Craig Biddle and Stephen Hicks Debate: Is Objectivism a "Closed System" or an "Open System"?

so we have crack bill who is a co-founder co-founder and executive director of objective Standard Institute co-founder and editor-in-chief of the objective standard and executive director of Prometheus foundation and then we have Stephen Hicks who is a professor of philosophy at Rockford University who is the executive director of the center for ethics and Entrepreneurship and Senior scholar at the office Society and the two of them are joining us today to debate the following question is objectivism a closed system or an open system I'm going to give you a very brief historical background on this uh problem so back in 1989 uh David Kelly responded with an open letter title a question of sanction to an article written by Peter Schwartz and in the open letter Kelly states that I ran left us a magnificent system of ideas but it is not a closed system and shortly after that in response to that Leonard peacock publishes a fact and value refuting Kelly's arguments uh including the one about objectivism not being the closed system and he States objectivism is the name of imran's achievement anyone else's interpretation or development of her ideas my own work empathetically included is precisely that an interpretation or development which may or may not be logically consistent with watch Europe and then in 1990 David Kelly goes on to found his own organization called The Institute for objective studies now known as the Animal Society an organization that states to promote open objectivism that same Year Kelly publishes truth and Toleration in which he further expands on his argument from a question on of sanction including his way in the objectivism is an open system and up until now as far as I know there there haven't been a debate of this kind where we have both you know open system and closed system side represented so this is something special and now I have an introductory question uh for our speakers um Stephen if you would like to to go first um so the introductory question is there have been a lot of discussions among objectives about you know this debate some Express the opinion that this is already settled that decades ago that it was unnecessary but also that it was immoral and harmful to have this debate and especially in this format so why um is the question is objective isn't an open or closed system important and why is this debate relevant uh well it's an important question because it's a perennial question about any philosophy to State what its identity is as part of a conceptualization so it knows what it is about and so it can communicate more effectively with other people so that would be the the short answer I have nothing to add to that I mean it's a clarity about what objectivism is is absolutely essential to studying objectivism understanding objectivism evaluating objectivism and deciding whether this thing is true or not true and good for life or not good for life so Clarity is Irene said of uh of fiction the three most important things are plot plot and plot and in non-fiction in particularly in philosophy the three most important things are Clarity Clarity and Clarity so we we this is something to get clear on okay so before we start with a central question I I first just want to uh Define the terms that are in the the central questions so when we say objectivism we mean uh by that a philosophy developed by Iran when we say a closed system we mean a system limited by the philosophic ideas of its author and when we say an open system we mean by that a system not limited to the philosophic ideas of its creator but open to revisions and so the central question of this debate for which each um speaker is gonna have 20 minutes to elaborate and then five minutes to respond to a Liberation off of the other speaker is is objectivism a close or an open system even if you want to be one of them very good okay so I want to start by uh saying that it's always a pleasure to meet other people who are passionate about ideas who are interested for me in philosophy in particular and who are at some level excited about iron Rand it's a rare and special thing so I want to start by flagging this concept the concept of benevolence when you're doing philosophy and you're doing philosophy particularly with people who share important values with you the fight for liberty Ayn rand's philosophy in particular that is a special thing and it says something special and wonderful about a person that they've responded well positively or strongly to Something in Iran's philosophy now when we're doing philosophy reality is very complicated philosophy is difficult it's difficult intellectually and it's difficult emotionally because it pushes very deep buttons in us and when disagreements occur and they will occur it's part of the business of doing philosophy always remember the benevolence Point you're doing philosophy with someone who likes respects or even loves iron I keep that as a governing part of your thinking about how you're doing the debates Now what is objectivism my first proposition is going to be this one objectivism is a science okay now this is controversial within philosophy but I ran and objectivism are very clear about taking a Firm Stance on positioning objectivism as a certain way of thinking it is a scientific way of thinking so direct quote from Rand on this epistemology is a science devoted to the discovery of proper methods of acquiring and validating knowledge ethics is a science devoted to the discovery of the proper methods of living one's life medicine is a science devoted to the discovery of proper methods of curing the disease and there's the the general Source there so you'll notice that the concept of science is emphasized and repeated and epistemology and ethics are two of the four or five depending on your categorization core issues but it's the same thing about doing metaphysics about your understanding of human nature proper principles of politics how art pushes our buttons psychologically and morally as well so philosophy is conceived of as a science and what random is saying is that we need to think very seriously when we're doing philosophy what it is to be a scientist now science is about discovering truths about reality so there's always a Content but there's also an entire methodological process that one engages in observation categorization conceptualization forming your definitions coming up with hypotheses doing experiments and the whole gamut of logical methodologies as well all of that is built into science but there also are character issues when you are functioning as a scientist what is it to think and behave as a scientist would and so to be a philosopher is to be a scientist right philosophy is a subset of science now I'm hitting on this point hard that's my first right big thing to emphasize so this is the key question for objectivists now Rand then is complicated because in addition to being a philosopher she's also an artist and Art and Science are related to each other but also distinct and very important ways art is a personal creation by an individual it brings something into existence that did not exist before and it would not have existed except for the unique contributions of the individual who created it science is different science is not about making stuff up and your individual creativity science is about what is out there and identifying it it is in that sense in the public domain it is when we are doing science we are both doing the same reality and trying to identify the same reality and your personal creativity and my personal creativity are to the side so science is about objective reality and identifying it art is about uh individual Creations right that of course will embody at least implicitly and sometimes explicitly understandings of reality now why is this important well here's the quotation right that's relevant to the point I'm just making it is important to notices from rand's article on patents and copyrights that the source comes a little later in this connection a discovery cannot be patented that's what scientists are doing can't be patented you can't assign ownership to a discovery right carrying on only an invention of scientific or philosophical discovery which identifies a law of nature a principle or a fact of reality not previously known cannot be the exclusive property of the discoverer because a he did not create it so point then pausing here objectivism as a philosophy philosophy is a science it is about Discovery it's not about things that we are created it is not owned by the discoverer and carrying on this long and important quotation if he cares to make his Discovery public claiming it to be true he cannot demand that men continue to pursue or practice falsehoods except by his permission right so he doesn't have that moral social power over the person the permission granting he can copyright the book in which he presents his Discovery and he can demand that the authorship of the discovery be acknowledged that no other man appropriate or plagiarize the credit for it but he cannot copyright theoretical knowledge philosophy slash science is theoretical knowledge is not owned it is discovered it cannot be copyrighted patented and so forth so what I'm suggesting then is that we have in the case of dealing with Rand in particular we have to think of her two ways they're going to be related Iran is a scientist and Rand is an artist and so I want to say the question for example about