Talk:Ayn Rand/Archive 8

This is an archive of past discussions about Ayn Rand. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 5

Archive 6

Archive 7

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"Exclusive intellectual heir?

The legacy section says this: "Following her death, continued conflict within the Objectivist movement led to a proliferation of independent organizations, a few of which claim to be her exclusive intellectual heirs."

People are born Jewish, American, Russian whatever. She was born in Russia and she was born Jewish. People don't care that Alan Greenspan, Bob Dylan, Sandy Koufax aren't religious. Most Jews aren't religious. It doesn't make them not Jewish. Its DIFFERENT to Christianity and Islam, where if you stop believing you are no longer a Christian or a Muslim. Ayn Rand was influence by her Russian-Jewish-American experience.... and they were crutial to her theories and writings. Her experiences in communist russia, freedom in America... and judaisms belief of not converting others and not having ANY problem with people of other religions... as long as they don't hurt you. --User:Adamhman 11:36, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

To the best of my knowledge, no organization claims this. At most, Leonard Peikoff is Ayn Rand's legal heir, but no organization that I am aware of has claimed to be her intellectial heir. Even if Peikoff did make that claim, he shouldn't be confused with the Ayn Rand Institute, which he founded but no longer leads, and which is not the legal heir of her estate. Futhermore, the books Peikoff and other Objectivists have published usually have a disclaimer stating that "these views do not officially represent the philosophy of Objectivism" --GreedyCapitalist 18:46, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

It seems to me that that bit is badly worded. Peikoff has claimed time and again (correctly) to being Ayn Rand's Legal and CHOSEN intellectual heir. I am not aware of anyone else making that SPECIFIC claim (being her exclusive intellectual heir), though Nathaniel Branden did openly hold that title until the schism. I am also not aware of any great disclaimer that Peikoff has put in any of his books aside from those not specifically about objectivism. On the other hand though, Peikoff has argued (I think correctly) that Technically Objectivism As defined by Ayn Rand is a closed system.--Courtland Nerval 19:10, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Good point, GreedyCapitalist. I agree with you that this section is poorly worded. Want to go ahead and correct the wording? If you made the correction before, it appears to have been reverted. On a related topic, I noticed that the text next to the external link to ARI described Peikoff as "Ayn Rand's legal and intellectual heir." Nobody contests that he is Rand's legal heir, but the many requests for proof that she ever designated him her "intellectual heir" (as she had done for Branden, before the schism) have never, to my knowledge, been met. And the body text of the article states only that he is her "heir." So I've shortened the text next to the external link to read "Ayn Rand's heir."--Jzader 12:22, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

I again added the three things Ayn Rand believed and taught--especially at the time the NBI was a going concern. If anyone cares to argue that she did NOT believe and teach any of the three assertions, have a go. It is precisely by deleting these items and shifting attention to irrelevant decoys that intellectuals of the looter persuasion are spared the effort of having to identify what she actually advocated--much less refute it. translator 16:09, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Neil Peart

It's true that Peart was influenced by Rand, but our consensus is that this list of influenced people is restricted to those who are philosophers. Therefore, Peart really should be removed. Al 06:02, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

The argument from consensus is also appealed to to deny that Ayn Rand was a philosopher. I would like to know whether William Graham Sumner (The Forgotten Man), or H.L. Mencken, who translated Nietsche's "Antichrist" and summarized ethics as it stood in 1936 qualify as philosophers by that nebulous standard. translator 16:14, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

change

This is trivial, but since I was incorrectly accused of vandalism, I will state here that in the introduction, I changed this - "Her philosophy and her fiction both emphasize, above all, the concepts of individualism, rational egoism ('rational self-interest'), and capitalism" - to this - "Her philosophy and her foction both emphasize, above all, the concepts of reason, rational egoism ('rational self-interest'), and capitalism." I think this is fair because Ayn Rand herself said, "I am not primarily an advocate of capitalism, but of egoism, and I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason." - A.T.

Laissez-faire Capitalism

A sentence summarizing Rand's views currently ends with "and capitalism, which she believed should be advanced to a full-fledged laissez-faire capitalism."

This is accurate but wordy. In fact, when Rand spoke of capitalism, she meant the laissez-faire variety. She did not consider a mixed economy as true capitalism.

Based on this, I shortened the sentence to "and (laissez-faire) capitalism." I thought this was quite clear, as it used the term Rand preferred, but qualified it with the parenthentical specification.

An anon IP disagreed and reverted the change. So, rather than engage in an edit war, I'm going to ask for input and offer four options:

1) Keep the long version.

2) Keep the short version, with "laissez-faire" in parentheses.

3) Keep the short version, with "laissez-faire" but no parentheses.

4) Write in your own suggestion.

Al 01:31, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

2. Keep the Short Version with "Laissez-faire" in parentheses. the long version is needlessly wordy. --Courtland Nerval 17:13, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

3. A parentheses is a "a comment departing from the theme of discourse" - here the clarification is necessary, not optional. --GreedyCapitalist 20:01, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough Capitalist, I see your point. --Courtland Nerval 20:05, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Of course, Centrx went ahead and picked #3, without offering a reason. The problem with removing the parentheses is that Rand used "capitalism" a whole lot, "laissez-faire" only rarely. She took the former to be the latter sort, but not everyone else does. For this reason, I used her term, "capitalism", but hid the clarification in parentheses to show that she didn't typically use the phrase "laissez-faire capitalism". That's my reasoning and nobody so far has addressed it. Al 20:18, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

You did not state that reason before. Did Rand have a specific objection to the term "laissez-faire" for some reason? Otherwise, this is just a normal clarification of what is meant, and uses the common meaning of "laissez-faire capitalism". Parenthesis should be avoided. —Centrx→talk • 20:34, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Rand seemed to think that capitalism could only mean laissez-faire capitalism. It's not clear that she understood that there were many varieties, each with their respective supporters. Can you find any examples of Rand using the phrase "laissez-faire capitalism" to describe her ideal instead of just calling it "capitalism"? If you can, I'll immediately withdraw my complaint. Al 21:01, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

"When I say capitalism, I mean a full, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez faire capitalism, with a separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church."-Ayn Rand

--GreedyCapitalist 21:46, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

That's the exception that proves the rule. We already know that she used "capitalism" to mean "laissez-faire capitalism". What I'm asking for a case where she goes against this by casually speaking of "laissez-faire capitalism", implicitly acknowledging that other forms are also worthy of being called capitalism. Instead, you're showing me her attempt to explain once and for all that what she means when she says "capitalism" all by itself. Try again. Al 21:50, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

There is a spectrum between socialism and capitalism. Ayn Rand advocated for what (she thought) was one extreme of that spectrum – that’s why she identified herself politically as a “radical for capitalism.” No nation has ever actually achieve that extreme, so when we call a society “capitalist,” we do so in context to less-capitalistic societies. That’s why Ayn Rand said that the U.S. is capitalist even as she bashed its socialist institutions and identified it as a “mixed economy.”

Ayn Rand understood that hers was a minority definition, and was harsh on those who did not share it:

“I consider National Review the worst and most dangerous magazine in America. The kind of defense that it offers to capitalism results in nothing exept the discrediting and destruction of capitalism ... because it ties capitalism to religion.” --GreedyCapitalist 22:08, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

The following is from Ayn Rand's interview with Playboy Magazine: "I never describe my position in terms of negatives. I am an advocate of laissez-faire capitalism, of individual rights -- there are no others -- of individual freedom. It is on this ground that I oppose any doctrine which proposes the sacrifice of the individual to the collective, such as communism, socialism, the welfare state. fascism, Nazism and modern liberalism. I oppose the conservatives on the same ground. The conservatives are advocates of a mixed economy and of a welfare state. Their difference from the liberals is only one of degree, not of principle." A.T. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.220.246.20 (talk • contribs).

This is a pretty good source. My main problem is that it's the transcript of an interview, not her own writing. In my experience, while such transcripts usually get most of the words right, they're only guesses at intended puncutation.

In other words, it may well be that Rand shifted her voice to indicate that the "laissez-faire" was parenthentical, but this distinction wasn't recorded. However, as this is still a pretty good source and it's a fairly minor matter, I'm inclined to leave things as is.

On another matter, I encourage you to create a Wikipedia account if you're going to participate further. It's only a small bother but it gives some handy benefits. Al 02:14, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Wrong? The Playboy interview was heavily edited by Rand herself prior to publication--according to the fellow who purchased the item. translator 16:18, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

It isn't important what Rand herself would write or edit; providing information to the reader should be the primary goal. I thought the parentheses read quite well and gave the reader more information in a concise manner. As for proper punctuation: language is guided by use. General literary trends allow for, even encourage, the parentheses in this context. Mister Knite 03:40, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Cult censorship

We have a number of citations indicating that Ayn Rand led a cult. Despite this, there have been repeated attempts by fans of Ayn Rands (or, in one case, supporters of cult rights) to hide this fact by removing the article from the "Cult leaders" category. This is a matter of WP:NPOV, not "consensus", as if the unilateral rejection of the category by members of the cult carry any weight. Al 03:43, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

(Sigh) Man, you and LGagnon are getting paranoid about this. May I suggest you a short break?... Justice III

Please note that, after my original response, Justice III altered his text to insert the word "you" between "suggest" and "a". This had the intended effect of making my response nonsensical. When added went back and added a comment in square brackets to point out that the word had been inserted after the fact, he deleted it. Now you know. Al 05:03, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, a short break would be a great idea. I welcome you to take one. Al 04:02, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I am not a fan of Ayn Rand. Please see:

It is all very well explained in these guidelines: Unless this is most essential about this person, do not add. From the material in this article there are just a couple of people that consider Objectivism a "cult" and less that have referred to this person as a "cult leader". We have argued this point already many times. Rather that keep reverting each other ad nauseum, I will place an RfC so that other editors can weigh in, as a first step in dispute resolution. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 04:08, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

No, you're in the other category. Now, I've read these various links, and they simply do not support your conclusion. Al 04:09, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, they do. Take some time and read them. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 04:10, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

An argument as powerful as "yes, they do" can only be refuted with apathy. Consider your argument refuted. Al 04:14, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

"Now, I've read these various links, and they simply do not support your conclusion" can only be refuted in the same manner. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 04:18, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

That can be refuted by actually showing how the rules apply. Oh, wait, it can't be done in this case because they don't apply, which leaves you nothing but edit-warring on your side. Congratulations for showing such a good example, admin. Al 04:20, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

"Try to limit the number of categories. For example, a film actor that holds a law degree should be categorized as a film actor, but not as a lawyer unless his or her legal career was notable in its own right. However it is also important to ensure that categories contain all of the most relevant articles. This means that some prominent people, such as senior politicians who have held many different offices, will be in a considerable number of categories. Apart from these factional categories, for those categories that require an assesment of personal characterisitics (e.g. art movement style...), try to limit the number of categories to what is most essential about this person, something in the vein of: "give me 4 or 5 words that best characterize this person."

My highlight. Unless you can provide evidence that the best 4 or 5 word that best characterizes this person included "cult leader", there is no adding this person to this category. And by the look at this article, there are only a few voices that make that claim, against a wide consensus that doesn't. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 04:22, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

And BTW, my name is Jossi, and I am editing this article not as an "admin" but as a fellow editor. Please keep your sarcasm at bay. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 04:23, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I have placed an RfC. I will wait for 7 days for comments from other editors. If there is no response from other editors, I will proceed with next step on the dispute resolution process. Until such time I will not edit this and related articles as it pertains to the subject oif "cult accussations". ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 04:39, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

The way I read it is that you have to admit that the category fits, so you're trying to block it based on your interpretation of a technicality. This is not particularly convincing. Al 05:04, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Alright, suppose the Objectivists were to say, "okay, we agree with you, Ayn Rand's philosophy is a cult." Exactly what bearing would that have over her ideas? Al and others have spent a lot of time pushing for the inclusion of pro-cult statements into the article. On the discussion page people are not talking about the idea of Objectivism but whether some Objectivists belong to a cult. In my opinion, this is syill.

Selective quoting

Alienus: First you quote partially, then when I check the source, I see that you only cite the portion that support your POV. Then I add more of that cite for context and for NPOV. Why do you delete it? Have you notice your behavior in these articles? It is most disruptive and unnacceptable. The fact that you are not afraid to revert as a way to assert your POV, does not mean that you can get away with it. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 05:21, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

First I insert a quote in a way that is entirely accurate. The section was on critical response, not popularity, and I quoted the part that concerned the former. I initially tried to use the whole quote, but it was awkward to insert into this context, as shown by your own attempt, which led to a false claim. In fact, some of her works were popular, but not all of them were bestsellers. Seeing your error, I gently corrected it so that it used almost the whole quote, yet did not leave a misconception in the reader's mind.

Sadly, in addition to your constant edit-warring over the cult issue, you are now assuming bad faith. Please try to be a better editor in the future: admins are supposed to be role models. Al 05:24, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Who is exactly edit warring here? ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 05:46, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

In this case, nobody. Rather, your error is in sloppy editing and bad faith interpretations. Al 06:43, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

RfC summary

There is a dispute about the inclusion of Ayn Rand in Category:Cult leaders. 04:42, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Statements by editors previously involved in the discussion

Note to involved editors: Let other editors comment freely, without challenging each and every one of them. We know the dispute, let's hear what they have to say. That is what an RfC is all about. '≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 15:01, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

My argument is that this violates WP:NPOV, as it is makes a de facto and controvesial characterization of a person based on a minority viewpoint. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 05:25, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

There is a consistent pattern of pro-Rand and pro-cult editors doing everything they can to move cult allegations off the main page, then off into oblivion. Some, including Jossi, have edit-warred to keep the cult categories off these pages at all costs. It's gotten very ugly.

What has to be acknowledged is that there are some quite notable people, including Rothbard and Shermer, who have quite publicly and verifiably accused Rand of being a cult leader. There's a book by Walker entitled The Ayn Rand Cult, as well as a chapter dedicated to the topic in one of Shermer's books.

Given the controversial nature of such accusations, we cannot suppress them just because not everyone agrees. Suppressing a singificant minority view violates the due weight clause of WP:NPOV. Also, please remember that insertion in a category is intended to allow better navigation, not to make an absolute statement of fact. Al 05:32, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

The sort of cult referred to by the sources is not like those in Category:Cult leaders. The persons in that category are leaders of suicide cults, have proclaimed themselves prophets of God, messengers of aliens, etc. —Centrx→talk • 05:46, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't believe that there is any requirement for a cult to be overtly religious. Objectivism is a comprehensive life philosophy that takes the role of a religion and has been characterized as a pseudoreligion. For example, Turner writes that "For its inner circle, Objectivism in its early days was a university, a political movement, a religion, a social life." In short, you don't need cyanide in your Kool Aid to be a cult. Al 06:48, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Comments

I personally don't think there's any amount of evidence that could justify the category of "Cult Leader" except perhaps for religions that have died out. For all intents and purposes, "cult" mean "bad religion". Having a category of cult leaders is like having a cateogry of "Bad People"-- I have to think the very category probably violates NPOV. About the best you could do is mae the category "Alleged Cult Leaders"-- but that has a lot of it's own problems.

If you don't buy that-- then there should at least be a consensus that said person IS a Cult leader before you add them to the list. In this case, I don't think there's anywhere near such a consensus. I doubt there's even a simple majority that thinks Rand was a cult leader. The fact that her teachings are not usually regarded as a religion doesn't help the case. I'm sure there are people that regard her as cultish, I'm sure some people find ways in which her teachings qualify as "cultish"-- but the fact remains that it's not a univerally agreed consensus supported fact that she IS a cult leader. So, she can't be on the list of people who ARE cult leaders.

