All right, we are streaming now. Meeting is now streaming and live custom stream. Code has to unmute. There we go. You muted? Yeah. All right, let me get this other thing going. The radical fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is the Iran Brookshow. All right, everybody, welcome to Iran Brookshow on this Tuesday, May 30th, almost in the end of the month. And we've got Ankar joining us today, Ankar Ghatay. I'm not sure what your title is these days at the Institute but Chief Philosophy Officer or something like that at the Andrin Institute. So thanks for joining us. Yeah, it's good to be here. Hi, Iran. Hi, everybody. And we're gonna be talking about a number of issues that have been at the center of, I guess, a bunch of controversies within objectivism for decades now. And recently there was a debate between Craig Biddle and Stephen Hicks of open and closed objectivism. So we're gonna talk about that. But in that debate, the issues that really are behind even the question of open and closed objectivism that even spurred that whole issue, the whole question of factor value never even came up. So I'd like to talk, we'll talk a little bit about that. And then we'll also talk about the appropriateness of having such a debate. And then of course, the issue more broadly of debating and moral sanction and when one is sanctioning which are all connected to the idea of fact and value ultimately. You can ask questions on the topic, of course, on any other issues in objectivism, philosophy, anything you guys wanna ask, any issues you wanna raise, feel free to do so. The super chat is available and open. And I know we've got people here who are new to objectivism, we've got people who I can see a few people who disagree with that in random particular issues or where they might have a question about the epistemology or defer when it comes to epistemology. Feel free to ask any of those questions. Anka is a great resource and a great resource for you guys to kind of chew and gain, I think, a better understanding of the philosophy. So let's jump in on this issue of open or closed, which came up, it was just, it was 1989, I think, that the split between the Ironman Institute and Leonard Peacock and David Kelly who founded what has become the Atlas Society happened. And it didn't happen over this issue of open and closed, right? Yeah, it was not a central thing that Kelly was arguing. It was related to what he was arguing, but he published a little pamphlet kind of thing called a question of sanction. And that wasn't the major issue as the title makes clear, it's not open objectivism or something, that was not the major issue. And Dr. Peacock responded in an article called fact and value, which again, the title indicates it's not all closed objectivism. It indicates that he doesn't think that's the central issue. And if you read that article and people should read the article, it's a very interesting article. It's towards the last few paragraphs in this article that he mentions, oh, and Kelly says, objectivism is open and no, it's not. So at most it's one consequence of Kelly's position that he views it as open and the position that Dr. Peacock was articulating about what objectivism is, that one consequence, not the most significant consequence is that it's closed. So yeah, it was not the central issue. And yeah, so part of just framing it like that is a distortion of what actually happened and what Kelly's position was and is. So yes, I wanna go back to, we'll get back to kind of the core of the issue, which was fact and value at the time and the issue of moral sanction. But let's dwell a little bit on this open closed issue. Why do you think it became, for some people at least, the central issue? I think of it as a smear from the Kelly's side in the, and we were both around at the time, so people were taking sides. I forget when the objectivist, what was it, standard, no, what was it initially called? It was, it went through a number of different objectivists. That's the objectivist study, I can't remember. Yeah, I can't remember either, it's slipping my mouth. It's now the Atlas Society, but it had a different name and that was formed a few months after I think of the split. So that, and it attracted people. So there was this kind of people taking sides and I think couching it in terms of, oh, we're open objectivism, you are closed. What it's trying to activate is we're open minded. We go by the evidence, we're objective. So if you think of what open versus closed-minded means and that you think it's closed, you're closed-minded, you're dogmatist, which is an accusation that's been over and over repeated. You're dogmatist who aren't open to evidence. And I think that's the reason they want to paint it like that, because they're on the side of the open, rational, objective.  And one of the ways it has been put sometimes is like you're orthodox objectivism. We just preach something because that's what Ayn Rand said and we follow along. And yeah, so by the way it was called the Institute of Objective Studies. Okay, yeah, somebody posted that. I also think it's open, closed is an easy way to smear the other side, but it's also not philosophical. So it's easy to hold and you don't have to, there's not a lot of explaining to do. And by being open, you're almost automatically kind of in the culture at least, the good guys, right? And the closed guys are the bad guys. But did you ever, I know what Maya said, did you ever think of yourself as a closed objectivist? No, so it's a smear and I think it's a rationalization of as you said, it makes their position seem palatable but also conventional. So part of what is just interesting in the terminology and why I think it's irrational is Ayn Rand commented on this very issue that open-minded versus closed-minded is not valid conceptualization and that it ends up being a kind of smear and deliberate package deal that when you hear open-minded you think, oh, it means you're open to evidence and you follow it wherever it leads and you don't have an authority that you blindly follow. But what it really means and how it's used in the culture is you're skeptical, you never take a position, you're always, well, something else might come up that changes my mind. And so it's a kind of skepticism and non-judgment position because well, the issue is always open and something might change. So how can you take any firm position, any firm stand? And she said the proper way to think about it. And this was the advice she's giving particularly for thinking about philosophy is don't fall for this that you have to have an open mind. What you have to have is an active mind, she said, an active mind that's gonna process the evidence. And when the evidence warrants a conclusion and a judgment that you're willing to make that conclusion to reach that judgment. So part of them characterizing it like this, it's already points you in the direction that they're rejecting aspects of objectivism. It wasn't the major thing that, but it's a consequence really of the major thing. And the other thing is like, I asked myself this and I've asked myself this since, and I'm interested in your, if you've ever been asked this question. So I'm in philosophy, have I ever been asked, well, is Mills views on on liberty? Are they closed or are they open? Could I add to them and rewrite and change some things and call it Mills theory? I've never been asked about that for any philosopher and more broadly for any viewpoint because people sense like that's not right to do that. There's something fraudulent about that. Like I'm gonna write a term paper on and say, well, this is Mills views. Of course I changed some and I altered some, but look, this is Mills, you would fail the course if you did that. There is an element of that goes on in a sense that they are followers of Marx to a Marxist and call themselves Marxist and consider themselves Marxism. Yet they diverge from Marx on particular issues or particular thing. And you probably get that with Kantians who consider themselves Kantians, although they often call themselves Neo-Kantians or something like that. Yes. And it is true that some of these terms, when you have the distance of a century or more that what they or come to identify is people inspired by this and would sort of self-consciously or either self-consciously or it's obvious from an outside perspective. They're taking fundamental things from Marx or from Kant and then presenting their own viewpoint. But there's not an issue of confusing it or so they're really saying that this is what Kant said about everything. And you have that for Kant, you have that for Marx, you have that for Aristotle and Plato. And if you look at a dictionary for say Platonism or Aristotelianism, now not every dictionary but many will have more than one definition. And one is just, it's the philosophy of Aristotle. And another will be, it's a philosophy, like it's a philosophical tradition or school that traces its roots back to this, but has made changes. So to call Aquinas and Aristotelian or attempting to kind of integrate or try to combine or not, you can't do it and you couldn't do it but to try to combine Aristotle and Christianity, it's to call him while he's in the Aristotelian tradition, nobody thinks, oh, so Aristotle's views was there was a Christian God and like nobody, so there is that usage but there is also the usage that Marxist means the philosophy of Marx or Marx and Engels since they were co-op. And indeed, I think particularly today you're seeing people use Marxism in ways that Marx would have, that are truly bizarre and people call them on it when they do. But isn't there also the difference here that Rand named the philosophy and then kind of articulated how she wanted it to be thought of? I think that is a different, it makes it even more clear. I think it's the same issue and part of what she says about why she named it, Objectivism is that people were starting to use the term Randist or Randian and she's too conceited to allow that usage. She didn't want her name in that way used. So she wanted and she gave it a proper name, Objectivism. And it's crystal clear that it's a proper name which means it's the name of the philosophy she created. And again, if you look at a dictionary because I looked at a few, a good dictionary will put it, Platonism with a capital P or Aristotelianism with a capital A or Marxism with a capital M is a proper name or a proper noun, they'll put it. And so it's not like this isn't known and that's part of what there's something fraudulent about this whole thing because you know this as an undergraduate, if not earlier, that you can't pass your ideas off as somebody else's theory. So what do you make of Stephen Hicks's argument that what is it? Objectivism is a science, anything discovered using this scientific tool is therefore part of this science? It's, I think of it and I mean, my impression when I heard that is he can't believe this. So, and then my view is it's a kind of rational is that you have a position and you have to try to mount an argument for it. And if you look on the open objectivism, David Kelly, David Kelly says something he doesn't call objectivism a science but he calls it a body of knowledge. And like any body of knowledge, it can develop but none of these are right. The proper classification of objectivism, it's a philosophical theory or a philosophical system. It's not science. And in what, so I watched some of the debate, what Hicks says that objectivism is science and then he quotes I ran and the quotes, don't say that, the quotes say metaphysics is a science, ethics is a science, epistemology is a science and more broadly, philosophies of science. And it's true, she insisted that philosophies of science, it's not a bunch of hot air, it's not the province for mystics, it's the province for rational thinkers. But to say philosophies of science is not the same thing as to say objectivism is a science. Objectivism is a scientific theory or a philosophical theory or a system really is like a set of principles and theories. But that's what it is. And so it's a crude equivocation. And again, my view is like if undergraduate doing this is that you would get a C maybe, or at least you should, with great inflation who knows what you would get? Yeah, I mean, it doesn't seem like you can have, yeah, I've never seen the point in debating this question. It seems pretty straightforward, pretty simple. You know, in Ayn Rand was, it's pretty clear what she wanted. What motivates a David Kelly to wanna, you know, pass across this fad of, you know, open objectivism, I mean, without psychologizing. But I think part of the motivation has to be to want to ride on Ayn Rand's name while not putting in the time and effort to really understand her ideas, her theories or philosophical system and to be an actual advocate of it. Now you don't have to be, you might think the system's wrong or in part wrong. And that's what you should tell the world. And Ayn Rand was adamant about this and she put it as there's a kind of fraud involved. And I think she thought of it as just during her lifetime of there's an attempt to wanna ride on my coattails to simultaneously put yourself as your, an advocate of her ideas and her theory. But I've got my own ideas and my own theories and not to make any kind of clear distinction between those.  