whether objectivism as Ran's philosophy and how we think about that should be the same way that we think about Newton and his physics or the way we think about Darwin and his evolutionary theory or Einstein and his physical theory in contrast the way we would think about artists and their personal creations Michelangelo and his sculptures Beethoven and his music Monet and his paintings Rand and her fiction you don't add notes to Beethoven's score you don't take notes away from Beethoven's score you don't take a Monet painting and add your own Dobbs and say I think the color of scheme should be changed and you don't say I don't like this bit over here I'm going to paint that over the artwork is inviolable it is the personal creation of the artist you do not alter it change it subtract from it add to it but that's not the case with science with science science is precisely about identification of facts that are independent and it is and I don't want to use the word quite yet but an ongoing process of discovery and reintegrations when new discoveries are made so don't touch Ran's artwork the philosophy now we turn to our central question today open and closed these words get used a lot first thing to note though is that they're metaphors they're a figure of speech so doors can be open doors can be closed windows can be open windows can be closed what metaphorically are we trying to get to when we talk about an abstract theoretical set of ideas that it's open or closed so the first thing we have to do when we are doing philosophy good philosophy and good science is notice when we are using metaphors and take the extra efforts to take the metaphors or any figure of speech and put them into direct literal language so defining what exactly this figure of speech is trying to capture in non-metaphorical language I'm going to suggest that there's a three important things built into the way in any theoretical science including philosophy and including objectivism the words open and closed are used there's a long history in The Sciences of uh of this terminology being used and so we can draw on that and apply it to objectivism as well one way in which we might say a system of ideas is closed or open is by answering this question is it complete that is to say whatever their domain uh that we're talking about in our in our science all of the issues all of the questions all of them have been answered right all of the things that need to be known in that domain are known and so we don't need to add any more questions or add any more content to it it is complete in that sense now I'm going to throw out an arbitrary number so as we say there's five branches of philosophy and then here's the arbitrary part in each part of philosophy metaphysics epistemology ethics and so on there's say 8 or 10 or 12 important questions in that branch of the philosophy collectively then that means in all a philosophy say to have a complete philosophy you need to address say 100 issues then the question is going to be for objectivism on those important 100 important issues that objectivism as a complete philosophy did Ayn Rand address all 100 of them and not only did she State a position on all 100 of them did she make an argument for each of those positions right and did she make the argument in a thorough fashion up to whatever level of scholarly discourse you think is appropriate now here I want to suggest that the answer to that question should be no Rand did a lot she did an enormous amount of important fundamental stuff and she had positions on a majority of those 100 questions that a complete philosophy has to answer but she didn't do all of them she wrote one book on epistemology and she called it introduction to objectivist epistemology making it very clear there's lots more that needs to be said about epistemology Beyond this introduction so it's not complete in that sense it's also though with respect to completeness not enough to say here's the 100 positions that the philosopher announces what his or in this case her conclusions are the person developed Arguments for them so we have 100 positions plus 100 arguments and we know in rand's case that in many cases what she would do not in many cases but a significant number of cases she would tell you what her position is but she did not develop the argument for that position and so that means there is still work to be done sometimes she would give us the conclusion but not the argument sometimes she also she goes the other way interestingly she will say you know here's a fact here's a fact here's a fact and then you know you do your reader you can see where this is going or you can see what the implication of this but she doesn't State the implication explicitly and that means there's still work to be done in filling in that implication and that is an interpretive move for philosophers to engage in the objective of the system all right so that's the first question the question of completeness now I think that's the easier question I think this is the harder question open or closed not only is it complete but is it correct is it true is it perfect in that sense and so what we would then have to do is say of all of the things that Rand said as the founder right of this philosophy did she get everything right and sometimes that's a hard question for people to put explicitly to engage with it but what we would then have to do if we are going to be serious philosophers serious scientists about this is go through all of her important propositions that she makes and say do I think this is true do I think it could be stated more precisely if she is making a claim in epistemology that bears on some elements of cognitive psychology have we learned anything in cognitive psychology since ran that might suggest that we can revise or tweak this are all of her terms defined at a suitable level of precision or sometimes she is defining a term for a general audience but in a more technical context she didn't give you the precise technical definition and that would need to be articulated and then of course the big things would be are there cases where I think Rand has made a mistake that it could be a mistake of fact that feeds into one of her premises or I think she's engaged in a chain of logic and one of the powers of her Brilliance is the long chains of logic the huge amounts of historical and psychological and other philosophical and scientific data that she is integrated that every single logical Connection in all of those arguments is perfect and not only that if we say a complete philosophy suppose we satisfy the completeness criteria and every individual one is defined perfectly and the argument for it perfectly there still is the matter of taking all 100 of those and integrating them into a system if we want to say objectivism is a systematic philosophy and the amount of work to integrate 100 this is again a Soviet arbitrary number propositions completely and perfectly that is an enormous amount of work and the question is did Rand accomplish that now those two senses have open closed are all ones that all of us as individual philosophers individual thinkers individual scientists emphasizing that context do for ourselves but it's also the case that we do philosophy in a thank you public mode as well it can be intimate one-on-one discussions small group discussions sometimes it's a matter of doing formal courses where one is a teacher with respect to students sometimes it's a matter of forming organizations and institutions around a certain set of ideas because we want to Advocate those ideas out in the world so doing philosophy in a social context the question of openness or closed-ness also then is relevant here and so here are the initial questions is one open to all of these things discussion or is it the case the different style would be I'm not interested in discussion I have my views and I am one way street with respect to the communication are you open to being questioned or do you make it clear from the beginning that certain things cannot be questioned are you open to being not only just questioned but actually challenged by people who think they disagree with you and that's going to happen of course you have smart young people trying to do philosophy they will have hundreds and hundreds of questions what is your attitude with respect to those hundreds of questions are you open to the idea that you can be wrong and actually should the arguments go against you be willing to change your mind on that is that's what a scientist will do that's what a good philosopher will do and then more formally as we are trying to do here today are you open to debate which is a very public and stylized way of contesting ideas important ideas and so forth and also that's just to speak from your perspective but it also has to do because all social things involve at least two people are you open to the other person with whom you are doing the philosophy going through this process this very difficult process of scientific philosophies and asking all of these questions and coming up with weird ideas and challenging right and so forth and recognizing because of the difficulty of philosophy and life and so forth that they have to go through the process they're not going to get it completely and perfectly that's going to be an iterative process and that your part in that social relationship is to Foster in a healthy and benevolent way that process of doing philosophy to whatever ideal standard you want to achieve now in that social context a couple of