 |
Comments |
|
 | Sunday, February 7, 2010 at 0:41:55 mst
Comment ID: #1
Name: O'newbie
Does intuition have any role to play in the formation of conceptual knowledge? I have encountered both theists and secularists, leftists and conservatives who argue for intuition. Just recently I was told that there is an intuitive aspect of rationality that allows us to know abstract principles. Is there "an intuitive aspect to rationality"? I get the sense that there are those that will use intuition to suggest a non-rational means to knowledge and that there are those that will try to include intuition in the definition of reason. There are also many who will argue that man intuits his sense of morality. Is human intuition even a valid concept? |
|
| Sunday, February 7, 2010 at 7:07:59 mst
Comment ID: #2
Name: William H Stoddard
E-mail: whswhs(at)mindspring.com
In mathematics, at least, intuition has a vital role in the process of discovery, but not in the process of validation, which requires explicit proofs. |
|
| Sunday, February 7, 2010 at 8:09:51 mst
Comment ID: #3
Name: Michael A. Slivka
E-mail: michaelslivka1(at)comcast.net
URL: http://slivkalaw.com
I've always liked the term "counter-intuitive" to describe phenomena that go against what I would expect, based on limited knowledge: it would seem that my bath water would get the hottest if I ran it all hot...but it actually winds up being hotter if I run some cold along with the hot (perhaps draining the hot water heater exclusively empties it, whereas adding some cold slows the process enough to allow it to simultaneously recover, and heat more water as it drains). Or the high-carb, low-carb debate: "you are what you eat" seems intuitively correct, yet a cow eating grass does not does become a grass-like carb, it becomes a zero-carb filet mignon. As all paleo-dieters know, eating fat without carbs does not add fat, it actually triggers the body to go into ketosis, and burn the fat that is there. (And if "you are what you eat" were correct, the guys who had sex with the most women would be pussies.)
I'd say intuition is akin to the Objectivist theory of emotions: lightning-like calculators that give you a most likely outcome based on the knowledge that you have at the moment....usually coorect, but sometimes woefully wrong, until you understand all the mechanisms at play. |
|
| Sunday, February 7, 2010 at 8:30:43 mst
Comment ID: #4
Name: C Andrew
E-mail: ca4papen(at)mindspring.com
O'Newbie,
I think that William and Michael have it on the valid versions of intuition. But when you are speaking with others outside
the Objectivist philosophy you have to remember that their idea of intuition is going to be different. They are usually referring to
some extra-sensory form of knowledge with such origins as the spirit of god (intrinsic) or the collective unconscious (subjective).
I'm using those two possibilities as illustrative but not exhaustive.
I think that Michael's answer shows the origin of legitimate intutition whereas William's shows the legitimate use of the same. I'm
sure you've had the experience where you cudgel your brain trying to remember something that you know you know without success. And then
wake up in the middle of the night with the answer. Just another example of the mechanism of your mind working its way throught a problem
that you've assigned it.
And as they both noted it's a real good idea to work through your insight so provided and make explicit the origins and conceptual
chain that rises out of your intuition.
Of course, there are times when you might not have the time to work through the process. Let's say you are in an emergency situation
and you have to go with your best guess in a short period of time. Should you take the intutitive route? Or go with a necessarily
incomplete but explicit route? Kind of an "emergency epistemology" so to speak. Anyone have ideas on that? |
|
| Sunday, February 7, 2010 at 8:38:46 mst
Comment ID: #5
Name: Lemuel
E-mail: synthesist(at)ymail.com
"Is there 'an intuitive aspect to rationality'?"
Search the Ayn Rand Lexicon (aynrandlexicon.com) for "intuition"; the word is used 4 times, 3 of them are negative. In each case, Rand uses "intuition" in a mystical context, indicating that her position on intuition is as a faculty that is used outside the process of rational thought.
- "Mysticism is the claim to some non-sensory, non-rational, non-definable, non-identifiable means of knowledge, such as 'instinct,' 'intuition,' 'revelation,' or any form of 'just knowing.'"
- "... knowledge cannot be acquired by special revelations from another dimension; there is no place for ineffable intuitions of the beyond."
- "... many people ... regard a sense of life as the province of some sort of special intuition, as a matter perceivable only by some special, non-rational insight. The exact opposite is true ..."