--Alecmconroy 05:54, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

With all due respect, if you oppose the entire category then you should join in the effort to have it deleted rather than argue for the removal of one entry. Your argument is primarily that nobody should be listed, not that Rand shouldn't. Because of this, you would raise the bar unreachably high. Al 06:48, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I feel compelled to mention that you were personally invited here by Jossi, rather than responding to the RfC. This has the appearance of an attempt to stack the deck. Al 06:56, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Oh contrar, my dear Alienus. Jossi invited me to the two Category for Deletion debates AFTER I posted on this page. I came here on my own because I saw the RFC. Additionally, even if the category survives deletion, I have a secondary objection to the inclusion of Ayn Rand in it-- an objection I wouldn't have to say Jim Jones or Charles Manson.--Alecmconroy 11:57, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Hmm. None of the sources currently being considered by the apparently "pro-cult-inclusion" editors here is that reliable, actually:

Michel Shermer[1] focuses more on Rand's success as a writer and the fascination her works inspired, which by definition would make all the likes of J.R.R. Tolkien "cult leaders".

Rothbard's essay has almost no other sources at all except hearsay, and his opinions are based mostly on remarks about people (that is, a few individual objectivists he claims to have heard about "from a friend of mine" or something similar) - and not the ideology and philosophical movement per se

Jeff Walker's book has been definitely debunked by numerous reviewers since it was published[2], [3], [4] Even Scott Ryan, well-known for his acid criticism of Ayn Rand, says[5]

"If you want philosophical critiques of Objectivism, you'll get just a little in Walker's book (...) If you're looking for a scholarly and philosophical account of Objectivism, you don't want this book; you want Chris Matthew Sciabarra's Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical, which has set the standard for scholarly works on Objectivism."

Well, here's what Sciabarra has to say, in his own critique of Walker's book [6]:

"Unfortunately, the book stands as a mean-spirited textual analogue to the "politics of personal destruction" about which we’ve heard so much lately. Whatever one might learn from Walker’s insights is undermined by his endless tirades, strung together in a rather disorganized fashion, amounting to a series of vitriolic ad hominems directed toward most of the major figures in Objectivism."

In sum, a rather poor source to rely on.

This is the sort of "reference" you seem to be dealing with here. And I'm not sure this would be enough to classify her as a cult leader. LibertariaNZgo 06:02, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

With all due respect, the fact that Objectivists disagree with these allegations is not interesting or convincing. Few groups admit to being cults. Rothbard, for a start, is far more reputable than Rand, and even Shermer is more respected. Sciabarra is biased because he's made a career out of his unique Marxist interpretation of Objectivism, so cult allegations interfere with his thesis. I also feel compelled to point out that you reveal yourself to be libertarian, hence you have a positive view of Rand's ideology. Al 06:48, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I should add that some of the strongest support for the cult allegation comes from Rand's former lover and intellectual heir, who "characterised the credo of the NBI thus: ‘Ayn Rand is the greatest human being who has ever lived. Atlas Shrugged is the greatest human achievement in the history of the world. Ayn Rand, by virtue of her philosophical genius, is the supreme arbiter of any issue pertaining to what is rational, moral or appropriate to man’s life on earth.’" Al 07:14, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Hmm. If it is indeed so strong, why then haven't you added it to the article before (or have you, perchance?)? With all due respect, this looks like the last resort of a losing cause. I also feel compelled to add that you are obviously a liberal, hence you have a negative view of Rand's ideology. The fact that liberal PointO'View disagrees with these objections is not interesting or convincing. I should add that you have not provided a reference to the quote, which totally undermines its credibility as a piece of evidence. Please notice that unreferenced "quotes" are quite unhelpful, to say the least. Thank you for understanding.LibertariaNZgo 09:24, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

But I have to say, I think we get off track here whenever we try to debate whether or not Objectivism is or is not a cult. For our purposes, that debate is completely irrelevant. The question here in not "Is Objectivism a Cult?". The real question is this: "Is there a true consensus that Objectivism definitely is indeed a Cult?". I think everyone agrees the answer to this question is "No", and I really think that's the right standard we should have if we're going to put somebody into a category entitled Cult Leaders. --Alecmconroy 12:11, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Categorizing Rand as a cult leader seems unneccesarily POV to me. Yes, there does seem to be a very vocal minority (outside of Wikipedia) that call Objectivism a cult, but more people seems to identify it as a philosophy. Mentioning cult accusations in the article is fine, but adding her to a category of such is... Silly. Come on, a cult? Objectivism makes me rolls my eyes, but I'd never think of Rand comparing to David Koresh. DejahThoris 21:58, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I have read the quote that alienus posted above, though I do not have a web link for it. Just as damning however are many of the things said By Nathaniel Branden (whom all the Objectivists here will pounce on as "biased") in the article entitled: The Benefits and Hazards of the Philosophy of Ayn Rand. You can find it here. This is a taste: ""It would have been wonderful, given how much many of us respected and admired Ayn Rand, if she had encouraged us to develop a more open-minded attitude and to be less attached to a model of reality that might be in need of revision. But that was not her way. Quite the contrary. Other people’s model of reality might be in need of revision. Never hers. Not in any fundamental sense. Reason, she was convinced, had established that for all time. In encouraging among her followers the belief that she enjoyed a monopoly on reason and the rational, she created for herself a very special kind of power, the power to fling anyone who disagreed with her about anything into the abyss of “the irrational”—and that was a place we were all naturally eager to avoid. ""

He also refers to her earlier as the "Twentieth centuries most passionate champion of individual rights against the state". I would humbly suggest that at least Gandhi also be considered for such as honor (since he was afterall fighting against the British state and its right to control india and her people). regardless that sort of sweeping agrandizment of Rand was still being made by Branden in 1982.

a note on the whole "cult" label. If we are to make the category workable we must proceed with a dictionary definition of "Cult", and thus "cult leader". when this is done you will find that: 1. Cults are by no means limited to Kool-aid drinking or David Koresh, and 2. David Koresh had much more in common with Ayn Rand (that even her closest associates attest to) than Most of the Objectivists here are comfortable hearing. --Courtland Nerval 19:41, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

If "Cults" were broadened to include the non-Kool-Aid variety, it would have to be either a separate category or have different subcategorizations, possibly with a differently named super-category. —Centrx→talk • 21:06, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

That just sounds absolutely ridiculuous. Categories are there for easy of navigation. Breaking it up into innumerable sub and sub-sub (or super sub) categories defeats the entire purpose of the category,l or even having them ther for navigation; but then I guess that is the goal isn't it (it certainly seems that way to me). I might also point out that simply because You choose to read the word cult extremely narrowly does not mean that everyone else does; I for one, never have, and our article for cults does not narrow itself to the extremely focused form of cult you are focusing on. I would oppose such changes for very practicle reasons, as well as on principle.--Courtland Nerval 21:52, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Splitting it up into two or three categories is common in Wikipedia categories and assists navigation by separating articles from others less related and grouping them with others more related. —Centrx→talk • 22:35, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Here is some more from you, from the Same Nathaniel Branden Article:

""Ayn always insisted that her philosophy was an integrated whole, that it was entirely self-consistent, and that one could not reasonably pick elements of her philosophy and discard others. In effect, she declared, “It’s all or nothing.” Now this is a rather curious view, if you think about it. What she was saying, translated into simple English, is: Everything I have to say in the field of philosophy is true, absolutely true, and therefore any departure necessarily leads you into error. Don’t try to mix your irrational fantasies with my immutable truths. This insistence turned Ayn Rand’s philosophy, for all practical purposes, into dogmatic religion, and many of her followers chose that path.""

The link for the article is at the bottom of the page I posted above. --Courtland Nerval 20:30, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Even assuming that this be the uniform opinion of many reliables sources, this does not entail that Ayn Rand is a cult leader in the context of that category. Do you think Ayn Rand should be added to Category:Religious leaders also? —Centrx→talk • 02:29, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

"Self-consistent" does not mean "true". It means self-consistent. A work of fiction can be self-consistent. An absolute lie can be self-consistent. Absolute consistency does not imply absolute truth. Kafziel 15:48, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

""Even assuming that this be the uniform opinion of many reliables sources, this does not entail that Ayn Rand is a cult leader in the context of that category""...Assuming? Assuming? It IS the more or less uniform opinion of MANY reliable sources. Is it a majority? NO it is not. But it is a large and rather vocal minority. it is also a minority that has been demonized by orthodox Objectivists and Casual fans of Ayn Rand alike. And Please, tell me honestly what OTHER possible, reasonable interpretation of that quote you can come up other than to say that Branden is telling us that for many people Objectivism in the person of Ayn Rand was a dogmatic religion. Doesn't that strike you as exactly like david koresh? Doesn't that strike you as at least a passing accusation of cult leadership? at least for some? --Courtland Nerval 04:05, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment. The effort to label Rand a cult leader seems like a provocation. The label serves a minority of readers and almost certainly will infer more POV views than NPOV ones. Sorry, it just does. Use labels carefully or not at all. Put some of the information in article under "criticisms" or something. When in doubt, inform the reader of the facts and spare them the labels. --Vector4F 04:22, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment What useful, neutral purpose is served by her inclusion in that category? In what way does it aid research on any topic? Seems like nothing but veiled criticism to me, and that belongs in the criticism section, not used as a category as if it were absolute fact. The word "cult" is always tricky when applied to anyone, but this certainly doesn't seem to qualify. Kafziel 15:45, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment I'm going to chime in with a bit of prose from the current WP article on cults: "Other non-religious groups may also display cult-like characteristics." (My emphasis.) I think in this situation, the issue here is the definition of the word "cult." AR, her beliefs and followers do not quite qualify as a cult. They lack a few essential, intrinsic religious/spiritual components. That is, her followers my exhibit cult-like behavior, but exhibiting cult-like behavior does not make one a cultist any more than exhibiting feminine/masculine behavior makes one female/male. SO: My conclusion is that the article should absolutely note that AR has been described as a cult leader and her followers described as participating in a cult. Such references are easy to find. However, she should not be amongst the WP list of actual cult leaders, and a bit of prose clarifying the issue (That the description of her and her beliefs as "cult-like" differs from an actual cult) should be included. It is the metaphoric use of the word "cult" being used by such critics rather than the substantial one in common useage. [Note: Lest anyone think this comes from the POV of a supporter of her "philosophy": I'm not a big AR fan, myself. I agree with the characterization of her as a cult-leader. In fact, I think her general ideas are crap. However, such a classification fails to meet an objective standard.) Geeman 04:22, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Uncited claims from cited articles?

I didn't find anything in the Wikipedia:Citing sources about this specific topic, but what is the policy on citing a conjecture from an article, which itself does not substantiate its claim? The source given for this sentence in the article:

Rand's novels, when they were first published, "received almost unanimously terrible reviews"

is given as: "As Astonishing as Elvis", which is a review about a biography of Ayn Rand written by an unpublished author. This author does not cite her source for this claim. So how can it be considered valid here? It would have been unacceptable if she simply wrote that statement in this article. So how is writing it (unsubstantiated) in another article, on another site, then citing that article here valid?

Scratching my head here... --WayneMokane 22:51, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Reliable sources. It does appear to be a weak reference. The basis for it as a source is on accepting the authority of the London Review of Books to hire an honest, careful, knowledgeable person and to edit their articles in the same way. Jenny Turner or the editors may indeed have a fairly good knowledge of how this book was accepted when it was published, or have access to databases which confirm that. However, it would warrant solidifying or verification by citing major book reviews at the time of publication actually giving it terrible reviews. Because the statement may not be the result of careful consideration, other reliable sources that directly research the matter would be overriding. —Centrx→talk • 02:12, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Non-philosophers

I believe we previously discussed the fact that other philosophers had non-philosophers listed in the list of people they influenced, and thus it was ok for Anton LaVey et al to be on the list. There has been no counterargument given to this, and I expect some form of one to be made rather than another undiscussed revert. -- LGagnon 04:45, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

I think it depends on how philosophical it is. I removed Nick Peart, a musician, from that list after this comment, but the listing may be more appropriate for LaVey. However, if indeed LaVey's church be a farce, then I don't think it should be listed. —Centrx→talk • 04:58, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

It's hardly a farce. Granted, I don't agree with LaVeyan Satanism, but they seem to be pretty serious about what they are doing. -- LGagnon 14:53, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

What would make you say that Lavey's church is a farce? I will admit that I don't take them seriously, but it is more than clear that they do take THEMSELVES seriously, which is really all that matters here. Fortunately our approval or endorsement of their beliefs or claims is not required. --Courtland Nerval 16:18, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

It is just an argument I encountered somewhere in one of these discussions related to cults. The assertion was, indeed, that LaVey himself created it as somewhat of a joke/farce. I was only allowing for the possibility of that premise in my comment and have no independent reason to think it true. —Centrx→talk • 02:57, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

External links

The new link "* [http://wheelerdesignworks.netfirms.com/Objectivism/nfphpbb/index.php Objectivist Living] - An Objectivist Community dedicated to Ayn Rand and the Art of Living Consciously" has only 191 registered users - I am thinking that it isn't notable enough for inclusion - thoughts? --Trödel 15:30, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Delete that spam. -- LGagnon 15:46, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, it doesn't belong. LaszloWalrus 21:51, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

" Jewish American"?

You said below that, "Ayn Rand was influence[sic] by her Russian-Jewish-American experience.... and they were crutial[sic] to her theories and writings"

Do you have a source to cite for the claim that her ethnicity affected her as much or in the same way (or in any way) as her experiences in Russia and the United States? Contrary to being influenced by Judaism, as her parents were agnostic and largely non-observant, Ayn Rand may have been more influenced by Eastern Orthodox Christianity than any other religion.^[1] While her ethnic heritage should be mentioned in her "early life" section, it does not warrant being part of the defining, introductory paragraph, as it is not one of her essential characteristics. Her experiences in Russia and America are clearly an influence on her philosophy, however, the fact that her ancestors were Jewish is not.

Furthermore, your claim that her work was influenced by or based on the hackneyed subjectivist notions "of not converting others and not having ANY problem with people of other religions..." is a monstrous falsehood, as her entire life's work was dedicated to revolutionizing philosophy, a task only possible by "converting" people, and opposing all manifestations of whim-worship and mysticism - AKA "other religions." No amount of subjectivist slogans such as "don't convert others" will whitewash the fact that Ayn Rand advocated just that, most famously in her article reprinted in The Virtue of Selfishness where she states that a "fundamental aspect" of leading a rational life in an irrational society is to form and communicate moral judgements.^[2] "Judge and prepare to be judged"^[3]

As she was an avowed atheist and rejected all forms of collectivism, including the most primitve version - tribalism, labeling Ayn Rand as a "Jewish American" is a sham. It's a dishonest (and unreferenced) attempt to attribute her identity and achievement to her ethnic heritage. 83.46.66.236 20:24, 22 July 2006 (UTC)American Einherjer

People are born Jewish, American, Russian whatever. She was born in Russia and she was born Jewish. People don't care that Alan Greenspan, Bob Dylan, Sandy Koufax aren't religious. Most Jews aren't religious. It doesn't make them not Jewish. Its DIFFERENT to Christianity and Islam, where if you stop believing you are no longer a Christian or a Muslim. Ayn Rand was influence by her Russian-Jewish-American experience.... and they were crutial to her theories and writings. Her experiences in communist russia, freedom in America... and judaisms belief of not converting others and not having ANY problem with people of other religions... as long as they don't hurt you.