sub questions here you're going through this process you're doing philosophy really hard and you're in a movement though where you're younger and you recognize that there are other people in the movement who have credentials phds and they are part of the intellectual movement one aspect of this openness has to do with how should that relationship go so I have shown one of these objectives philosophers with a PhD so you and I are doing some philosophy and you disagree with me how should that go or how should I relate to you on that disagreement how should you relate to me on that disagreement and then uh the stakes even a little further what if you're thinking when you're going through the process disagrees with something Iran says you're suggesting maybe this definition could be more precisely focused or given some new insights from Neuroscience or whatever we need to rethink objectivist epistemology measurement mobile Mission and her particular hypothesis about that all right you say well I'm disagreeing with perhaps Ayn Rand on this issue right are you open to going through that process with respect to Ein rand's ideas that's the challenge now rand's answer to this question is in an essay she wrote who is the final Authority when there is a disagreement between people who are more or less peers between people who are in different ranks in a hierarchy of some social organization phds Founders right and so on metaphysically the only Authority is reality there is no Authority except for the world reality epistemologically one's own mind so it's not the objective of his phd's mind it's not Iran's mind your mind in connection with reality that is the central thesis of objectivism the fundamentality got it finally this issue of Elites I'm going to take just one extra minute if you don't mind of course she's a little worried right at this point writing in the 1960s knowing that often terrible history of what happens to philosophical scientific not to mention religious and other movements that start to form social movements the formation of Elites that stop being open stop being philosopher stop being scientists in the proper sense and you'll notice she's not talking using the word coercive Elite here in any profession she's not talking about political coercion she's talking about all of the hard and soft versions of coercion that can happen in Social any social movement no tolerance for that in objectivism objectivism is your mind in connection to reality only do that so if these are our questions how do we best protect and Advance objectivism well we know what it means to be an objectivist at least the argument that I have made and if you think of it more personally the immense value and significance of Ein Rand in your life given the nature of her just astonishing accomplishments it is proper to want to Revere the amazing human beings who appear in our midst once in a while how do you do that well you don't do it by turning her into a God or a demigod or anything close to that she is encouraging you to question challenge debate even her and you have to step up to that task so great point I want to say uh there's a lot of water under the bridge and I hope we can stay under the bridge this is particularly for the young people in the movement here to advance objectivism to Revere Iran what I think first thing I would say is forget the history of the movement just block it out of your mind entirely there's a huge amount of intellectual energy emotional energy that you have don't get yourself sucked into all of the debates and arguments and personality conflicts that have gone on for the last 30 40 50 years or so it will waste all of your energy you have your mind you have rand's Works to start with and build upon and of course there are other good philosophers you can learn from learn from them but focus on the future start over right create the world that you think is possible and that is what it is to be a good objective is this all also all right [Applause] a couple of extra minutes so thank you Stephen for that that is it was a clear concise uh statement of your position and I really appreciate it I also want to emphatically agree with Stephen's final statement about forget about the history of the objectives movement or of so-called objective movement you don't need to go read everything that's been written about this the resilience of documents and back in the day it was just overwhelming what you need to do is think in terms of Essentials think for yourself and figure out what makes sense and I'm going to present some very different ideas than Stephen just presented and I think that they will be helpful so probably a few of you know this but I am a Marxist I advocate Marxism now not that Marxism not not the one that's coming to your mind I take Marxism and I modify it I I change a few things I subtract a few elements and I add in a few elements to develop what I regard as real Marxism and so here's what I have in mind here so for instance I take the economic determinism in Marxism and I replace it with free will people can make choices I take the labor theory of value and I convert that to values are created by people making choices using their minds and using their labor together so it's a mixture they do all of that I replaced total State ownership of the means of production with partial State ownership of the means of production so the government's going to control you know the important things the banking industry Health Care education and the like I replace from each according to his abilities to each according to his needs with from some according to their abilities to some according to their needs and finally I replaced the class struggle element with social harmony as orchestrated by the government so that's my Marxism that I advocate now a question for you is this real Marxism what is it what did I just put on the table it's a hodgepodge it's just it's just it's just a conceptual chaos packed into the word Marxism it's also exactly what's going on in the United States today and in much of the world which is precisely why some people are gravitating toward Marxism and socialism again today because they don't know what it is they think that socialism and Marxism are being nice to people having the government make sure that you know people play fair etc etc and that you know everybody's got clean water in the house to live in and whatnot but that's not what Marxism is Marxism is something specific everything is something specific a thing either is what it is and has an identity or it's nothing at all it's the law of identity so you see there's a real problem in me taking over Marxism and saying it's something other than what its Originators marks and angles said it was and for me to co-opt it and change it is very confusing and those confusions can lead to catastrophe which they're leading to today so you see the problem right there now as you all do know I am not an advocate of Marxism and I'm an advocate of capitalism but not that capitalism no no no the capitalism I advocate is a capitalism in which people with political pull get special favors from the government it's a capitalism in which the government regulates the economy to some extent particularly the banking Industries health care and education it's a capitalism in which the government protects everybody's rights but not completely because we've got a work things out for the greater good you see the problem now capitalism and Marxism are indistinguishable it's the same thing I just said about Marxism and this is why nobody knows what capitalism is today this is why einron wrote a book capital is in the unknown ideal because nobody is keeping their terms defined clearly and concisely and using words in ways that make sense if I Define capitalism the way that I just did then people can be four parts of it and against parts of it and add their own things to it and take things out of it Nancy Pelosi can be for capitalism Barack Obama can be for capitalism and so on and so forth so we need to take seriously the need of clarity and crucial distinctions when we use Concepts especially philosophic Concepts and that's what I want to talk about today if we want to know what we're thinking about and what we're talking about we have to make bright lines between the things that we're talking about what's to be included and what's to be excluded this is the purpose of Concepts and definitions and it's the purpose of your mind it's the purpose of your mind to make these distinctions so you know what you're thinking about you know what you're talking about and all of this holds emphatically for objectivism as it does for Marxism capitalism altruism egoism sacrifice you name it every complex term needs to be handled properly so that we know what we're thinking and talking about I want to hit this issue of open and closed objectivism from three different angles the first is going to be clarity the second is going to be Justice and the third is going to be self-esteem and we're going to see I think some helpful ideas here for you if we package together under the term objectivism ideas that Iran developed and integrated Plus ideas that David Kelly developed and integrated and ideas that Stephen Hicks developed and integrated and ideas that I developed and integrated and you and he and she uh we end up with mental chaos right you if I then said what do you think about objectivism where would your head go would just split right you can't have that objectivism is one thing we need to think of it as the one