Rand, and obviously the closed-system side is correct. If Objectivism is a systematic philosophy, then it is defined by a set of philosophical views, and anyone who holds those views while adding ideas could add to it, and then obviously the open-system side is correct. The two sides mean different things and so can't see eye to eye to resolve their dispute.

I propose to solve this confusion by creating a new word, "Randianism," to describe Ayn Rand's individual's philosophy, which is defined as the philosophy of Ayn Rand, while keeping "Objectivism" as the name for the systematic philosophy, the philosophical system defined by that certain set of views about objectivity, reality, reason, rational selfishness in ethics, free-market capitalism and the moral defense of capitalism in economics, individual rights in politics, etc. At its inception, Objectivism was formed 100% from Randianism, but the two are analytically distinct, based on the understanding which I have provided.

Some critics might say that, as I have defined it, only an individual's philosophy is a "real" philosophy, and what I call a systematic philosophy is merely a historical category, or a worldview, or a philosophical view, or set of views. But that is not, in fact, how ordinary people use the term "philosophy." Each of those systematic philosophies is, in fact, a philosophy.

Faith, Skepticism, Knowledge, Rationality

Definitions:

Faith: The absence of doubts and questions, or the condition in which doubts and questions are not allowed.

Skepticism: The condition in which doubts and questions and critical thinking are allowed, or the process by which a position is subjected to questions or doubts, but this is also the name of the belief that knowledge is impossible, as such.

Knowledge: a position or belief which is held with the belief that it cannot be wrong or that its truth is the one and only possibility.

Faith-based knowledge: knowledge that is held without doubt, without question, without testing, without evidence.

Rational knowledge: knowledge that is held, and which is asserted or claimed to be known, but which is, or can be, doubted, questioned, tested, while still maintaining its status as knowledge, or knowledge which exists in a condition where doubts and questions and critical thinking are allowed.

The tradition position holds that you must choose between faith-based knowledge or rational skepticism, but you cannot have rational knowledge. Now the question is: Is rational knowledge possible? If so, how, and under what conditions?

Consider this: Claim, or assert, that you know that X is true. Logic, or science, or math, or history, or whatever, shows that, if X is true, then experience Y will be observed. You can test or question or doubt X by looking for Y in your observations or experience.

Now, you test for Y or not Y, and run an experiment to see if Y is true, or you question or doubt Y and Y withstands the critical scrutiny and proves true, once, and you see that Y is true. Does that mean that you rationally know X?

Consider this: You test X and/or Y an infinite number of times, and X and/or Y is proven true, against doubt and question and test and experiment and experience, an infinite number of times.

Would this, then, be rational knowledge? You know that X is true because X and/or Y withstood doubt and question and critical inquiry and critical thinking, but, for N number of times which X and/or Y did so, X and/or Y might fail a test at the N+1 experiment or test or doubt or question. So you can never rationally know philosophical truth.

Yes. But the problem is: how can you possibly test X and/or Y an infinite number of times?

Consider this: If X is such that if X is true then Y will be observed, and if X is a metaphysical or philosophical principle that is universal and infinite in scope, then (and here is the important part): if X is true, then Y will prove true an infinite number of times, if doubted and questioned an infinite number of times. Y will prove true an infinite number of times, because X is true.

And, if X is true, then the application of logic and reason to thinking about X, will produce knowledge of X.

So it isn't that you rationally know X because X was proven true by an infinite number of doubts and questions being withstood with X's truth intact. Instead, you rationally know X because X is true, and X would prove true in an infinite number of questions and doubts, if such were to exist, because X is true.

But how does one gain rational knowledge that X is true, other than by the satisfaction of an infinite series of doubts of X and/or Y? By means of logic.

What matters for rational knowledge is not whether you know it, what matters is whether or not it is really true. If it is true, then you will come to know it, provided that you use reason and logic.

Contrast this position with the faith-skepticism dichotomy: the claim that knowledge must be based on faith, because reason always allows doubts, and knowledge is that which is known to always be true, so rational knowledge could only come by means of a process of an infinite series of doubts being satisfied, because, if you assert or claim that your knowledge is rational, either you or someone else is always, at any or every point in the future, entitled to question or doubt or test that position which you claim to know, and no position can satisfy every doubt and every question because there could be an infinite series of such leading into the future, so only faith, as the absence of all doubts and questions, or as a condition where you are not allowed to doubt or to question, could make knowledge possible, so you must choose either faith and knowledge, or reason and skepticism, but you can't choose reason and knowledge, you are not allowed to choose to believe that rational knowledge is possible in a practical way in reality for humans.