The only positive connotation in which she used it was:
- "It is Aristotle who first formulated the principles of correct definition. It is Aristotle who identified the fact that only concretes exist. But Aristotle held that definitions refer to metaphysical essences, which exist in concretes as a special element or formative power, and he held that the process of concept-formation depends on a kind of direct intuition by which man’s mind grasps these essences and forms concepts accordingly."
This indicates that there is *some* validity to intuition as limited, like a rational process that has been automatized. Driving I think is a good example. Once you've learned how to operate a car safely, the complex actions and awareness needed to continue doing so becomes so automatized that you can mentally attend to other things - preparing for your day, reviewing your day, fussing at the radio talk show host, rocking out to some new music, etc. All this is going on, and you may not be paying a bit of attention to the road, yet you arrive home safely; sometimes I feel like my 20-minute commute happened instantly. But knowing how to drive doesn't come automatically; you have to be learn, practice, and master the skill.
(Tech marketers, like myself, use the word "intuitive" to describe their products, but that's just hip shorthand for "quick to learn; easy to use; no manual required".)
Because "intuition" is so loaded with mysticism and implications of mystical (non-)awareness, I'm cautious about attempting to validate intuition as a rational faculty. |
|
| Sunday, February 7, 2010 at 9:04:18 mst
Comment ID: #6
Name: C Andrew
E-mail: ca4papen(at)mindspring.com
I was talking with my brother last night. He's an economist. We were discussing the impact of Obama's deficit on America's
recovery prospects. He pointed out that we're doing the same thing that Japan did in 1990 and that Hoover did in 1929 in order
to "forestall" the recession.
Japan's present debt to GDP ratio is 160%. He thinks the tipping point for debt to GDP ratio is about 1:1; that is, when debt approaches 100% of GDP, there is no coming back. There are some niggling issues about the percentage of govt spending vs market growth but that
is his rough estimate.
He also said that there is some wiggle room because much of what happens in financial markets is relative, and, believe it or not
the US is apparently one of the better players (relatively) when it comes to fiscal policy. Apparently the EU is even worse than we are and as far as the non-OECD countries, they make the EU look good.
In fact, the greatest threat to the US economy would be someone else putting their fiscal house in order. But it would probably take
50 years before the track record of stability would threaten the US unless we continued to do stupid things. Which, of course, is entirely possible.
One of the reasons the US has been able to export their inflation for the past 40 years is that America is still a safer place to
put your money than any other place on the planet, both because our economy is relatively more stable than the rest of the world and
even though we are moving away from the rule of law we're still much better than anywhere else. As he put it, "If you become rich in
China, the last place you want to leave your money is in China." Because of the question of stability and the lack of the rule of law.
So, what about the trade deficit we're running with China and the fact that they hold so much US debt? He kind of chuckled and pointed out
that the fact that China was willing to give us goods in exchange for dollars illustrated that, relative to the rest of the world, our currency still has the advantage of longer ranged stability. And that the fact that the US is running a trade deficit is one the mechanisms whereby we export our inflation. And on a larger note, he is skeptical of the idea that trade deficits are bad for a country.
Historically, there have only been two economies that were in trade surplus and had the cash position vis a vis their GDP that China has today. Those were, America in 1929 and Japan in 1990.
Food for thought?
C. Andrew |
|
| Sunday, February 7, 2010 at 11:15:58 mst
Comment ID: #7
Name: PDS
O'Newbie:
Here is my take on the concept of intuition: it is similar to what people in the 19th Century would have called "temperance". Or, to use a fancy term, "coup de oeil", which is something akin to a "coup" of the eye, or the ability to size things up at a glance. Put this way, intuition has far less of a mystical ring to it, and most who knew Ayn Rand would say she had a "coup" of the eye, in spades. |
|
| Sunday, February 7, 2010 at 11:38:16 mst
Comment ID: #8
Name: JT
E-mail: JT30014(at)hotmail.com
Lemuel, that last Rand example does negatively refer to intuition. Rand is saying that Aristotle was WRONG in his view of definitions as metaphysical essences and in his view of concept-formation as a kind of intuitive grasp of those essences. This is in fact the mysticism in Aristotle's epistemology that marred an enormous achievement. The last Rand example is consistent with the first three, which rejects the notion that intuition is a valid means of knowledge. Driving a car isn't an instance of intuition as a means of knowledge; it's an instance of the automatization of a skill, which is a different concept. |
|
| Sunday, February 7, 2010 at 12:02:26 mst
Comment ID: #9
Name: John Donohue
E-mail: john(at)jrdonohue.com
URL: http://jrdonohue.com
PDS has put a finger on it. "Intuition" is just your rational judgement working so fast it seems like "another way of knowing" if you are inclinded to irrationality. A trained mind can 'size up' a situation and perhaps leap to an answer or to the path of an answer.