thing that it is if for instance I were to remove from objectivism the virtues of honesty integrity and pride and if I were to add in to objectivism the virtues of benevolence and toleration and then I subtract out also the principle of measurement Omission the essential principle of the mechanics of concept formation and so on and so forth and then I call that thing objectivism I've created a mental monster that looks nothing like the real objectivism I'm doing the same thing there that I did with Marxism at the start of my presentation objectivism simply is the philosophy the philosophic ideas that Ein Rand discovered and integrated under the term objectivism in her lifetime and she gave it the name objectivism with a capital O because it is not a concept it's a proper name proper name that's so it's a proper name like Stephen or Craig or his Adora or Belgrade now a proper name can have a lot of elements Belgrade is not a concept there's no there's not more than one Belgrade so we don't need to it's not it's not a concept that we need to do it's the name of the capital of Serbia and then there are things in Belgrade streets Parks buildings Etc that are part of Belgrade but they are not the defining characteristics of Belgrade if you took some of those out took a building here or there out or a park here there Belgrade would still be Belgrade so you have to get very clear on the on this distinction we're going to return to that shortly that it is not uh that that objectivism is not a concept it's it's a uh a proper name and that uh proper names are not defined they are described proper names are not defined they are described right so if you talk about me my name is Craig and if you want to talk about what that means you would describe me other people are named Craig also and if you want to talk about them you would describe them Craig is not a concept it's a name and the same is true of objectivism and Belgrade developed a couple or discovered a couple of fallacies that are really help helpful in thinking through this the first that I'm going to mention is her fallacy of package dealing which I'm sure you're to some extent familiar with and we've already seen the package dealing going on if I package into Marxism a bunch of things that are not Marxism you can't function with that idea of Marxism anymore it doesn't work if I do the same with capitalism your mind blows up right if I do it with selfishness if I treat selfishness as including people who are honest and productive and trade with each other because they want to get the things that they want become wealthy and happy with criminals who steal stuff from producers and I package them together because well everybody they're all going after what they want so they're all selfish I have treated a superficial similarity as if it's a fundamental similarity but it's not it's a superficial similarity and we have to make those distinctions the essential characteristics of something are the things that we need to focus on and likewise for objectivism even though it's a proper name it still has an Essence and its Essence is that it is Iran's philosophy and if we package other stuff into it that's not her that does not include her ideas then what we're doing is creating conceptual chaos or or mental chaos I should say that will not serve us well because we won't even be able to study the thing that we're trying to name and study we won't be able to evaluate it because who knows what's going to come in next or being taken out next by who know who knows who's going to claim the authority to do that will return to the authority issue later another fallacy that heinrin introduced is the fed and this this one is really what's going on here more so even than package dealing is the fallacy of the Frozen abstraction now Rand only gave one example of this in her works but the example is very very Illuminating so the fallacy of the Frozen abstraction is committed when you take a broad abstraction and you treat one of its constituents one element that's subsumed under that broad abstraction as the equivalent of the whole broad abstraction and the example that Rand gave is morality big broad abstraction which includes should include egoism Hedonism utilitarianism you know Etc all of the you know uh uh you name it Christian morality all of these come under the broad abstraction morality that's what morality is in the generic sense there's an open question whether any of these philosoph any of these moralities is demonstrably true secondary question but they all come under the overarching broad concept of morality if you take that broad concept morality and freeze it at the level of one of those constituents one of those units subsumed under it namely altruism you get morality equals altruism anybody heard that idea or grew up with the idea that being moral means being altruistic that is a frozen abstraction and as einrin put it at the start of the virtue of selfishness it's responsible more than any other thing for the arrested moral development of mankind if you think that morality equals altruism we're toast communism fascism all of the things that involve sacrificing for others are based on that Frozen abstraction very dangerous stuff Frozen abstractions well that's exactly what is going on here and I believe this is an innocent error I do not get into any of this nonsense about uh you're evil if you disagree on these things so just put that to ref I don't think this stuff is obvious it requires thinking through but here's what's going on with the idea that objectivism is an open system I believe that most people who accept this idea and I think Stephen's whole presentation was an example of this they're freezing the abstraction of true philosophy or truth in philosophy at the level of one of its constituents one of its elements namely the body of ideas called objectivism truth in philosophy is a big umbrella it includes all the truth that Aristotle discovered right his truths about syllogistic reasoning it includes the truths that Francis Bacon discovered particularly regarding scientific method it includes the truths that John Locke discovered in so far as he got some things about rights correct it includes the truths that Iran discovered it includes the truth that Stephen Hicks has discovered particularly if there if there are some originals and I wouldn't doubt that there are and it includes the truths that Leonard Peak off the screen excludes the truths that you discover in the future if you become a philosopher and discover truth that is open truth in philosophy is an open idea and it will never be closed einrin's objectivism if it's true and if it's principles and ideas are true and I think they are is one Element under that big umbrella and if you freeze the abstraction of Truth in philosophy at the level of objectivism you're treating a broader abstraction as if it's the equivalent of something that is just a unit under that abstraction it's just it's just an error and it's a really bad error to commit because you won't be able to think clearly about what objectivism is every time somebody discovers a new truth or or or or that they think is a new truth which may not even be a new truth it's going to get packed in there and then somebody says what do you think about objectivism now I don't know what's the latest thing that got packed into this thing you see the problem here what happens with this if if you just roll with we're going to keep adding stuff to it or subtracting stuff from it that is not how Concepts or proper names work that's not how things work so another thing that Ein Rand helped us with here she gave us something called rand's razor rand's razor says concepts are not to be multiplied Beyond necessity don't make up new Concepts if you don't need them necessity just simply means need right concepts are not to be multiplied Beyond necessity and nor are they to be integrated in disregard of necessity don't put things together when they don't belong together so what do we get if we do these things so if you multiply Concepts Beyond necessity if you make Concepts up that you don't need because there's no referent in reality for instance extremism Iran wrote a whole article on this extremism is this negative bad connotation something bad you're not supposed to be and but it's Hollow it doesn't have any content extreme about what if you go to extremes extreme Justice extreme rights protection extreme happiness extreme Prosperity these are bad things for some reason right the idea of extreme being bad because it's extreme is a senseless concept it doesn't make any sense it's an illegitimate concept einran called it an anti-concept because it blows up in your mind legitimate Concepts when you accept it it blows up the idea of being principled and going to an extreme about what's right and wrong blows up other things too but it blows up that which is enough right big problem you do not want to do that so same with Duty uh unchosen obligation she says there's no such thing it's an anti-concept same thing with uh with uh social justice anti-cut we don't need a social before justice justice is already a social context it's a social concept it's about how people should interact with each other the whole point of putting social before it is to enable people to forcibly redistribute wealth and get the government to force some groups to do things on behalf of other groups so it's an anti-concept that blows up the concept of real justice so these are really dangerous so when you when you multiply Concepts Beyond necessity you get things like anti-concepts very bad thing to do Rands razor says don't do it the second half of rand's Razor is really the the the almost the more important Point here but they're both important concepts are not to be integrated in disregard of necessity what happens when you integrate things that don't belong together you get package deals and you get Frozen abstractions morality and altruism don't belong integrated into the same thing that's a frozen abstraction truth and philosophy and objectivism don't belong integrated into the same thing that's a frozen abstraction Iran's idea is on objectivism and everybody else's ideas on what objectivism is and should be don't belong in the same package that's a package deal Iran's philosophy says Ryan's razor says don't do that I want to bring in another razor you can call it Craig's razor for the time being and that is this proper nouns are not to be integrated in disregard of necessity nor are they to be or they're not to be multiplied in disregard of necessity nor are they to be integrated I should restate that proper nouns don't have to be multiplied Beyond necessity nor are they to be integrated and disregarded necessity what happens if we multiply them Beyond Necessities so what happens if I say in addition to calling Isadora is a Dora I'm going to call her also Nancy Marissa Becky and Fred right then if I use one of those terms you don't know who I'm referring to because I've multiplied Concepts proper names Beyond necessity not a good idea silly idea but that's not the one that really counts the one that counts is uh integrating proper names like objectivism Beyond necessity or integrating them with other Concepts in disregard of necessity so integrating a proper name like objectivism with other ideas in disregard of necessity what does necessity mean here the requirements of human cognition the requirements of clarity keeping things apart when we need to keep them apart so we know what we're thinking and talking about so don't pack things into this proper name that don't actually come under the proper name the proper name objectivism simply is the ideas that Ein Rand came up with whether they're complete or not I'll get to that in my in my rebuttals later whether the complete or not doesn't make any difference doesn't make any difference at all they're her ideas it's her philosophy it was named with a capital O because it's a proper name so yeah don't don't uh integrate proper names with other ideas in disregard of necessity so do you see why this matters I mean you you we need bright lines between things to know what we're thinking and talking about and that's what these the Iran's razor helps us to do don't put things together when they don't belong together and don't multiply names when you don't have good reason to name a New Concept so what is open if objectivism is closed and I say it is it's closed to the ideas that Ein Rand developed and integrated under the name objectivism in her lifetime what then is open philosophy truth in philosophy all of that stuff is open and there's plenty of more work to do in there and when you do good work and you come up with ideas that are true by virtue of being true they're going to integrate with all other truths including objectivism so they will integrate with objectivism and that's a beautiful thing My Philosophy my personal philosophy of life is objectivism because I think the whole body of objectivism it's essential principles is true plus a bunch of other ideas that I've come across that I think are true including some I've made up myself that philosophy is one big integrated system it's my system and it's at this point open because I'm still adding to it but when I die that closes because it's Craig's philosophy not everyone else's philosophy to put in what they want hmm so what do we call philosophic ideas that integrate with objectivism but are not a part of objectivism ideas that integrate with objectivism it's that simple and there's no reason to call them anything else but integrates with does not mean is a part of integrates with does not mean is a part of Leonard pikoff's theory of induction I think integrates with objectivism but it is not a part of objectivism Stephen or you or I or others may come up with philosophic ideas that integrate with object that will not make them a part of objectivism that's a different thing so now this is not only an issue of Justice I mean of clarity it's also an issue of justice and self-esteem and I'll make quick work of this if you have new ideas that integrate with objectivism who should get credit for those ideas or the person who came up with them it's a matter of Justice they shouldn't be packed into Iran's philosophy and give her credit for the ideas that she didn't come up with whoever came up with the ideas new ideas are great I'm sure Steven's come up with some new ideas he wrote a book on post-modern it's a great book it shouldn't be integrated with now this is a part of objectivism that wouldn't make any sense it's his part right uh and why would a person who comes up with a new idea want to hand it into objectivism and call it a part of objectivism Iran didn't come up with these great ideas and then say Oh and they're all errors I'm going to put them into Aristotle's philosophy that wouldn't have made any sense they were her ideas not Aristotle's ideas she built on Aristotle's ideas she credits Aristotle she couldn't have done her work without his work you know she's rest she's basing her ideas on the law of non-contradiction and on the fact that that human knowledge is based in perceptual reality and things that are that are from Aristotle's basic set the truths that Aristotle discovered and elaborated but they are not his philosophy they're hers and later ideas that come up that are true are not her philosophy they're the person who comes up with them they're his ideas or her ideas and you can say the whole thing is your philosophy your personal philosophy as I do objectivism is my personal philosophy but it's not the only part of my personal so rand's ideas can be seen in the Aristotelian tradition which is the way it's typically put of something as John Locke's ideas are seen in the Aristotelian tradition and uh Ran's ideas I think also can be seen in the liberal tradition Dr Hicks gave a a nice talk you know talk yesterday where he talked about liberalism and I think Iran's fall in that tradition as well and future ideas that integrate with objectivism could be called in the randian tradition she didn't like that term when she was alive but uh but you know rand's razor and and other elements within her philosophy tell us well it might be necessary even if you don't like it so it doesn't she doesn't get to have everything that she wanted if we need a term we we coined the term and so in the randian tradition I think can be helpful for people whose ideas do integrate with it but are not a part of it they're very different things let me go a little bit a couple more minutes to wrap up you good I'm fine with that yes now discovering new ideas that integrate with other new with with other truths is a wonderful thing to do that's what we need more of so I don't want to put there's no poo pooing that my organization objective Standard Institute we focus on helping people to understand the principles of objectivism and other ideas that are true so they also help you to think clearly and live better life so they all integrate and you get what we call a super system your own Super system which includes true philosophy that you've discovered from other people plus ideas that you bring into your own worldview for living and understanding the world and that's you know objectivism can be a part of your super system but that doesn't mean that your ideas are the same thing so a thing is either something specific or it's nothing at all objectivism is something specific it's the ideas that Iran developed and integrated there is no reason to alter it there's no reason to add to it and there's no reason to subtract from it because if you have new ideas you can just say they're new they're true and they integrate with it and that suffices and there is a world of reason not to pack things into it and call them objectivism to freeze the abstraction or to create a package deal out of this thing because if you do we don't know what we're thinking and talking about when we use the term objectivism and that is devastating to the philosophy so if you love ideas this conference is about love if you love ideas if you love these fundamental things on which all of our lives our happiness our friendships our work our lovers our freedom all of these things depend on ideas if you love ideas you need to take the requirements of clarity in ideas seriously and one of those requirements is making crucial distinctions between things so you know what you're talking about and keep things separate clear and distinct if you see the need for these distinctions join me in recognizing that objectivism is one thing Iran's philosophy and not these other things packed in with it and if you don't unders if you don't see these distinctions or the need for these distinctions that's fine you don't see it keep thinking about it I think you'll see it down the line thank you [Applause] so Stephen now you have about five minutes five minutes okay yes all right well thanks for that Craig uh yeah useful so absolutely the issue of definition concept formation uh defining the boundaries and Contours of a concept and then hopefully coming up with a clear definition one thing I would suggest though is to think about this issue of borderline cases and if we go into trying to Define philosophy with the idea that all Concepts should have a hard borderline and the the bright line right that you were talking about that is not quite right because the way Concepts work is some of them are hard and fast distinctions some of them though array along a spectrum when we are talking for example about people being ectomorphic to endomorphic or from too skinny to too fat and where the person stops being say skinny to being slender to being slim to being chubby to being right whatever right to say that we need to go into looking at that spectrum that reality has carved things out into hard and fast juncture points that's not quite right or to use computer analogy some things in reality are digital they're on or off and some things are analog they Ally along the Spectrum and it should be an open question when we are doing philosophy about objectivism in particular whether the concepts that constitute or the constituent Concepts and the propositions that are built from them are composed of more analog Concepts or more digital Concepts so the color spectrum is along a spectrum so there's not a hard and fast borderline built into reality for women being pregnant or not pregnant there is a hard border line there right you either are or you aren't so any philosophy in any science is going to include both kinds of of Concepts I think it's a second and a related point is uh uh Clarity is important but also uh it is the nature of science that it is an ongoing process of discovery so I like the Marxism example and absolutely right if you identify the fundamentals of Marxism and start changing them then the right thing to do is to change the name along with those changes and if you go into objectivism and you say here are the fundamental principles in my judgment of objectivism start changing any of those at a certain point absolutely you're not an objectivist anymore and you should change the label for for what you're doing but when you are doing that that's an open question that needs to be discussed on a Case by case basis so if we take seriously the idea that Rand uh puts to us that objectivism is a science the way to think about these conceptualization issues and the changes issues is not a matter of chaos that every time we have to change our minds or add something or redefine our terms suddenly we're plunged into cognitive chaos and we don't know what we're doing anymore well actually that is an ongoing part of the scientific process right to sometimes go through that process it never is completed but the better analogies then with respect to science would be to say say something like Newton right so Newton was a great physicist and he founded a new approach and developed a system of of of scientific physics and we do have a proper name we call that Newtonian physics but then the question is going to be that is Newtonian physics only what Newton said or is what Newton saying is here is a set of propositions about the world and I want you to judge them for yourself whether they are true or not and here are some methodological principles that we can apply so you can take what I have done and develop it and so Newtonian Phillips physics develops along the way now you might then say and here's a good example for for making a change of fundamentals suppose we get uh it would be uh is it really 16 you got 310 years later a young Albert Einstein comes along and he is schooled in Newtonian physics as it is developed up to his generation and He suggests a fundamental change with respect to the nature of space and time and this is an ongoing debate any questions is he adding a friendly amendment to Newtonian mechanics or is what Einstein doing something so fundamentally different that Newtonian physics becomes a subset case within a broader case of Newtonian physics now what's the right answer to that question I don't know but I want to say that that's the right way to think about objectivism and doing philosophy think of yourself as a Newtonian physicist in the uh or think of yourself as an objective as philosopher um this issue of proper name and naming rights um there is this issue about you know Rand as the founder and there always is the question about assigning a name or a label to it but I think the way to do this is to think of this is to say that what Rand is doing when she says here is objectivism she is not saying This Is My Philosophy she is saying it's my philosophy but she's not saying it's my philosophy in the sense of exclusivity or in the sense of ownership if you'll remember one of the coaches I gave to you this is not my philosophy in the sense that I am the owner of it it's not my philosophy in the same in the sense that this is my work of fiction and so that in some sense this is my philosophy and I am giving you permission or allowing you to use the philosophy instead what she is doing saying this is my philosophy and I am offering it to you with an invitation to become a colleague not to become a student of me right or a follower even of me to become a colleague yes all right so you are doing what I am doing and we are embarked on this open-ended scientific discovery process I'll have to stop there okay thank you all right I'm going to move very quickly through some points um so bear with me so objectivism is not a science it is a philosophy now einrant did science when science is is a systematic study or inquiry of a subject and Iran did science she performed that process or they used that method the method of science to discover the ideas and to integrate the ideas of objectivism but objectivism itself is not a science it is something it's the product of science it's a thing it's it's a body of ideas that she named Newton's physics if if the term Newtonian physics is vague if if the physics field people in the physics field are using that and they don't know whether it means just his ideas or ideas in the tradition of him they should stop using that term or Define their terms because that's very confusing to do that things have to have specific definitions to use them coherently uh probably they should just say Newton's physics refers to his uh specifically what he wrote and thought whether he got things right or wrong doesn't matter that's his ideas and that's the way that I think objectivism should be treated doesn't matter whether einran's our ideas are right or wrong or whether they could she could have done more or whether some things are not perfectly defined makes no difference at all it's still her philosophy it's her ideas that's the name she gave to those that body of ideas and we don't need to alter it because all you have to do is come up with new ideas that work and if they integrate with the other ideas that you know are true you got a great ongoing system that is open in that sense objectivism itself there's a second point objectivism was not really discovered that's an equivocal term there too it wasn't out there and ran found it objectivism was created by the Integrations and identifications that Rand made using her mind some of that involved the process of discovery but the philosophy itself is not a discovery and you need to keep those things separated as is my whole point here about Clarity and knowing how to use terms correctly because that as a package deal will mess you up nor did Ein Rand uh copyright or patent objectivism it's not her property and uh it's not owned by Iran none of that applies to objectivism she originated it she created it and it closed when she died that's the thing that matters it's not copyrighted or trademarked or any of that you're welcome to use it you're welcome to write about it obviously morally you should give Iron Man credit if you're using her ideas just as she gives Aristotle credit when she uses his or Builds on his but that's a that's an obvious point uh let's see physics is a science not but objectivism is not but Newton's physics is a body of ideas that was created by the science Newton did so there's another analogy there that I think is a better way to think about it uh einrin's philosophy not being complete well uh philosophy or true philosophy is not complete there's more to be done but you can take it either way with Iran's philosophy you can either say it's complete because she put all of her ideas that she wanted in it and then died and so it was complete in that sense or you can say well she didn't solve the problem of induction or come up with a theory of propositions or other things so it's quote incomplete take it either way it doesn't matter because objectivism is the body of Ein rand's ideas that she discovered that she developed and integrated in her lifetime so I don't that's just a red herring not an intentional red herring but it doesn't matter to to this whole debate whether her philosophy is true or perfect or improvable is irrelevant to whether it's her philosophy again it's like a it's like a side issue and a red herring it doesn't matter whether it's true perfect or improvable it's still only her philosophy uh whether it's open to challenge and debate and discussion and whether you should respect people's Independence when you're talking about of course you should and of course you should challenge Iran's ideas when you're reading them that's what your independent mind is supposed to do analyze is this true is this supported by facts as I can see them nothing in objectivism says don't do that there might be organizations and people who treat objectivism as some kind of a dogma and shame on them for that but the philosophy itself is not a Dogma it's a philosophy the centerpiece of which is essentially independent thinking so you you need to think for yourself about whether her ideas are true and you should debate them with people and you should always be open to inquiry and discussion as we are doing here about what this thing is and why these questions are important um uh who is the final Authority on all of this reality is the final Authority but that's pretty abstract so there's another principle that comes in here the requirements of human cognitions at the standard for whether we include things in a unit whether we include units in a concept or a proper name or not if you pack a bunch of stuff in that that creates conceptual chaos you're violating the requirements of human cognition that's what makes it wrong that's what makes package deals wrong that's what makes anti-concepts wrong that's what makes frozen abstractions wrong so there's a standard here and it is the individual Judgment of your mind that has to understand a standard and apply it properly so there's no Dogma there but there is an objective standard about what goes into a concept and what does not regarding treating irand as a god nobody should ever do that that's the silliest thing ever and she would be rolling in her grave if anybody was doing that I by the way wrote an article titled Ein Rand said is not an argument which I encourage you to look up that might be helpful and I'll say more about borderline cases if somebody asks me about those in the Q a thank you thank you so we're gonna start with a q a now um I have two connected questions as time moves on and Society changes and with it its structure and concept changes should and could philosophies and I will reduce change I am connected with that if an ideology or a philosophy is incomplete uh could its students further it by adding up to it like in a sense of objective School of tradition thank you who is that for primarily is that first both okay I'm happy to take it so um absolutely any philosophy can be built on any particularly true philosophy because then it's it's grounded in reality by virtue of being true and then if you find out new truths and build on them you're building on that philosophy there's nothing in what I'm saying that says you shouldn't do that in fact I'm saying you should do that discover new truths that integrate with objectivism and you but you get the credit for it you don't pack it into objectivism and say this is objectivism you just say no this is my set of ideas and I'm proud of them and I'd like other people to understand them so I'm going to write a book on it or whatever you're going to do and that's how to treat those um and ideologies can change in some senses and in some sense it's not because it depends on what you mean by ideology if by ideology you mean a named closed system like objectivism that closed when the author of that of the ideas died then that ideology is not going to change if there's a loose set of ideas that was not founded by or named by anybody say conservatism in America does that ideology change to some extent yes because it's it's not even really that definite a thing conservatives boast about the fact that it can't be defined Edmund Burke in particular made a big deal of this I think if I'm getting that guy right um so um yeah absolutely build on things but just recognize who did what who discovered things who integrated things and who gets credit wouldn't it be more agile system if you're specifically speaking having an order of the system that says I think as important as having an agile system what do you think about that I missed the last sentence that having a what system is like having an agile system that is actually movable it's easy easier to move wouldn't it be for some people speaking as desirable as having it very orderly system as a system of thought so if I understand your question you're saying you know should should we would it be easier to Define objectivism by the things it excludes rather than by the things it includes and wouldn't that make it more agile I think that would make it chaotic because objective the the way to think about first of all you don't Define it it's a descriptive because it's a proper name but to describe objectivism by by naming all the things that are not included in it would mean you'd have to name everything in the world to to do that it's much easier to name the things that are included in it and I could go through a long list of things that I think are included in it but basically it's the work that Iran did in philosophy if she made a a psychological side note about something or homosexuality or a woman president or something like that that's not her philosophy that's an opinion and an application in my view a misapplication of fundamental ideas in her actual philosophy so you can't include those but if she wrote something about the distinction between the metaphysical and the man-made that's a part of her philosophy if she wrote something about causality versus Duty and the difference between a disciple of causation and a disciple of Duty and the separation of her Philosophy from Emmanuel ethics that is a part of her philosophy why because she wrote about it and she parked this under the concept or the name objectivism and that that's that's what includes so if you talk about what's included and it's big enough objectivism whether you think of it as complete or not it's a huge philosophy it's got a lot in it einrin's Corpus is massive and um so it's it's plenty to deal with there yeah one more question is quick uh my inclination was also towards the closed system but thinking from a pragmatic point of view I'm sure there are marxists that disagree with each other because in fact Marx has been this and Marxist but they come together under this umbrella of this one idea of Marxism wouldn't we consider having that some something similar to objectivism and when or being of the state of the same umbrella living on the same intellectual Journey kind of thing yeah that's a great question now sorry to hog these answers but I'm happy to answer them um I think it's I think the way to think of that is fans of Ein Rand or people who appreciate Iran's work and now that's going to include people like me who think that she's that she's just right about philosophy through and through but it will also include people who think she maybe got some things wrong and I have several friends who are in that camp um and I you know we're fine we talk to each other all the time and then I have people who think I don't even want to think about philosophy I have friends I go dancing with and stuff and they couldn't care less about philosophy they're perfectly good people and they live good lives but uh so not everybody has to even get involved in this but the people who do and I I mean Stephen and I are both very interested in Iran's ideas I think we're in the same uh category in that sense insofar as I think Stephen is trying to advance something that involves package deals and Frozen abstractions which I do think then I don't think we're in the same camp because because I think that's a big difference and a big problem but in in in that he loves Rand and thinks he's really important makes us both fans of Rand and I think that so you can categorize things that way as need be let me jump in here there's a distinction between the body of the science or the body the the concepts of content and concepts of method and the label that you use for that I think it is worth saying we make this distinction and then ask the question about open and closed on each level if you talk about what it is then you can say well objectivism is a body of propositions I just arbitrarily said the 100 so maybe Rand spoke on 60 of them but it's also the methodology that those propositions describe about how to do this activity that we are engaging in and so whether you are open to additions to completeness is one issue at that level but also are you engaging in that process in the way that Rand described right the the open-mindedness uh we can use that metaphor there that's one thing okay but then this issue of a proper name all right what should we call this philosophy that also is to my mind an open question and when Rand was going through this process people say you know you should give your system a name because actually started to become more popular in philosophical movements in the 20th century existentialism positivism right and so forth what should we call it and the issue here again should not be whatever Iran says because what we are describing is not something that is her property that she owns it's again an issue of can we come up with a label that best captures what we are trying to do in the philosophy or in the science in this case and in this case the decision was objectivity is the core concept and so therefore we're going to use the name as a proper name based on that fundamental element of the concept which is both a statement of substance but also about methodology and process as well but that also should be open to discussion so if Ein Rand were right here and she was saying you know I think we're going to call this philosophy positivism because I'm romantic right and so forth well maybe that's not the best one and that would be an ongoing argument within the system I have ideas about what the right proper name is for that system of ideas or you're