And I mean, it's worked because I'm not conflicted directly on this towards the end of her life. And it's pretty interesting what she says about it and how prescient it is. Should I do it? Yeah, I think so this was when the Objectivist Forum was launched, which was close, I mean, just a year or two before Ayn Rand's death. And she talked about the, when she launched this, so this was Dr. Harry Binswanger's publication called the Objectivist Forum. And she's writing to its readers to say that explicitly, to say that she approves of it. So the idea like it's only Ayn Rand can talk about philosophy and nobody else can and she's gonna slam the door against it. That's not true, but she wants a clear distinction. So this is part of what she said. This is to say that I approve of the publication of the Objectivist Forum, that it promises to be a very interesting magazine and that I recommend it to your attention. It is not, however, the official voice of Objectivism and it is not my representative or my spokesman. As its name indicates, the magazine is a forum for students of Objectivism to discuss their ideas, each speaking only for himself. And then she goes on to elaborate a bit about that. And then she says, if you wonder why I'm so particular about protecting the integrity of the term Objectivism, my reason is that Objectivism is the name I've given to my philosophy, my italicist. Therefore, anyone using that name for some philosophical hodgepodge of his own without my knowledge or consent is guilty of the fraudulent presumption of trying to put thoughts into my brain, again, my italicist or of trying to pass his thinking off his mind, an attempt which fails for obvious reasons. I chose the name Objectivism at a time when my philosophy was beginning to be known and people were starting to call themselves RANDIS. I am much too conceited to allow such a use of my name and that's worth talking about a little bit more. And then she said, what is the proper policy on this issue if you agree with some tenants of Objectivism, so some tenant, but disagree with others, do not call yourself an Objectivist. Give proper authorship credit for the parts you agree with and then indulge if any flights of fantasy you wish on your own. And then she says at the end, and now that I hope we understand each other, I wish a happy and successful new year to the Objectivist Forum and to its readers. And I think like anyone trying to understand understands what she's saying here and why she would be saying it. And the idea that Objectivism is anything other than just a name for her philosophy. Like nobody could think that I think going in and certainly after she states the point so adamantly, who can think otherwise? And so that there is something that you're trying to ride on her name. And I suspect that's part of when she says she's too conceited to allow the use of RANDIS. I think like she invented the name on RAND and it's so connected to Atlas Shrugged, to the Fountainhead, to her as an artist and to her artistic work and masterpieces I think that she didn't want people going around calling themselves RANDIS and they're connected. Like they're connected to that. I think that probably was part of the motivation that you want a different term. Ayn Rand is that's the author of Atlas Shrugged the Fountainhead, that's the association people should make not to, oh, there's these people and we both have met some bizarre Objectivists and if it's connected to RAND and to Atlas, there's a way in which I think it, she probably thought it taints it. And so let's have a different name for the philosophy. So how do you think of it's a work you've done that is new that obviously RAND hasn't seen and approved of and so how do you think of it if it's not part of Objectivism? I think of it as its applications of Objectivism, its elaborations, its presentations sometime in the same way that I think if I'm presenting Mill and Mill's viewpoints say on Liberty, some of his ethical and political viewpoints, I'm trying to get him right. I'm not just using his exact sentences and so I'm presenting, but I'm presenting his philosophy and to do that in a, I mean, I'm doing it largely as a teacher but also as a more of an advocate but there's a lot that goes into that and doing it in a skillful way of putting it in your own formulations and terminology but what you're trying to get is the theory and you're trying to get here is a theory that Mill has put forth and that there's independent and first-handed thinking about that doesn't make you a creator or a co-creator of the theory and so it's interpretations, elaborations, applications and then you do this for any thinker. Ideas consistent with, you think they're consistent with but they're separate, they're not the same and in terms of, you know, so a lot of people accuse us, us, the Institute and you and me, I think personally are being dogmatic of, which I find bizarre, just thinking about it, but are being dogmatic of just, you know, only mouthing what Ayn Rand says, how do you even respond to something like that? Well, it depends who's bringing it up. So if it's young students who've heard this and so on, talk about the issue and part of it, I do talk about the issue, the philosophies of science, objectivism is a theory within this science and do they have the same attitude about sciences that they think of as sciences? Do they have this attitude in chemistry and in physics and biology that, oh, well, you're just echoing, you're a dogmatist because you're saying what Einstein said or what Newton said or what Darwin said and they don't have that. So part of what happens I think is they're only, they don't really have an understanding of philosophy to the extent that they can liken it to anything, they liken it to religion and there's reasons why they would do that. And that triggers that, well, if you think you've got this worked out religion, isn't that, aren't you a dogmatist that you've got, you're handed down from whoever was St. Paul or Christ or Muhammad, this whole system that you're just blindly obeying now. And so there's some people I can understand that they think like that. There's many people who I don't think it's understandable. And I would add to this, cause I think it's important. So yeah, we get this accusation now. Dr. Peacock got this and he's really, I think the lightning rod for many of these attacks and it's not true of Leonard. And I know, I mean, my first exposure to him basically this was in a class where we're writing confusion paper. And it basically his criticism was like, that you're too much of a dogmatist. You're saying stuff you don't really understand because it seems like that's what the philosophy says. And so the idea that Leonard is just spouting things that he doesn't understand, hasn't integrated, hasn't thought about all kinds of applications, including applications that I ran didn't focus on. The idea, there's, if you actually look at the work, that he's a dogmatist, it doesn't mean you have to agree with everything he's argued but that he's a dogmatist, you have to see that as a smear. And then you have to ask like, why are they trying to smear him? Why don't they present what he actually does versus presenting him like he's some kind of religious figure? I mean, one of the ways this religious attitude comes across is, I don't know if you get this, but I get questions like this all the time. What do you disagree with Iron Man Don? Kind of as a getcher, not as a curiosity really, but just as a getcher to prove that you're gonna say, well, I agree with her on everything. So therefore you must be a religious dogmatist. Yeah, and again, for that kind of question, when I think it's, when it's young and they're actually confused or they've been told things and it doesn't sound right exactly to them, but they don't know what is right. I asked them again for other, do you ask that to your biology team? Like, and is it a test? What do you disagree with in Darwin or to a physics profile? What do you disagree with Einstein about? And you don't think they don't think of it as, yeah, that's a question I really should ask. And it's again, because they're putting it in a different category. So anything else before we move on regarding open and closed? What about the debate? Yeah, so, well, so part of the reason I don't think this is debatable is there's nothing to debate. And Hicks's opening statement is like that, that if your objectivism is a science and this is what Ayn Rand said. So clearly did not say that. You're just fishing for arguments for a position you're maintaining for other reasons, not that you're actually, like logically convinced of this position. And I haven't met anyone who I think has been logically convinced that, oh, objectivism is open philosophy. The other philosophies may be closed, but objectivism is an open philosophy. And that tells you something and something important that it's not a question that has any currency for other viewpoints. And part of a debate in some context at least means there's something to debate. And if in the run up to this debate, I think it was one of the things that was interesting and this leads to issues about sanctions and so on. It's that the Atlas Society was posting things that, oh, finally someone is willing to debate us on this issue. As now they're getting some approval, some standing that's final, and it sort of presented like finally someone has the courage to debate us on this issue when Dr. Bicuff replied right away to the issues in a question of sanction and replied in detail to them. So the idea that the one side was unwilling to discuss the actual issues here is false, but it's part of it is, oh, people are taking us seriously. See our position is serious. And that it's not a serious position. And that's part, you can't do things that imply that it is. Yeah, and that's the essence of the sanction. The essence of the sanction is you're making them appear serious. You're making them appear bigger and more influential and more important and legitimate where they clearly are not. And particularly if the whole debate has the flavor which it has both from the forum and tone of this debate. As we're all objectivists here debating with some point about well, is it open or closed? Is it possibly open or closed? And it's a friendly debate and in effect, Craig's position was like the Atlas Society's position. Oh, this might be a dispute about ideas, but does that have any moral significant or no? We're all friends here. And that's, again, if you do it like that, you particularly can't address this issue because there's something fraudulent about it. And I in Rand saw that when people were trying to kind of cash in