She may have been of Hebrew decent, but not every article on a person includes their ethnic background. She never identified herself as Jewish, was never identified as Jewish, and most definately did not practice Judaism. As the Jewish label is irrelevant I have edited it to simply American. 83.33.206.126 14:50, 21 July 2006 (UTC)American Einherjer

Nietzsche an influence?

I believe that after reading an except of one of his books, she liked him and was possibly influenced by him. However, after reading more of his ideas, she began to disagree with him. I am not entirely sure about this, but if it is, I think we should remove his name from the Influences section.

If she was influenced by him, as consensus seems to indicate, then even if she didn't agree with all his viewpoints, he was an influence. —vivacissamamente 08:10, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

I am still amazed at how endless repetition by looters still influences thinkers who try to be objective. Visit gutenberg.org and retrieve a copy of Nietsche's "Antichrist." Notice the name of the translator? Part of H.L. Mencken's appeal to the mad philosopher was his revulsion at prohibition--brought about by organized mysticism. Mencken resuscitated the memory of Nietsche in part to needle the bigots behind the coercive prohibition movements and undermine their authority. Mencken discusses Nietsche's flaws in his "Treatise on Right and Wrong," where he also discusses William Graham Sumner, whose "Forgotten Man" figured so prominently in "Atlas Shrugged." That neither is included among her influencers is a shameful indictment of the lack of research going into this page--or the stealth of her detractors in deleting such info.translator 15:58, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Critical views

There seems to be only one link in the "critical views" section. That seems like a natural place people for critical links. I know there are some in the footnote area; would it be reasonable to reproduce them below? —vivacissamamente 08:10, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Ayn Rand and Hilary Putnam

I'm trying to make Hilary Putnam into a featured article. But do you know what the problem is? I cannot find practically ANY biogaphical information on someone who is universally acclaimed as one of the leading philosophers (even outside the analytic school, I can assure you!) in the world today. I ask this out of simple frustration and incomprehension, not as an anti-Randian pot-shot: why is there so much damned info about Rand and almost nothing about Putnam. How can I find out more info about Putnam?' Do I have to wait until he is dead, or what? Or is this really a question of a cult of fame and popularity, not in a negative sense, versus someone who hasn't published popular books and so forth? Does anyone here know anything or can find out anything about Putnam? Why is EVERYONE battling over the time details of Rand articles and no-one gives a damn about Hilary Putnam? Alienus, can you help me out here?--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 22:27, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Somehow Putnam didn't inspire the same kind of devotion Rand did. I mean, there wasn't a community devoted to his teachings that immigrated to live near him. No one wrote a pamphlet explaining in rather positive terms who he was. I've met people who say things like "The Fountainhead changed my life!" I can't recall hearing that about any Putnam piece. He was a philosopher in a traditional sense, who didn't give "non-philosophical types" the answers they were looking for, so he doesn't have devotees. Alienus seems to have left, according to his user page. Incidentally, what did you hope to accomplish by putting that on this page, an influx of pro-Rand biographers contributing to the Putnam article? —vivacissamamente 04:53, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

The thing is, Rand built a cult following on a bunch of low quality romance novels (as someone who studies literature, I can guarantee you that's an accurate assesment of their value). She attempts to dumb down "philosophy" into merely "whatever I say it is" out of spite for academia. She had the "rebel cool" image that worked for pseudo-rebels who wanted to still be conformists by ditching religion but still conforming to bland right wing politics so they could still be part of the in-crowd of conformity. Essentially, Rand is "mall punk" for right wingers; and like in the case of mall punk, it has much more followers than the real thing (in this case, both philosophy and real non-conformity). With so many conformists following her, she had no trouble getting biographies written. -- LGagnon 06:00, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

In answer to viv's question: No, it's just that I used to follow this page a while back and remember that there were not just pro-Rand contributors but huge numbers of people: pro-Rand, anti-Rand, neutral, etc.. who all flocked to this page. The obvious answer just struck me though after reading LGagnong's comment above: Rand is not just more popularly known, but she is extremely controversial. Puntnam is marginally "controversial" among academic analytic philsophers who know about him. So that's pretty much settled. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 07:28, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Ayn Rand's "virtue" of selfishness versus satanism.

I continually edited the Ayn Rand page to remove the unconscionable reference to satanist Anton LaVey. Ayn Rand no more influenced his revolting species of pseudo-selfishness than a pedophile could claim that Mother Teresa's lifelong dedication to some of the world's most vulnerable children "influenced" his attraction for a child's touch.

That is first-order conceptual perversion. --[[User:AOluwatoyin 08:06, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Read WP:NPOV to see why you edits are unacceptable. -- LGagnon 17:45, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

To those who think that Ayn Rand influenced Anton LeVay: do you believe that these two individuals advocated the same kind of selfishness?

No, but I don't see how that's relevant. The Anton LaVey article cites a reasonable source[7] that says "Despite the fact that LaVey described his religion as "just Ayn Rand's philosophy with ceremony and ritual added" (cited in Ellis, p. 180)." It would be better to get this sourced directly to LaVey directly, but if LaVey himself calls Rand an influence, that seems to me to settle the matter.

Someone can be an influence on someone else, even if the person who is influenced has a significantly different belief system... or misunderstood the influencer. Did Ptolemy influence Copernicus? Did Jesus influence Torquemada? Surely the answer to both questions is "yes."Dpbsmith (talk) 16:32, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Two days ago I wrote to Andrew Bernstein's assistant publicist, asking him to forward a letter of questions pertaining to philosophy to Bernstein. I included this issue of Wikipedia listing Anton LeVay as an individual influenced by Ayn Rand. I'm very curious as to what his response will be. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.220.246.20 (talk • contribs).

Obviously you couldn't cite a personal communication, but if you can find a citable source that says in so many words that Ayn Rand was not an influence on Anton LaVey, that would certainly be relevant information for both the Ayn Rand and Anton LaVey articles. Neutrality does not involve suppressing points of view, but it certainly allows representing conflicting points of view. It may be embarrassing to supporters of Ayn Rand that LaVey claimed to have been influenced by her, and, I'm not very familiar with either Rand or LaVey but I think it likely that most would regard LaVey as having misunderstood or distorted whatever he said he took from Rand. Every promoter of a belief system has proselytes they rather wish they didn't have; it goes with the territory. Dpbsmith (talk) 16:22, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Editing the reference to satanism from the Ayn Rand article.

There seems to be some confusion about the exact nature of a neutral point of view with regard to the Wikipedia cannon. Neutrality is not a licence to assert associations and intimate linkages that otherwise would require rigorous argument and analysis.

As a philosopher, I well know that neutrality cuts both ways. This protects against assertions that in fact serve hidden agendas such as attempts to sneak in legitimacy for unspeakable perversions like satanism and pedophilia. Again, the prohibition, explicit in the Wikipedia discussion of neutrality, is precisely against such brazen assertionism.

Reverting this edit again, without further argument should be subject to blocking.--AOluwatoyin 21:07, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Not that I agree with LGagnon - I rarely do anywayz ;) But AOluwatoyin, please notice that I consider your comments, if not your edits, highly biased and unacceptable for a serious discussion. Your persistent comparison of LaVeyan Satanism with "pedophilia" is laughable, to put it mildly. My understanding is that LaVeyan sysmbolism (that is all they claim to practice, no evil Moloch worship implied) relies on totally false premises and historical misinterpretations, and he probably doesn't deserve the title of "philosopher" at all. However, that system is simply a "ritualistic-atheistic" system of ideas drawing from radical individualism, hedonism and Nitzschean dyonesianism allegedly filtered through Ayn Rand plus some minor, less serious, sources. It may not be a great philosophy, but it isn't simply a "perversion" (calling it such names and engaging in wild comparisons is precisely the kind of flamewar publicity these people are looking for.)Justice III 21:45, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Response to critics: I do not know what your exact intellectual preparation is but please refrain from ad hominem attacks such as you disgracefully engage in with regard to what you reference as "your [my] comments." An intellectual responds to (a) specific comment(s) with (a) specific argument(s). Your loose, generic attack on "[my] comments" -- as if you, or indeed anyone, with regard to anyone else, could possibly cover such a range -- is paradigmatically the sort of personal mode of reference that Wikipedia properly, professionally, abhors.

Now, being with regard to the analogy involving satanism and pedophilia as employed in my discussion, you are gravely conceptually confused in terms of the exact logical force of "analogy." As a logic professor, I can tell you that an analogy is not a mere comparison. That is why when people take offence at analogies, one has to flesh out the force of the parallel, cognitively as well as emotively.

My point is that there is nothing in the exact Ayn Rand cannon that can be conceptually linked in terms of "influence," with regard to satanism. You do not in fact dispute this. But then you cannot simply go on to maintain your position, status quo ante. You will need more than generic nihilism/atheism to do this. Ayn Rand was many things in generic terms. She was a woman, for instance. That establishes no link of intellectual nuance between her and, say, women in philosophy, or in any other field of endeavour for that matter.

"[A]llegedly filtered through Ayn Rand," as you assert, will not do. The reference to Nietzsche covers too much ground. Others have used it to brand Ayn Rand a Nazi!!!!!!! You will need to flesh out specific components of Ayn Rand's theory of selfishness, something unique to her, that can then be linked in loaded terms like "influence" to satanism. This you do not even attempt to do.

I am re-editing the Ayn Rand article accordingly. Please do not revert again on the mere basis of your assertionism, as I have previously adumbrated.

I have still to hear from a mediator with regard to previous blocking perpetrated against me. I now add your threats to the matter. Please refer to the appropriate authorities. I am very disappointed that no-one has contacted me in this regard. I cannot believe that Wikipedia, particularly in view of recent accusations of bias and plain inaccuracies/distortions that made their way into the mainstream media, would leave such matters at the mercy of your failure to provide needed analytic muscle to this debate. -- User: AOluwatoyin 21:51, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

You can quit claiming to be a professor; with the way you write, you wouldn't have been given a job in any department of any accredited university. That, of course, is irrelevant to anything here whether you are telling the truth or not, so please stop using phony and/or real accrediation to back your claims, because it'll get you nowhere here (trust me, the Randists don't trust my real educational value).

Likewise, stop veiling personal attacks in bloated jargon. The last sentence of your comment was obviously one. That kind of thing could get you banned again if you go too far with it.

I have already explained to you that your edits are in violation of WP:NPOV. I suggest you come up with a logical argument instead of throwing around an illogical strawman of "Rand has nothing to do with satanism" (which we never accused here of being involved with in the first place). -- LGagnon 05:32, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Hmm. So you accuse me of being unpolite, and yet then goes on to dismiss "your [my] comments" as a "failure" and "assertionism". Very coherent. But never mind. Anyway, I should mention that I do agree with your edit for the very reasons I mentioned before (LaVey isn't really a Philosopher and his alleged phlisophical genealogy is flawed and confuse, so better not add Rand to the mélange.) I was just [specifically] commenting on your quite passionate comment above, which I thought was somewhat exaggerated (as we really do not need such extreme arguments and spicy analogies, the issue is very simple), that's all. I wonder what sort of "threat" you might have seen in it? Please read again and tell me. Are you sure you're not mistaking me for someone else??? Now, in response to this other, quite illogical accusation:

"Please do not revert again on the mere basis of your assertionism"

I really don't know what you are talking about, since I have not edited this article for a long time, and never reverted a single edit from yours. If you want to protest those reverts, please do a simple search for the person responsible before you start blaming the first fellow wikipedian who comes your way for things they haven't done. If there's anyone who should take umbrage here, believe me, it's me. Justice III 04:18, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Remove LaVey because he's not a philosopher? Rand is not a philosopher! She has only one academic in the entire world on her side! It's bad enough we misinform readers by calling her a philosopher; it's utterly ridiculous that we hypocritically denounce LaVey's philosophic value on the same grounds that we accredit Rand's value. -- LGagnon 05:32, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Further responses to critics: Unfortunately, since I focus on reasoned argument, I do not draw personal distinctions between critics. My concern is argument, not the actual man behind the argument. So please abide the non-personal conflations.

The advantage of my cognitive, non-personal approach is all the more clear when you read the juvenile mode of vulgarian reference, by one of my critics, supra, to my intellectual status.

I'll also try to make the most of the situation as I wade through the bad grammar, misspellings and/or typos, and related infelicities of articulation.

You make mention of the need for a logical argument. I responded earlier, very specifically to the issue of the Wikipedia Neutrality of articulation. But here's yet another specific argument, point and counter-point.

You attempt to vindicate, if not actually justify, the reference to satanism in the Ayn Rand article, in terms of what you claim to be "allegedly filtered through Ayn Rand." I said this will not do. Let me unpack that riposte further here.

When you say "allegedly" in this matter, you all but concede that the claim is not buttressed, only asserted. Now, the reference to satanism is what is at issue. It is what is being disputed. To say it is "alleged" is not to establish it but in fact to acknowledge the very dispute that I make. In other words, you cannot appeal to the very "alleged" matter in order to establish it. That is to say, you commit the "petitio" fallacy. Begging the question. Circularity.

You fail then to make good the reference to satanism in terms of the "influence" of Ayn Rand.

I don't know what you mean by such assertions as that Ayn Rand has only "one academic in the entire world on her side!" Concepts are not consensus. That too is a logical argument. Please focus on reasoned debate, not poll taking. Again, I cannot believe that Wikipedia would allow this kind of democratized failure, if not downright refusal, to argue. This is what I call intellectual apartheid. It makes a fetish of mere optatives, with a familiar concession to relativism.

I do not attack the "scholar" of satanism in this respect at all. I simply argue the analytic point of linkage or lack thereof. Please do not conflate "explanation" with assertion. You cannot simply "allege" the influence of Ayn Rand. Otherwise, a prosecutor could secure a conviction simply because there was a charge made on the basis of allegations in the first place.

You cannot simply claim "influence" on satanism. Otherwise, you might as well include "Neo-Nazis," on the grounds that "many" (you like numbers) "allege" that!

You're confused with regard to the Straw Man argument. Rand "has nothing to do with satanism" involves only Ayn Rand; there is no Straw Man nor does it make one of her. In fact, my point is to argue the matter in favour of Rand, i.e; with reason, not distortion.

Perhaps the sticker: "The neutrality of this article is disputed" might help.

Oh, by the way, they're Randians, not Randists. --[[User: AOluwatoyin 07:48, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't think you understand how Wikipedia works. We are not here to write our own views into the article. We are not here to add original research to the articles. What we are here to do is collect outside research and edit it into the articles. We aren't here to argue over the facts as we see them, but as outside sources see them. You have your own philosophic opinion? Good for you, but if you can't cite an outside source and have nothing but your own original research to back it up, then you have nothing to argue for here.

