From: holmes@opal.idbsu.edu (Randall Holmes)
Subject: Re: Settimbrini
Organization: Boise State University Math Dept.
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 23:33:03 GMT

In article <1992Jul28.201743.24599@cis.umassd.edu> pmsc13sg@UMASSD.EDU writes:
>Re: M. Zeleny, Jul 24
>    I've noticed that when subjectivists are confronted by a serious argu-
>ment they tend to abandon their pretense of being interested in philosophy
>for metaphors, ad hominems, etc. I made a serious point about artistic in-
>fluence in pre-Nazi Germany and was greeted with conceptual disintegration.  
>the irony is that opposition to reason was culturally influential in pre-
>Nazi Ger. when faced with cultural/econ/pol chaos Ger. responded with ir-
>rationality and by blaming reason. This cultural trend exists in the US
>and we are going to pay a terrible price someday. Abandoning reason for
>nazism and abandoning reason for environmentalist fantasies is the same
>foolishness and will have the same destructive result. 
>    Contemp. phil. is the problem. It is a concern with literally mind- 
>less trivia unrelated to human life. rand may be right or wrong about this or
>that but any poage of her writings shows a serious concern with the human need
>to have a perspective on his daily actions as a guide to those actions. 
>    Analysis, pragmatism, and neo-existentialism have disintegrated serious   
>thought into word games and technical trivia. People who have studied what
>passes for phil. in universities know this. Harvard thinks phil. is the
>elucidation of the arbitrary and conventional usages of language. Rand says that
>is a rationalization for using words to manipulate people. the alternative, of
>course, is the conceptual grasp of reality. Stephen Grossman

Ayn Rand, while she made many true or possibly true statements which
bear thinking about, is notably poor at figuring out what anyone other
than she herself actually thought.  Her disciples are in an even worse
situation; they not only do not know what anyone else is thinking, but
they tend to repeat things that she said _verbatim_ (especially in the
area of ascribing incredible opinions and motives to anyone that
diagrees with them) rather than do some original thinking of their
own.  Mr. Grossman: not everyone who disagrees with you is a
subjectivist; not everyone who disagrees with you is an ordinary
language philosopher (I don't think Zeleny is).  Such reactions make
reasoned discourse about our common and very real problems rather
difficult!

In particular, I suspect that Zeleny does think that philosophy has a
great deal to do with the "conceptual grasp of reality" (although he
might not accept this as a definition of the subject --Mikhail?)

To jostle your preconceptions a little: I have read the works of Ayn
Rand, and they had a very powerful effect on improving my moral
character when I was a teenager.  Even when I was a teenager, I could
tell that she was not competent as a technical philosopher; I also
knew enough about the views of enough philosophers to know that her
characterizations of their opinions were caricatures.  I _agree_ with
you that our society is in danger of disintegration through a failure
to firmly support the supremacy of reason and the specific reasoned
principles on which this country (and others) were founded.  But I
suggest that independent, reasoned investigation of these subjects
(and of the history of philosophy) would be better than the course you
seem to be taking.

May I suggest "The Closing of the American Mind", by Allen Bloom?
Same issues, discussed from a different standpoint; some philosophers
appear in a very different light than Rand sees them.  (This is not
precisely an endorsement).

-- 
The opinions expressed		|     --Sincerely,
above are not the "official"	|     M. Randall Holmes
opinions of any person		|     Math. Dept., Boise State Univ.
or institution.			|     holmes@opal.idbsu.edu
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta