Saturday, April 17, 2004 Friends and Philosophy By Diana Hsieh @ 1:15 PM My basic policy with the comments on my blog is that I leave all genuine comments (as opposed to the occasional spam) intact. Why? A few reasons: Idiots can hang themselves with their own words. To attempt to draw a fine line somewhere would be a waste of my time. Attempting to justify that fine line would be a further waste of my time. Worst of all, selective editing might give the wrong impression of approving or agreeing with the comments that remain. Given that bit of background, I do find Noumenal Self's decision to remove reasonable comments by Chris Sciabarra and Robert Campbell in response to this post puzzling, particularly given the willingness to engage the far less reasonable questions and comments in that very thread. From where I stand, Robert asked a perfectly legitimate and polite question about access to the Ayn Rand archive. And Chris corrected a significant error made in an earlier comment about his prior access to those archives. (Chris's comments on this removal can be found on SOLO. Robert's are in my comments section.) Perhaps NS regards both Chris and Robert as obviously beyond the pale. To be clear, I cannot remotely concur with that judgment. Whatever our philosophic disagreements, both have been good friends to me over the years. Along these lines, I should say something about Noumenal Self's comment in that same post about my relationship with Chris. There NS wrote, "Maybe soon she'll turn a similar critical eye to the works of a certain NYU-based dialectical scholar she continues to regard as a friend." Chris Sciabarra has been an excellent friend to me over the years. He has consistently encouraged me in my philosophical work. He was both supportive and challenging in our many discussions about my dissatisfaction with TOC. As my friend, he is worth his weight in gold. Notably, my friendship with Chris does not imply agreement with his dialectical approach to Objectivism, nor with his approach to academia. I have substantial questions about the former and substantial doubts about the latter. Both will surely be hashed out over time, using the same critical eye I employ in all intellectual endeavors. Yet our friendship, which is grounded in far more than a mutual interest in Objectivism, will not thereby be brought into question. I hope that clarifies somewhat, although whether it satisfies is surely another matter. Update 1/24/05: I'm sad to report that Robert Cambell has since demonstrated his total unworthiness as a friend. Link / Noodles / Trackback Friday, April 16, 2004 Development By Diana Hsieh @ 7:17 AM One of the obvious challenges of development in technologically primitive societies is the absence of infrastructure upon which the technology of well-developed societies depends, e.g. roads and electricity. The cost of importing technology when the background infrastructure is spotty or even wholly absent is surely often prohibitive. That's why I find simple solutions -- like this pot-within-a-pot refrigeration device -- so fascinating. Apparently, it's already transforming rural life for the better, e.g. by allowing more girls to attend school. Inventing such simple devices requires a special sort of ingenuity for which Mohammed Bah Abba deserves high praise. (Via Andrew Sullivan.) Link / Noodles / Trackback Wednesday, April 14, 2004 Broken Units By Diana Hsieh @ 10:04 PM Don Watkins has posted some rather interesting comments on the idea of "broken units," i.e. "a unit [of a concept] that lacks a characteristic shared by the other units of the concept of which it is a member." If you have any interest in the Objectivist epistemology, it's well worth reading either on his blog or as a MS Word document. Based upon my quick first read, his theory seems to solve some puzzles I've always had in reading Peikoff's essay on the analytic-synthetic distinction. Don has also been blogging up a storm in response to John Ku's Critique of the Objectivist Ethics. Ku's essay comes in ten parts, and Don has written up lengthy critiques of each part. Start with the first one and just keep going. (Hey Don, how about compiling them all into a nice little file?) Link / Noodles / Trackback Soviet Economics as Primacy of Consciousness By Diana Hsieh @ 7:01 PM I'm presently reading Robert Conquest's The Harvest of Sorrow, a very thorough and fascinating history of the famine in the Soviet Union that killed millions as a result of Stalin's collectivization and dekulakization of the rural peasants in the early 1930s. In the late 1920s, as this process began, economists were not exactly in support of the attempt to so quickly and radically change the economic structures. But, as Conquest says, "as 1929 wore on there were a number of statements which made clear that [the economists] had the choice of supporting the politicians' new plans or going to prison" (111). Conquest then notes that the political leadership even "imposed an end to economic research in 'mathematical models of growth, studies of investment allocations and effectiveness, models of accumulation and consumption, research on management models, and studies on the scientific organization of labor and many other endeavors" (111-2). Most