Second of all, it is already mentioned in the article that LeVay considers Rand an influence. That, and the fact that bits and pieces of Randism are found in LaVeyian Satanism, is all the proof we need to add him to the list. You have yet to prove otherwise outside your own "rationalization". And no, we won't add neo-nazis, because we don't have a source for that, just as you do not have a source for your claims. -- LGagnon 19:32, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Response to LGagnon: Thanks for the note, LGagnon. Timothy McVeigh cited Libertarian Randianism as an influence, and there are certainly "bits and pieces," as you put it, of a uniquely Randian opposition to non-limited government in interview materials involving him. Why is he not in the "influenced" box in the Ayn Rand article? Why was he left out/not included/deliberately kept out?????? There is perhaps not room for everyone, so why (is it important to)include LaVey, but not/instead of McVeigh? Why does LaVey but not McVeigh belong? Thus I am again editing LaVey out. Thankyou. This matter does need to go to editing mediation/arbitration.AOluwatoyin 21:37, 9 August 2006 (UTC)AOluwatoyin

What???!!! What? Has reason finally prevailed???? I proceeded to edit the Rand piece as promised just supra , lo and behold, LaVey had been subject to a waylay. He's no longer in the "influenced" box. What happened? Who did the dirty job? Why? Again, I'm obssessed with reasoned discourse.AOluwatoyin 22:09, 9 August 2006 (UTC)AOluwatoyin

LaszloWalrus is a known vandal who makes pro-Rand POV edits. His edit was reverted, as this is just one of the many edits Wikipedia's vandal-coddling admins let him get away with. -- LGagnon 23:15, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Reply to LGagnon: My goodness. I thought you were going soft in the head there for a moment. Nice to see you back in personal attack form. Gee! "pro-Rand POV edits," allowed by "vandal coddling admins".... Do you need an updated dictionary, LGagnon??? My dear, as no less than Freud himself would say, some edits are just edits. Not necessarily "pro" anyone. It is possible to edit without even having any interest in, let alone bias in favour of the subject (matter). That's yet another elemental and elementary logical point I have to make to you before I return to revert what you reverted. Good for you, LaszloWalrus!!!!!!!!!!!! AOluwatoyin 06:17, 10 August 2006 (UTC)AOluwatoyin

If you had been here long enough, or at least read his user page, you'd know he has a bias in favor of Rand. He's made tons of biased edits over the past year, almost all of which have been rverted due to the fact that his edits fly in the face of cited facts (as in this case).

And don't worry, LaVey will be back in the article tomorrow; I just have to wait for the anti-anti-vandalism timer (better known as WP:3RR) to wear off. In the long run, both you and him will fail to force your biases into the article. -- LGagnon 06:54, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

LGagnon: Warning, Another Warning, Final Warning: Your Foul Conduct.

Please STOP sending ill-written messages to my talk page. I will continue to edit the satanism reference till it goes to mediators/arbitrators who hopefully employ reason rather than emotion in dealing with conceptual disputes.

You have engaged in personal attacks with regard to everybody, including the people you call "vandal-coddling admins" at Wikipedia. The only thing they seem to be coddling is your foul, fiendish conduct. Perhaps you don't get the message from anybody. Perhaps something is lost in translation. Perhaps you don't get their French -- only your threats!!!

STOP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You violate every Wikipedia rule of professionalism and seem to get away with it. I order you to stop!!!!AOluwatoyin 08:23, 10 August 2006 (UTC)AOluwatoyin

I've simply given you warnings in the appropriate manner. No admin is going to claim what I did was wrong, because, unlike you, I've followed the rules. You have now recieved your final warning; I suggest you quit your personal attacks immediately. -- LGagnon 19:42, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Reply to LGagnon: You seem to relish your apparently buddy-buddy relationship with admins. I gather that's why you can insult even them, subject them to name-calling, "vandal-coddling," you called them, and get away with it. Why does Wikipedia continue to indulge you in this regard? You bring shame to Wikipedia as an intellectual enterprise.AOluwatoyin 20:07, 10 August 2006 (UTC)AOluwatoyin

You do know that I'm reporting each and every personal attack you make, right? That's why there was an admin telling you to cut it out on your talk page. You have 2 post-final warning personal attacks reported; you're only making this hard on yourself by persisting. -- LGagnon 20:14, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Neutrality sticker and Ayn Rand article.

Lo and behold, again!!!!!!!!!!!! I suggested the addition of the sticker ("The neutrality of this article is disputed") to the Rand article in my relentless pursuit of a truly neutral POV, fair, reasoned presentation, and again, again,again, lo and behold, the sticker emerges!!!!!!! Is reason once again about to prevail???!!!!AOluwatoyin 20:17, 10 August 2006 (UTC)AOluwatoyin

This is a temporary warning until I am able to revert your edit. It'll be gone once I get around to putting LeVay back in the article. -- LGagnon 20:20, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Oh, no, no, LGagnon strikes again: Did I celebrate too soon???? LGagnon has just posted another "post-final" warning!!!!! Oh no!!!!!!! And before I could save this ... another "temporary warning"!!!!!! Oh no!!! Shouldn't that be "post-temporary"???? Oh no!!! AOluwatoyin 20:27, 10 August 2006 (UTC)AOluwatoyin

"Rhymes with"

It seems like saying "'Ayn' rhymes with 'whine'" is a little insulting. I think "mine" is more appropriate, but a more neutral term would be preferable. lordspaz 15:17, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Why LaVey anyway????

Well, so far, Reason Rules. The Neutrality sticker is still up, though LGagnon threatened, I believe, that it would only be temporary. Intellectually, I am actually rather satisfied to leave it at that.

But --- Not!!!!!!!!! For one thing, I enjoy intellectual duelling much too much. All Hail Wikipedia! Ah, for the days of learning for the sake of learning!

I raised the question as part of my pursuit here: why LaVey? Why not Timothy McVeigh? Again, there's not enough room for everyone, so how were the selected selected? We know who is included. Who was excluded, or perhaps simply "non-included," i.e; unintentionally, in contradistinction to intentional exclusion?????!!

What is more, in view of the evolution of terrorism – to all intents and purposes – virtually morphing into a veritable weltanschauung, Timothy McVeigh takes on a new urgency, relevance and intellectual/philosophical challenge.

My fear is that the whole effort is loaded, biased, in violation of Wikipedia rules. The whole thing seems to be a charade to ride satanism in on the ratiocinative coattails of Objectivist Ayn Rand. Otherwise, again, why not Timothy McVeigh? Again, he explicitly mentioned, and is often discussed in terms of Randian libertarianism. She would disown him like a Bolshevik, of course, but then she would disown LaVey in utter disgust!!!! So, if there's room only for one of the two, why LaVey?

If I don't receive reasoned responses, I will edit LaVey out again. Again, boys and girls, my emphasis is on a truly Wikipedian neutral POV.AOluwatoyin 08:08, 12 August 2006 (UTC)AOluwatoyin

Oh, by the way, regarding my being blocked -- on grounds of incivility, no less -- LGagnon who started all the trouble, on the other hand, does not get blocked? He who refers to admins as "vandal-coddling"??!!! That's not "incivility"?!!!! Such revolting double-standards will not stand. I'm just getting warmed up, here!!!!!AOluwatoyin 08:08, 12 August 2006 (UTC)AOluwatoyin.

First of all, you are once again violating WP:NPA and WP:Civility. If you don't want to get banned again, I suggest you show some respect for your fellow editors. Do not call my edits (or anyone else's edits) "a charade".

Second of all, if you remove LaVey again, you will be violating WP:NPOV again. We have a source cited, thus you have no reason to remove him other than your own bias (which is all you have to say for yourself).

Your Tim McVeigh arguement is just a red herring to avoid giving a logical argument for the disinclusion of LeVay. McVeigh has nothing to do with his inclusion. And McVeigh isn't in the article because he did not create a specific belief system as Rand and LeVay did. Also, both are psuedophilosophers, while McVeigh was just a terrorist. Nonetheless, this is no more than an attempt to distract from the argument, and thus has nothing to do with LeVay. If you really are a logic professor as you claim to be, you would understand such a simple "logic 101" concept.

And you were banned because you treat other editors like dirt. My comments were commenting on the flaws of the system (admins are encouraged to do very little about vandals until things get out of hand), not the other editors or any specific admin.

I'm reporting you again for your actions here. -- LGagnon 21:06, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Rand is not a philosopher

I don't think we ever resolved one big problem with the article: Rand is not a philosopher. The article continues to push the POV suggestion that she is indeed a philosopher, which is an opinion only supported by her and her followers. There is only one professor in all of academia that supports the idea that she is a philosopher, and thus the article is pushing an extreme minority view as the truth. We are essentially doing the complete opposite of what we are supposed to do with psuedoscience articles in an article about psuedophilosophy. The NPOV warning will remain on this article until we truly resolve this dispute. -- LGagnon 04:11, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

A few suggestions for what we should do with this article:

Change the infobox to Template:Infobox Writer
Remove all POV claims that she is a philosopher; replace them with something along the lines of "Rand claimed to be a philosopher."
Do not refer to Objectivism as a philosophy; a term such as "ideology" would be more neutral.
Remove categories that refer to her as a philosopher. -- LGagnon 04:15, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Also, I'd like to point out this line from the article:

Rand viewed herself primarily as a novelist, not a philosopher -- LGagnon 04:34, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Response to Suggestions

There are too many conceptual difficulties with LGagnon's suggestions. Again, we need good grounding, not unsourced opinion.

To begin. The distinction between philosophy proper and pseudo-philosophy requires a fleshing out of criteria. Don't conflate Anglo-American analytic philosophy with the ubiquitous belief-system development that preceded it. Or you can scrub virtually all Continental systems (endless varieties of Existentialism(s))from the category (of philosophy).

In fact, the analytic of North America is merely a method for doing philosophy. It eschews systems as such, due to the influence of empiricist/positivist skepticism going all the way back to David Hume. (Recall Hume awakened Kant -- at least so Kant relayed -- from "dogmatic slumber." Philosophy has not been the same since.)

Further, though we speak of belief-systems, since the decline of the Middle ages, and the notorious rote of the Trivium/Quadrivium, these systems have been increasingly secular and secularized in knowledge and value emphases.

In that respect, Objectivism is no less than its equally original, equally American conceptual cousin: pragmatism. Indeed, LGagnon's very student-musings about the exact status of Objectivism in this regard remind one of the reception pragmatism suffered (and suffers still) by comparison to earlier Theocentric philosophic systems. William James famously claimed that the very first real lecture on philosophy that he ever attended was the one he himself taught.

Ergo, "ideology" would not be a neutral mode of reference with regard to Objectivism anyway. That loads the controversial "Objectivism-as-cult" smack into the supposedly neutral explication of the system. It utterly distorts the sourcing and external material that is required by Wikipedia. It loads original opinion/research of the most expansive sort. It fails to unpack the place of reason in the Randian corpus.

Oh incidentally, many, very many philosophers in the analytic school disdain the Continentalists as philosophers. They used to refer to them, when favourably disposed, as philosophes -- a la that great Continental Trio of the Enlightenment, Rousseau, Voltaire, Montesquieu). Othertimes, analytics would dismiss your average Continentalist as a "philosoher-manque."

Ayn Rand did not consider herself primarily a novelist. She explicitly addressed the issue of the novelist-philosopher distinction and with characteristic disdain: sneering at what she perceived to be the implication that one ruled the other out. She could not have been more univocal on the symbiotic connection she saw between the two. This is very serious indeed.AOluwatoyin 08:39, 15 August 2006 (UTC)AOluwatoyin

When this dsipute last came up, it was established (by agreement of both sides) that Rand created a philosophy in the vernacular sense - that is, a set of things she believed - rather than the academic sense. The term "ideology" is much more appropriate for such a concept, as using "philosophy" confuses the reader into thinking we are talking about academic philosophy. If we kept it the same, it would be like using "theory" to mean "wild guess" in a psuedoscience article. That would be biased in favor of the psuedoscientists, so a more neutral term would have to be used instead. Here, with Rand's beliefs, the term ideology fits the agreed upon definition of her beliefs. -- LGagnon 15:58, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

So, just to be clear, your definition of philosopher is "creator of a philosophy which was generally well-accepted in academia"? In that case I would have to disagree because there is enough interest in it outside of academia to be taken seriously. --WayneMokane 20:03, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Further conceptual difficulties with LGagnon's student-musings: Did Continentalist (Existentialists) create "philosophy" in the "vernacular" sense, whatever exactly that means? Again, I specified the need for criteria, to be unpacked, criterion for criterion, in distinguishing philosophy proper from pseudo-philosophy.

The analogy from "theory" in contradistinction to "wild guess" is actually useful for probing the matter further. But again, LGagnon fails to grasp complex nuance. There are in fact sub-categories of theoretic formulation and validation. Mere hypotheses are not on a par with established facts. This issue comes up again and again in the evolution debate, for instance. Still there are "guesstimates" that enjoy unbiased respect in all disciplines, including the hard sciences.

The foundational divide is not a matter of "ideology," politically deconstructed and/or historically situated. It is a matter of epistemology, concerning category conflations in fleshing out validation. LGagnon confuses "dogma" with "doxa" (belief).

The task of criteria rigorously pursued would be too tasking for the unfinished undergraduate preparation of LGagnon, to be sure. But a fortiori, we need to be very careful about adequate qualifications with orders of this magnitude.AOluwatoyin 20:59, 15 August 2006 (UTC)AOluwatoyin

ACCORDINGLY, BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED, I have edited the intro to read more neutrally, "system of thought," thus there is no need to mention the word "philosophy" at all. (See further edit detail, infra.) AOluwatoyin 22:04, 15 August 2006 (UTC)AOluwatoyin.

There is only one person in all of academia who believes she is a philosopher? Really? Yeah, that's whay there is a section of the American Philosophical Society dedicated to Rand. Apparently, Tara Smith (U of Texas), Gary Hull (Duke), John Ridpath (York), George Reisman (Pepperdine), David Kelley (Vassar), Chris Sciabarra (NYU), Jaegwon Kim (Brown), Robert Hessen (Stanford), John Cooper (Princeton), and the myriad others count as just one person. I shall be happy to post the whole list I have collected so far (not exhaustive, by any means) if anyone is interested. LaszloWalrus 23:34, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Tara Smith is the only tenured professor who supports Rand. Other than her, only a small handful do. The vast majority of professors don't even consider her worthy of being commented on, positively or negatively. In the meantime, the main supporters of the idea that Rand is a philosopher are Rand's followers. We are not going to push a belief held by an extreme minority group as fact, even if they have the majority here amongst this article's editors. -- LGagnon 00:12, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm no expert, but I think LGagnon has a point here. Philosophy is indeed an academic discipline, one in which Ayn Rand was not trained or recognized. And I'm not aware of Objectivism having any significant following either in the analytic or continental traditions (tenured or not, most of the folks listed by Laszlo above appear to come from other disciplines).

Now, the situation is complicated by a) the terms "philosophy" and "philosopher" are widely used in a non-scholarly sense, and b) Rand and her followers make claims to scholarliness which the academy doesn't recognize. I assume our guidelines regarding pseudoscience (which I'm not familiar with) would apply for latter, but I've no idea about the former.

RadicalSubversiv E 02:26, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

As terminology, "system of thought" is misleading unless it be purely some methodological philosophy, and obscures what is meant. Objectivism certainly seems to be a philosophy somewhat similar to others, with premises and deductions, however weak or strange some may think it. Note there are numerous sources mentioned at Objectivism (Ayn Rand) and on the Talk page at [8] indicating it as a philosophy, and apparently numerous professors at the bottom of [9] which consider it a rather legitimate philosophy. Also, while a big contemporary name like Derrida might be widely taught at universities, this does not mean that the any of the dozens or hundreds of philosophies not widely taught are not still philosophies. —Centrx→talk • 14:18, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Folks, it takes five minutes to read. (from the bibliography page) *Comments on Rand's style and scholarship, by Gary Merrill. Not a philosopher, not an academic. Utterly bankrupt. Zweifel 10:07, 27 August 2006 (UTC) = It took me a year and a half to grow out of her!