Objectivism rejects the faith-skepticism dichotomy. The belief that rational knowledge is possible is a core element of the philosophy of Objectivism.

The truth has nothing to fear from skepticism. Indeed, rationality is skeptical knowledge, in a sense. If someone suppresses or avoids being questioned, and seeks to censor doubts, that is the surest sign that they are hiding something, that they fear rational inquiry or critical thinking, that they want you to believe their assertions when what they say is false, and they know it is false, or they themselves don’t know but they fear it is false, in their hearts, so they attack the skeptic who questions and doubts to insulate their own doubts from irritating their guilty conscience, because your doubts become a symbol of their own doubts in their subconscious minds, and they hide from themselves. As Ayn Rand said, “to name the unnamed,” to openly state the doubt or the question or the need for a test, to openly ask why and to call the belief into question, is the surest antidote to this type of fear. When someone has no answers, they seek to avoid the questions, but if they have answers, then they do not fear, or need not fear, skepticism.

Bertrand Russell's Paradox, and Set Theory

In my book "Everything is Something," I set about to accomplish many things, one of which was to refute Bertrand Russell's Paradox. After finishing the book, and publishing it, I realize that I could have phrased my account of his paradox differently, and more accurately. In the book, I describe his paradox as "a set that is not a member of itself." In retrospect, it would have been more accurate for me to have described it as "the set of all sets that are not members of themselves." His logic actually makes far more sense in the second description, than in the first, which I had said. However, in "Everything is Something," I prove, and demonstrate using logic, that every set is a member of itself. A set is the set of all of its members, therefore the set is equal to the set of all of its members, therefore the set is equal to all of its members, and all of its members are within the set, therefore the set is within the set, therefore the set is a member of itself, and this is true of all sets, because it is true of a set as such, of the essential set, because of the essence of a set, and is deduced without reference to any specifics that might differentiate this set from any possible set, which is the methodology of essential logic. The fact that every set is a member of itself refutes both formulations of Bertrand Russell's Paradox, so my error was only in my statement of his paradox, there was no error in my statement of my proof of my refutation of his paradox. The only set which is not a member of itself is the set with no members, which is the null set, the empty set, but, because it has no members, the null set does not exist, it is equal to zero, because it contains zero members, it contains nothing. It can be thought about and conceptualized, but it does not, and can never, exist, in the sense of being a real thing, in reality.

More broadly, regarding set theory, which I discuss at length in "Everything is Something," I later realized this, also: Bertrand Russell (and the early Ludwig Wittgenstein) sought to derive math from set theory, and to prove math using set theory. But math is set theory, math and set theory are identical, so their effort, their quest, their work, was doomed to failure from the very beginning. For example, what is the difference between "a set of ten things," as such, and "the number ten," as such? What is the difference between "a set of one thing," "a thing," and "the number one"? In my opinion, there is no difference. So, the attempt to derive math from set theory, and to prove math using set theory, reduces to the attempt to derive math from math, and to prove math using math, which adds nothing substantive to math itself, as an academic discipline. Philosophy can say how we gain knowledge of math, and what role math plays in the world, and what math is useful for, but math is math, and philosophy does not, fundamentally, add anything to the statement "math is math," for one does math by doing math, not by analyzing math by means of philosophy, although philosophy can add to the understanding of math, to our wisdom with respect to math, so to speak, for example by saying whether numbers exist in the physical world or exist in a separate spiritual or intellectual world or do not really exist at all, which is within the province of philosophy.

And I argue that numbers do physically exist, and there is no need to refer to or rely upon another dimension or an intellectual or spiritual world where numbers exist, and it is also obviously not true to say that numbers do not exist or they are merely our way of speaking about things but they themselves are not real, because we can see that numbers are real, if we look out the window and see a flock of ten robins then we can see with our own eyes, and know beyond doubt, that the number ten is real, because a thing is a set of properties, and an essence is one property or set of properties isolated out of a thing or things and then analyzed using logic, and a number is the essence of a group of things as being a certain particular number or amount or quantity of things, so, if groups physically exist, if, for example, there is a group of ten squirrels living in my back yard, and they are real, then the number ten physically exists, because the group of ten squirrels is a thing that has a property of being the number ten, and a property of being a group of squirrels, and a property of being in my back yard, and the property of being alive today, and so on, for example, and "the number ten" simply uses essential logic to isolate the property of being ten, from a real physical group of ten things, or from many such groups, which is abstraction and induction, and then uses the number ten in math to prove things in math, which is deduction and logic. For another example, if there are three boxes on my shelf, those boxes are the number three, plus many other properties such as being boxes and being on my shelf, and the number three physically exists as those three boxes, because that real thing has the property of being three. And there is no difference between that number ten, as a group of ten things, and that number three, as a group of three things, on the one hand, and the numbers ten and three of abstract theoretical mathematics, in intellectual math, on the other hand.