on her name while presenting things that are not her views. All right, so let's go to the core philosophical issue that caused kind of the dispute to begin with which was the issue of fact and value and that's and of all sanction and of course the fact. So tell us what the philosophical issue around fact and value is and what's Rand's position, you know, where you find Rand's position on this. And of course, Leonard P. Guffin is essay. And by the way, the essay is available online. So if you just put fact and value, Leonard P. Guffin, you'll find it. It's on the Ironman Institute website. There might be other websites that are carrying it, but certainly on the Institute's website. So just put fact and value and you can find it. It's a, I think a brilliant essay and it gives you both, you really see Leonard P. Guffin's mind in action. It's super sharp, it's classic Leonard. It's got, kind of particularly at the end, it's got this emotional tone to it, which is very powerful, but he dissects the argument and he presents it so clearly and so beautifully. So what is the issue? Where does Rand really deal with it and kind of what does Leonard put together? A little bit about the history I hear I think is relevant and I imagine you can remember sort of the atmosphere at the time because I think it's hard to recapture it and it's partly because of Leonard's work on fact and value, but more broadly. So he's writing Objectivism and the Philosophy of Ein Rand at this time and says in the essay, he's decided to interrupt his work on the book to address this issue once and for all. He puts it something like that. And so this is 1989. There's not many people who understand Objectivism and particularly Objectivism as a system of philosophy other than Leonard. And part of what this controversy surfaced in effect is, yeah, that's really true that not that many people understand it. So I think and I certainly hope that a position that like Kelly's, like the position that Kelly articulated in a question of sanction, would there would be many more people in the Objectivist world who would say, like that's obviously not Objectivism. But at the time that it was published, it was part of what he was arguing was, look, you have to make a big difference or big distinction between what's true and what's false and what's good and what's evil. And what's true and false, the primary focus is that it's just cognitive. It doesn't, if something's true, it has some kind of relationship to the good, but not that much. And if something's false, don't think of that as being on the side of evil. So the part of the way it was frowned upon is that the primary evaluation for ideas is are they true or false? The primary evaluation for ideas, sorry, for action or are they good or evil? So it was making a big wedge between ideas and action. And I mean, it has some interesting concretes in regard to that that we could talk about. But here's the cash value of this and this is the way it was put in the question of sanction that if you don't get ideas, yeah, that's about cognition, true and false. It's actions that are about good and bad and good or evil. Here's a paragraph of the cash value of this. The failure to draw these distinctions has a pernicious effect. If we approach ideas with the question, true or false, we stand ready to combat bad ideas by the only means appropriate to intellectual issues, open, rational discussion and debate. But if we approach ideas with the question, good or evil, we will avoid debate for fear of sanctioning evildoers. We will substitute condemnation for argument and adopt a non-intellectual intolerant attitude toward any disagreement with our views. Close quote. And whatever you think of, like, is Kelly right about this? The idea that this is Ayn Rand's philosophy, that this is objectivism, is you have, I mean, I was an undergraduate at this time and it has, this can't be right. Now, I didn't know what was right exactly. So fact and value, I learned a lot from fact of out. There's no way I could write that. And my view now is nobody could have written that at the time other than Leonard. He had an understanding of these issues that nobody else had.  He didn't lead armies. And the idea that it's so she's, and calling him for the ideas that he advocates evil, she's substituting condemnation for argument and adopting a non-intellectual position on it. And one of the many kind of powerful philosophical identifications of Ayn Rand's is to understand the essence of what Kant was arguing. And it's one of the most brilliant passages when she said that in essence, his view is you're blind because you have eyes and you're deaf because you have ears. And that really is the essence of his position. And the idea that that's condemnation without argument and it's not intellectual to let nobody, you can't be capturing her position and her view. My view is that Kelly's is a conventional position. Who judges ideas? Ideas are just true and false. That's what we do in academia. And then we go, we're all friends about it and so that, yeah, maybe actions are good and evil, but ideas like who thinks that? And again, you can't present that as objectivism or as Ayn Rand's view. And while Rand doesn't necessarily explicitly talk about that, it's implied in everything. I mean, look at the characters in the novels. I mean, these are not... I mean, if you think just of the fountain, Tui goes to cocktail parties and writes a newspaper column. And so he's not Attila the Hun. And yet he's clearly evil. He's the most evil character in the fountain head. It's clear Ayn Rand thought he's evil. And it's true, she doesn't address it in exactly this way. But so you asked like, where can you find her view? I think read the first two essays in the book, Philosophy Who Needs It. So the first is Philosophy Who Needs It and what the subject of philosophy is, and there you get a bit, yeah, she regards it as a science and objectivism is a theory within it. And she says to the, she's addressing cadets at West Point. I haven't tried to sell you on my philosophy, which means her theory within philosophy, but I've been speaking of it implicitly and I have enough confidence that if you investigate the subject, you'll come to think my theory is true.  And it's about how to think about and study philosophy. And there she makes it, I mean, it's hard that she can make it clearer that if you come in with a non-valuative, non-valuing perspective that you don't think in terms of good and evil and you don't think of the issue as truth and false or true and false as intimately connected to good and evil, you can't understand philosophy, any philosophy. And one of the points she makes in that essay, some point just to how adamant and how explicit it is. And this whole phrase is italicized in the essay. Evil philosophies are systems of rationalization. And you can't understand them. If you don't understand, they're systems of rationality.  So the idea that, oh, the ideas, the primary evaluation is true or false and good and evil, that applies to actions, non-idea. Like you can't read that essay and think that's her view of philosophy. And yeah, I mean, she didn't write explicitly addressing a question of sanction because she hadn't read it, but Leonard does. But the idea that this could be Ayn Rand's viewpoint. Now, we're not at the point of saying, Ayn Rand's viewpoint is right. And that's part of what fact and value, Dr. Wigels, I think it has a dual purpose, but the primary is Ayn Rand's right about fact and value, the way to think about it, the relation. And then it's, if you can't pretend that this isn't her viewpoint. So there's two things that is her viewpoint right or is her theory right and what is her theory? And her theory is clearly that ideas are subject to moral evaluation. And is Kelly saying that's not true? Is Kelly saying, it doesn't matter, my view can be part of objectivism too? It's unclear. And this is part of what is fraudulent about it. It's unclear if it's the position is, yeah, Ayn Rand's wrong about this. I'm taking a different position, but I can call it objectivism because I still agree with the fundamentals of objectivism. Or if he thinks, no, this is Ayn Rand's position, it's unclear, both in a question of sanction, though in a question of sanction, the natural way to read it is this is the objectivist position. And I think that's part of why Dr. Pieckoff responded. And fact and value starts off, I mean, in the third paragraph or something, he views this as a repudiation of objectivism's principles. And I think he stated it like that because that's what Kelly should have said, that I fundamentally disagree with Ayn Rand. And towards the end of fact and value, that's what Dr. Pieckoff said, that what one should say if you have a position like Kelly's is I accept some ideas of Ayn Rand's, reject many, and yeah, I'm not an objectivist. This isn't objectivism. And that would have been an honest position to take. And of course we've met many people, read Ayn Rand and said, yeah, I agree with some things. I don't agree with objectivism. And it's not like, whoa, we won't talk to these people. No, I mean, the people who infuriate be the most. And I get emotional about this is the people who claim to be objectivist, who claim to be speaking fine Rand, who claim to know what Ayn Rand thinks, and then misrepresents it completely on relatively simple things that it's not that hard to figure out and yeah, so they're trying to write in their coattails and to pass along their kind of distorted views as you know, as hers, because they know nobody will take them seriously, but people do take Ayn Rand seriously. So let's shift to the question of Mars sanction and then we've got like a gazillion questions. So we'll go to the questions. Really all this started, I mean, from the question of Mars sanction, I mean, that's how they got into fact and values. How do fact and value relate to Mars sanction? And how do you view this issue of Mars sanction and its practical implications? Well, yeah, it started in part as a debate about how to deal with the, at the time. So thinking late 80s, the libertarian movement and it included some of the critics of Ayn Rand, including Barbara Brandon and she had come out, I forget when a passion of Ayn Rand was published, but sometime in the 80s, I think, of how to think about this, how to relate to it. Is this something debatable? Should one engage with Barbara Brandon? So there were issues about that. Peter Schwartz was one who had written a lot about the libertarians and how to think about this movement at the time. And it really was at that time, co-opted by Rothbard and Rothbardians. And so there was real reason to keep a distance from it, which I think was the right position, it was Ayn Rand's position and you see it growing, like she's growingly adamant. I have nothing to do with libertarians through the 70s. And I think you can think of that as the ascendancy of Rothbard in this movement and he's presenting himself as the spokesman for everybody and what libertarianism means and so on. And I think many in that circle of people should have distanced themselves from Rothbard. It's real, there's real poison there and anti-Americanism and anti-freedom. We recently did a podcast on New Idea about some of this that people can look up. So there was a question of, you can't imply that these people are fellow travelers, they're on the side of freedom or of reason. So there were debates going on in the Objectivist movement about how to relate to this and how bad is it and if it really is evil, then that has implications for one's actions and how one engages. So there was debate going on about this. It's, I think, important to recognize that's not the source of the split. The source of the split is Kelly, a question of sanction in part is an articulation from a philosophical perspective of how he thinks about these kinds of issues of which libertarianism and how to deal with them is one. And part of what it's arguing, as we've talked about a little bit, is