astonishing is what Stalin's economist Strumilin said about all that: Our task is not to study economics but to change it. We are bound by no laws. There are no fortresses which Bolsheviks cannot storm. The question of tempo [of change] is subject to decision by human beings. Really, I'm not sure that I've ever seen a more naked advocacy of Primacy of Consciousness in my whole life... and by materialists, no less! Wow. Link / Noodles / Trackback A Twice Baked Heretic By Diana Hsieh @ 5:05 PM Noumenal Self is blogging again, with a long and interesting post about my disassociation from TOC at the top. Given the title of the post ("Another heretic is created") and his comments on my ten-years-ago decision to side with Kelley, he must be familiar with my original essay about that choice: Yet Another Heretic is Created. That short essay is an interesting historical record of my thinking at the time. Noumenal Self characterizes it pretty accurately, I think: I remember thinking at the time that she was smart, but that her decision had been influenced by her exposure to supporters of ARI who were, unfortunately, dogmatic and rationalistic, and hence bad representatives of Objectivism. It was too bad. Unsurprisingly, one of the worst, Jay Allen, has since totally rejected Objectivism in favor of something like Buddhist socialism. He even wrote an article about Objectivism not too long ago, but the site seems to be down. In contrast to some of those ARI supporters, I was very quickly introduced to many friendly, smart, knowledgeable, and committed Objectivists at then-IOS via Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales. (Notably, most of those people are no longer involved with TOC.) As I was quite new to Objectivism at the time, I strongly suspect that my judgments about the merits of the ideas were heavily influenced by the merits of the people I saw as practicing representatives of each side. At the time, however, I don't think I knew that. If I had, I surely would have seen my inclination toward Kelley's view as merely provisional. I also likely would have sought out some ARI-affiliated academics. It wasn't until fairly recently that I recognized the asymmetries in my contacts with people on each side. That was one of the reasons I decided to attend OCON last summer. Although I was frustrated that the conference was not structured so as to make socializing all that easy for newer and/or quieter folks, people were indeed very friendly. So Noumenal Self is again right: I know that Miss Hsieh was at the ARI summer conference last year, and that she must have realized that we're mostly not nearly as bad as those gnomes that are to be met in various chat rooms. (Granted, he's terribly wrong to call me "Miss." A girl like me doesn't acquire a crazy name like "Hsieh" without marrying a Mr. Hsieh and shedding the "Miss"!) I have more to say about Noumenal Self's comments on the meaning of the "closed system" view of Objectivism in that post, but I'll save that for later. In any case, much thanks to him for the thoughtful and supportive comments. Link / Noodles / Trackback Tuesday, April 13, 2004 A Simple Question By Diana Hsieh @ 11:03 PM What do you get when a PhotoShop expert combines George Bush's expressive face with the bodies of female celebrities? Yes, you get this little delight. Link / Noodles / Trackback Monday, April 12, 2004 Chernobyl By Diana Hsieh @ 9:35 PM David Eiche sent me to a web site describing (with lots of photographs) a motorcycle drive-through of the disaster area of Chernobyl. I found it quite fascinating, although I know little about the disaster. (I was only 11 at the time. Paul in the middle of medical school. Heh.) Since I'm presently devouring a multitude of books on Soviet communism... and thinking about nuclear power in my environmental philosophy class, does anyone have any book recommendations on Chernobyl? I'm more interested in the political response than the scientific details. Link / Noodles / Trackback From Blushing to Error By Diana Hsieh @ 2:07 PM High though my self-esteem may be, the praise in these comments from Matt on this post is certainly more than enough to turn my cheeks red. I do strive to write in a clear, straightforward, and engaging style, so I'm glad to hear that I'm succeeding in that to some substantial degree. Of course, much progress remains ahead of me, but at least I seem to be heading in the right direction. One of the tricks I use is to envision an audience entirely composed of my mother. She's a smart, sensible, and active thinker and reader, but definitely outside the scholastic world of academia and only somewhat familiar with Objectivism. If I can't explain some philosophical issue to her, then most likely I'm suffering from some form of rationalism. My husband is also a good focal point, particularly when I'm writing for a more academic or Objectivist audience, since he knows quite a bit about both without being an expert in either. A third target audience is composed of the good folks of Titan Toastmasters, since they are sharp and interested in ideas, yet accept a more standard spread of (often muddled) views found in our culture. Notably, none of these target audiences contains a single