Our knowledge of math does come from the physical world, and this is why math, and math used in science, can describe the physical world, and is useful for technology in physical reality. As I have also written elsewhere, I believe that math works in science, and math describes the physical world, because I do not believe that there is any real difference between the theoretical abstract space and time of math, on the one hand, and our actual real physical space-time, on the other hand, the only difference is that the first space-time is thought about in some mathematician's mind, and the second space-time is one which exists objectively, outside of our minds, and which we experience as the physical world, but the actual math is exactly the same for both. So, when mathematicians think of an intellectual or spiritual world where math is real, it is actually our own physical reality that they are thinking about. Science, and the scientific world, is essentially the manifestation of the abstract mathematics of space-time into the concrete experiences that you have as a person observing and experiencing the little slice of space-time in reality that your point of view is privileged to experience. Science is really just how all the math fits together to form reality, and to form our experience of reality.

On Empirical Logic

Here is a point that I have tried to get at in my previous essays, but I don't think I phrased it in quite the right way, so I attempt to here: Data is counterintuitive. This is the reason why empirical logic is preferrable to spiritual intuition. Oftentimes, a surprisingly high number of times, in fact, you will make an assumption, and hold a belief, that you know is right, and you hold this belief for days, for months, for years, or maybe even for decades, but then, when you actually look at the research, and see the data, and see what the science says, you find out that you were wrong, and the data said something completely other than what you and your intuitions had assumed, even though your assumption seems like it was likely to be right, and what the data says is counterintuitive and unexpected, maybe even strange and odd and unlikely. And it can be embarrassing, to be honest, that you were convinced you were right, and then someone else, or maybe even your own research, points to the data, and proves you were wrong. But, if you believe that data comes from the external world, and that your intuition comes from your own internal mind, and if you believe that the external world is objective reality, then, if your data and your intuition conflict, trust the data, do not trust your intuition, and throw your assumptions out the window and embrace the data. And one should never hide from the shame or embarrassment of having made assumptions that turned out to be wrong, by clinging to them and refusing to abandon them in the face of the data; instead, be intellectually honest, admit you were wrong, and move forward on the basis of what the data shows. There's nothing wrong with making an assumption, but there is something wrong with refusing to abandon it in the face of data that contradicts it. However, I say this only with this one caveat, that raw data says nothing, it only says something to you after you use your logic and reason and your reasoning mind, independently, to analyze the data.

So, to sum, in a pithy motto: You are what the data says you are, and you should do what the data says you should do. (There is also a capitalist version of this motto: You are what the market says you are, and you should do what the market says you should do.) Also, as I have written before: True knowledge comes only from experience.

Also note that in recent politics there have been efforts to politicize science, and the purpose of this short essay was not to have anything to do with that. This short essay is not intended to be political at all, it deals only with epistemology, logic, and the philosophy of science, in a neutral and unbiased way, which is how all data-driven science should be.

An Open Letter to the Faculty of the Philosophy Departments of Ivy League Schools, Regarding the Teaching of Objectivism in College Classrooms

Russell Hasan has published the following open letter to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, UPenn, Cornell, Brown, and Dartmouth philosophy departments:

Philosophy departments should achieve diversity and inclusion in philosophy, with more women and minorities in philosophy, so that the list of famous philosophers is not merely a list of old white men. Please let me put forward a suggestion for how to help: begin to teach the philosophy of Objectivism in the classroom. Assign “Atlas Shrugged” in your introductory philosophy classes, and offer seminars devoted to Objectivism. Ayn Rand was a woman, and an immigrant from Russia to the United States. I myself, Russell Hasan, am a contemporary Objectivist philosopher. I am openly LGBTQ and of mixed race.

What prevents you from doing this?

Mischaracterizations of Objectivism:

(1) Objectivism is an ideology, not a philosophy.

When you consider this statement, it does not make any sense, and is intended to insult Objectivism, not to convey truth. In academics, an ideology is something less that a political philosophy, which asserts that a certain economic system is superior. Objectivism does not fit the definition of an ideology; however, the definition of “ideology” itself is highly dubious, because every political ideology either is, or implies, a political philosophy. Socialism, for example, is an economic system and a political ideology and a political philosophy formed by the ideas of the various socialist political philosophers. Its ideological aspect does not prevent professors from taking it seriously.

Objectivism does not merely assert that capitalism is superior to socialism as an economic system, as an ideology would. Instead, Objectivism explains why capitalism is superior to socialism, using arguments that are distinctly philosophical, and grounded in logic, ethics, and political philosophy. Objectivism is a complete philosophy, which holds positions in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, logic, political philosophy, economics, and aesthetics.

(2) Objectivism does not deserve to be taken seriously.

Who decides what is, or is not, a “real” philosophy? How is that decision made? On the basis of what criteria? Is Confucianism or Daoism or Stoicism a “real” philosophy? Is Existentialism a “real” philosophy? What does “real” mean in this context? Objectivism contains a serious set of ideas on subjects such as epistemology, ethics, logic, and political philosophy. You might not agree with those ideas, but your disagreement does not prove that those ideas are not legitimate or that they should be banished from intellectual debate.

(3) Objectivism is a form of elitism.

Objectivism does not believe that great human beings form an elite who should rule. Instead, it believes that every human being can, and should, achieve greatness, or seek and strive to do so.

(4) Objectivism is a form of Far-Right Conservatism.

Objectivism is an atheistic philosophy which asserts that reason is superior to faith. It does not collapse into or imply the Christian Far Right.

(5) Objectivism is a form of Neo-Modernism, not relevant in the Contemporary Era.

Objectivism believes in freedom, reason, logic, rationality, virtue, knowledge, science, industrial capitalism, and the existence of the external physical world. It holds these beliefs in a simple and sincere way. It does seem like it would have belonged more in the 1700s or 1800s, not in the Contemporary Era. But many details of Objectivism are unique and deserve study.

(6) Objectivism is not important to the history of philosophy.

Since its publication in 1957, “Atlas Shrugged” has had more influence in philosophy, as measured by number of readers, than, for example, Plato and Aristotle, or the German Idealists. My own books related to Objectivism have sold, or been downloaded for free, thousands of times. “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead” have both sold millions of copies and been read millions of times, and had a huge influence on American culture and politics, which make them important to the history of contemporary philosophy.

When you exclude Objectivism from the academic debate, you exclude one of the greatest woman philosophers of the contemporary era ever, Ayn Rand, and you also exclude me, Russell Hasan, a philosopher who is openly LGBTQ and of mixed race, and I also consider myself to be one of the best philosophers currently doing philosophy. Objectivism disagrees with most of the basic ideas taken for granted in academic philosophy, and we do things differently than you. I can understand that you don’t want to have to address a philosophy that calls your basic unquestioned beliefs into question and which asserts that most of what you believe is wrong. But that is not a rational grounds, in itself, to exclude us, if we make arguments that can be rationally understood and which make valid points, and if you have a sincere desire for a lively intellectual debate in academic philosophy.

I request that you add Objectivism to your academic curriculums immediately. Although I, Russell Hasan, am a nobody, and you are the great and powerful Ivy League, I write this letter, not in arrogance, but out of a humble desire to help you find new ways to meet your diversity and inclusion goals.

Philosophical Aphorisms - By Me (Russell Hasan)

(1) The Logical Positivists held that everything which cannot be verified by science has no meaning. My position is precisely the reverse: that everything which has a meaning can be verified by science.

(2) Nietzsche once said: "Every philosopher must be forgiven for his first followers." I have a similar motto: every writer must be forgiven for their first book.

(3) Nietzsche said, or meant, in gist, something similar to this: "We hold the greatness of geniuses a safe distance above ourselves for the purpose of considering ourselves unable to reach it." Similarly, people who choose to be stupid look up to smart people in order to relieve themselves from the burden of having to think.

(4) What is a Libertarian?

A Libertarian is someone who doesn't obey the rules.

But then how do they know what to do, if they don't follow rules?

You would have to think for yourself.

Precisely.

(5) The history of philosophy, summarized in one paragraph: Pre-Kant, there were the empiricists, who had sensations but not reason, and the rationalists, who had reason and the analysis of concepts, but not sensations. The empiricists were like Pavlov's dogs, merely animals reacting to sensations like a smell or a noise, or to a mental image, without thought; the rationalists were like blind men, having a mind that could think but lacking eyes that can see. Kant "combined" the two, by saying that reason and the analysis of concepts imposes truth onto sensations, and he called this scientific. And the popular narrative of the history of philosophy calls Kant a hero, for having done that. I might be viewed as having said the opposite: that reason acts upon sensations, but it is the sensations which impose truth upon reason, and it is the sensations which impose truth upon the analysis of concepts, and that this is what science is.