that, well, you don't bring in moral evaluation in the realm of ideas, that's primarily cognitive. Don't think of it as good and bad, good and evil. Just think of it as true and false. And yes, oppose the false, but you can only do it through discussion and debate. So be tolerant of everybody and everything in the cognitive realm. Tolerance is a virtue in the cognitive realm, not in the moral realm, but and the, so this is part of the kind of viewpoint that leads to the sanctioning of evil ideas precisely to not put them in the category of evil. Yeah, Kant might be wrong, but he's not wicked or Marx might be wrong, but he's not wicked. And we need to engage with them a little bit more and try to persuade him and his followers and so on. It's reason that you have to engage with them, these people. And that is all the license that evil needs. It's just, okay, yeah, don't agree with us, but if you treat us as respectable, mistaken, trying to understand, trying to figure things out, that's what we need. Treat to eat just as a respectable guy who comes to cocktail parties and so on. And you might not agree with everything, but obviously he's respect respectively, he's not scum. And that's what they need to be able to operate. So it, and it, and this is part of what Dr. Pinoff said, in fact, in Valley, like it made clear to him in philosophical terms, why there's been so many conflicts and schisms in the objective of his movement. Because if you have this view, yes, then Ayn Rand seems irrational crazy. You have this conventional view that who brings moral evaluation into the realm of ideas? Well, Ayn Rand does and she does it over and over again. And it's, if you really have this view, you get more and more uncomfortable with that. And that's the source of it. But I mean, part of what fact and value argues is, yeah, but that view is completely wrong. All right, let's, we're ready almost an hour. Let's take some of these questions and see where they take us. Some of them are on topic, some of them are not. I'm gonna go by the dollar amount they put on it. So let's start with Adam, more general question he has. For those you see struggling with popular morality for altruism, yet on actively seeking a new philosophy, maybe people who wouldn't go and read Atlas Shrugged, is there an elevator speech or something you use to introduce objectivism to those who are not familiar with Ayn Rand? I don't use an elevator speech, but I wouldn't use an elevator speech because here you're talking about an individual who's struggling and I would want presumably the person asking the question would know something about that individual and what they're struggling with. And I would tailor what I said to that context and the specifics of it. So if I thought, so for many people, what I would recommend that they read is the novels and it might not be addressing their particular issue, but what the novels do is present that there's a whole different view of life and it doesn't give you all the explanation from it, but just having that as a reality that, oh yeah, a whole different way of functioning is possible is often motivation for a person to think more about the own issues he's facing, the own problems, because part of the question was, they're not that philosophical, but part of the novels will push people to become more philosophical because they see the ideas in action and the importance of the issues. So for some people, that's what I would do. For other people, like if they're struggling with religion, I would bring up specific things about religion and it doesn't have to be this way. If they're struggling with unearned guilt, like just an elevator speech about, there's such a thing as unearned guilt and that people, like it's a way to manipulate people to if you feel guilty for something you shouldn't be feeling guilty for, they don't have to do much because you're the one beating yourself up about it. And like that, the whole phenomenon of unearned guilt that Inran spends a lot of time on because it's part of conventional morality, that's a phenomenon comes as news to almost everybody and that can be something that is motivating. Oh, so maybe there's something more to hear I need to think about. So there's a lot of different ways in. Great, Adam, if you have any follow-ups, feel free to jump in. Paul says, I understand the values of facts when viewed from the perspective of a living organism. Can you cite a quotation where Ms. Wren stated or implied that all facts are values? Yeah, so, and this is in the article, fact and value, he quotes for mind-rendedness and what he's quoting from is the Objectivist Ethics, which is the lead essay in the virtue of selfishness. And it's the formulation of something like this and this might not be word for word, but that for every living organ, or for every conscious organism, in is implies an ought, that is it's knowledge of what is, implies something for what it ought to do. And that's part of her perspective. Here's the little thing, as I said, this is quoted in fact and value. Knowledge for any conscious organism is the means of survival to a living consciousness. Every is implies an ought. Is being the fact and ought being the value. Yeah, or is being the truth and ought being, well, this is what's good. This is what you should pursue. And so, yeah, every is implies an evaluation. And this is part of her whole view is knowledge is not for the sake of knowledge. It's not knowledge in a vacuum. It's not knowledge is some kind of intrinsic value that we have some commandment pursue knowledge. You're interested in knowledge precisely because it advances your life. And so to make this separation between, well, there's ideas and that's cognition and action and values. That's a different realm. The whole point of you want knowledge is to guide action. Yeah, I think Paul misstates when he says, all facts are values, all in fact, imply values. Yeah, I mean, there's a part of the way Dr. Picov puts it in this and it's the period, the paragraph before where he quotes on round. He says, the good therefore is a species of the true. It is a form of recognizing reality. And so it's values or facts looked at from the perspective of the choice to live. And this fact implies certain actions on my part if my goal is to survive. Right, Adam asks, what is your take on the label Randian? I suspect it will be a label that if you go a century from now will be used. I mean, that's my guess. The I am surprised but pleasantly surprised that how often objectivist is used and it's used more than say when I was 25 years ago graduate students by in newspaper articles and so on. They talk about, oh, these people are objective. And what they mean is they're followers of Ayn Rand's philosophy. So it's possible that that term as she wanted that will be preserved as the name of her philosophy. It's also possible that it will revert back to that people are used to Marxist and so on, Kantian, that it will be Randian the century from now. Although I still think that the term objectivist will be preserved because there's so much writing about it and Opa and things like that. And what might happen is that Randian is a term used for that what you're trying to identify is there's a real influence of Ayn Rand's thought on this person. And so you view what is a Randian in the way you can say it someone's an Aristotelian and it means they've been influenced by in the way that Ayn Rand's an Aristotelian that she's certainly influenced and says she's profoundly influenced by Aristotle's philosophy but she's not just articulating Aristotle's philosophy and she never pretends that that's what she's doing. So Randian will become influenced by Rand and objectivism will still be the name for a philosophy which I think will be ultimately the ideal outcome. Yeah. And I think as she becomes more prominent and more debated, I think that kind of duality will have to happen in one way or the other. Let's see. Yeah, it'd be good if that's what happens. Yep. James says, I noticed that TOS conferences at the objective standard conferences over half the speakers aren't even objectivists. Compromises and appeasement don't move us into the mainstream. They water down our message and make the final victory take longer. Do you want to comment? I, it doesn't have to be that. The question is how is it presented? Are they presented as their objectivism or knowledgeable about objectivism? And I think at the start there may have been some confusion about that. But now it's more clear and even in the term of what's the conference called it doesn't even have objectivism. It's level up or something like that.  I do want to say, so there's something connected about this in the debate on the open close that I think is important because it was presented like this. And then I've got a few comments about a comment question about it. It's, so if objectivism is the name of Ayn Rand's philosophy as people learn more and discover more, isn't it like everyone needs a name for their philosophy? And so the term objectivism will go away. That's Ayn Rand's philosophy. But I've got my philosophy and Craig Biddle has his philosophy, Steven X has his. And to me that is, you do not understand what philosophy is. And particularly when we're talking about a philosophical system there are not that many philosophical systems in the world. And the idea that every Tom, Dick and Harry can add to a philosophy. That is, that it just has the intellectual power to add to a philosophy, which means new philosophical principles. It doesn't mean an issue of interpretation or application. It means you're developing new philosophical principles. There are not that many in the history of philosophy going more than 2000 years. And the idea that it's like everybody, that you have some view about like this is the best way to have a home mortgage. So it's not a philosophical issue. Even if you think objectivism has informed a little bit about how you think about personal finance. It doesn't make it that you have a new philosophical principle. And that also is in part of the, this whole debate there's been an issue like what is a philosophical system? And part of I think Dr. Pika's perspective and this comes out in fact and value. Ayn Rand's is a radical new philosophy. So most people haven't understand it, don't want to understand it, but it's a new radical creation that not many people could do. And that's part of protecting its integrity is protecting it just it as an achievement. This is a monumental achievement. It's not everybody develops their own philosophical ideas. It's much, if anything, it's the reverse of that. And Dr. Pika has a lecture about this as well that's very interesting, which is basically nobody can originate their own philosophical ideas. So their only choice, absent geniuses like Aristotle, Plato or Ayn Rand is to pick between the philosophical principles and existence because you don't have the capacity to formulate new ones. You do have the capacity to judge them. And I think of it exactly like this. It's the same kind of lack of objectivity and modesty of, oh yeah, like I'm gonna add to Einstein's theory and to Newton. No, you're not in a position to add to philosophical physics theory at that level. And you're not in a position to do it in philosophy. I was once, I remember, yeah, I mean the presumptuousness is just unbelievable to me that, you know, Iran has a flaw. No, there's a reason why I consider myself an objectivist. Ayn Rand's philosophy to the extent that I understand it and apply it is my philosophy. That's my philosophy. Now, it doesn't mean that everything I do, she would have agreed with everything. Every opinion I hold and every issue she would have agreed with, that doesn't mean that at all. But it means that the fundamental basic, you know, philosophical ideas that I adhere to are hers. They're not mine. Somebody once asked me, I remember at one of these, one of these discussion groups and what do they call it that when you get together and you discuss a reading and Liberty is something. And- The Liberty Forum? Yeah, one of the Liberty forums. And this is a well-known philosopher, you know, it's well-known within kind of the free market world. And we had breakfast together and he seemed to be impressed kind of by what I'd said during the thing. And he says, Iran, why do you go around advocating for Ayn Rand's philosophy? You know, why don't you advocate for your philosophy? What are you talking about? I didn't know what he was talking about. It's like, because Ayn Rand's philosophy is my philosophy, this is what I believe in. Well, why can't you be original?  