Because of lust for their to be something other than reason in the current world culture, and therefore the tendancy to call any sort of whim "intuition" I avoid that word. |
|
| Sunday, February 7, 2010 at 12:22:25 mst
Comment ID: #10
Name: O'newbie
Thanks for all the responses. It sounds like intuition may be an legitimate concept but that it is intimately linked with psycho-epistemological functioning. For example, sometimes a person has a "feeling" that "something is wrong" or that, perhaps, someone they see may be "up to no good", etc.. Many people may say this is intuition but I think what is going on here are lightening like calculations being conduction by the mind. The world around us is constantly being observed, analyzed and evaluated - and the emotions we receive are estimations of "good for us" or "bad for us" that we need to ultimately think through using reason (when we have time).
Lemuel,
Thanks for alerting me of Rand's usage of the term. It seems that many people are using intuition as the ability to see the epistemological essence of something by just looking at it. This seems to me to be the main problem with Platonism/religion - the idea of gaining *conceptual* knowledge by passively absorbing it through some non-rational means. |
|
| Sunday, February 7, 2010 at 13:04:06 mst
Comment ID: #11
Name: C Andrew
E-mail: ca4papen(at)mindspring.com
Randy Cox said,
"I'm mad too! You want to know what I'm mad about? I'm mad a folks who rail against health care reform, but never say a word about the not so free system we have now. "
Well, you're probably right. (I did read your post on the matter.) But most of the posters here and the three authors of the blog
are fully aware that the medical market in the US is anything but free. Click on Paul's FIRM blog (upper right hand corner) if you want to
see some examples of that awareness. For instance, I followed Paul's postings clear back in the HPO days and even though he is an MD, (Jon Blaze to the contrary notwithstanding) I've yet to see him support the monopoly aspects of the present healthcare system like the FDA, coercive prescription policies, government licensing requirements that are essentially rent-seeking on the part of medical special interest groups.
If the focus of late has been on defeating the health care "reform" being sponsored by various liberal fascist types in the House and Senate
it is because the possibility of ever having a free market system would be foreclosed by such legislation. And the tools we have to counter this power grab aren't exactly the sharpest ones in the box. Consider the Republicans defending "free-market" health care by pointing out that Obama-care will short change Medicare; hardly a principled argument for the free market.
So, yes, a lot of opposition to Nationalized Health Care doesn't fall into the principled free market approach. Scott Brown's support of
MassaCare (championed by Republican Mitt Romney) points up that the idea of thinking in principle doesn't often occur to the Republicans.
But just because our ad hoc allies are not pure doesn't mean that we can't make the case for free market reform. It just means that the temporary priority is the defeat of a far worse system.
Regarding military health care; the VA is a pretty good pre-cursor to what you could expect in a nationalized system. Remember that little
contretemps a few years ago where the MSM "discovered" that patient rooms were substandard in the VA hospitals? Well, it's been that way for
the last 40 years. And the MSM wouldn't have "discovered" it if it hadn't paid political dividends for their cause and as long as they were certain that no one would make the connection that socialized medicine of any sort bring this kind of decay in its wake.
FYI, I'm self employed, pay my own insurance, and the best I can afford is with a 5000.00 deductible. And yes, I did go to one of the
Tea-Party demonstrations against health care "reform." And even though I've got serious chronic condition that costs me a considerable amount of money out of pocket, I still support genuine free market reform. Because if I ever fell short, I'd at least have the option of appealing to family for assistance. Whereas in the Brave New World of Obama-care, I would likely find myself in front of those "tax-commisioner-like" panels that George Bernard Shaw was so fond of. Trying to defend my life against the charge that I was no longer
"socially useful." And facing the probable ruling of the panel that I be exposed to "some gentlemanly gas" in the presence of "light classical music" so that my burden on society might be lifted. I find it significant that George Bernard Shaw conjured up that scenario some decades before the Nazis actually put it into practice.