But that is a shallow, two-dimensional view of my work. My philosophy runs deeper. There is no sharp distinction between sensations, on the one hand, and reason and the analysis of concepts, on the other hand, the former is object, the latter, subject, you could not have a sentence without the form of "Subject verb object." The subject does something to the object, or else nothing would happen, but the subject is subject, and the object is object. What the subject actually does to the object is summed up by this pithy quote: "Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed."

(6) If someone from another country, a long distance away, in a land where they grow mangos but not apples, and he has never seen an apple before, if he asked you, "what does an apple look like?" How would you answer? The only true answer is that an apple looks like an apple. A thing is what it is. And a thing's appearance is what it looks like. If you have seen an apple, then an apple, itself, is something that you have seen. The apple's appearance, what the apple looks like, is equal to the visual properties of the apple itself, of the apple in itself, the thing as such, the thing in itself. So, if something looks like an apple, then it has an apple's appearance.

If something looks good, then you know that it is good-looking, because these are one and the same thing, and if something looks ugly, then you know it is ugly looking, because that is what it looks like, and good-looking and ugly are properties of visual aspects of things, and so those can be directly perceived. If you see something, then you know what it looks like, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you know what it is, in the sense that you don't necessarily know what is underneath its appearance, you don't know what structure is there, what physics of body and mass, what chemical composition, or what actions the thing can do, what its purpose is, and so on. Any one of those things could surprise you, if you assume, absent proof, that the thing is exactly what it looks like it is.

But to see a thing, and to then have knowledge of what it looks like, is incorrigible, and the only way to truly know what a thing looks like, is to see it. Sensations are simple, what Ayn Rand called "the irreducible primary," they do not break down as visual appearances into smaller components, although the visual things can be described using abstractions, like "blue" or "cloudy" to describe how the sky looks, etc.

But things themselves as such are not simple or irreducible, it is only the directly perceivable properties of things, which is what an appearance is, that are of this sort. And, of course, you could draw a picture of an apple, to try to show the foreigner what an apple looks like, but that is merely an abstraction, and sensations are always fully concrete, so it is not the same, seeing a drawing of an apple is not the same experience as seeing a real apple (although it is the same as seeing a drawing of an apple), because of what sensations are. This is why to experience something is to have an experience, which is a unique, simple, irreducible thing. There are some philosophers who say, "you cannot say what experience is." But you can. Experience is experience. That says everything that there is to be said. And, no, that isn't a tautology, because there are plenty of philosophers of logic who would disagree with me. You can say what it is, in a statement that is true, but that isn't the same as experiencing it.

However, experiences can be analyzed, using logic and reason, because they are things, like, for example, asking why an apple looks the way that it does, for what purpose, and how this shape helps the apple seeds become trees, and such. The experience of seeing a hammer, for example, is the perceivable and sensory aspect and attributes of the hammer itself: the hammer is the sensation, plus the substance, such as, in this example, the logic of why this shape and this material can hammer nails, and so on, which reason and logic can analyze. The hammer as a perceived thing is-plus the set of sensations; you see the sensations, but it is also true that you see the hammer, that you see the thing itself, because the thing itself is the sensations plus other properties. A thing is a set of properties, and an experience is a set of sensations which are properties of a set of perceived things. The things, as such, exist in objective reality, so the things that you perceive do in fact exist objectively, outside of your own subjective mind; experience is not in itself subjective, although your own mind and point of view and angle from which you see experience is.

Sensations can give us a path to knowledge of the depth behind the surface appearance. Such things can be real, or illusions, but reason and logic can tell the difference, much as a scientist might look to empirical data to see if his research is on the right track or has hit a dead end. In general, as I have written elsewhere, if the sensations were what a theory would expect, they serve to confirm it, to the extent that those sensations are a statistically significant sample set of the entire thing, but if the sensations were not what a theory would expect them to be, they refute the hypothesis.

A caveman in ancient times could see the stars at night, and he knew what stars look like just the same as we do, but we know that they are stars, which the ancient cavemen did not know, because we have science and reason built upon generations of research and scholarship, and he had only the knowledge that came from immediate experience of the sensations of stars. The difference between what he knew and what we know is the difference between empirical knowledge and rational knowledge.

(7) Some philosophers would say "a dollar bill on Mars isn't a dollar bill, it is just a piece of paper." But, no, it is still a dollar bill--because the dollar bill always was just the piece of paper. There are some who have said that a hammer isn't really a hammer objectively, it is only a hammer for human beings, because that identity, being a hammer, exists only relative to our human purpose. No. It is a hammer--that is a fact in objective reality--it is useful precisely because, in reality, it has a handle of wood, and a head of metal, with this hardness, in thus-and-such a shape, that makes it useful for hammering--the fact that humans can use it to hammer nails into wood is a fact in reality, which is true because of what the hammer is--because it is a hammer---it is not a merely a subjective wish or feeling. What humans find useful, is a fact in objective reality--whether we succeed or fail, whether we live or die, exists objectively. Also, if a human actually used a hammer to hammer nails, the fact that they did so would be objectively true, and would be fully objective.