So he'd been impressed by the fact that I can articulate these ideas, but it's not me. I mean, it would be unbelievably presumptuous to think that I could come up with any of these ideas. But it is true. And this is, it's actually, you can see this in the letter that we quoted a little bit from the Objectivist form. I mean, Ayn Rand's well aware of the fact that the application of principles to one's own life and to new situations. So that takes a lot of thinking. So she does not think of the followers as their robots. It takes a lot of thinking, and it takes first-handed thinking, it takes a lot of work. So that's part of like what's so strange about this part. It's, he's simultaneously recognizing something. Like you've got interesting views and so on. And so you're clearly thinking at first, but you're, don't think you have a philosophy, but that's the difference between a philosophical principle and its application that application is difficult. And it does take a lot of thinking and new thinking. But it doesn't mean you're at the level of Aristotle's originating new philosophical principles. So part of it just betrays, they don't know what a philosophical principle is. Something I've seen this among Objectivists is some self-esteem issue where, you know, I need to be original. It needs to be mine. I need to have thought of it myself, not in the sense of integrated and understood somebody else's principle, but I have to come up with it. And there's this resistance to Ayn Rand and the emphasis on being quote original. And I think that's a self-esteem issue as well. Yeah, it's partly. Allison asks, can you comment on Biddo's point that some people are holding Objectivism as a frozen abstraction for true philosophy? I don't think there's many people who are doing that. I haven't met people like this.  But Objectivism is the name of Ayn Rand's philosophy. And in that sense, it's not even a concept and it's not that people confuse this issue. It is true that this is part of the smear. So part of the smear that you're open and we're open, you're closed is there's a vast difference between saying that Objectivism is closed, which means it's Ayn Rand's theories. It's her philosophical system. She was adding to that system in terms of thinking about the principles and their interconnection till the day she died. But it's close, it's her theory. Her theories come to an end when she dies. That so that Objectivism is closed is not the same thing as saying that philosophy is closed. There's nothing more to discover. Nobody might come along like another Ayn Rand or Aristotle with some new philosophical principles. So there's never been a claim like that in Objectivism. All that Ayn Rand's doing, you can see is it flies in the face of that. And the smear is, well, to say it's closed you have to say the same about these two things that if you say Objectivism is closed that means philosophy is closed. And no it doesn't, nobody thinks like that if you say Ayn Rand's theories are closed you can't add to them, modify them and so and call them Ayn Rand's theories. Nobody thinks, oh, so you're saying physics is closed? No, I'm not saying physics is closed. But that's what they're trying, that's part of the smear. They want someone young to think that oh, are you saying philosophy is closed? No, we're not, that never was a claim. And I think Biddle is being up is in a sense is attack on us probably as again, this dogma, right? So we believe Objectivism is the truth and that's it, right? As if anybody that I've ever met holds that position, right? That Objectivism is because it's closed it's therefore the true philosophy and that's closed. It's just, I don't know anybody like that. Yeah, so and it's part of that I think it's important that it's a smear. I think it's, I've only met people who've fallen in some way for the smear or asking about the smear. I've never had someone genuinely come. Are you saying that Objectivism is science and it to say it's closed, the science is closed? I've never had that question. Let's see, Hoppe Campbell says at least David Kelly seems to have a deep understanding of Objectivism, but you jack some of its fundamentals. While Craig Biddle doesn't even understand Objectivism his explanations of Objectivism strike me as amateurish. I don't know if we want to comment on that. I mean, I'll say this, my view is that Kelly is intellectually more powerful than Craig Biddle, which makes that like that's part of the assessment here that this is not a high school kid who's maybe confused about it. It's someone who should know that no, Objectivism is not a science. I never said Objectivism is science. She says philosophy is a science. And that Kelly baking this about open versus closed Objectivism or Hicks, they know enough to know better about this. And that's part of the one, I mean, part of my assessment of the whole phenomenon. Richard says, why has mysticism dominated spirituality? Does it decline in religion, present an opportunity to promote Objective spirituality? What would that look like? Well, it presents an opportunity, but it's the, so, and this is something that Ayn Rand talked a lot about. And I think if you read her things, both the fiction and nonfiction to the, the idea that if explicit religion wanes, that means you're in a less mystical period. That's not true. And part of her view is what happened with religion is that it was secularized. So you got a secular mysticism. And that's part of her view of what Kant is doing. It's part of Marx in Atlas Shrug. There's the Neo mystics, but it's the mystics of spirit and the mystics of muscle.  And it's, people think of Marx's against religion as the opium of the masses and getting rid of it. Soviet, the problem with Soviet Russia.  And from a deep philosophical perspective, that's all wrong. It's a secularized mysticism and it substitutes for God society.  And Marxism and the kind of totalitarianism that comes from the 19th into the 20th century, it's the state should have total power, total obedience. And so her view was, it's the same essential view being secularized. And so it's not right that it's, we're in a less mystical period, like intellectual, but it is true that the waning of religion and people searching for spiritual things, that is a kind of opening, but one of the things that filled it is secular mysticism. All right, let's see. Hunter asks, how should we regard the police considering that they uphold both moral and immoral functions of government? Well, that's true of all forms of government now, but I think if you're in anything like today's world and if we're talking about America or the West that's semi-free, it's still, in essence, government is still what it represents is an achievement and your life, because you're in a place that's governed versus not governed or that is totalitarian and so on, your life is so much better.  You need the police, you want the police and you wanna sort of strengthen the best aspects of them, but it is true that in any mixed economy like we have today, there are aspects of it that promote, so both, like they're given laws that they have to execute that are bad laws. That's just bad that there's bad laws on the books like drug laws or immigrate sending people back home because they wanna work here and it's part police and immigration officers and so on. It's in part bad law, but it also attracts then people who wanna do these things. And at the margin, it drives out the better people who like I can't spend 90% of my time going after people for drugs and so on when like this should be legal. And so it pushes that kind of person out and it attracts the person. Yeah, I like bashing people around because they're taking drugs though. And so it has a corrupting thing on the police as well, but that's true of all like even proper functions of government when you get bad law. And so you need to recognize the cause of it and not start hating the police. Let's see, Mr. Dr. Sir, could you speak on suggest some reading on logical connections between logical connection between choosing life to really maximizing the three virtues, I assume it means values and some concrete examples of the life sustaining goals that maximize the virtues. I don't quite understand the question. I don't know if you're getting a question. I guess the logical connection between the choice to live and you know, reason, purpose, self-esteem as you call it, no values. Well, there's a lot of connections between them. We'll take all three of them.  And that means like it's a fundamental acceptance of reality. And that's part of what is meant by reason and taking reason, making it one of the iron lens formulations that she uses often is reason as an absolute that there's nothing that comes above it. There's nothing that comes above the verdict in your own mind of these are the facts and to go back to what we were talking about. It's nothing above that because you wanna guide your life in reality. That's part of what it means to be choosing to live. It means choosing to live in reality which means I need to understand reality in order to be able to function in it. So the dedication to reason is precisely a dedication to it's my means of survival. It's my means of pursuing value. So it's intimately connected to the choice to live. And in the end, it's the same choice to embrace reality or to embrace reason. It's the same thing. To embrace reality, you need to use reason. And to embrace reason means to embrace your means of knowing reality. So it's the same issue in a fundamental sense. And the same, it's setting a purpose. Like the choice to live is setting a fundamental purpose that it's I'm trying to figure out the values that will advance my own life. It is instituting a fundamental goal directed stand. So it's again, it's not some separable issue. It's part of what it means to embrace life. And if you do that, that's the only self-esteem is that you're able and worthy to live. It's only if you truly make the choice to live but make the choice here means a dedication to it. Like it's a commitment to living which means a commitment, a purposeful commitment to figure out what's valuable. That is the source of self-esteem. Like that choice and follow through inaction is what builds your self-esteem. That I'm able to live because I'm using my mind which is my means of survival. And I'm worthy to live precisely because that's what I'm doing. So I deserve to stay in existence. So they're intertwined these issues. Let's see, Richard asks, thanks to you both. Over on cause shoulder is what looks like a picture of one of the tunnels made in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia in the mid 1800s by French engineer Claudius Crozet. Is that so? But I thought this is a natural arch here. It is one of the parks here in Virginia but I'm trying to remember what the name of the park is but it's something like natural stone arch or something like that. It's on one of those tunnels. Yeah, so I don't think it is, but it is Virginia. Let's see, Moondog asks, why are so many whitest intellectuals obsessed with religion? I will watch them talk about the government or leftist being anti-technology only to turn around and be against certain technologies for religious reasons. There's a lot to it, I think, but one aspect is there's an attempt to have some kind of philosophical grounding without really having to think about it and to think deeply about it. So religion's an easy out, that