I refer you to the book, "The Philosophic Thought of Ayn Rand" (edited by Douglas J. Den Uyl and Douglas B. Rasmussen). It is a collection of essays on Objectivist philosophy. Some are critical, others are not, but none of the academics/philosophers who contributed identify themselves as "Objectivists." However, in the introduction, one finds this sentence: "All the contributors to this volume agree that she is a philosopher and not a popularizer." To say that Ayn Rand is not a philosopher is pure POV. Nothing else. Let's stop this nonsense. -- 24.220.246.20

And yet to say that she is one is also POV. You are missing the point that she is much too controversial of a figure to call her a philosopher when so many academics don't consider her one. The intro to this article calls her a philosopher, yet the footnote that comes right afterwards claims that not everyone considers her one. That is why we have the self-contradiction tag at the start of the article now. We could easily clear the problem up if we didn't refer to her as being a philosopher, but pointed out that her followers consider her a philosopher, but most academics do not. How hard is it to use such simple NPOV language in the article? -- LGagnon 18:22, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Again, let me point out that none of the academic philosophers whose essays make up the book The Philosophic Thought of Ayn Rand are "her followers." Many of them are, in fact, critical of Objectivism. But that doesn't change the fact that every one of them agrees Ayn Rand is a philosopher in her own right. To say that only Objectivists consider Ayn Rand to be a philosopher is absolutely wrong. Do you have a reference to substantiate your claim that "most" academics do not think that Ayn Rand is a philosopher? Based on the sources I have encountered, such as the above-mentioned book and Britannica Encyclopedia (a Randist source, I'm sure), I still argue that removing any reference to Ayn Rand as a philosopher is wrong.

To Mr. Anonymous IP Address: I'm sorry if you misunderstood me. I wasn't asking you to cite a book, provide no details about that book, and no defense of Rand as a philosopher. I was instead asking you to defend Rand as a philosopher in light of the criticisms against her leveled in that professor's piece.

--In light of the fact that she is afforded little attention she has received from the academic philosophical community (and within their classrooms), and in light of the fact that the literary community believes her books to lack artistic merit, principally because her characters don't appear to have any characteristics that would make them human beings (believe it or not, people don't often launch into 70-page treatises on money at dinner parties), and above all (for my purposes) because my parents, who were both fans of Rand (and founded the U of MD Ayn Rand club during her heyday in the 1960s) and both came to abandon her philosophy for different reasons (though the one they held in common was the cult-like behavior of her fans during the break with Branden), to me lends support to charges that she is a pseudophilosophical literary hack, expounding a set of ideas designed to seduce above average teenagers with their apparent Truth (capital T)...teenagers who will hopefully abandon her before they lose all of their social skills. Look at the way objectivists behave -- going around convinced of the Truth they possess, proselytizing to people who don't want to listen to them, condemning in rabid, vociferous terms, etc - exactly like evangelical Christians.

--Look, I was into her when I was 17, after reading Atlas Shrugged. But I abandoned her after realizing that the questions she posed, let alone the answers she provided, were shallow. I am still an atheist, I still consider myself a scientist, but I found the questions posed by Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky, and Skakespeare (and others) regarding uncertainty in life to be far more interesting and fulfilling. I still believe in the power of markets, even though I have abandoned laissez-faire because of the unrealistic assupmptions upon which it is based (and I say this as someone essentially pursuing a PhD in Political Economy). Despite the immediate reaction condemnation from Objectivists such statements receive, I believe I now have a far better understanding of reason and the capacity of the mind and human life than I would have had I stopped with her.

--What ultimately disqualifies her as a philosopher (and political thinker) is that she does not do what philosophers do. Philosophers ask fundamental questions, and then seek to provide answers as best they can. The question, and the ambiguity it recognizes, is frequently far more important than the answer. In what are best deemed polemics, Rand, on the other hand, has a set of answers, and poses "questions" from which she can provide her answers (the most important being economics/capitalism/etc, not metaphysics and epistemology), and then dresses those answers up as if they were the only ones derived from "reason" (the definition of which seems to be, "what I, Ayn Rand, think"). Her thought is therefore not philosophy, but a belief system (or "ideology"), with all the trappings (and all the psychological comfort) of any other belief system, and is for that reason not held in high regard by the academic community. Philosophy tries to find the answers to questions. Ayn Rand tries to find the questions to her answers.

--Right, so it was fun wading into this discussion and thinking about 12th grade for a while, but I got a lot of work do do. I don't think I'll be back (though I might look at the replies posted here). Please don't construe my post as a personal attack, though please do acknowledge the empirically recognized poor social skills of Objectivists, in yourselves or your critics.

Zweifel 23:49, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm finding it hard to believe that this section exists. How can anyone claim that Ayn Rand was not a philosopher? She DEVELOPED the PHILOSOPHY of Objectivism! Her two primary roles/passions/occupations in life were writing and philosophy. Is there actually a debate happening trying to resolve what constitutes philosophy? My friends, philosophy is not a "scholarly" task that only a select, "trained" few are allowed to partake in. Philosophy is THOUGHT. I invoke dictionary.com's definitions of philosophy; namely, the first and fourth definitions: "1. the rational investigation of the truths and principles of being, knowledge, or conduct." Rand's "doctrine" of Objectivism, if that's what you're calling it, was developed as a rational investigation and questioning of people's values and way of life. She deals with issues from politics to metaphysics in her novels and nonfictions. Hell, she wrote the book entitled "Philosophy: Who Needs It?" Now, dictionary.com's fourth definition: "4. the critical study of the basic principles and concepts of a particular branch of knowledge, esp. with a view to improving or reconstituting them: the philosophy of science." Rand's works receive so much flak because she challenged accepted principles and esteemed selfishness as virtue. She was examining and criticizing beliefs and widespride doctrines of selflessness and trying to reconstitute man's moral system. Whether you believe that she had wrongful ideas or even took some information from other philosophers, a book judging a moral system is a book of philosophy. A book of philosophy cannot be written by any but a philosopher. 24.225.223.21 10:29, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

That's not true. Tons of writers have written about morals; do we consider all writers who have done so to be philosophers? Why single out Rand as one and not the vast majority of writers? Even Stephen King developed a whole way of thinking in The Dark Tower. Is he a philosopher? There are countless philosophy classes where they will tell you "everyone is a philosopher" simply because we think about things from time to time. Do we use "philosopher" as a synonym for human? Obviously, we need some boundaries for this categorization, and Rand does not seem to fit the boundaries laid out by academia, which is often the determiner of who is or is not a philosopher. Many (if not most) academics dispute her status, and few will recommend teaching her mind-garbage to impressionable minds who have yet to learn what real philosophy is about. -- LGagnon 16:32, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

LGagnon, can you prove that "many if not most" academics dispute Rand's status as a philosopher? A professor's passionate criticism of Objectivism is not the same as denying that Rand is a philosopher. Also, you continue to think that only "Rand's followers" call her a philosopher, and that every one else says that she developed an "ideology" (as you say it). This is utterly false. In addition to that book I cited earlier (which is composed of some essays highly critical of Objectivism), Britannica Encyclopedia, the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and numerous publications by academics all state that Rand, whatever her errors, was a philosopher in her own right.

By the way, what do you mean by "real philosophy"? If philosophy can be defined as an integrated view of existence, man, and man's relationship to existence, then I don't see why one couldn't accept the fact that Objectivism is a philosophy. May I ask which of Ayn Rand's non-fiction works you have read? (As a side note, I will say that Atlas Shrugged is not what I would call "good" literature.)

Dear Mr. Anonymous IP Address, presumably someone already BANNED for arguing his ideology to the point of personal attack on this very forum: In your "response", you commit two serious academic failings. 1) The first is equivocation: equating "philosophy" as in "the pursuit of answers to fundamental questions through rational, as opposed to religious or mystic, means" with "I have a philosophy about how to do the dishes"-sort of "philosophy". In this case, you are claiming that she is a philosopher by means of tautology, that she developed the "philosophy" of Objectivism (I'll give you that), which we are claiming is a philosophy of the latter sort (viz., about how to do the dishes), in this case Objectivism being "a 'philosophy' about how to justify Ayn Rand's beliefs, while sufficiently cloaking them in the authority of reason so as to be able to seduce impressionable 17-year olds." The charge being leveled here is that Objectivism is a post hoc justification of Rand's beliefs -- however well-reasoned that justification is -- rather than the investigation of a fundamental question without prior belief. While dictionary.com might be a good resource for finding the definition of words like "bloviation", it is not the final arbitor on what philosophy is or means; indeed, philosophers seem to have debated that meaning and their enterprise since they began. Taking a cue from the philogists, I think the best definition comes from the word itself: the love of knowledge, or the love of wisdom. In this discussion, wisdom is best distinguished from belief. Ask yourself, have you ever actually read any of the criticisms of her, linked on this website or found elsewhere? Have you avoided them because they materials that, under any other circumstances, would be deemed blasphemy? Or have you avoided them because, even without reading them, you are certain they are written in error (implying faith, here)? If that is the case, then surely Objectivism is not philosophy, at least in your relationship to it.

2) Follows from this, and is FAR more academically dishonest, viz., that you didn't even respond to the criticism levied, i.e., the commentary from the professor linked above (and elsewhere on Wikipedia), that her "scholarship" is so egregiously bad as to be nearly incomprehensible (e.g., "As an example of this, see Kant and Hegel." - ?), and that it consists of little more than attacks on straw-men of those with whom she disagrees. Hell, skip the "epistemology" book altogether, and address this (I was talking to a friend of mine and he reminded me of it): In Atlas Shrugged, after that 70-page speech of D'Ancona's, the woman he was responding to says something like, "Well, I don't think that's true because I don't feel it to be true." RTF? Is that her best representation of critics of money/etc? Or was it just a way for D'Ancona to win the argument? It has been wisely said that true peer review begins after publication, but a good rule of thumb is to address potential criticisms in your article, laying your cards out on the table and explicitly stating how you disagree with those critics. If she wanted to argue that arguments based on reason are superior to those based on emotion, that's cool. If she wanted to argue in favor of money as a medium of exchange, as opposed to, e.g., social capital, that's fine too. But reducing critics of her economic to one hysterical woman who "feels it to be true" is wholly dishonest, regardless of whether she or the critics turn out to be right, though it is good at seducing teenagers. Except of course to Ayn Rand, where criticism of money is so self-evidently the result of argument based on emotion that there is no need even to demonstrate how that might be so, all in a big, circular world, where every statement confirms every other statement, all converging on the absolute moral pronouncements and aesthetic tastes of one very strange woman, pronoucements and tastes that her supporters accept and repeat with out question. That's what reason truly is!

I mean really, how could anyone really like Strauss? ...I'm glad I see that now. Or Dostoyevsky, even if I did cry after reading the scene about the horse? How foolish I was....

Anyway, my point was that you didn't address the criticism. Respond to the question/criticism posed, not the question you'd rather answer.

LGagnon Don't feed the trolls, unless you are one yourself (which might be the case). Trolls come on to internet forums to argue, not to learn or to find a consensus. The way they do that, after encountering contradictory/etc evidence and/or arguments, is to change the subject of the debate, but only so slightly to be imperceptible, thereby keeping the "discussion", and the possibility for arguing, going. The trick, if you want to keep talking with them, is -- instead of immediately reacting to what they say -- to identify the ways they've avoided addressing your point, say, NO, you still haven't addressed my point, I won't talk to you until you do, and then go and actually ignore them. Otherwise you're feeding the troll. I suppose despite that I've done that in this post, though.

I suppose my own behavior on here could be interpreted on some level as being trollish, in that I am less interested in finding a consensus, and more interested in avoiding my schoolwork. On the other hand, they are making the claim that Rand was a legitimate philosopher and therefore have the responsibility to defend that claim, and I'm saying, you guys had better be able to back that up, otherwise many people will gleefully delete such references in the article.

Zweifel 08:14, 29 August 2006 (UTC) = Who really needs to finish his damn masters thesis already so he won't be able to come on here avoiding it any more.

I can assure you I am not here to troll the talk page. I'm a legit editor who is simply getting tired of Wikipedia "Rand Uber Alles" attitude that the admins, due to negligence and ignorance of the subject matter (and possibly pressure from Wikipedia's head Randist), have allowed to exist. With so many biased Randists destroying these articles without reprocussions, these articles becom very tiring to work on, and thus one can easily make mistakes in trying to keep the Randists from using fallacies to control the discussion. If the admins (specifically, the ones that earned their position by showing they understand how to run a logical discussion) tried to regulate these discussions so that it could be more about real discussion and not personal attacks and fallacies (both if which not a single Randist has ever avoided here), it would probably be easier to navigate the chaotic mess that these articles have been turned into. -- LGagnon 20:44, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Zweifel: If there is anyone committing intellectual errors, it is you. Even if one disagrees with Ayn Rand, if philosophy is to be defined as an integrated view of existence, then there is no way one can deny that Objectivism is a philosophy. I do not think that philosophy is, as you say, the pursuit of answers to questions through rational rather than through mystical means. Ayn Rand did not develop Objectivism to "justify" her beliefs. She began at fundamental starting points in reality and through a process of thought was ultimately led to certain conclusions about the universe. For example, the "purpose" of Objectivism is not the defense of capitalism, but rather first of egoism; and before defending egoism, Objectivism defends reason. I am offended by your accusation that I am someone blocked on Wikipedia. I am also offended that you think my intelligence is equivalent to that of a 17-year-old cultist. Furthermore, I am offended that you keep insisting that I am part of some "Randist cult" and that I do not read "blasphemous" material. I previously recommended a book entitled The Philosophic Thought of Ayn Rand, which is a collection of essays written by professional philosophers that discuss positive and negative aspects of Rand's philosophy. I didn't respond to that professor's commentary? Well, you never responded to this book. Whenever I say, "What about this book written by academic philosophers?" you never say anything. You continue to say that "most" academics don't view Rand a philosophers. Most of the academics who wrote that book have a sort of negative opinion of Objectivism, but every one of them considers Rand to be a philosopher in her own right. Why do you continue to claim that only "Randists" call her a philosopher, when so many other objective, academic sources do as well? But of course! Britannica is an evil Randist publication. Oops. With regard to Atlas Shrugged, this was a fictional novel with characters and an imagined plot. If one wants to actually study Objectivism as a philosophic system, he should read Rand's non-fiction works, where she descriptively presents her ideas and offers defense and validation. "Taking a cue from the philogists, I think the best definition comes from the word itself: the love of knowledge, or the love of wisdom." Okay, wonderful, thank you for your opinion. Since you are, of course, infallible, I have to be wrong when I say I disagree, I don't think this definition is adequete enough. If you accuse Rand of thinking as most people do (for example, as you say, many people write about morality), then anyone who loves wisdom and knowledge is a philosopher. When this article is opened up again, I will revert any attempt to eradicate references to Ayn Rand as a philosopher. -- 24.220.246.20

It's a bit late in the day for me to go over this, but I'd just like to point out that you have mistaken Zweifel's comment for mine, and thus should direct all this towards him, not me. -- LGagnon 05:48, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Apologies.

Ad hom, tu quoque, potato/potahhto, avoidance, distortion. I sure as hell have no intention of editing this page, let alone engage in an edit war. Have fun with that.

Ad hom. I never claimed to be infallible -- quite the opposite, in fact. I don't see how forcefully arguing something implies belief in infallibility. You gotta watch the cognative dissonance, man, it'll make an internet troll out of you. Unless you already are a troll, and have been banned. Why don't you sign your name? Otherwise, I'd suggest you get an account. They come with benefits. Seriously, though, why the personal attack? Why do you feel threatened by our apostacy? Why immediately resort to a revert-war, instead of creating a section about the debate over whether she is a philosopher?