(8) Mark Twain once said "Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken." He also said "Do the right thing. This will please some people and astonish the rest." I would combine the two: "Do the right thing. Everything else is already being done."

(9) If people are not allowed to be proud of their virtues, then they will be proud of their sins.

(10) What is Heaven for one man is Hell for another.

Aristotle and the Seven Deadly Sins

Let us see if we can combine Aristotle's theory of the Golden Mean, which holds that the good is a ratio, virtue lies in the middle ground between two extremes, and that the ethical behavior is in between one extreme of excess and one extreme of deficiency, with the Christian doctrine of the Seven Deadly Sins, defining each sin as an extreme of excess:

My statements will always take the following form: First, the sin of excess, then, a naming of the virtuous middle virtue, then the sin of deficiency. I will then state the topic to which the degrees of too much or too little pertain.

Take this example: Too Much, Just Right, Too Little. Virtue.

(1) Lust, Healthy Sexuality, Involuntary Celibacy. Sex.

(2) Gluttony, Healthy Eating, Anorexia. Eating.

(3) Envy, Inspiration from Others' Achievements, Apathy towards Goals. Comparison and Competitiveness.

(4) Pride, Self-Esteem (but also being Humble and Grateful), Low Self-Esteem or Self-Criticism. Self-opinion.

(5) Wrath, Righteous Anger against Injustice, Complicity or Weakness. Anger.

(6) Sloth, Relaxation and Enjoyment, Stress and Anxiety. Idleness or Laziness.

(7) Greed, Rational Self-Interest and a Healthy Desire for Money and Ethical Selfishness, Poverty. Money.

If this is true, then the Christians completely misunderstood their own doctrine, because they believe that, for example, any desire for money is greed and is evil, or any desire for sex is lustful and is therefore evil, so a truly virtuous person holds zero desire for money and zero desire for sex, so they are led down the wrong path by their misunderstanding of their own Bible. In reality, for ethics and virtue and morality, you can do the wrong thing, but you can also have too much of a good thing, which itself becomes another wrong thing, and, because a good person desires goodness, doing too much of the right thing might be an even greater temptation than doing the wrong thing.

Take, for example, this question: if eating lots of cake and junk food tastes good, then how can it be true that perception is truthful, which is the position held by the philosophy of Objectivism, because the cake tastes good, but eating it is bad for you? But I hold that the cake tasting good is truthful, because the cake is good, it is only bad to eat it because eating it is too much of a good thing, for example, too much fat and too much sugar, so the fact that fat and sugar taste good is not evidence that the senses are deceptive or that perception lacks accurate knowledge of objective reality, fat and sugar taste like exactly what they really are in reality.

Similarly, for sex, it looks hot and beautiful because it is hot and beautiful, but the naked human body is also gross and disgusting and dirty, as an animal body, so sex looks exactly like what it really is. One should want some food, but not too much and be fat, or too little and starve; one should desire some sex, but not too much and be dirty and disgusting, or too little and be mired in sexual frustration and a lack of pleasure in life.

There are countervailing arguments against me: for example, that greed is the love of money in itself, which is an unhealthy attitude towards money, whereas a healthy attitude towards money is to use money as a means to an end but never as an end in itself, and so on for sex, food, etc., so it is a question of attitude, not a question of degrees. There is also the argument that I get Christianity wrong (and, I admit, most theologians would not agree with my analysis), that food, money, sex, self-esteem, etc., are the tools by means of which a person stays alive in the physical world, and any behavior that clings to life in the physical world is wrong, and true virtue lies in renouncing the physical world, which purifies the soul for its journey to Heaven upon death. That is one extreme Christian view, although, if that is the official Christian position, then, obviously, my theory is not Christian, it is merely a synthesis of certain elements of the Bible with certain elements of Aristotle.