it's like, what are your foundations? I don't know, I don't know how to establish them. I get them from some book that someone wrote 2000 years ago, how they came up with this and so on. I have no idea. So it's, so part of philosophy is a search for foundations and the religion is a easy way out of that whole quest while simultaneously pretending that I have foundations and I have a basis and so on. And part of the appeal of it then is it's a religion, another way to think about religion and faith are there a get out of reason free card? And I use that formulation because it names part of the kind of motivation. It's, I don't have to think more about this and philosophy is difficult. These issues are difficult. And so, and this is a pretty charitable reading of the attraction to it. It's a way of having a foundation without effort. What is your, what's your assessment of somebody like Jordan Peterson who seems to come at the religion for kind of a platonic, I don't know, he's an intrinsicist and a Platonist and religion kind of is an easy out for him. I mean, it kind of fits in with that kind of, he starts with that philosophical framework and religion kind of fits neatly into it. Do you think that's right? Yeah, I think there's certainly an aspect of that that's what's going on. And it's a kind of mysticism. Like this is beyond science. It's not, and so part of being beyond science is it's beyond criticism, analysis and so. So it's the semblance of a foundation without it really being a foundation. Yeah. And I also find that they want to reject subjectivism and they fall into kind of a mystical intrinsicism as the only thing that they can imagine. And this goes to your point about coming up with your own philosophy is hard and it requires genius. And if you're not a genius, then you're gonna fall on the conventional. And what's the conventional that's not subjectivist? It's typically religious. Yes. And it's, but part of it is intrinsicism's a more sophisticated form because it typically is, it's quasi-religious, but it's like Plato's forms are in a certain way more sophisticated. There are these things out there in reality that are permanent part of another dimension. Because the more you make it really religious and it's about God, it's hard to escape. And again, the more intellectual you are, the harder it is to escape this, but it's even if you're not that intellectual, that all you're doing is substituting for subjectivism a supernatural subjectivism. So it's not what these people say around us. It's what some guy in another dimension says, but it still is what someone says. And this is what he says and it goes. And there's a kind of subjectivism that is obvious to that. So the intrinsicist and part of Plato's is, no, it's not just some guy telling you, it's these eternal forms that dictate everything. And there, then they feel it's more, yeah, this is not subjectivism, but what the hell it is, they can't tell you either. All right, Andrew asks, what do you think causes the duality of thinking that expresses itself so often in societal discourse? For example, self-esteem is new age nonsense or self-esteem is an inalienable right, no matter what one achieves or not. I think that question, like dualities is another way of thinking of it as there's dichotomies. And it is, Einran often talks about that there are false dichotomies, but a dichotomy is a easy way of thinking. It's like there's two possibilities. And then often what happens is, like this is what happens between subjectivism and intrinsicism. It's often, it's the attack on the subject, like subjectivism is wrong, this can't be right. And so the other must be right. And if you really knew, yeah, there's only two possibilities, that form of argument could work, that it's like I've shown the possibilities are A and B. It can't be A, so therefore it has to be B, but that is usually not true. That is you're not in a position to say the two alternatives are A and B, but there's a natural way of thinking like that, that it's a form of oversimplification in the end, that there's two alternatives and I somehow know that these are the two alternatives. And then especially I can knock out one and establish the other. And Ayn Rand, one of the things that is, I think distinctive about her thinking is how, one, how often she says, these are false, both of these are wrong. There's other possibilities. And then more broadly of she rarely presents things like, these are the only, these are the exhaustive alternatives. And that's the province of an inductive thinker, not a deductive thinker. So a deductive thinker tends to think of, I've got these categories and then I'm gonna knock some down and the one that's standing, that's the winner and so. And inductive mind thinks like, what are the facts? How do I generalize from them? And it doesn't deal with these things often that are exhaustive. So take a kind of issue that, and it relates to people invent their own philosophies. Ayn Rand has a list of virtues. She never claims that they're exotic. These are the only possible virtues. But on the other hand, it's not true that any particular character trait that you like is a virtue. Like I like people who are funny. So isn't there a virtue of humor? And it's no, that's not what a virtue is. A virtue is in light of a metaphysical fact that we all face in life, you need some guidance on. But her argument's completely inductive. And if you come up with an eight that you have a real argument for, she'll listen to it. And so part of this whole issue is an inductive thinker doesn't think in the way a deductive thinker thinks. And philosophy has been dominated by deductive thinkers. And so much of life seems to be dominated by deductive thinker. It's much easier. Yes, and again, this view that philosophy comes down to Plato versus Aristotle, that in that sense, Ayn Rand's in Aristotle's camp. And that's the sense in which she's an Aristotelian, even though she doesn't agree with the whole of Aristotle's philosophy. That Aristotle's the inductive thinker and Plato's the deductive thinker. But in philosophy, most people have been in the Platonic tradition, not their Aristotelian church. All right, Richard asks, I guess he's following up on a previous question. How could objectivism capitalize on the decline of religion and the failure of communism and socialism? Neither mysticism of spirit and muscle works long-term. Yeah, I mean, I'll say one thing that I do and I do think it resonates, at least with a subset of people, which is that in talking about objectivism and relating it to religion, what I emphasize is not religion is all wrong, though it is all wrong. What I emphasize is what objectivism has is something better than religion. What philosophy is, is something that's superior to religion. And so part of what you want from religion and you want guidance and you want a kind of worldview, religion can't actually give you, but philosophy can give you and it's right to want that. So to appeal, and this is like how do you cash in to appeal to the positives that people think they're getting and maybe seeking in religion and the primary to emphasize is those can be gained but you can gain them in philosophy. And then to point out, and you're not getting them at all in religion, they're actually tearing you down in various ways. Let's see, Richard says, aha, natural bidget state park. I guess that's where you took that. Yeah, I think that's right, yeah. Thanks again, glad to have you here in Virginia. Perhaps sometimes you'll look up Claudius Crozet, the engineer who built some tunnels in Virginia. Yeah, I'm making note of it. All right. Thanks guys, we've still got a lot of questions but we've reached our goal. So I appreciate all the super chatters, that's perfect. Let's see, Cook says, thanks for having Anka on. I always enjoy listening to Anka's thoughts. Wyatt asks, is the real reason schisms are so ubiquitous is because they're mostly personal grudges dressed up as moral intellectual to get followers to shun dissenters. No, and here if we restrict it to more positive movements. So I think schisms in, like Marxism, there's schisms in Marxism, they have some different dynamics or schisms in religion, say, well, which there's a ton, have some different dynamics, but if we, or at least start off by talking about the positive movements, no, I think if anything, it's the other way around. There's real intellectual disagreements that then shape the personal interactions. And it's not always easy to distinguish what is going on, but this is part of what in the conflict with David Kelly and again, something that Dr. Bikoff emphasizes in fact in value and part of why he's writing it, made it clear to him in philosophical terms what people's objections are to Ayn Rand and they would be put in more personal terms that she's a moralist and she gets angry too often. But what really is going on is they don't think the whole realm of ideas is subject to a valuation that you should be thinking about it in terms of good and evil. And because Ayn Rand does and that she lived her philosophy so that these were her philosophical views and she practiced them. And you can see both in terms of who she praises and who she denounces that she takes this whole issue seriously, that she thinks as whole philosophers who are evil, for instance, that for a person who is rejects that whole viewpoint it becomes more and more intolerable to be in that environment of someone insisting on that. So it's, I think more often it's there's actually intellectual disagreement and sometimes that disagreement is not being voiced directly. And so it comes across as like it's a purely personal conflict but I don't think that that's what's actually happened. Wesley asks, are you familiar with levian satanism? Satanism, if so, what are your thoughts? I'm not, I don't know if you are. Yeah, there was a satanist who used to come to objectives conferences years and years and years ago. He used to always ask good questions. He was pretty smart. So I think I looked it up once and it was just a mishmash of kind of anti-Christian, you know, some positive self-help type stuff and clearly some stuff taken from Ayn Rand. Yeah, but anybody who calls themselves uses satan in their title, it's beyond silly, right? It's something very wrong in any ideology that needs that. David Neary asks, is Dr. Picoff's theory of induction a theory which integrates with objectivism and is not an addition to ranch philosophy of objectivism? Yeah, so it's not, nobody can add to the philosophy of objectivism once Ayn Rand dies. It's, I mean, it's the name for her philosophical system. And Dr. Picoff himself is adamant on this. So yeah, I mean, part of what he argues is the theory it's flowing out of her idea so that he thinks of it as I'm in part applying her more fundamental ideas in epistemology about the nature of concepts and the nature of the human mind. I'm applying it to this issue. He certainly is arguing that it integrates with objectivism but that's not the same as it is objectivism. And he's very clear about that. I think at the introduction to the book or to the lectures. And even for Opar, his view was this is not official objectivism because Ayn Rand hasn't seen this book and so on. But on the other hand, what I think I'm doing is I'm just giving a presentation of her philosophy but it's not official objectivism because she wasn't there to say, yeah, this is an accurate presentation. And he actually took out a lot of material from Opar that he thought was true and right, but that he couldn't, he didn't have a firm recollection that it's something that he was convinced that she would agree with. And he thinks that everything he is in Opar, he is convinced she would agree with whereas the theory of induction, he always told me, I hope she'd agree, it was like, I think she'd agree with it but there wasn't that 100% conviction where with Opar there was and the material that he wasn't 100% what didn't make it into the book. So there's a lot of thinking about these issues that goes beyond Opar because but wasn't included in Opar for that reason. All right, monotropic. To grasp causality, do children have some perceptual knowledge which enables them to relate the action of the entity to its other attributes? The objective is view is that you perceive causal connection. So I don't know what is meant by some other perceptual knowledge. It's you see entities acting and part of seeing an entity is seen part of its identity. Part of its identity is perceptual. Like when you perceive something, you're perceiving in part what it is which is that's its identity. So if you see a egg, you drop an egg on the counter and it cracks open, like that's what causality is. It cracks open because it's an egg and you perceive it as an egg. You can feel its shell and so on and you can see that it's cracked open and the yolk is oozing out. So one of the formulation in Opar is like action is the name of what entities do. And it's put in that very simple form because that's perceivable. Like you perceive entities acting and that's the causality is a perspective on that. The putting it in that like the law of causality is very abstract, but what you perceive is entities acting in the way they act because they are what they are. Okay, not your average algorithm. I read that Craig posted attacking you in Ankar. It was superficial and petty, a delusional head of an organization claiming to be pointing objectivism is dangerous. Not gonna disagree with that. Let's see, Michael says, you mentioned another day that many people with confidence don't have self-esteem. Isn't self-esteem a prerequisite to being confident about anything? So I mentioned that there are people who are confident in giving public speeches, but as soon as they're criticized, they fall apart because they have no self-esteem. So you can be confident in something but not really have self-esteem. Do you agree with that? Yeah, I mean, for some of these kinds of things, it's, you could say like, what do you mean? Genuine confidence? And the more you mean that, the more I think no, but yeah, are there people who project this? And in some sense, it's not just a project, like they get up on stage and they are comfortable doing it. And yeah, I mean, we know some of these people can do that and the moment they get criticized, yeah. Well, the example I gave at the time was Trump. I mean, Trump exudes this confidence, right? He's not shy and he seems to, but he falls apart.  Yeah, and that's the sense of like, is it genuine confidence? It's so second-handed that, yeah, the crowd doesn't love him anymore and so on. It goes deep for him because it's not genuine. It's not reality-based confidence. Yes, but it's, yeah, it's interesting. But it is what appears to be and it's, I think they really feel like, you know, this is, I do this well, I know how to do this. This is the thing I do well. They're confident in doing that particular thing, but it's specific and it's narrow and self-esteem is something much broader and deeper. Let's see, Paul says, is David Kelly evil? What is this motive to misunderstand such a simple idea or is it an attempt at a united fund or is there a deep annihilist envy? I mean, my view of what happened is Kelly's conventional and there's a little bit of this in fact and value. It's, you wanna keep one foot in the conventional world, one foot in the objectivist world. You like in part being in this kind of subculture of objectivism, but also don't like it and want to be part of just the normal world. And can't we all get along? And so there's a little compromising aspect to it. And when you say it's in fact and value, you mean fact of value brings this up and criticize this. Yeah, it brings up like what some of, because it's part of the articles about there have been schisms in the objectivist movement. And part of what I understand now is much more to the intellectual source of this. And so it's the kind of thing that Kelly's saying in a question of sanction, in effect, part of what Dr. Pigov's arguing is, I've heard this before. It's not always put in exactly the same way, but now I see it as it's the same viewpoint and that there's been a kind of refrain about attacks on Ayn Rand and then it became attacks on Leonard, that she's moralistic, judgmental. And part of that is, I think the real translation of that is this is serious. The issues we're dealing with are serious. They're value laden. You have to think them through and make, take a stand then. And I mean, if we know, if you know anything about Ayn Rand, she takes stands. She thinks issues through and takes stands often controversial, unpopular stands. But it's like, that's what's demanded of a real thinker, of a real valuer of someone who takes philosophy seriously. And there's people who think of it more as a game and an intellectual exercise and so on. And I've met it many academics who are like this. Then it's that kind of perspective is alienating, jarring, and they become more and more uncomfortable with it. And this is a way of avoiding it without seeming like you're avoiding it is saying, well, what the philosophy says is the realm of ideas, that's not subject to evaluation. That's not about good and evil and so on. Now, the question was, is Kelly evil? And evil's used in two senses. You can use evil in the sense just as a contrast to good. And you can, Ayn Rand often uses it like this, like there's one side is the side of values, that's the side of the good. And one side is the things that undermine values. And that's the side of the evil. And in that sense, yes, I think what he's doing is wrong and it's morally wrong. Evil is also used in a sense of a scale, of like you're reaching a very high scale of a moral wrong and that is manifesting in actual, like not a future, but actual present destruction. And when we say Hitler is evil, we don't just mean, well, what he did is morally wrong. It's on a scale and level and not, destruction is, it's incredible destruction. So in that sense, no, I don't think Kelly's evil in that sense, but it's not just a mistake, that's all. So, and to put it as a fraud, I think it's, as I say, I think this is how Ayn Rand thought about the whole phenomenon. And it's what I think about the Atlas society. It's a fraud, like trying to simultaneously say, what we're doing is objectivism, while knowing full well, what they're doing is not objectivism.  So it looks like the car is less miles. Is that person evil? Well, no, he's not Hitler, but is what he's doing, it's not just a mistake. What he's doing is morally wrong. Yeah. So on this, Richard asks, I first read of ideas being dangerous in the context of people holding them, being put down by authoritarian regimes. How can ideas be dangerous in a relatively free society?  And there were all kinds of thinkers who were, who I view as anti-enlightenment, putting forth ideas that helped bring to an end the achievements of the enlightenment. So in that sense that they're dangerous, and if adopted, they lead to enormous destruction. It is true that people have choice in regard to adopting them, but what's also true is the more the evil ideas are tolerated, the more they get adopted. This is part of the reason why it's not sufficient just to say that Kant is mistaken. Part of it is that it's in the category of this is an assault on reason, and it has to be thought about, it has to be shunned from that perspective, that this is enormously destructive. Nobody should take up these ideas, and then you need people arguing against these ideas. So it's true that it's different than someone firing a gun at you, but that's not the only thing that's dangerous. Oh, there is one form of danger. Michael asked, he says, I showed up late. I am not sure if you guys mentioned it yet, but did either of you ever watch the debate? We both did, so we've both watched the debate. Liam says, what makes a person allow himself to become irrational? Well, it's not that he allows himself. And these kinds of questions, they often come from a religious perspective, I think in the end, which is, what needs explanation is evil. And the good is kind of automatic. It's beyond real understanding. Nobody can understand what God does, and nobody understands what it means that he's good. Like the real cash value is a focus on evil. The objectivism's whole focus is the focus on the good. The question should be, what makes somebody rational? And it's not like the default's rational, and you have to do something to be irrational. The default is you're not rational. It's you're not putting in the effort to think and to think in a systematic way that is like I'm really pursuing the truth, and it's the truth above anything else. And so a lot of forms of irrationality is, yeah, I mean, it's not like they're blind always to the truth and so on. But when something more significant than the truth comes up, it's, well, I put the truth to one side and so on. And that's more the norm. It's not like everybody starts off as a passionate lover of the truth, and then has to do something to it. The achievement is to make yourself into someone who actually loves the truth. And truth as a guide, like it's gonna guide me in action. And this is, I referenced the, I ran companion essay to philosophy who needs it, philosophical detection. This is part of what she emphasized. And again, it's this interconnection of fact and value or of the true and the good. It's you can't actually be a lover of the truth unless you really think of it in very selfish terms that this is what's gonna guide me in life. And it's all that's gonna guide me in life. I can't put anything above the truth because then I'm putting something above my life. But that's an achievement. It's not the default.  Apollosus, if Rand lived for a thousand years with what she would be saying, then still be objectivism. I mean, if she's developing further philosophical principles, yes. So that's another kind of issue. It's not everything I ran said is objectivism. And again, the more somebody thinks like that, it's just, you don't know what a philosophical theory is if you think that. Like nobody thinks everything Einstein said is part of his theories in physics. I mean, so he was talking about the opera or he was talking about what foods he likes. That's part of his theories in physics. No, philosophy is an actual subject with actual question stuff. So if she were working on induction and formulated principles about it, yes, that would be part of objective. That is part of her philosophical system. Scott asks, do you think Einstein was morally perfect? I'm not in a position to know. I never even met Einstein, so I'll take one. And if you get a further distance, historically, do I think Aristotle was morally perfect? I don't know, but I do know that I think he's a genius. And the level of commitment to reality that that takes is, it's almost unfathomable. So like, do I think Aristotle could be a monster to know? And is there tremendous virtue in the fact of what he discovered? Yes, but I don't know him. I don't know everything he did and so on. And people will get, yeah, but yeah, you can answer that question about Aristotle. Scott asks, have you read Kelly's 17 fundamentals that he says you must accept before calling yourself an objectivist? No. I think I did at some point years and years and years ago. I mean, unless it's in truth and toleration and that I don't remember. So I read a question of sanction and I read not because I was on the fence, but I wanted to see the way it's presented. I read truth and toleration. I think it came out, no, I think it came out late. I think it was a few years later that he put this out. I don't know, I'm suspicious of anything where you have 17 fundamentals. 