1. James Valliant was on the History Valley podcast recently to discuss The Passion of Ayn Rand’s Critics. While much of it was what you’d expect from Valliant (for example Rand wasn’t jealous contrary to the notes in Valliant’s book), I learned a few things. First, Rand was not just a great philosopher, but also a great psychologist as well -- she pioneered cognitive behavioral therapy. Second, Rand was morally perfect. She made mistakes but never acted contrary to her principles. I’d say that she largely lived up to her values, but for example denouncing Nathaniel Branden in 1968 as a thief without evidence was quite wrong. Michael Prescott reminded me of Rand’s praise for murderer and kidnapper William Hickman.
2. Long-time Objectivist writer Andy Bernstein has a new book on Global Warming (he’s a skeptic). Bernstein was interviewed recently on the Ayn Rand Fans You Tube channel about his book.
3. Ayn Rand Institute COB Yaron Brook and ARI Chief Philosophy Officer Onkar Ghate critiqued the recent Craig Biddle/Steven Hicks debate on Open versus Closed Objectivism. It’s two hours long, so I’ll summarize it: (1) Hicks is bad; (2) David Kelley is evil; (3) Biddle is a compromiser; and (4) Leonard Peikoff always gets things right.
The Ayn Rand Fan Club did a review of the Brook/Ghate discussion of the Biddle/Hicks debate here:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiFqXmEOhXc
-NP
Another example of Rand not being true to her values was her refusal to publicly disclose her lung cancer or to acknowledge the role that cigarette smoking played in it. Publicly she had always glorified smoking and disparaged any link between smoking and cancer. Even after she learned better and quit smoking, she never let her fans know about her change of mind. Some of those who’d started smoking to follow Rand's example might have kicked the habit if they’d known.
ReplyDeleteIn most cases, she probably was true to her values, but often this was possible only because her values were sufficiently elastic to be redefined as needed (something made much easier by her skill at rationalizing). Examples include having an extramarital affair because the ordinary rules don’t apply to moral and intellectual "giants"; celebrating Apollo 11 after having previously denounced government-funded science; criticizing "psychologizing" when other people did it, while chronically engaging in it herself; and dedicating herself to the inquiring, independent mind but breaking contact with those who disagreed with her. In each case she could justify her actions, but only because her nimble intellect could find a way to justify nearly anything.
Speaking of Rand & smoking, Valliant as usual misleads on this (he answers a question on smoking after the moral perfection question).
ReplyDeleteRand didn't deny that smoking causes cancer. She acknowledged people who smoke get cancer at higher rates, but said that while this is reason to look into the question more, it isn't proof of causation. You have to know the mechanism. When her physician showed her the x-ray of her lung, she put the cigarette out and never smoked again.
As Michael notes, Rand's biographers report that some in her circle, such as Dr. Blumental, urged Rand to make public her change of mind but she didn't.
While Valliant is typically confused, Peikoff lied (from 2006).
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Q: If Ayn Rand were still alive, would she smoke?
A: No. As a matter of fact, she stopped smoking in 1975. When the Surgeon General in the 50s claimed that smoking was dangerous, he offered nothing to defend this view but statistical correlations. Ayn Rand, of course, dismissed any alleged “science” hawked by Floyd Ferris, nor did she accept statistics as a means of establishing cause and effect. Statistics, she held, may offer a lead to further inquiry but, by themselves, they are an expression of ignorance, not a form of knowledge. For a long period of time, as an example, there was a high statistical correlation between the number of semicolons on the front page of The New York Times and the number of deaths among widows in a certain part of India.
In due course, when scientists had studied the question, she and all of us came to grasp the mechanism by which smoking produces its effects—and we stopped. Doesn't this prove, you might ask, that she was wrong to mistrust the government? My answer: even pathological liars sometimes tell the truth. Should you therefore heed their advice?
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NP
Peikoff:
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When the Surgeon General in the 50s claimed that smoking was dangerous, he offered nothing to defend this view but statistical correlations. Ayn Rand, of course, dismissed any alleged “science” hawked by Floyd Ferris, nor did she accept statistics as a means of establishing cause and effect. Statistics, she held, may offer a lead to further inquiry but, by themselves, they are an expression of ignorance, not a form of knowledge. For a long period of time, as an example, there was a high statistical correlation between the number of semicolons on the front page of The New York Times and the number of deaths among widows in a certain part of India.