One may, of course, point to sex, food, money, and self-opinion, as things that tempt one into betraying one's moral integrity, such as, for example, if money is a temptation to commit a crime, or if sex tempts you to betray a friend for a woman (or for a man), or if pride leads you to an act of arrogance or grandiosity or to steal credit for someone else's achievement. Envy, or wrath, could also be an emotional influence that tempts you to evil. To betray law-abiding society (by crime, for money), to betray someone else (for sex), or to do the worst thing you could do, to betray yourself, is the ultimate evil. Betrayal, symbolized by Judas in the story of Jesus Christ, is the one true evil, but, expressed on our lives, it is our own betrayal of our ethics and our moral integrity. So defined, one could say that the seven deadly sins are merely a list of temptations to betrayal, to evil. If so, then, used in a good or ethical way, food and sex and pride etc. would not be sins, they would only be sins when expressed as the temptation to bait you into betraying your own soul.

On Immanuel Kant

I took it upon myself to read the Critique of Pure Reason. That lasted a few days, before I couldn't pick it up anymore. But I will say this: say what you want about Immanuel Kant, he was a great enemy of Objectivism, but he was also a great writer. He takes the fact that his theory is so absurdly crazy that there literally are no real-world examples of his ideas, and turns that to his advantage: "I sacrificed examples in the interests of clarity," is basically what he says, but he says it so much more elegantly. He says "this is the last work there needs to be in philosophy, ever, this answers every question, and you have no choice but to agree with me, you must agree with everything I say," then, in the next sentence, obviates any anger the reader might feel at being talked to with such arrogance, by saying that any previous philosopher, who put forward any theory of the soul or reason, was actually being far more arrogant than Kant--which is obviously not true, but the quality of Kant's prose form was so good that he makes the reader feel as if it was true. I think Kant's staying power in philosophy, at 300+ years and counting, owes more to how good of a writer he was, and far less to the quality of his philosophy.

Objectivism in Ten Quotes

1. "Why is it immoral for you to desire, but moral for others to do so? Why is it immoral to produce a value and keep it, but moral to give it away? And if it is not moral for you to keep a value, why is it moral for others to accept it? If you are selfless and virtuous when you give it, are they not selfish and vicious when they take it?" (Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, which is an almost verbatim statement of one of the ideas of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, although Rand spent her entire life denying that Nietzsche influenced her.)

2. "...for these truths hold good for everything that is, and not for some special genus apart from others. And all men use them, because they are true of being qua being. ... For a principle which every one must have who understand anything that is, is not a hypothesis. ... Evidently then such a principle is the most certain of all; which principle this is, let us proceed to say. It is, that the same attribute cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the same subject in the same respect..." (Rand, Atlas Shrugged, quoting Aristotle.)

3. "No one survives in this valley by faking reality in any way." (Rand, Atlas Shrugged.)

4. "You who prattle that morality is social and that man would need no morality on a desert island--it is on a desert island that he would need it most. Let him try to claim, when there are no victims to pay for it, that a rock is a house, that sand is clothing, that food will drop into his mouth without cause or effort, that he will collect a harvest tomorrow by devouring his seed stock today--and reality will wipe him out, as he deserves; reality will show him that life is a value to be bought and that thinking is the only coin noble enough to buy it." (Rand, Atlas Shrugged.)

5. "I am, therefore I'll think." (Rand, Atlas Shrugged.)

6. "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." (Rand, Atlas Shrugged.)

7. "Reason, man's only means of knowledge, is his only standard of truth. The most depraved sentence you can now utter to ask is: Whose reason? The answer is: Yours." (Rand, Atlas Shrugged.)

8. "Life, Liberty and Property." (John Locke's statement of basic human rights, which America's Founders, lacking the political consensus to use that phrase, changed to "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.")

9. "In the beginning was Logic, and Logic was God, and Logic was of God." (Alternate English translation of the original Greek version of the opening passage of The Gospel of John, The Christian Bible. Although a Platonic doctrine based on the Greek philosophical concept of logos, which means "the logical understanding understood expressed in words" but which is often mistranslated in Bibles as "The Word", this might as well be an Objectivist slogan.)

10. "I swear--by my life and my love of it--that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine." (Rand, Atlas Shrugged.)

The Top Ten Virtues from The John Galt Speech in Atlas Shrugged

 I have not seen a simple list of the virtues enumerated in Atlas Shrugged, so I made this list:

1. Reason

2. Purpose

3. Self-Esteem

4. Rationality

5. Independence

6. Integrity

7. Honesty

8. Justice

9. Productiveness

10. Pride

For Ayn Rand's explication of these virtues, see pages 932-33, Atlas Shrugged, Signet Paperback Edition.

One can further subdivide this list: Reason, Purpose and Self-Esteem are "the Big Three Virtues," Rationality, Independence and Integrity are "The Intellectual Virtues," and Honesty, Justice, Productiveness and Pride are "The Social Virtues." These three sets of values comprise the bedrock foundation of Objectivist morality.

Links to My Newly Released Nonfiction Books: On Forgiveness, and A Law and Economics Approach to Litigation Costs

I have to share links to my two new books on Amazon--just to make it easier for you to find them!

A Law and Economics Approach to Litigation Costs: The Proportionality Test for E-Discovery Law

And

On Forgiveness

Love them or hate them, this nobody can deny: my nonfiction books are unique!

What is Objectivism?

What is the philosophy of Objectivism? Let's learn about it together! I bet you'll learn something new!
Objectivism is the name of a philosophy--a set of ideas--developed by novelist Ayn Rand in the 20th Century. Objectivists are people who practice Objectivism. What do Objectivists believe? They think that a person should be happy, and that your happiness is the moral and ethical purpose of your life. They claim that rationality and reasoning are your main tools to succeed in the world, and that success causes happiness. They promote capitalism and individualism, feeling that the individual is more important than society.
Did you know? The 1980s were called The Decade of Greed because many people were influenced by Objectivism at that time, including high-ranking officials of the Reagan Administration. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan was also a known Objectivist.
Who was Ayn Rand? She was born in 1905 in Russia to Jewish parents. She lived through the 1918 Communist Revolution in Russia, which gave her a lifelong hatred of Communism and socialism. Eventually she escaped the USSR and fled to the USA. She achieved wealth and fame with her bestselling novel The Fountainhead (1943), and followed it up with her novel Atlas Shrugged (1957). Atlas Shrugged is the foundation of Objectivism, and is over 1000 pages long!
Did you know? There was a surge of interest in Objectivism in the 1960s, and a large Objectivist movement, centered around New York City. But Ayn Rand had an affair with another one of the leaders of the movement, a man named Nathaniel Branden, and when they broke up in 1969, an explosive conflict developed and the fallout destroyed the Objectivist movement of the 1960s.
I hope you enjoyed learning this lesson about Objectivism as much as I did! Thanks for reading!

A System of Legal Logic: Using Aristotle, Ayn Rand, and Analytical Philosophy to Understand the Law, Interpret Cases, and Win in Litigation (A Scholarly Monograph)

Master legal reasoning. Improve your writing and hone how to draft a brief. Understand the intersection of political philosophy and the law, and how that should shape your legal arguments to judged and juries whether you are a seasoned lawyer or pro se. Impress your friends with your grasp of logic.
This paper provides a new system of logic, including philosophical principles and logical notation, based on the work in logic done by Aristotle and later by Ayn Rand but also with a nod to modern Analytical philosophy, which is extremely useful to lawyers for analyzing facts to determine whether they satisfy the elements of a claim, as well as organizing arguments to a jury and presenting evidence. A libertarian politics emerges from the system of logic as a byproduct of the logical analysis of the intersection of law, politics, and philosophy.
Required reading for lawyers and citizens who want to understand the law and how and why it impacts them.

Learn more at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07QX3DT8K/

What They Won’t Tell You About Objectivism: Thoughts on the Objectivist Philosophy in the Post-Randian Era

A Must-Read Book for Fans of Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand and the Objectivist Philosophy

Everyone has heard dark whispers about the philosophy of Objectivism. People read Ayn Rand’s novels and fall in love with her ideas, only to collapse into one of two inevitable fates: (1) eventually give up on the ideas as childish and selfish, often complaining that the philosophy is a cult, or (2) develop a religious, zealous fanaticism, obeying the tenets of the philosophy in an obsessive, robotic, mindless manner.

But what is the truth about Objectivism? What is it in Rand’s novels that makes a light turn on in the minds of her readers, and why does that light always flare and then burn out, leaving behind either anger or mindless obedience? This book argues that Objectivism has been turned into a shallow, two-dimensional cartoon caricature of what the philosophy really is, by both Objectivism’s foes and its followers. The philosophy’s enemies fight against, and its followers worship, a misinterpretation, not the ideas that are actually in the novels. Rand’s novels present a vision of reality that is both heroic in its idealism and useful for real people in its practicality, with integrity as its highest moral value, but people forget that vision, and eventually the vision fades into the paper-thin cartoon that people think of when they hear the name Ayn Rand.

This groundbreaking, innovative book looks at Objectivism in a new light, and offers an analysis, rooted in quotes from the texts of Rand’s novels, that presents Objectivism as a deep, serious, thoughtful philosophy, with emotional depth and shades of gray, a philosophy of the mind designed for smart people to heighten their intellectual freedom, not merely a cult of robots or a cartoonish Right-wing extremist defense of rich businessmen.

If you want to know the truth about Objectivism then read this book.

Learn more at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074TXY258/