C. Andrew |
|
| Sunday, February 7, 2010 at 13:19:57 mst
Comment ID: #12
Name: Handy Handle
http://cryptogon.com/?p=13409
"Microsoft Executive Thinks That Individuals Should Have to Obtain Government Licenses to Use Internet"
Quoting the article:
[Craig] Mundie [chief research and strategy officer for Microsoft] and other experts have said there is a growing need to police the internet to clampdown on fraud, espionage and the spread of viruses.
“People don’t understand the scale of criminal activity on the internet. Whether criminal, individual or nation states, the community is growing more sophisticated,” the Microsoft executive said.
“We need a kind of World Health Organisation for the Internet,” he said.
“When there is a pandemic, it organises the quarantine of cases. We are not allowed to organise the systematic quarantine of machines that are compromised.”
He also called for a “driver’s license” for internet users.
“If you want to drive a car you have to have a license to say that you are capable of driving a car, the car has to pass a test to say it is fit to drive and you have to have insurance.”
End quote. If this article is true, too bad I ever said anything nice about Microsoft. |
|
| Sunday, February 7, 2010 at 20:13:58 mst
Comment ID: #13
Name: Sam
"The Crazies"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNwEtEnf0M4
Watching this movie is the way normal people try to make sense of the philosophical (and thus moral and political decay) of American life.
Instead of the problems being mysticism, skepticism, subjectivism, relativism, altruism, collectivism, and statism... the problem is toxic drinking water. |
|
| Sunday, February 7, 2010 at 21:17:12 mst
Comment ID: #14
Name: subzero
About White Lies.
I agree with the core of Ayn Rand ethics and I practice it well (at least from my point of view). The practice of not lying (except when you're kidnapped, etc) is a good one, I believe. However I believe to have found an exception.
Let's say a have a wet dream and a friend is in my dreams. Next morning I see her, and she says, "I had an awesome dream last night..." and then tells me all about her perfectly nice innocent dream. I say great, and she answers, "What did YOU dream of last night?". The only thing I can remember is that wet dream with her. I think I would lie and just say "I don't remember".
Does this imply anything about Objectivist ethics? If so, what? |
|
| Sunday, February 7, 2010 at 21:20:16 mst
Comment ID: #15
Name: KPO'M
E-mail: ka84796(at)comcast.net
Too bad about your Colts, Diana.
Anyway, in case you were wondering, Jacob Weisberg blames you, the American people, for all of our problems.
http://www.slate.com/id/2243797/
Typical "intellectual" elitism at work here. |
|
| Sunday, February 7, 2010 at 22:04:49 mst
Comment ID: #16
Name: Sajid
"I think I would lie and just say "I don't remember"."
Its really a very innocent lie. You could just say "its personal, sorry" and that would be that. If the line makes your uncomfortable because the other person may try and read something into your statement, then you can outright lie, since you do not want to share that information with her. People would understand that.
The Objectivist Ethics tends to shy away from generalized commandments like "Thou shalt not lie" or "Thou shalt not steal". This is because it recognizes that ethics is not about blind commandments but ethics is based on how to be a good person. How a person decides to implement his ethics in any given situation is up to a person. I wouldn't have any problem with your reply if I knew the details--generally I do try to tell the truth as far as possible. |
|
| Monday, February 8, 2010 at 1:56:13 mst
Comment ID: #17
Name: Jim May
E-mail: Seerak(at)gmail.com
So... Did anyone else's jaw drop at the "green police" Audi ad? |
|
| Monday, February 8, 2010 at 3:59:57 mst
Comment ID: #18
Name: Sam
Jim,
I'm still trying to get it up off the floor: http://commercialanalysis.wordpress.com/2010/02/08/ill-make-this-quick/ |
|
| Monday, February 8, 2010 at 6:53:07 mst
Comment ID: #19
Name: KPO'M
E-mail: ka84796(at)comcast.net
I thought the Audi ad was well done. It unwittingly (or perhaps consciously) showed the ultimate goal of the "green" police to control every aspect of everyone's life. If it didn't ring true, it wouldn't have been as effective.