17, how could you even hold 17? But was Adam Smith an influence on Rand? Would Rand have developed a philosophy without Smith? Yes. Yeah, I think so too. I don't think he was an influence on her. I mean, he was an influence indirectly to the extent he was an influence on class of liberal, pro-capital, you know, pro-freedom thinkers, but, you know, she didn't like Adam Smith much. I mean, she was very critical of Adam Smith, but particularly for his moral stance. But yeah, I don't think he did anything that would be essential for her to be able to induce a philosophy. James says, Anka Iran, would the idea of objectivists wanting to originate their own philosophy in the way you described be a misapplication of independence? I mean, I think so. Yeah, it certainly could be. But as I say, it's not just a misapplication of independence or something. Part of the context often, again, it's not always, but often is a kind of religious perspective. And it's people, I think, don't appreciate the extent to which religion has shaped the categories in which people think. Even when one's getting rid of some of the content of religion, the framework of the religious mentality often remains. And so I think part of it is that I have to originate my own, the more you're putting philosophy in the category of religion, even if you would explicitly say, no, it's secular and so on, but you're putting it that it's not really science. And so if I'm just accepting someone's philosophy, it's like accepting a religion and independence is when you're not supposed to do that. So it's not just a misunderstanding of independence. It's being grafted on to a misunderstanding of philosophy that is usually coming from religion. So James asks, I've had experiences with people that have made me believe that evil exists in those moments. But after time passes, I find it hard to hold the context and I question whether the evil was real. What are your thoughts on this? I mean, that too sounds religious to me. There's this kind of element. And you see this in Atlas Shrugged that if we're talking about evil, not just any immorality, but if you're talking about a significant and here part of the significance is a motivation that is very anti-life, that there's a way in which it's hard to fathom if you're a healthy person, like morally healthy person to fathom that motivation in others. And so there's a way in which it's easy to dismiss it. And no, it must be an error and they just didn't understand. And if I talk to them more, they'd see it and so on. But when you're faced with it at the moment, it's clear, no, that's not right. It's not, we're not just a misunderstanding. There's some really bad motivation here. And part of that I say this comes up in Atlas Shrugged is that's part of what Dagny and Reardon can't understand about people. And particularly, I mean, for both of them, but it's like in terms of the structure of the story and of the plot, it's most significant for Dagny. Like this is the one she can't understand. And there's passages where you see her trying to understand and she, so an early one of people know the novel of the Starn's heirs, so the heirs to the people of the 20th century motor company, they're really evil. And when she's talking, this is in pursuit of this, like where does motor come from? She's talking to, and she gets like this is real evil. And she tells herself, pay attention. There's something here that you're seeing, like that this is the essence of evil. And I think it's partly because it's, yeah, when you're then out of it, there's ways in which you think, no, I couldn't have been that bad and that evil and that motivation. And yet when you're in the moment, it's, no, that's what it is. And this is part of, I mean, objectivism is not focused on evil, but part of what it helps you understand is the nature of evil. And one of its lessons is it's easy to whitewash because you don't want to, like it's not putting it in terms of the fountain head. It's like you're in the presence of a beast and there's something really uncomfortable about that. And there is, but you still have to face that that's a fact about some people. All right, almost done. Maxim, something, I'm not the smartest person out there. How much of objectivism should the average person know? If I can't defend it, does it mean I'm not one? No, so for the last, definitely not. There's many things that one can understand and have genuine understanding of. And if you're faced with real intellectual opposition, you can't answer all of it. This happens, I mean, even for people studying philosophy and object, I mean, this happened for me many times in graduate school, undergrad and graduate school, where I thought, no, there's something wrong about this. I can't answer it. It's part of why I was learning more about the philosophy. So it's a pretty sophisticated perspective to think, yeah, I can answer the major common objections that are brought up against it. And it doesn't mean you don't have any understanding prior to doing that. And for the way I think about it, but I'm interested when you think about this, Iran, is I'm much more interested in the person who to the extent that they understand objectivism is actually trying to practice it and use it in their lives and make their lives better as a result. And they might not be able to tell you about every point in the epistemology and they don't understand it all. But to the extent they understand it, it's a genuine first-handed understanding. But part of what that means is, yeah, I'm trying to live it. And I've met people who, yeah, they think they can, and in some ways they can recite different arguments and for kind of exotic points in objectivism, but you look and think, yeah, but there's no relationship to how you actually live. And to me, that's way worse. Yeah, no, I think that's absolutely right.  And it's people who take it and then do something exciting in their lives with it and apply it to their lives. And they have a, you know, they've read everything and they have a vague understanding, an understanding sub-level of the epistemology and the understanding of the ethics and how it connects to politics. But they could never articulate, they could never make the argument, they're not gonna win a debate. But what really matters is that they're living it. What can be more important than that? That's what the philosophy is for in that. And I think she said somewhere, there's a philosophy for Reardon and there's a philosophy for Ragnar was the philosopher, right? So, I mean, you don't have to know it. You don't have to know the history of philosophy and every argument and how to diffuse every argument. I mean, there's still areas of epistemology that I'm not, you know, that I cannot defend or they cannot argue. And there's still not areas in, that she said, you know, epistemology is just an introduction. She, there's still so much epistemology that hasn't been done yet.  That's what I think is the most important. Yeah, on the philosophy for Reardon and Ragnar, I think Dr. Pigoff has said this, that he asked her once about that. And it was, I think he asked her like for the, her theory of concepts. So introduction to objective is the epistemology. Does Reardon have to understand it? And her answer was something like, no, he has to know there is a solution. He doesn't have to understand it all. That's what Ragnar understands.  So don't pretend you know more than you do but also don't let other people including I've seen objectivists do that. Like try to put you down because oh, you don't know what she's talking about on page 25 of ITOE. No, you don't and you don't, you're not pretending that you do but to the extent that you understand it, you're taking it seriously. And that's what's important. Yep. And if there's a context in which it's necessary for you then you know where to find it and it's there. You know, that's the extent to which it's important to know that such a theory exists. Let's see, Michael asks, Uncle, is there anything you think Ayn Rand got wrong? Either with her ideas or her approach, emphasis and spreading her philosophy? Well, in her approach and in spreading her philosophy, I think she thinks there were things that she got wrong. So if you think early in, she's politically active and I think she thinks the conservatives slash Republicans are better than they actually are. And part of what she recognizes that she's involved with supporting some people in campaigns and so on, it's no, they're worse than I think they are. And I think like if she knew that she would have done something different in regard to her early activism or think of the, so there's a split with Nathaniel Brandon, but also there's some reflection on, there's ways in which some of the things I did were ambiguous between, do I think there's an objectivist movement and do I want there to be? And so let me now, like here's my position now, but it's a position that she's formed after some reflection and some errors. And I also think there's issues of application that I don't fully agree with that she's making. There's various kinds of slanting. There's some applications to American history that I'm not convinced of in regard to the, just thinking first about the history of racism, there's things that doesn't mesh with my understanding of American history. But that, so it's again, it's important to make a distinction between philosophical system, which consists of a set of integrated, interconnected principles. And at that level, no, I don't have disagreements with objectivists. I think this is the last question I have. Why is the idea of self-interest viewed as so radical? You have 2000 plus years of thinkers of every stripe. So every stripe here means you can think they have, and they often do have vast differences, one from the other. Some are religious, some are secular. Some are empiricists, some are rationalists. And yet the dominant and like by far dominant line in morality is, morality is about curbing your self-interest.  That's the most radical idea that you could have in morality. And Aynran knew that she's a radical in morality. And I actually think it's the rarest phenomenon almost intellectually, certainly philosophically. The rarest is someone willing to challenge at its root conventional morality. And you get that in ancient Greece with the first philosophers who are getting away from religion and having a whole secular approach to philosophy, part of that is a secular approach to ethics, like a real secular approach to ethics. And with from the Renaissance on, there's all kinds of challenging of religion, but what you don't get is a challenging of religious morality, which has become conventional morality and that's what Aynran does. So it's the most radical position that philosophically in in morality. Yeah, I mean, the enlightenment almost challenged everything else, but that's one thing they didn't really, they didn't present an alternative. Touched on it, they got close, but they didn't quite... Yeah, so that's part of... And that's part of why I think it's the rarest thing philosophically, because they're talking about self-interest and the pursuit of happiness, but you never get a full-throtted moral defense of the idea. And that is because what it's hard to do, but you have to be enormously independent and courageous to do it. And Aynran had that in addition to like a genius level intellect. All right, thanks, Hong Kong. This has been fantastic. We had lots of questions. Yeah, it was fun. Two plus hours. So thanks. Are you in Austin next week? Yeah, I'll see you next week. I'll see you in Austin in a few days. Sounds good. Thanks. Good night, everybody. Thanks to all the superchatters. We blew away our goal. Really appreciate that. And let's see. Don't forget to like the show before you leave. We should have more likes there. So it helps our algorithm. So like the show, it elevates everything on the algorithm. I know there are superchats on the AOA feed, but I can't monitor two feeds at the same time. Too much. So maybe somebody at AOA can collect those questions and they can do kind of a follow-up where they answer some of those. Yeah, we can try to do that. Thanks, everybody. I will see you guys. I will see some time tomorrow morning for one of my news roundups. Bye, everybody.


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