--As for my own ad homs, I mean, yeah. But the stereotype about the rabid 17-year old with all the answers and no social skills conforms to reality pretty well, and people who read her when they are 17 and then uncritically interpret everything after that in light of her credo aren't much better. But also dude, like, no humorous subtext? The stereotype about the 17-year old perpetuates itself not only because of its accuracy, but also because, on a cosmic level, it's pretty damn funny. I also felt proud for working in the word "bloviation".

Tu quoque. "You recommended an article and I recommended a book and you didn't read it, so na na na na na-na." I didn't read the book (in two days?) because I have a life to live and I can't read a book in one day when I am already reading at least one book every day. Meanwhile, in order to I recommended an article that directly addresses whether her thought rises to the level of philosophy as regarded by philosophers and academics (conclusion: no, and thank god it was only 74 pages long), and does so in a way far better than I could, especially given my time constraints right now (and lack of interest). I also linked it because it takes ten minutes to read, and is therefore both efficient and accessible.
Avoidance. SEE ABOVE. Here's that link again.[10] HINT, HINT. I've complained about this before. So...Na na na na na-na.
Distortion. In my last post, I gave two definitions of "philosophy": 1) investigation of fundamental questions through reason; 2) love of knowledge/wisdom. The first you dismiss with the informative reason that you "disagree", and then substitute your own definition (more on that in a sec). Regarding the second, you took the first words and nothing that followed them, and then attacked their obvious limitations on their face. Although to be sure I could have been absolutely, 100% explicitly clear about this, what I was offering was less a working definition of philosophy, and more an ethic, a guiding principle of philsophy - loving knowledge and wisdom, as distinguished from belief. That implies remaining vigilant about what you claim to "know", and questioning whether or not it is actually belief. This is obviously of a dynamic nature, yet you impute a static quality onto it. No. (This is pure Nietzsche, here, whose emphasis on dynamism is virtually synonymous with advocacy of the pre-Socratics.) No, not at all. It's both destructive, of beliefs and modes of thinking that are essentially belief, and constructive, by postulating better ways of thinking, organizing thought, and so on; exploding a thought as a belief is a form of knowledge. Loving knowledge means just that - loving knowledge, embracing knowledge. Observing her, following her, stalking her even, learning her behavior intimately. It means hunting her, running in and pouncing on her. It means picking her up, throwing her over your shoulder, bringing her home, and making love to her for hours and years. And if you later feel that in fact she isn't "the one" for you, then hot damn you go out hunting (or cruising) again. THAT is what I mean by loving knowledge and wisdom, and THAT is the approach I think philosophers take to their profession. In stark contrast stands Ayn Rand's ossified dogma, the death of philosophy.

An interlude, fictionally illustrating the above. "Why not commit suicide?"

Ayn Rand: It is irrational. Man's nature is to live and be happy. Man is therefore heroic. THE END.
Nietzsche: Why NOT commit suicide! Look at our 19th century material suffering! Look at the anguish caused by life forcing us to moral decisions! Look at the German word Gift, derived from the word "to give", but now means "poison"! What does that SAY about an act that can bring both pleasure and pain, that can be both moral and immoral! But surely we would have no appreciation of pleasure without having suffered. Surely we would not understand morality without experiencing, even committing, immorality. Surely we could not appreciate our CHOICE to embrace life without understanding the CHOICE to embrace death. And SURELY I am misrepresenting this issue by thinking of it entirely in terms of seemingly opposing concepts! I will now go and live in a cabin in Switzerland and think about this for five years.

You say potato, I say potahhto. And finally...I SERIOUSLY have to get back to work here. I will do this quickly. You say that philosophy is an "integrated view of existence," and earlier, "of man, existence and the relationship between the two." I say that your definition also includes ideologies, religions based on sacred texts, and perhaps even all religion not based on personal revelation. This is fundamental. You say she created "a philosophy" and I agree with you, but with the caveat that "a philosophy" is not (necessarily) "philosophy". A better term here is "sophistry" - add one part metaphysics, one part aesthetics...and poof! An instant philosophy. Perhaps "Weltanschauung" or "belief system" are less perjorative.

In my 19th Century continental philosophy class, we read two authors -- Schleiermacher and Dilthey -- who wrote about hermeneutics, or textual criticism, in which they presaged much later thought. Did they write metaphysics? I have no idea. If they did, it was not notable, i.e., it was not considered actual philosophy -- however hard they (hypothetically) tried to tie their metaphysical opinions to their actual insights into hermeneutics. Nietzsche doesn't seem to have cared a whit about metaphysics; to him, man was fundamentally a decision-making creature, and his insights into morality, even if you disagree with them, are astounding. On the other hand, Wittgenstein (working in a much different tradition) wrote about logic and epistemology, and concluded his magnum opus denying even the possibility of commenting on morality, aesthetics, etc. Does his lack of A moral philosophy mean he's not a philosopher? Of course not. While in all likelihood all of them tried to develop their own "complete" philosophical system (sophistry) -- especially Hegel, OH MAN! -- their importance rests not with the success of those systems, but with specific insights.

So what of Rand, then? Well...in general her scholarship is simply BAD. Her philosophy books are largely cut-and-paste jobs from her novels, and are otherwise almost incomprehensible, relying largely on straw-man conceptions of philosophical positions with which she disagrees. Her metaphysics is mainly an after-shadow of her epistemology, plus her inability to distinguish between sensation and perception, as philosophers understand them (while at the same time condemning Kant as the most evil man in history). Her epistemology is flawed. To quote my father, for someone who values reason so highly, she has surprisingly little understanding of it. Reason is considered, essentially, exogenous -- dare I say a priori, yet her conception of it is at the same time condition designed in such a way that the only outcome of its application is laissez faire capitalism (you say "integrated view", I say circular and self-validating; you say "defends capitalism by egoism...", I say post hoc justification). The same goes for science. She doesn't understand the difference between the normative and the positive. Her conception of the individual is simplistic and banal. Her deprication of emotion denies a meaningful human experience, whatever its utility. Her conception of the state contradicts itself. Her moral philosophy is absolutist, and boils down mainly to her own tastes and preferences. She is unable even to conceive of the ways an individual might benefit from the efforts of society, such as education. Her aesthetic philosophy rests on a gross misappropriation of the word "romanticism" and the belief that her trashy novels represent one of the greatest artistic triumphs in history. Her overall philosophical system is both solipsistic and contradictory.

And she is loathed -- almost universally -- by philosophy and literature professors alike. So I think it is fair to say that the individual parts of her philosophy as well as the overall system -- whatever that's worth, anyway --

And yet she is undoubtedly an important social phenomenon, as continuing sales of her books indicate. And, as the adoption of her miniscule tastes by her followers indicate. And, as hearing young men who are into her declare her to be "sexy" indicates. And, as seeing at least two of her followers wear capes indicates. I'VE SEEN IT. So, you say philosophy, I say belief system. And you say philosopher, and I say 'guru'. Maybe it's just a matter of perspective.

Good Night Zweifel 12:28, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

And now -- back to LaVey.

Causa belli: Foundational logic lessons in response to LGagnon: Calm down, LGagnon. I requested a reasoned response. So stop getting hysterical. If you want proof of your hysteria, consider but this: you so emotively take issue with my calling your edits a "charade," indeed you make mention of this in the context of a flat accusation of uncivil conduct, an accusation utterly disabused of hard-core evidence, then you proceed immediately to call my counter-argument a "red herring." You go further. You say that a perspective rooted in bias is "all you have to say for yourself." You accuse me of "distraction" and again sarcastically make personal professional references of me and to me.

To put it in the most tentative mode of inquiry LGagnon, exactly what is the conceptual distance between your characterization of my position and my characterization of yours?

I'm going to be honest with you LGagnon, the sort of elemental and elementary inconsistency you so wantonly display would get a student of mine a very special grade of: "F - -" That is, a grade I save for students whose work I consider a disgrace even to the "simple" F students.

Not surprisingly, you no more consider your personal attacks of me to be problematic, than you consider your personal attacks of (your fellow admins) a problem. You attempt to vindicate your personal attacks on admins (never mind me) with that lamentable arrogance unique to the under-educated. You all but say explicitly that any criticism of your work is unacceptable but any personal attack by you is unassailable.

Your discussion of Timothy McVeigh follows suit. You say he "was just a terrorist," who "did not create a specific belief system." Neither did others included in the list of those the article claims were "influenced" by Rand.

So again, what are the reasoned criteria of inclusion/non-inclusion/dis-inclusion/exclusion from the list? "Creation of a belief system," I have just shown, cannot be a criterion. Spell out the criteria, criterion by criterion. Again, you are required to follow reason, not emotion.

Again, to model for you a man of reason, I am not yet going to revert the LaVey inclusion. (And it is LaVey, not LeVay.) You have another chance to provide a reasoned response!!!!AOluwatoyin 08:47, 15 August 2006 (UTC)AOluwatoyin.

I have reported your continued use of personal attacks again. Please note that the reason why I know you are not a logic professor is that you resort to ad hominem constantly. Essentially, you constantly make a freshman undergrad-level mistake despite claiming to have a PhD.

Getting back to your main argument (although you took up more space with ad hominem nonsense), the lack of McVeigh does not prove that LaVey does not belong. You are making an ignoratio elenchi fallacy by suggesting that his inclusion determines LaVey's status. -- LGagnon 16:19, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Dropping in on this discussion late in the game, and professing no particular expertise with regard to Ayn Rand, my 2¢: I'm wondering what the criteria of inclusion are for the "influenced" figures. It seems that it just lists her immediate followers in the objectivist movement and a few academics, then LaVey, who in that context looks like the proverbial sore thumb. Indeed, LaVey is quoted as saying something to the effect that his philosophy was just a dressed-up version of Ayn Rand's. So, unless that quote misrepresents LaVey's relationship to Rand, he does seem to count among the influenced, and he is a famous (some would say notorious) figure, probably the best known on that list. I'm wondering why a more broad cross-section of people isn't included in that list: where's Alan Greenspan, for example? It seems to me that Rand's influence is far greater outside of the realm of academic philosophy that it is within that realm. But it looks as if whomever put together that list is trying to make a case for Rand as an influential intellectual in academic circles. Unless I'm missing something here, I think the list would be more accurate and more interesting and if it reflected the range of prominent people who have cited Rand as an influence (Clarence Thomas? Christina Ricci?) rather than relatively obscure academics such as Tara Smith and John Ridpath. LaVey's inclusion would become much less of an issue if he were merely one in a diverse group of prominent people. BTfromLA 17:11, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, it has been the effort of Rand's followers here at Wikipedia to push the false idea that Rand is an academically accepted philosopher. Unfortunately, it has been very difficult to remove this bias from the article as Rand's followers are very intent on keeping the balance skewed towards Rand's favor. I have been making an effort to change this, and I think we could make changes to the influences section of the infobox now that it has been neutralized to show Rand not as the philosopher that she and her followers claim her to be, but as the writer that nobody questions that she was. -- LGagnon 17:30, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

LGagnon's failure to respond: User:BTfromLA's suggestion about a more diverse group of people "influenced" by Rand is spot-on. That's exactly why Timothy McVeigh belongs. In the world of action, fabric-shattering social action, a world that meant so much to Ayn Rand, McVeigh's adaptation of the Turner Diaries -- beyond ethnophobic polarity to broader belief-structured, virulently Randian-libertarian anti-government action -- could not be more telling for internal analyses of the Randian corpus.

So again I am hardly one of the fans who is obsessed with anything that makes Ayn Rand "look bad" as LGagnon repeatedly intimates and has explicitly mused about in his latest piece to his fellow-admin A Y Arktos.

Oh, by the way, LGagnon, you've got your informal fallacies mixed up again, an occupational hazard with freshman philosophy students. I spoke of criteria of inclusion/non-inclusion/dis-inclusion/exclusion. Again, there are nuances all over here. For instance, not to be included is not necessarily to be excluded. If you find that my Golf Club has only male members you cannot conclude that I have excluded women. My membership does not include women, yes. I cannot produce a membership list with a single woman on it, yes. But the conclusion that I have excluded women would be non-sequitur. Perhaps no woman ever applied to my club. Perhaps -- in spite of what every last left-loon whack-job insists on believing -- not one woman was qualified to be a member. Perhaps every qualified woman who applied and was accepted turned us down; ....

As you study more philosophy, LGagnon, you'll gain a better grasp of such intricacies as that just adumbrated with regard to ignoratio elenchi and non sequitur. You've got promise, lad.AOluwatoyin 21:40, 15 August 2006 (UTC)AOluwatoyin

I'm reluctant to get involved in what seems to be a personally-directed exchange, but my initial thought is that McVeigh--as someone who is nearly universally reviled, who is not known as a thinker of any sort, and whose link to Rand, as far as I am aware, is not so strong as to demand his inclusion on a list of notable figures influenced by her writing--probably doesn't belong on that short list. BTfromLA 21:57, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Response to User:BTfromLA: "Reviled" can no more keep you off the list than "admired" gets you included. That would not be in pursuit of neutral criteria. It loads bias.

ACCORDINGLY, BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED: McVeigh is on. I have also removed the source-note for LaVey. It calls attention to itself, since there is no such note for any of the others on the list. Yet, surely you do not intimate that the others on the list are not equally, properly sourced. Edit memo to LGagnon: when editing, whatever you do, do not call attention to yourself with pre-emptive responses to accusations of bias. That'll get you accused of bias quicker than an explicit profession of bias!!!

I have moved the list-members around to reflect the "mix" of the group. Finally, I removed Barbara Branden. One Branden will do. Barbara gets adequate mention in the fuller text. It was Nathaniel who went on to expand Objectivism and do more with it in his own work.AOluwatoyin 22:21, 15 August 2006 (UTC)AOluwatoyin

LaVey is sourced because people try to remove him; the source is needed so that nobody tries that again. As for McViegh, I suggest finding a source for that so that he isn't removed. Honestly, I don't care if Rand is associated with a psycho (in my opinion, she was one), but you should verify your claim nonetheless.

And I don't appreciate you mocking my education; again, I suggest you cut out the personal attacks. -- LGagnon 23:16, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

AOluwatoyin: don't grand resolutions usally reflect concensus? However decisively the gavel falls in your own mind, clearly no concensus has been reached here at Wikipedia. And this isn't the place for resolution by kingly fiat. While you are right that "reviled" is not grounds for exclusion, the combination of a reviled figure with a weak connection to the author should give pause, at least, because the implied association of the author with that figure can reflect a bias--in this case, a desire to make Rand idea's appear dangerous or something that appeals to antisocial types. I see that all the changes the three of us have discussed today have already been reverted by someone else--it appears that the "philosopher template" issue remains unsettled. BTfromLA 23:50, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Philosophy or ideology?

I woud argue that most reliable sources refer to Rand and Objectivism as philosopher and philosophy. The editor that is replacing "Philosophy" with "Ideology" may not be aware of this fact.

Websites

Articles

Books

Douglas J Den Uyl Philosophic Thought of Ayn Rand University of Illinois Press ISBN 0252014073
David Kelley, The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand, Transaction Publishers, ISBN 0765808633
Mimi R Gladstein, Chris Matthew Sciabarra (Eds.),Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand Penn State Press, ISBN 0271018313
Scott Ryan Objectivism and the Corruption of Rationality: A Critique of Ayn Rand's Epistemology, iUniverse, ISBN 595267335
and many more....