I was most surprised at the David Letterman-Oprah Winfrey-Jay Leno ad. |
|
| Monday, February 8, 2010 at 7:00:15 mst
Comment ID: #20
Name: Sam
Yes, KRO'M, the Audi ad did that, and then it said the the solution is to let them get away with it. A big step in letting them is buying an Audi, apparently. That's the deeper message, and that's the one which will shape the unscrupulous viewer's mind. He'll come to regard his ability to please his masters as a mark of his virtue. The Audi he drives will cease to be a reward for his individual initiative and independent mind, but a reward for his complacency and servile intellect. |
|
| Monday, February 8, 2010 at 7:00:41 mst
Comment ID: #21
Name: Sam
Excuse me, K'POM. |
|
| Monday, February 8, 2010 at 7:51:06 mst
Comment ID: #22
Name: Vince
Jim May,
I was thinking the exact same thing. You beat me to it.
I wouldn't be surprised if we got that far. It reminds me of "controls necessitate and breed further controls". It may seem like a joke today, but it is very likely if the idea of enviromentalism is to continue on the route it's on right now. |
|
| Monday, February 8, 2010 at 11:20:08 mst
Comment ID: #23
Name: Frank Loreti
E-mail: FNLoreti(at)aol.com
On the intuition discussion:
When I was a graduate student in physics at UW-Madison in the late 80's - early 90's, there was an older Nuclear Theory professor who would (in a nice way) interrupt every seminar speaker to ask questions so that he could follow the talk at the level of broad concepts (since it is almost impossible to actually follow the mathematics as someone is flashing them by on an overhead projector). I always admired him in that he always tried to remain in focus and to try to understand what the speaker was trying to get across. (This is somewhat unusual as many people at these types of seminars simply drift after the first few minutes because the speaker is talking about something far removed from their specialty).
One day, when there was a joint Nuclear Theory/Particle Theory seminar and the talk was more about Particle Theory than Nuclear, he was asking about one question every two minutes. At some point he asked for an "intuitive explanation" or mentioned that the speaker's answer to his question was "not intuitive". One of the Particle Theory professors, annoyed at his constant interuptions, stated slightly dismissively that "intuition is something that you create based on your previous thinking" - or something to that effect.
While snippy, I think what she stated is true. It is the past thinking you have done on similar subjects, past observations you have made and past analysis that you have performed that determines what your subconscious is referencing when you have an "intuition."
If one is considering a complex new idea, it is usually impossible to immediately determine if it is true or false. In the process of beginning to think about it, and especially if you have had previous experience with similar things, your subconsious is going notice all kinds of similarities and differences with knowledge you already have.
These, if you ask me, give the best, rational referent of the concept "intuition". There is nothing mystical about it, nor is it subjective. I realize that this may not be the way the term is used in much of philosophy.
However, like all subconsious processes, intuitive feelings that something might be true or false about the idea you are contemplating need to be explicitly checked by your consious mind in a process of active reasoning. |
|
| Monday, February 8, 2010 at 12:57:19 mst
Comment ID: #24
Name: Jim May
E-mail: seerak(at)gmail.com
"I thought the Audi ad was well done. It unwittingly (or perhaps consciously) showed the ultimate goal of the "green" police to control every aspect of everyone's life. If it didn't ring true, it wouldn't have been as effective."
That's the thing, though.... post-Climategate, too many people are now aware that the Green Police is what the envirocult is after. (Hell, no American conservative would fail to notice the last scene where a *real* cop is being harassed by a GP officer... it looks too much like local [American] authority being overrided by [blue] green-helmeted usurpers.)
And remember, this is a *football game*; consider what demographics form the bulk of the viewership.
I don't know what really went on behind the scenes there, but in terms of the net effect, I really think that this ad can work to our advantage.