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I'm no philosopher of science, but this borders on the ridiculous. Yes "correlation isn't causation" but it's evidence of causation. Taken to the extreme, what if no one who smoked got lung cancer but everyone who did got long cancer then Peikoff still would say the Surgeon General was peddling "junk science"? And the semicolon/deaths in India analogy isn't very good. Based on what was known about physiology at the time, it was reasonable to believe that a substance injected in the body could correlate with a disease to such a high extent that you can infer causation. Like causes like, or whatever the phrase is.
-NP
In logic, there’s something called "drawing an inference to the best explanation," which is a form of induction. As with all inductive processes, there are borderline cases and other ambiguities and exceptions; but in general, the "best explanation" is seen as one that covers all the known facts in the simplest way. If your street is wet, it probably rained.
ReplyDeleteLikewise, if there’s a strong correlation between inhaling foreign particles into your lungs and developing lung cancer, the best explanation is probably that the particles can cause cancer.
Rand denied this for years, and Objectivists still defend her reasoning, if not her specific conclusion.
Note that it wasn’t the scientific discovery of a hidden mechanism that prompted Rand to change her mind. It was her own diagnosis of lung cancer. From a strictly rationalist perspective, this diagnosis shouldn’t have altered her opinion on the issue of statistics vs. causality. If she was unwilling to draw the most obvious inference from the data before her diagnosis, why was she suddenly so sure of the inference afterward? Nothing had changed except her personal situation.
Objectivists and adjacent people should seize the global-warming science (GWS) in support of their "dominator" model for dealing with nature. OF COURSE a technologically competent global civilization, like the imaginary ones in science fiction, should have the ability to regulate its planet's climate. The GWS shows us how to do that, so it unintentionally supports the pro-capitalism right's world view, and not the left's.
ReplyDeleteSo Ayn Rand invented cognitive-behavioral therapy now? Figures. No cultist wants to admit that an ordinary schlub founded his cult, so the true believers tend to attribute all kinds of unlikely accomplishments to their guru. Wouldn't surprise me if they credit Rand with inventing human-capital theory in economics, given that her view of man's mind in Atlas Shrugged looks like a fictional portrayal of the importance of human capital in the economy without calling it by that name.
ReplyDeleteRand's reasoning seems dubious to some Objectivists. This is why Mayhew rewrote Rand's answer on the question of cyclamates, tobacco and saccharine to leave out tobacco.
ReplyDeletehttps://campber.people.clemson.edu/rewritingrand.pdf
Pages 111-115.
-NP
Oh, Rand was asked about tobacco, marijuana and cyclamate.
ReplyDelete-NP
Here is what Rand said in 1969:
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but also of cigarettes—although I grant you there, um, doctors are more
divided on the issue of cigarettes. But there is a division,
only we always hear the negative side.
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It's relatively mild. (Rand got lung cancer in 1974.) I'm not sure if doctors were divided in 1969.
So Ayn Rand invented cognitive-behavioral therapy now?
ReplyDeleteIronically, Albert Ellis, the first psychotherapist to introduce a type of cognitive behavior therapy, also wrote the first book length critique of Rand, Is Objectivism a Religion?. Unfortunately Ellis' book doesn't have much to say about Rand's psychological theories (which she never really fully developed). Branden developed a sort of weak caricature of cognitive behavior therapy in his own Objectivist psychology, which however he revised after Rand gave him the boot. The other psychotherapist in Rand's circle was Alan Blumenthal. For a time, Blumenthal was co-heir to Rand's literary estate (with Leonard Peikoff). Blumenthal, as far as can be ascertained, made no contributions to an Objectivist psychotherapy. If he is remembered at all today it is for referring some of his patients to Lonnie Leonard, another Objectivist psychotherapist who presented himself to the Objectivists in his circle of influence as some kind of Objectivist god and who routinely sought to recruit his female patients into his own personal harem. Blumenthal and his wife eventually tired of Rand and the Objectivist movement and simply walked away from the whole mess.
"Blumenthal and his wife eventually tired of Rand and the Objectivist movement and simply walked away from the whole mess."