philosopher. I'm not much of a fan of philosophers writing for their own profession. Matt does mention that my papers "vary in quality," which is certainly true. In particular, they vary in their substantiative and methodological veracity. I am still very much on the steep part of the learning curve in philosophy. So I often approach my graduate papers as serious explorations of ideas, rather than attempts to settle my views for all time. One of my hopes is that, by posting these papers, my errors will come to light through comments from readers. Exposing my known errors to the world -- including those found in my undergraduate work -- reminds me of and motivates me in all the learning I have yet to do. Reading though my humble beginnings in philosophy might show present philosophical beginners that good philosophizing is a skill that develops over time with knowledge and practice, not an innate talent. Of course, I also think that I made some interesting points in those earlier papers. Really, my only concern about posting those papers is that they might be plagiarized. Generally speaking, although I do not take a casual approach to my writings, my basic attitude is that I am perfectly willing to err, even in a spectacular and public fashion. Of course, I would prefer not to do so. Of course, I strive to avoid it. But when it happens, I take it as an opportunity to learn and grow, rather than a blow to my self-image. In contrast, when I joined Toastmasters back in 2001, I rather disliked being told pretty much anything other than that my speech was wonderful. Although I understood its theoretical function, I was generally averse to criticism. But in that friendly and supportive environment, I quickly realized that improvement required strong and direct criticism. Of course, some forms of criticism are genuinely destructive. Good criticism aims at correcting errors by noting and encouraging some change for next time. My attitude towards the possibility of error and the value of criticism changed for the better, I think. That shift in attitude is why I was so thrilled with Greg Salmieri's critical comments on my paper on false excuses at the UPitt Graduate Philosophy Conference. On the one hand, I learned that my basic approach to ethics and politics, as found in that paper, was all wrong. That's a bit of an ouch. But at the same time, I also made a huge advance in my understanding. Wow! That's utterly fantastic! (A post on the substance of that issue is still in the works.) That shift in attitude is also why the tepid intellectual atmosphere of TOC quickly became unbearable to me. In presenting my two papers to the Advanced Seminar, I was expecting hard-hitting commentary from a deeply Objectivist perspective somewhere in the two hours of discussion. Such criticism, I knew, was necessary for improvement in my work. As I put it the point elsewhere: "I wanted my papers to be raked over the Objectivist coals by scholars who know the philosophy inside and out, not tepidly reviewed from a vaguely Objectivist perspective. I wanted to be respectfully but firmly held to the highest standards, even though failure may sometimes be confusing, painful, and frustrating. I wanted to be quickly and strongly challenged if I ignored some aspect of Objectivism on some issue. Yet such hard scrutiny, high standards, demands for seriousness was beyond the will and grasp of TOC." (As I've indicated elsewhere, I see such as a prime example of bad theory generating sorry practice.) My shift in attitude toward error also played a significant role in my disassociation from TOC, in that I was more than willing to publicly admit my error, even given ten years of vigorous support and active involvement with the organization. When I saw systemic problems at TOC, I was willing to consider and investigate philosophic origins. When I realized the necessity of departure, I didn't slink off into the night. Yet my embarrassment has been quite painful at times, given the magnitude and duration of my error. I should note, however, that I do not feel either guilt or shame, as I did not ever evade as far as I know. Honest error was easier than skeptics might think. I read Truth and Toleration only a few short months after first reading Ayn Rand's essays. The ARI supporters I knew often acted as if the errors in it were self-evident, such that you were obviously corrupt if you didn't see them right away. Often these people hadn't even bothered to read the work at all, let alone understand it in any detail. No knowledgeable critiques of it were available. When I read T&T for only the second time this winter, profound and disastrous errors certainly popped out at me. The first time around, I was simply not in a position to see them. Speaking generally, my prior fear of error and aversion to criticism seems to have been the result of regarding ignorance by itself as a moral failing. In my experience, that's a common attitude amongst smart young people, as they are used to understanding so much so quickly. But Rand was right: Evasion is the root of all evil... and there is a world of difference between errors of knowledge and breaches of morality. Link / Noodles / Trackback

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