really about logic so maybe we should call it log or something like that and then we would have arguments back and forth and she should be open to that process now I think there is something to saying she should you know uh you know have two votes and thumb on the scale with respect to naming issues but that also is not something that is an ownership prerogative and that Iran as Authority has the only label we make the Judgment also is that the best label what what might have happened and what did happen are very different things right she she did name it objectivism and she's not the authority in what constitutes what we call it the authority is the requirements of human cognition if you pack things into it that if it's just an open thing and anybody can think anything they want belongs in it then it loses its identity and you can't think or speak or analyze it whereas if you recognize that the philosophy is different from method including different from objectivity objectivity is a method objectivism is a philosophy it's like democracy is a kind of government but a democratic process is a process they're akin to each other but they're not the same thing the order matters here we call it objectivism derivatively because the content of the philosophy is objectivity that's the fundamental the labeling issue is secondary okay we have time for Max two more questions so um can I pick up what Stephen's question about all the cases because you use the example of you know facets within a people and how nature as you rightly say the nature often doesn't give us peer-cut beneficials like planets and asteroids like where does one start at the beginning but then there are other cases where it does for example apples and oranges are clearly different things and I think in philosophic terms that's the difference between a difference of degree and a difference in kind yes so for the question of what is objectivism is there a difference of degree is there some kind of greater or lesser extent of objectivism or is it objectivism as I think Craig and I will both hold is objectivism a clear defined Apple versus the orange of Marxism or all the other fruits all the other Fosters and you have different degrees of objectivism right or is it just one pure I would say if we start with what Ryan Rand said that would be one of our starting points we would say in the case there are many things where Ryan spoke Crystal clearly and offered a very concise definition in other cases she spoke more approximately and more generally so at that point in the body of ideas that einrand has presented some of them are more uh open to Spectrum issues and some of them are clear border and so on so that's a judgment call that we are always making as we are doing the process of philosophy uh I mean I don't have too much to add oh God go ahead we'll go to another question after that uh Liverpool is gonna go next and then you can ask the last question so up to my knowledge I know that the the term objectivism was before I ran it's been used in in many ways and also terms like rational egoism right like this above it's not the property of Iran up to my knowledge like they've been used before to mean completely different things but I want to ask a question that I'm trying to put myself in the shoes of a student who's just studying now objectivism so what and generally I'm asking the question like what how would it help me if I know the difference between open and close if I grapply with all these ideas how would it help me practically absolutely if you think uh that the philosophy is closed in the sense that it is a creation of an individual and so should be treated more like an artwork than your attitude toward that is going to be different so then you would say no absolutely I'm not going to add subtract write change or or anything versus if you think it is open in the sense of uh here is an initial set of propositions and we need to discover more that have been discovered then your attitude is well I am equally in the position of the other Discoverer to validate these propositions and work in that tradition and build upon that so your attitude is going to be quite different if you come in thinking it's closed in the sense that it is not subject to correction because you know it was said by a certain person then you're going to when you're doing your philosophy in that tradition be psychologically I don't want to say crippled but something closer to that you won't raise the hard challenging questions because that will destroy the Perfection so to speak of the system and also it has implications for socially if you think it is closed in a certain way and that's your primary marketing term this is closed some things are not open to discussion right and uh the the one's status within the relationship there's the founder and I'm not saying God Demi God but we do know this is an occupational hazard for every single movement objectivism included if it is closed because of the status of this person she said so in some subtle way that also damages the social movement I absolutely have to answer because this is the most important question that we've gotten here is why does this matter so um the idea that you can't challenge objectivism if it's closed is exactly backward you can't challenge objectivism if it's open and the reason you can't challenge objectivism if it's open is because if it's open you have no idea what it is objectivism in order to know this thing that the reason this matters the reason that this whole debate matters is because if we open objectivism up to new ideas alterations this that and the other it loses its identity which means you you don't know what it is you don't know how to study it you don't know how to think about it you don't know how to evaluate it you don't know how to recommend it to other people because it's not a thing anymore it's not it doesn't have an identity if it's if you recognize the fact that it's closed and it's just Iran's ideas you're absolutely able to challenge it hey did she get the derivation of art you know art from is correct what's her inductive uh alleged inductive proof there does it hold up to reason you know exactly what it is you're looking at if on the other hand somebody adds Toleration to it and you say well I want to determine whether objectivism is true and good let's take this virtue of Toleration and you start analyzing and you go well that doesn't make any sense at all Toleration seems to mean as much don't judge people as it does uh protect people or respect people's rights in other words it's a big package deal and you could easily refute the idea that it's a virtue because if it means don't judge people it's not a virtue it's a vice bam Ran's philosophy has been annihilated by uh by me refuting something that was added to it by by someone else that's why it's got to be keptical let me know let me jump in at this point here let me say Craig seems very worried about this issue if we open things up immediately we're into conceptual confusion and nobody knows what they're talking about that is not the way science work is not the way philosophy works the most simple example of this would be Euclid doing uh mathematical science and we say Euclid wrote The Elements of geometry and he laid out a certain number of axioms and theorems now if we then say well is this a closed or open system we say well this is an open method like that you could Luke has given to us and he did a certain number of things that if we say it's an open to proving new fuel to somehow we don't know what euclidean geometry is or how we're doing this right and so on no it's very clear we know what the axioms are we know what the methodological principles are we know exactly what number of theorems Euclid came up with and so if someone comes along and says well let's add this theorem because I think it follows oh I don't know what we're doing anymore no it's ridiculous we know what we're doing and it's an open question whether that new theorem follows logically or not and we should all be able to discuss it rationally and decide whether in fact that is part of euclidian geometry that's the right model okay can I have just a quick follow-up okay but just like very interesting very very fast so can we say that it's both in a sense so it's it's close in the sense that you know we have to respect the the author or the scientists but it's also open in the sense that you need to keep on developing the content you can't say that because you're freezing the abstraction you're you're treating you're treating a science like math or geometry or some you know anything like that you're treating that which is open-ended because new discoveries can be made with something specific Euclid's own ideas or random ideas which are under that science which are not the they used the science to come up with their ideas but their ideas died when they died or their ideas closed when they closed and so this whole that's the if you try to have it both ways you're freezing the abstraction you're treating uh the method or the science or true philosophy or some big abstraction as if it's the same thing as a unit under it okay the last question okay okay then thank you everyone and thank you and uh thank you Stephen for joining us today I think this was a very productive productive and I hope you guys will enjoy thank you sir all right sir yeah well done

Channel: Ayn Rand Center Europe

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Length: 88min 53sec (5333 seconds)

Published: Tue May 16 2023