I would also add that rather than engage in useless conversations about the personalities of editors involved, that these editors spend some quality time researching the subject to improved the article, rather than implement meaningless edits that add no value. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 03:39, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

I would agree that "philosopher" is a pretty reasonable term for her occupation. The fact that was brought up that "The vast majority of professors don't even consider her worthy of being commented on, positively or negatively" doesn't really comment on whether she is a philosopher or not; rather it's more directed at the question of whether her work was significant or of wide interest among peers. Christopher Parham (talk) 03:59, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

My dictionary includes the following definition of Ayn Rand: Rand, Ayn(1905–82), U.S. writer and philosopher, born in Russia; born Alissa Rozenbaum. She developed a philosophy of "Objectivism" in For the New Intellectual (1961), arguing for “rational self-interest,” individualism, and laissez-faire capitalism. Notable novels: The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957). 03:41, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

David Kelley, a Randist, counts as a legit source? Random websites that aren't academic count? Where's the academic sources? Where's the proof that Rand is well accepted as a philosopher by academia? The Randist faction is being fiercely anti-academic and fiercely POV about this issue, pushing their own opinion as the factual truth rather than as a controversial issue. What's next, intelligent design will be called a science? Dianetics a form of psychology? There are sources for that, and by your logic throwing a bunch of sources at the article will make it correct no matter what academia says. -- LGagnon 04:03, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia doesn't adopt a purely academic point of view, especially on issues where academia doesn't seem to have an unusual degree of special authority. Christopher Parham (talk) 04:16, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Academia doesn't have authority on philosophy? I'm pretty sure they do, considering the fact that much of modern philosophy comes from academia. Wikipedia may not be purely academic, but it should follow the NPOV rule, which means academia's opinion counts for something. As it stands, the Randists are trying to completely eliminate academia's assessment of Rand from the article by pushing the idea that Rand is a philosopher as an undisputed fact. This is a blatant disregard for WP:NPOV, especially in the area regarding pseudoscience. We don't need an academic point of view; we need a neutral one which doesn't hide the controversy. -- LGagnon 04:33, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Obviously the views of academics should be included in the article. The article ought to include information about the views of those who reject characterizing her as a philosopher. Although it would be important to separate such from those who simply reject her work or are uninterested in it. As far as I can tell no such sources have been provided in the sections above. Cheers, Christopher Parham (talk) 04:41, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Sources have been provided, but biased Randists delete them. If it wasn't for the tyranny of the majority here, we'd have everything we need to prove this here, rather than have much of it delted and/or moved to another, out-of-the-way article. -- LGagnon 18:29, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Philosophy can be done badly

The question of whether Rand "is" a philosopher seems rather silly to me. There simply isn't any bright-line distinction between people who "really are" philosophers and those who are not. "Philosopher" does not mean "professor of philosophy", nor does it mean "author of papers in philosophy journals", or anything of the sort. Philosophy, like mathematics, is a subject matter, not a profession.

Rand was clearly not an academic philosopher, in the sense of one who is employed to teach philosophy and who publishes in philosophy journals. However, neither was Nietzsche, who, while originally an academic, was trained in philology (language and literature) and published most of his works independently of any academic institution. Some of Nietzsche's better-known works he published at his own expense, the equivalent of the vanity press.

Rand's nonfiction work clearly deals with, or attempts to deal with, several traditional subjects of philosophy. These most notably include ethics and political philosophy, but also metaphysics, epistemology, and aesthetics. To say that she was a philosopher, it seems to me, is to say that she did philosophy; that is, attempted to understand and work in these subjects.

As with art, philosophy may be done badly. A painter who does bad and sloppy work is still a painter. I suggest that it is much more defensible to say that Rand did philosophy but is considered by academic philosophers (for this and that reasons) to have done philosophy badly. --FOo 04:59, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Simply because one deals with philosophy doesn't make one a philosopher. Every novelist addresses some form of philosphic concept in their work, so by your logic every writer should be labelled a philosopher. And every person who knows arithmatic should be labelled a mathematician, every person who knows some science a scientist, and so on. The distinction is needed to point out the difference between the lay person and the professional.

As for Nietzsche, he did have some association with academia, as you point out. The fact that he wasn't immediately accepted by academia isn't important; what's important is that he is accepted now. Rand, on the other hand, is not accepted by them, and likely never will be (and as a student of English I can guarantee she'll never be accepted as a great literary writer).

The fact of the matter is, anyone can pick up philosophy and blab about it. As I said before, pretty much every writer does this. Hell, even politicians do it (right-wingers comment on Marx constantly). Do we just throw people into the philosopher category randomly, or do we make distinctions between ameteurs and the real thing? -- LGagnon 18:38, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

It's really too much to suggest that Rand's relationship to the philosopher category is random: clearly, she saw herself as a philosopher and elaborated her version of a philosophy in considerable detail, in terms that at least make explicit reference to the established categories of Western academic philosophy. Calling her a philosopher in this context is not equivalent to declaring that J.D. Salinger, say, belongs in that category. Though imperfect, I'd suggest there might be an analogy with Thomas Kincade: should we refuse to call him an artist? In academia, an artist is expected to critically engage the history of art and contemporary art discourse. Kincade clearly does no such thing, his work seems to function in a completly different way than does the art at the Venice Biennale, and I am sure we could get some academically well-respected art professors to declare that Kincade is not an artist at all, in the sense that academia understands the category. Yet, in the vernacular sense, in his self-description, and probably in the view of some academic outliers, he qualifies as an artist of a sort, and systematicaly striking that description from his article would give a position of priviledge to the POV that wants to disqualify him entirely from their subject. BTfromLA 19:14, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

And again, I think self identification is bunk. Pseduoscientists do this all the time. L Ron Hubbard used to call himself a psychiatrist. Creationists claim to do legit science. Do we allow their self indentification to determine their category? And yes, Rand does count as a "philosopher" in the vernacular, but intelligent design is a "theory" in the vernacular too. What's important is to make the distinction between vernacular and academic, as this will determine how well we educate the reader. -- LGagnon 19:36, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Taken alone, one's self-labelling is bunk, and the fact that someone found an audience that accepted the self-applied label is, too. But in concert with other factors, those elements can bear on the decision we have here, especially since applying the label "philosopher" is not an empirically verifiable yes-or-no the way "licensed medical doctor" might be. That is, unless you are arguing that an accredited PhD in the subject is prerequisite for every philosopher. While most everyone here seems to recognize that Rand is not taken seriously as a philosopher by the large majority of academic philosophers, the claim that "philosopher" cannot be be applied to her at all is very strong one which has so far garnered little support as the default NPOV. And, so far as I can see, the folks, like myself, who have recently wandered into the discussion are not "Rand-ites." LGagnon, if you wish to continue to push for the not-a-philosopher position, can you find some strong evidence that the mainstream of academic philosophy actually holds your view, specifically, that what Rand did was not philosophy at all? It's difficult to be asked to prove a negative, but in this case, Rand is so well known (she was on a US postage stamp) and is so often and widely described as a philosopher, and Objectivism as a philosophical system, that I have to assume that if the normative view within academic philosophy is that those labels are completly misapplied in her case, a number of philosophy specialists would have written as much. BTfromLA 02:15, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

As two cents from a random passerby, I agree with the above sentiment by FOo. Philosophy is not some discipline that requires a special license to practice. Socrates was a random soldier who chatted with people on the street, and lots of the Enlightenment style philosophers were simply "gentlemen of letters" who were educated. You are certainly free to disagree with her, call her bad at philosophy, or point out her lack of training in parts- but to deny her the philosopher tag at all? That would be the POV position considering the abundance of evidence to the contrary.

LGagnon, you bring in an analogy to psuedo-science. Science is a bit different, because actual scientists can make things that testably work, while psuedoscientists generally can't. That's a fair and simple dividing line there. However, there is no such line for philosophy, and experience has shown us that even within science, academic support is not a particularly fair or useful guide considering the number of people mocked for their inventions at first. If a philosophy is a system of thought, Rand definitely provided one- she offered a system for determining the proper stance to take on decisions.

To put it another way, Wikipedia values self-identification very highly. That's why various sects that self-identify as Christian, yet have beliefs greatly at odds with the majority of other Christians, are given the benefit of the doubt and called Christian. It's the same in other areas. Rand saw herself a philosopher and there's a not insignificant philosophy named after her. That's good enough for me.

(Side note: Not that it matters since I deny that academia matters that much, but my Philosophy 101 class at a prestigious college did in fact include a short excerpt from Rand as one of the readings. It wasn't a huge deal, but it was there.) SnowFire 15:09, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

In the early days of philosophy, before academia was involved in it, it would have been impossible for there to be academic control. This is no different from any discipline; it all has to start somewhere beforehand. Academia doesn't often begin any discipline; they just cut off the deadweight of snake oil salesmen so that the discipline can be guaranteed to be taught correctly. And this is why they are more credible than Joe Philosopher; we know academia knows what they are doing, but we don't know if Joe Average does. Thus, their opinion on Rand's work is much more credible than the opinion of Rand's followers (most of whom are uneducated in philosophy, many of whom are just teenagers who read Atlas Shrugged).

And don't use ad hominem to discredit academia. Just because they made completely unrelated mistakes in the past doesn't mean they aren't right about Rand. They have studied how philosophy works, while Rand's highest education was a mere certificate for attending a college. They may make a few mistakes along the way (all institutions do), but that does not mean that they will always make mistakes.

The benefit of the doubt is not always a good idea. Pseudoscientists want to be counted as scientists, but we should not give them the benefit of the doubt, or else we will be miseducating readers. Likewise, Scientologists want to be credited as good alternatives to psychiatrists, yet we shouldn't claim this either. Self identification proves nothing if it doesn't hold up to the facts.

And as for brief mentions, yes, I know that happens. However, in my experience Rand is only mentioned to discredit her as what philosophy is not. Even L Ron Hubbard was briefly mentioned in a philosophy class I took (specifically to point out that he is not a philosopher). -- LGagnon 19:03, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, Rand's article was an example of ethical egoism in the class. It was mentioned in contrast to an article on more traditional altruism, and another article questioning if egoist distinctions made sense at all (you know, the old "What if I enjoy being altruistic?" problem). I won't deny that to some degree it was being held up so it could get shot down in the next article, but it was definitely discussed as a valid alternative. It was portrayed as a perhaps wrong option, not a non-entity as you seem to claim. Also, um, what are you talking about for ad hominem? Considering that you are using an argument from authority with academia, it is an entirely relevant response that this authority has proved questionable many times in the past, especially for something like philosophy.

I fail to see how your responses on self-identification are relevant. I've already conceded the point on testable, scientific disciplines. To the extent that philosophy can be defined, I would only call something not a philosophy if it provided no system. A laundry list of stances on issues is not a philosophy, for example. A system for thinking and making moral decisions, however, is a philosophy (even if perhaps a bad one). Rand offered one. Again, it might be bad, but are you denying that she did in fact write long, voluminous books on it? I'm thinking of her non-fiction diatribe type books here ("The Virtue of Selfishness," etc.) not her fiction (which is horrid and would perhaps explain your reticence- to derive much philosophy from those books would be difficult, I'll grant).

I'll add as my disclaimers that I quite enjoy academia and that I am not an Objectivist, not that it should matter. SnowFire 21:02, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Redirecting the focus of the ongoing debate: The ongoing debate has lost direction here and both of you, especially LGagnon, need to cut out the ad hominems on academics and Randians.

The fundamental distinction is not between academic philosophy and some loose, generic sense of philosophy. Your insight is too limited. Academic philosophy is done very differently in Asia and Africa, though most such practitioners have Western terminal degrees in the discipline. There are also European, Continentalist philosophy professors whose "methods" Anglo-American analysts simply deplore.

There was philosophy the world over before Anglo-American analysis just as there was religion before Eurocentric exegesis. So cut out the obsession with American philosophy practitioners. Indeed, I am editing the "influenced" (by Rand) info piece in the Rand article to include John Hospers, who long-ago included Rand in his classic Introduction to Philosophical Analysis, and I have deleted derivative others.

You've all forgotten that Rand prided herself on extra-curricular influences. She explicitly noted that the common man of common sense would be the salvation of Objectivism, philosophy in general and certainly America and civilization. She did abhor what she considered the loon-left who still dominate academic philosophy.

Thus again, I have re-included Timothy McVeigh who serves to bring up the other face of the precise coin of common sense applications of uniquely Randian individualist opposition to all manner of authority beyond limited government. This underscores Wikipedian neutrality as McVeigh is hardly an entry casting that Randian influence in good light. It serves to give to pause, which is what encyclopedic adumbrations are supposed to do.

The libertarian reference for McVeigh is readily available in a click-on of the Wikipedia McVeigh article, no different for verification of referencing for Tara Smith, or indeed, LeVay. Again, I have removed the latter reference-note from the info box. As I argued, it calls attention to itself, as if the others are either not as notably sourced or do not need to be so obviously noted to be.

Rand belongs to a tradition of system-builders in philosophic thought, whatever exactly one thinks of her system or system-building as a whole in the Golden Era of Anglo-American Philosophic Skepticism. Thus I have re-edited the basic intro of the whole article to reflect that more generic bent and to delimit the seriously spurious manner in which you are all getting caught up with mentioning or not mentioning "philosophy" and "philosopher" in reference to Ayn Rand.

Yes, various system builders are dismissed. Never mind L. Ron Hubbard, LGagnon, Existentialism continues to be considered a joke by many old-school conceptual-linguistic analysts. So cool it, people. Broaden your presentation and attendant articulation.AOluwatoyin 19:54, 16 August 2006 (UTC)AOluwatoyin

I've told you before that LaVey needs a source because people like yourself deleted him several times up until we added a source. The source is the only thing that stopped you from deleting him, so I think you of all people should understand the need for it. Most of the others don't need sources because it is common enough knowledge that they were influenced by her. If someone disputes this, we can add sources for whomever they dispute. Personally, I'd like to see a source for McVeigh, as that is the most questionable addition to the list.

And contentialists reject Rand as well. She has been judged unworthy by both major schools of Western philosophy, and thus doesn't count as a philosopher from their viewpoint. Given that, we shoul express her philosophic status in a more neutral manner, as I have done in my revision (by pointing out that this is her view, and not an undeniable fact). -- LGagnon 21:08, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't see any problem with pointing out that academic philosophers don't regard her as one of their own, but claiming that Rand wasn't a philosopher would be absurd, when that's what she was most known for: she was sure as hell a better philosopher than writer, though that's not saying much. Mark Grant 01:25, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't really see how anyone could read Atlas Shrugged and conclude that Ayn Rand was not a philosopher. One may disagree emphatically with her philosophy, but it is philosophy nonetheless. BenjaS 07:45, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Example of how to neutralize pseudoscience

Here's a little example of how we should be handling Rand's POV:

Let's say an article on Joe Pseudo says Joe Pseudo is a scientist despite the fact that scientists consider him a pseduoscientist.
To neutralize this, we can change it to Joe Pseudo claims to be a scientist.
Likewise, instead of saying Rand is a philosopher, we could say Rand and her followers claim that she is a philosopher.