Caricature is a double-edged sword, and must be wielded very carefully. Observe what happened to Maurice Joly's satire about Napoleon... |
|
| Monday, February 8, 2010 at 15:02:02 mst
Comment ID: #25
Name: KPO'M
E-mail: ka84796(at)comcast.net
I think the Audi ad will help the cause because it, in a disarmingly humorous way, points out the hypocrisy of the green "police." Obviously, going out and buying a brand new car isn't particularly "green" if one already has a working vehicle, even if it doesn't have clean burning diesel. That was the environmental folly of Cash for Clunkers. I can burn a lot of incandescent bulbs for all the energy that goes into producing a car. However, the green police would have us believe that buying a hybrid, clean-diesel, or similar car is a sort of "environmental indulgence" that lets us feel good about ourselves. It's really like a religion and pre-Reformation Christianity. |
|
| Monday, February 8, 2010 at 15:36:58 mst
Comment ID: #26
Name: KPO'M
E-mail: ka84796(at)comcast.net
Here's a take on the Audi ad from a right-wing blog:
http://www.rightpundits.com/?p=5501
He sees it as I do - a commercial that mocks environmental extremists to make a point. |
|
| Monday, February 8, 2010 at 16:18:52 mst
Comment ID: #27
Name: Publius in Idaho
I just posted the following at The New Criterion in response to Anthony Daniels's article. Any criticisms would be appreciated. I read NoodleFood regularly and enjoy it. Thanks!
I am taken aback by Anthony Daniels’s superficial analysis of Ayn Rand. And this is coming from someone who is enamored of his excellent writing in Life at the Bottom, where he illustrates his critique of modern British society with superbly wrought first-hand observations.
I am not, however, shocked. In contrast to his analysis of the British underclass, Daniels has long taken a nonintellectual and lazy approach to cultural criticism. Take his article “Trash, Violence and Versace: But Is It Art?”, which attacks the infamous “Sensation” show at the Royal Academy--a piece in which he never deigns to address the philosophic ideas that led to that deplorable exhibition.
To write an article that illuminated the nihilism of the Young British Artists, one would need to do a lot more legwork. To get to the marrow, one would need to address the arc of art history that led us to the dismal state that we are in today. One would need to analyze the people who conditioned “taste” makers like Charles Saatchi--the art critics of the contemporary scene, from Clement Greenberg to Arthur Danto. Most importantly, one would then need to identify the philosophic ideas that conditioned these conditioners--that is, look at the ideas that shape society. People don’t just make and admire sculptures like Dinos and Jake Chapman’s deformed, sexualized children without philosophic conditioning.
Daniels, however, demurs from looking too deeply into the matter. Rather he beats around the bush, avoiding the ideas in the cultural milieu that caused “Sensation” (such as the philosophic shift from the Renaissance--when man’s life on Earth was viewed with the benevolent wonder of the Ancient Greeks--to the modern nihilism of the Existentialists and Postmodernists). In lieu of addressing ideas head-on, Daniels waxes eloquently (and to his credit, he does so par excellence) about the cruelty of subjecting the mother of one of Myra Hindley's child-victims to a portrait of the murderer made with the handprints of a small child. He quotes the vapid justifications of the Royal Academy’s chief of exhibitions. And he ends by delightfully turning a quip by Joshua Reynolds, about the desire of youth to find a shorter path to excellence than hard work, into an indictment of a culture that does this through the nihilism of “Sensation.” All of these points are great, but they do not explain the phenomenon of “Sensation.”
Such articles are the equivalent of junk food: high in calories, but low in nutrition.
Ten years later and Daniels has not progressed when he critiques the loathsome architect Le Corbusier in “The Architect as Totalitarian.” Writing that he was elitist and cryptic, Daniels finally zeros in on what he believes is Le Corbusier’s major fault: he had a “totalitarian mindset.” He does not however examine what ideas the “totalitarian mindset” consists of, or what philosophy underlies it. (In fact, I don’t believe that Daniels knows what a “totalitarian mindset” is, which is why he can be so flip with the label.)
Daniels needs to ask himself: What is Le Corbusier’s totalitarian mindset? Could it have anything to do with the aim of shaping minds in the tradition of Marxist dialectical materialism? What philosophic assumptions gave rise to Marx and his theory of class conceptual determinism created by the modes of production? Is it Hegel? Is it Kant’s Copernican Revolution? Is modernist architecture also a nihilistic attack on the bourgeoisie and their beaux-arts standards? What gives rise to nihilism? Mr. Daniels does not ask such questions nor give such answers. He does not write about ideas.