ReplyDeleteIt's ironic that the person who has said the most critical thing over the years about Rand isn't Nathaniel or Barbara Branden. He even is reported to have said that Barbara's biography was a "whitewash" of Rand's bad side. He stuck with Rand after the Rand/Branden split and refused to attend an Atlas Society (or IOS as I think it was called) event because Nathaniel was also invited. This is something that the Branden haters have never come to terms with.
-NP
I meant to say
ReplyDeleteIt's ironic that the person who has said the most critical thing over the years about Rand isn't Nathaniel or Barbara Branden, but rather Dr. Blumenthal.:
Maybe they agreed with LRH, that it wasn't smoking that caused lung cancer. It was space dust.
ReplyDeleteSmoking/cancer link is BS, like the clot shot and Ukrainian democracy.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.sott.net/article/338885-A-comprehensive-review-of-the-many-health-benefits-of-smoking-Tobacco
I will remind all respondents of the fallacy of ad hominem.
I mean, the opening statement of that article accuses "the authorities" of being more concerned about profit margins than health, so if we're that worried about ad hominem, already the article itself fails the smell test.
ReplyDeleteI googled one of the names in the subsequent box of quotes, chosen without aim somewhere in the middle, and immediately came up with a link stating he was a scientist on the payroll of the tobacco industry. Without spending the time to do an extensive debunking, I think it's safe to say there may be some bias present there.
Of all the things "Yes We Kant" could have said were BS, it's interesting that they choose "the clot shot and Ukrainian democracy". I assume by the first they must mean the COVID-19 vaccine. Well no comment is necessary there other than to say it's most definitely not BS. As for the 2nd one, I'm not sure what to infer from that. Even if there was no democracy in Ukraine, the war would be waged to protect the lives of the Ukrainian people.
ReplyDeleteI think there are legitimate criticisms that can be made regarding the Covid-19 vaccine, its efficacy, potential side effects, and the way it's been politicized into a moral crusade in some corners. That said, calling it "the clot shot" comes across as flippant and dismissive, and suggests the same close-mindedness as those who insist "the vaccine is absolutely flawless and anyone who doubts that is a fascist".
ReplyDeleteRussia has justified its invasion of Ukraine by claiming the country is rife with Nazis and that Russians within the country are therefore in peril. That of course ignores the fact that Russia was for years supporting a secessionist movement inside Ukraine, just the kind of thing that would whip up any nationalist tendencies - how convenient to create a fine breeding-ground for nazis and then complain that they exist.
Regardless, there's a limit to how much an invasion can be justified on those merits. Russia could have simply opened its own borders to Ukranian-Russian refugees fleeing the supposed tyranny and persecution and won a considerable propaganda coup, except that wouldn't have satisfied the desire for re-acquiring Soviet-era territory. The Nazi accusation, true or not, is simply a pretext. If Russia was truly concerned about the welfare of Russians across the border they had a world of non-military actions they just never attempted.
The very real presence of neonazis and white supremacists in the USA doesn't grant Canada the right to invade Minnesota to protect some stray Canucks.
Any day now the John Galt's of Ukraine will repel the Russians and bring Objectivism to Ukraine.
ReplyDeleteTheir man in Kyiv:
https://www.atlassociety.org/post/our-hero-in-kyiv
The Cold War was over---and the Americans won!
ReplyDeleteThe Warsaw Pact & the USSR went out of business; the Berlin Wall came down.
Yet NATO was actually expanded!
Why are people so eager to start World War III----
which would probably be nuclear.
It's impossible to tell from this statement whether anonymous is a member of far left or the far right!
ReplyDeleteWell, if he'd written that in capital letters I'd assume the far left...
"It's impossible to tell....."
ReplyDeleteThat's a compliment, perhaps unintended!
There is a tendency for people to follow a "party line".
I recently saw a poll on the internet that showed the pro-vaxers were
three times more likely to support a no-fly zone over Ukraine.
See SUICIDE OF THE WEST by James Burnham.
See what he says about the fallacies of "ideological thinking!
Regarding point 2) in this post. I wonder who rational it is for a philosophy professor to write a book about environmental science?
ReplyDeleteWould Objectivists put up with it the other way round? If an environmental scientist writing about objectivist philosophy and coming out against it?