How hard is it to add this kind of neutrality to the article? It doesn't censor Rand or her followers, it just changes the wording so that it does not favor their POV. For once, let's allow the NPOV policy to be used in this article. -- LGagnon 21:17, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

The problem is then that you would have to do that for EVERY philosopher. Schopenhauer did not consider Hegel to be a philosopher. Peter Singer and Noam Chomsky don't consider postmodernists to be philosophers. The standard of philosophy is quite different from the standards of science. With science, there is an easy way to test whether someone is a scientist or not: does he follow the scientific method. Philosophy has no such agreed upon method. Since Britannica calls her a philosopher, I really don't see the problem. Her non-fiction books are in the philosophy sections at bookstores. LaszloWalrus 21:41, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Either way, it's entirely inaccurate to label references to Ayn Rand as a philosopher as "Randist POV", since many intellectuals, including ones highly critical of her, call her a philosopher and Objectivism a philosophy. The fact is that Ayn Rand developed a view of the world, man's role in it, etc., which is essentially what philosophy is defined as. Whether one agrees with her or not has no significance.

I don't know how this is going to turn out. Currently, there's no source citation directly addressing the question of her being a "philosopher." I'm going to do a quick Google Books search and see whether anything strikes my eye as being a convincingly reliable source. If there are also reasonably convincing sources that say she is not a philosopher, than I think it would be reasonable to add a footnote along the lines of "some sources [cite] describe her as a philosopher, others say that she should not be considered one. OK, Google, here I come. Dpbsmith (talk) 23:41, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

"Jenny Heyl (1995), in her discussion of Ayn Rand in Contemporary Women Philosophers, observed: 'Perhaps because she so eschewed academic philosophy, and because her works are rightly considered to be works of literature, Objectivist philosophy is regularly omitted from academic philosophy. Yet throughout literary academia, Ayn Rand is considered a philosopher. Her works merit consideration as works of philosophy in their own right.'"[11] There ya go, both sides neatly wrapped up in one tidy reference. Let's see what happens when I try to put it into the article. Dpbsmith (talk) 23:48, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

See the sources in the first line at Objectivism (Ayn Rand) and in the Talk page there. There are eight that refer to her specifically as a philosopher and to Objectivism as a philosophy, and I came no where near to exhausting Google Scholar or Proquest. —Centrx→talk • 02:11, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

(The section Ayn_Rand#Philosophical_legacy seems to bear on the question but doesn't quite address it head-on).

Of course, find and footnote any other views that seem relevant and illustrate what the range of opinion might be. Dpbsmith (talk) 23:59, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

dubious

LGagnon has put a "dubious" tag behind statements referring to Ayn Rand as a philosopher. He then objects when I put a similar tag behind Anton LeVay's name, stating that I can't do that because there's a source there. However, there are many "non-Randist" sources that refer to Ayn Rand as a philosopher, so his actions are just simply POV. -- 24.220.246.20

Statements of hypocrisy, true or untrue, are ad hominem attacks, which violates WP:NPA.

And there is a source cited that has LeVay himself saying that Rand influenced him. You can not disprove that unless you can find a statemtn in which he said Rand didn't influence him. -- LGagnon 04:27, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

I previously read that that list was for philosophers only. Are you saying that LaVey is a philosopher, but Ayn Rand isn't? -- 24.220.246.20

I didn't say that. I said that there was no standard for who belongs on that list. I said that Rand isn't even a philosopher, so it shouldn't matter if LaVey is on the list. -- LGagnon 04:55, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Ethnocentricism is not dubious: Again, the ethnocentric, Eurocentric, Anglo-American analytic perspective cannot be a sorting criterion for philosophy versus non-philosophy, anymore than it can sort philosophy from pseudo-philosophy. Accordingly, the "dubious" label is removed.

The previously cited criterion of testability/replicability for sorting scientific from pseudo-scientific indeed serves as a sharp point of contrast here. LGagnon, please note that it is non-sequitur to argue "that there was no standard for who belongs on the list" from simply failing to specify criteria for membership. Unspecified or non-specified does not mean that there is none to specify, only that none has been specified.

Please do not load the most reviled of perspectives, namely race-ridden taxonomies, into a neutral POV. Ayn Rand, in fact considered all manner of race to be the most atavistic of devices. It was what drew me to her thought and method in the first place.AOluwatoyin 08:04, 17 August 2006 (UTC)AOluwatoyin

I never mentioned race at all. Can you actually argue against my statements, not ones that you make up out of thin air? -- LGagnon 15:59, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

LGagnon: Since you said there is no standard for who belongs and who doesn't, that list has the potential to be pretty large. While LeVay may have stated he was influenced by Ayn Rand, there is no reason why he should be on that list other than because a few individuals may want him there. Adam T.

Here's part of the abstract for the Britannica article on Ayn Rand: "Russian-born American writer who, in commercially successful novels, presented her philosophy of Objectivism, essentially reversing the traditional Judeo-Christian ethic." The article clearly refers Objectivism as a philosophy. It seems a bit strange to me to say that Britannica has some kind of "Randist POV." LaszloWalrus 20:07, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Ethnocentricism is racial whether or not one mentions race in the articulation. That's why "Eurocentric" is such a lightning rod in academia, in left-wing deconstructivist dialectic in particular.AOluwatoyin 20:56, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Ethnocentrism isn't even part of this discussion. If Rand claims to be part of Western philosophy, and she rejects all philosophy except for that which she agrees with (which was only the works of Western philosophers), then philosophy in other parts of the world don't even come into the equation. I have no clue why you are throwing something so irrelevant to the subject matter into this discussion. -- LGagnon 00:45, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't see what's dubious about the statement that "Opinions differ on whether Rand is properly regarded as a 'philosopher.'" It seems crystal clear that a substantial number of do people regard her as a philosopher and a substantial number of people do not regard her as a philosopher. Given the number of shades of different meaning in the dictionary definition of "philosophy," both are right. Dpbsmith (talk) 01:46, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

What is dubious and POV is removing all statements referring to Ayn Rand as a philosopher in the article. If someone wants to include a few sentences arguing that there are people who don't consider her a philosopher, that's fine, but to warp the entire article into that view is wrong. -- 24.220.246.20

What is dubious is that, despite saying that the issue isn't resolved, we push the opinion that she is a philosopher as the truth, only mentioning the fact that this is disputed in a footnote. We essentially have an implicit statement in the article that contradicts both the facts and the footnote that follows it. -- LGagnon 04:15, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

I continue to hold that it is dubious to remove any mention of Ayn Rand as a philosopher when objective, credible sources including, but in no way limited to, Britannica refer to Ayn Rand as one. Even among philosophers highly critical of Objectivism, Objectivism is a "philosophy." Here's one random example, from Michael Huemer:

"It is in holding to these five propositions that Rand's philosophy most contrasts with the prevailing philosophical attitudes of our culture." Michael Huemer http://home.sprynet.com/~owl1/rand.htm

While Ayn Rand is ridiculed and criticized (I myself think she made a lot of errors) by philosophers, I simply cannot agree with the idea that there is serious debate among academics over whether or not Ayn Rand is a philosopher.

Rand and Philosophy without Borders: Rand claimed to be a part of philosophy simpliciter, philosophy properly constituted. She believed in and practiced philosophy without borders. She never claimed nor desired to be a part of "Western" philosophy, if such a regionalized, ethnocentric view departed from her objectivist ideal. Students have trouble grasping this because they think in delimited and delimiting terms of the Eurocentric curricular. Ayn Rand rejected all such conceptualizations in the most savage terms. That rejection is not merely relevant. It is dispositive of Rand's perspective. Neutrally, we must leave details to a broader unpacking, then. Otherwise we would be insisting not only that Rand cannot be viewed as a philosopher, but indeed that nobody could possibly think of philosophy in terms other than those of contemporary Anglo-American analytics. Too ethnocentrically limited. A violation of Wikipedia neutrality. AOluwatoyin 08:08, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

When you make very specific claims about what someone said, you should be able to back your claims up with a source. If you can't do that for this claim, then there is no need to acknowledge it as useful to this article. -- LGagnon 21:34, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Read Rand on "Race" for an explicit statement of what she explicitly rejected under that, as she called, atavistic concept. You may not accept her view, fine. But read it for the purpose of neutrally presenting her viewpoint.AOluwatoyin 22:11, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't think you understand. It's not my job to research your claims. It's your job to back up your own statements. I'm not looking up a small statement in one of Rand's books just because you aren't willing to make a proper citation. -- LGagnon 01:22, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Reference exactly as adumbrated: "Racism," in The Virtue of Selfishness. You don't need to read the entire text of essays. Again, I referred to the locus classicus. Your confusion is not unlike that of many of your fellow-students. They simply cannot grasp how Rand who so vigorously defended Western Civilization and attendant traditions could just as relentlessly disown the ethno-racial roots that situate those traditions. It is one of the most conceptually demanding challenges in all philosophy. AOluwatoyin 06:12, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Could you cut the personal attacks and stick to the subject matter? You are blantantly violating Wikipedia:Civility again. All I ask of you is to make a simple citation, something that, if you really are a professor, should be child's play for you. -- LGagnon 16:31, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Reply to LGagnon: I responded to the argument in question. Criticism cannot be construed as personal by fiat. Or by definition. You are conflating differing and different forms of citation. I gave the citation for the generic argument in Rand. The Racism article originally appeared in The Objectivist Newsletter (September '63). It was collected in the first edition of The Virtue of Selfishness, the following year. I already referred to the celebrated opening remarks (para.) of the piece. I stressed the developmental nature of the overall thesis of the essay, however. I still do. It's not a long piece.

That is a different sort of citation from one dealing with a specific sentence/para./section/..... Even the sections dealing with what Rand refers to as "automatic knowledge," "automatic evaluation," in the essay must be considered in terms of the step-by-step argument of the piece. (Echoing Western ethnocentric standards of philosophy, "automatically" viewed as sound, though anchored only in culture, not reason.)

A steadfast ability to engage in remarkably personal attacks in the context of complaining about personal attacks stands no-one in good stead. AOluwatoyin 08:51, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Timothy McVeigh

I can't find anything conclusively and strongly linking McVeigh with Rand. At least not on the interweb. I am going to take him out pending a source that strongly ties him to Rand. The influenced list can't become a litany of every notable person that read Atlas Strugged. Rangek 20:26, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Exactly. Either way, it seems that it would make more sense if that list was limited to philosophers (such as Peikoff, Ridpath, etc) not well known social figures (Greenspan, LaVey, etc) who were influenced by Rand. Every article about a person could have an "Influenced" list. -- 24.220.246.20

We had writers on the list. Why would people of the same profession as Rand be removed? They have more reason to be there than any "philosopher" (as we can all agree that Rand was a writer). -- LGagnon 04:20, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Well Ayn Rand's profession certainly wasn't Satanism, so I will never fully understand why Anton LeVay's name is on that list. -- 24.220.246.20

I think limiting the list to philosophers only isn't right. I think readers would be interested to know and discover connections between Rand and people like LeVay and Greenspan. We just can't add every person with a wikipedia article that read Atlas Strugged though. Perhaps if we came up with some arbitrary number of slots on the "influenced list" (e.g., We all agree that the influenced list shall contain no more than 6 people or whatever.) and then hold a vote as to who goes in. That way we can limit the length of the list (IMHO it is a bit too long now.), get/retain some diversity in it, and head off a lot of bickering.

I propose the list be no more than 8 people (twice the influenced by list). Rangek 16:28, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Values versus virtues

Ayn Rand insisted on an elemental and elementary distinction between values and virtues. One need not accept this, but neutrally speaking anyway, one cannot thereby force one or the other into an articulation of her work. So even in introducing what she "emphasized," one must not -- must not, I repeat -- make it seem that she said something that is precisely what she explicitly did not say. Thus the latest intro edit in the article.AOluwatoyin 20:30, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Could this passage be revised in such a way as to include the four key points of Objectivist philosophy, which Ayn Rand said are objective reality, reason, egoism, and laissez-faire capitalism? These four concepts reflect the four main branches of Objectivism: metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and politics, whereas the virtues you list pertain more to ethics. I think it would be more accurate to keep the revert I made. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.220.246.20 (talk • contribs)

Reason (as in "reason, purpose and self-esteem") is fundamentally metaphysical and logical, not ethical. "Existence exists," the Randian "urstuff" is apprehended by reason in cold logic. Reality is not a separate issue. You're not only missing Rand's concept of inter-relatedness here, you're almost pitting reason against reality in precisely the sense that Rand considered despicably dualistic. The edit is reverted.AOluwatoyin 07:29, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

I think that since Ayn Rand is known as the creator of Objectivism, the beginning of the article should list the four essential points of her philosophy: objective reality, reason, egoism, and capitalism. I don't see why this is an impossibility.

Not an "impossibility." Simply not elucidating of an inter-relatedness unique to her articulation. Reverted. AOluwatoyin 22:14, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Umm...okay? Is there a way both could be added? After all, when asked to explain Objectivism while standing on one foot, Rand did say: objective reality, reason, rational self-interest, and capitalism. 24.220.246.20

Protected

I protected the page due to the long running dispute over this page. I think everyone needs a cooling off period. Talk this out here. --Woohookitty^(meow) 03:58, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Fundamental

There is a serious problem with the opening of this article: Ayn Rand did NOT reason, rational egoism, or capitalism fundamental philosophic concepts of objective reality. They are derivative issues in her system. LaszloWalrus 01:16, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

But the concepts of objective reality, reason, self-interest, and capitalism constitute the essence of Objectivist philosophy. http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=objectivism_intro That's what Ayn Rand said when asked to explain her philosophy while standing on one foot.

You are mixing up terms; those are a summary, but not all of those concepts are fundamental. LaszloWalrus 07:06, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

LaszloWalrus has got it exactly right. In fact, the summation ("on one foot") pertains to traditional divisions, main content-areas, in philosophy. It is the intricate, unique interconnectedness of "Reason, purpose and self-esteem" that is on one footing. AOluwatoyin 18:29, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Kant

For some reason, this seems absolutely wrong to me:

"Rand believed that if an object has an effect upon the senses, then that effect upon the senses gives us knowledge about the object itself. At the most basic level, it informs us that that object is of a particular character such that when it interacts with one's sense organs it causes a particular sensation; and, that is knowledge about a quality of the object itself. It is not in fact clear that Kant would have disagreed with such a weak formulation of realism. In Rand's view, Kant's dichotomy severed rationality and reason from the real world — a betrayal of the very nature of man. In Rand's words..."

First, the phrase "weak formulation of realism" is POV; second, most of this seems like OR: "In Rand's view", "Rand believed", etc., it is without citation; and third, and I could be wrong, I thought this was Kant's view of things to begin with: "At the most basic level, it informs us that that object is of a particular character such that when it interacts with one's sense organs it causes a particular sensation; and, that is knowledge about a quality of the object itself." To put it short and dirty, didn't he say that "sensing" (or otherwise perceiving) something proves that whatever you sense, whether it is how you sense it or not, exists and acts on the sensory organ, and is therefore "a thing in itself"? -Bordello 04:23, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree with you that the paragraph needs work. I think you are misreading Kant (or perhaps I am misreading your reading of Kant); Kant said that once you perceive something, you are no longer perceiving a "thing in itself" but only its phenomenal reflection. LaszloWalrus 00:20, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

I wasn't so clear, I guess. I agree with what you said, and I meant to say that a quality (namely its objective existence) can be determined, no? Anyway, is this just another in an index of slanted, uncited philosophy articles? Because I was just at Nietzsche for a while, and that place (though improved from day to day) is still somewhat a mess. -Bordello 01:05, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

I guess we're agreed then. Personally, I find it very difficult to discuss Kant clearly, or understand someone else's discussion of Kant. The Critique of Pure Reason was a nightmare. LaszloWalrus 01:08, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, that shit's wild. (Shhh, I didn't bother finishing it.) -Bordello 06:34, 21 August 2006 (UTC)