In his piece on Rand, Daniels seems to have read The Fountainhead (alas, apart from skimming The Virtue of Selfishness that seems to be the extent of her work that he has read), but is unable to name its theme: individualism--specifically, the first-handed thinker against the second-handed thinker. In the book, Rand portrays people who are the embodiment of these ideas. Take the main character, Howard Roark, who defies the conventions of Beaux-Arts historical forms (a style of architecture I often find delightful), because he is an originator of ideas. In other words, he is not a classicist; he does not take the architectural forms of others and recycle them. (Such forms are often at odds with the function of a building.) Instead he fashions his creations from whole cloth relying on his first-hand observations of the building’s setting and its requirements. This separates him the second-handers like Peter Keating who copy styles from Beaux-Arts to modernism--the latter which she trenchantly critiques as well. The theme of self-guided, rational thought over intellectual conformity was repeated in various permutations and with a variety of characters throughout the novel.
(And an aside, Howard Roark was inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright not Le Corbusier--and both used reinforced concrete, but to entirely different ends.)
What is clear in his analysis of The Fountainhead is that Mr. Daniels can’t get past his hang-up on the details of architecture in the book to the ideas at its core. I prefer the Queen Anne style to Le Corbusier, but this did not blind me to the intellectual theme of the book.
More fundamentally, Rand’s advocacy of rational certainty seems to irk the doctor. He appears to mistake a certainty born of the Enlightenment (Newton’s scientific certainty, not Robespierre’s authoritarianism) for dogmatism. He writes previously of his own “preoccupation--anti-ideology” and his “great surprise and pleasure” when the curators at the Walker Art Galley “appeared to make no point at all” in what could been a polarizing exhibit. Elsewhere, he attacks Le Corbusier because he “believed there was a ‘correct’ way to build and that only he knew what it was.”
It is absurd for Daniels to dub Rand as the “Chernyshevsky of individualism” without pointing out even the most cursory ideological similarity between her and the Russian tradition of “angry literary and social critics, pamphleteers and ideologues,” and based solely on what Daniels takes to be her “vehemence, moral fanaticism and mediocrity as a thinker” and her “speechifying.” And yes, I have quoted the whole of Daniels’s case. I suppose then that Newton is the “Stalin of science” for his political maneuvering at the Royal Society. You see the absurdity of not thinking in essentials? (One has the sense that Daniels’s editors at The New Criterion are his fan boys and they are not doing him any favors with their uncritical pen.)
What Daniels takes to be the tone of Rand’s writing, that it “bores you like a drill,” and the fact that she held that her ideas were unprecedented (they were) is enough evidence for him to repeatedly link her to Stalin--even though philosophically, were he diligent enough to investigate the matter, he would find them to be diametrically opposed: reason vs. dialectical materialism, individualism vs. collectivism, individual rights vs. class warfare. Again, Daniels does not write about ideas. Such a baseless comparison is chillingly unjust and it is reprehensible given that Daniels must know that her parents died in the prison that was Stalin’s Russia.
Such “downright cruelty,” to use the doctor’s own words, along with his bizarre psychologizing of Rand (based on a single distorted biographical detail and a misreading of a once mentioned character in The Fountainhead) is emblematic of a nasty streak in Daniels’s writing, one illustrated in his article “Loose ends in Liverpool” where he gratuitously pokes the corpse of the earnest but mediocre artist Benjamin Haydon while reflecting on the Walker Art Gallery.
Daniels passes over some of the greatest art in the world (the Walker's Waterhouse’s “Echo and Narcissus,” Delaroche’s “Napoleon crossing the Alps,” Thornycroft’s “The Mower”) to mock Haydon whom he coldly dubs a “tragicomic character.” Here Daniels displays a shocking lack of regard for the extremely sad, but all too common phenomenon of earnest over-reachers. A noble soul who earnestly struggles to be good, but lacks the ability to do so *is* tragic. To exhume Haddon as an object of ridicule when it has nothing to do with the theme of one’s piece--other than to pretentiously display your grasp of a minor player in the history of art--is shameful, even if the person is long dead. (And this from the man who writes so tenderly and beautifully about those sensitive souls who have to live amongst the brutes in the British slums.)
If I were to tear a page from Daniels’s playbook, I would wonder whether such callousness showed a psychopath lurking beneath his eloquent prose. But that would be just as unfounded and supercilious as when he implies the same about Rand.
Such superficial and baseless evaluations are the closest Daniels’ gets to Rand’s ideas. He spends the rest of the article attacking a straw man. He declares that Rand divides “mankind into two categories,” that she rejects compassion, that her philosophy “would seem to justify the reign of philosopher-kings,” that she holds that the marketplace is the proper judge of value, that “Romantic Realism is virtuously indistinguishable from Socialist Realism.” All of this is not just mind-bogglingly wrong, but absurd. Daniels should be ashamed of reviewing someone who he doesn't have the foggiest grasp of and someone who he has not read more than a smattering from. This is a schoolboy’s paper of confusions spun around out of context quotes.
Daniels is not even familiar enough with Rand’s oeuvre to make a pretense of addressing what she wrote. I think he would be astonished to realize the true depth of her thought from her metaphysics and epistemology to her ethics, politics and aesthetics--something one doesn’t get from reading Anne C. Heller’s embarrassingly trite book. (She is an unbiased biographer? Listen to the bitter, mocking tone and pot shots she takes at Rand when she is interviewed by the New York Times or NPR. Contrary to her meek protestations, she is not “something of an admirer of her subject.” She hates her subject.)
But Daniels will never spend the time to actually read Rand and that’s just fine with The New Criterion.
Anthony Daniels’s writing can sparkle. He can entertain with erudite and obscure trivia. But he seems unable to think deeply about ideas. His intellect is as wide as an ocean, but as shallow as a puddle. |
|
| Monday, February 8, 2010 at 20:56:45 mst
Comment ID: #28
Name: Amit Ghate
E-mail: amit_ghate(at)hotmail.com
URL: http://amitghate.blogspot.com/
Hi Publius,
Though I'm not conversant enough with all the details and examples in your comment to really be able to judge it, it strikes me as a careful and valuable response. Perhaps you should consider submitting a version of it to CapMag or some other venue which will give it a wider audience. |
|
| Monday, February 8, 2010 at 21:55:43 mst
Comment ID: #29
Name: Publius in Idaho
Hi Amit,
Thanks for the comment.
It takes me forever to edit, so I will have to see if I can carves some time out of my schedule to get it into a presentable form. (As I glanced back over my comments a couple of grammatical errors and misformulations made me cringe.)
I very much enjoy reading your blog. I also had the great pleasure of having your brother as a teacher at the undergraduate program of the OAC. (I believe I have that relation correct.) |
|
| Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 1:53:06 mst
Comment ID: #30
Name: Ryan O.
E-mail: ryanmoshea(at)gmail.com
Whether the Audi ad intended to mock the notion of Green Police, it still dramatized an intrusive police force trampling the rights of ordinary people to enforce Green Laws-an idea not out of the realm of possibility-and was therefore appalling to watch. It was not presented as cheeky or serious, but rather lighthearted, which makes it worse-such a scenario is the logical implication of policies currently in the works. Audi could have scored major points with rational, even common-sense, people by having a vehicle NOT touted for its Green compatibility, say, perhaps, a W12 A8L or R8, go blowing past the clowns at the vehicle check-point.
Capitulating to the Green rhetoric by designing and marketing a TDI as a Green vehicle, while making the enforcement of such laws to appear more hilarious than evil, will move the world in the wrong direction, at the speed of a Turbocharged Green Audi. |
|
| Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 5:39:45 mst
Comment ID: #31
Name: O'newbie
"Audi could have scored major points with rational, even common-sense, people..."
This is a question I ask myself on my darker days: are there enough of those kinds of people left? Could Audi make money marketing to a pro-liberty audience? I think the very real, and very tragic, answer might be no.
The sands of the hourglass may be running out. |
|
| Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 9:53:39 mst
Comment ID: #32
Name: Diana Hsieh
E-mail: diana(at)dianahsieh.com
URL: http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog
Publius in Idaho -- Could I post your essay as a regular NoodleFood post? It's too good to just be posted in the comments! Feel free to e-mail me about it: diana@dianahsieh.com. |
|
| Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 15:29:43 mst
Comment ID: #33
Name: Jim May
E-mail: seerak(at)gmail.com
Seconded! That comment should stand on its own, Publius. My first thought when I saw it was that it was too long to post as a comment... and I still think so, except that I'd say it's much too *good* to be posted as one :)
I'll link it from The New Clarion as soon as it's up. |
|
|
Post Your Comment |
|
|
|
E-mail Diana Hsieh
Comments
