In Defense of the Layperson

My latest book was published on July 1. Its title is Epistemological Foundations of the Free Society: Ayn Rand’s Theory of Universals Applied to Science, Sigmund Freud’s Psychology, and Ludwig von Mises’s Economics.
 
As the title suggests, the book applies Ayn Rand’s theory of concepts to the correct understanding of science and illustrates the theory with the scientific work of Freud and Mises, concluding that, contrary to their critics, both are true scientists.
 
Out of curiosity, I recently searched my book for the word “layperson” and found that I used it twenty times! Hence, the title of this post.
 
Or, in other words, as I might also put it: I was an academic for thirty-six years, but please don’t accuse me of that! Or, again, figuratively speaking, I am a truck driver at heart (though I never drove trucks for any of my many part-time and summer jobs.)
 
The layperson—and I am including both skilled and unskilled workers, as well as anyone else working in a non-academic field—is usually a common sensical, practical, down-to-earth person trying to live life as best as he or she can.
 
The layperson in particular does not take seriously the minutia that many academics spend their time on and they certainly dismiss out of hand the philosopher’s claims, due especially to Immanuel Kant, that true reality can never be known.
 
What I emphasize in my book is that academics or scientists perform the same cognitive processes as any layperson, namely conceptualization, the formation of new concepts and application of known ones to identify concrete instances of those previously formed concepts, which in turn are used to guide our choices and actions.
 
Concepts are the ideas or abstractions that stand behind words. For example, the words kitty, minou, Kätzchen, gattino all symbolize the same abstraction. Concepts are mental units—“file folders,” as Ayn Rand calls them metaphorically—that children learn initially from their parents, later from teachers in school and reading. A concept once learned is then applied when we come upon new instances or concretes that constitute the content of the concept’s file folder.
 
Mental and physical skill, whether driving a truck, teaching or raising children, wiring a house or commercial building, or conducting a scientific experiment, requires, first, the accumulation of knowledge—concepts—relevant to the nature of the skill and its performance, then practice in applying that knowledge to accomplish the defined goal.
 
Kitty, ball, chair, table, and bed are concepts that we learn early in our lives and then apply them when we see a new furry thing that goes “meow,” or a flat thing that holds other objects. At first, we may confuse kitty with those other furry things that go “woof, woof,” but eventually we learn to differentiate the two as distinctly different animals.
 
After we have observed enough cats and dogs, or chairs, tables, and beds, we learn that these concepts, when put into a new file folder, can be called, respectively, animals and furniture, which often are our first abstractions from abstractions. Learning, subsequently, becomes a series of identifications—concept formations—of concrete objects and abstractions from abstractions.
 
Conceptualization is the process of generalization to form concepts and application of our formed concepts to recognize or identify the specifics of our daily lives and to guide our behavior.* Application is what most of us do, including scientists in their laboratories, most of the time in our lives.
 
The formation of concepts is an inductive process, application is deductive. Ayn Rand’s theory of concepts can readily be understood by the layperson, though it may take slow, concentrated reading and rereading.
 
Skilled and unskilled laborers, to bring back my laypersons, learn more concepts of concrete objects than college professors do, who work with broad abstractions, but laborers, too, learn broader and broader abstractions related to their professions.
 
Scientists, as I discuss in my book (and as identified by Francis Bacon, following Aristotle) focus on forming correct concepts that are universal, by defining their essential distinguishing characteristics. Citing an example I have used before, from science historian John McCaskey, Robert Koch identified the comma bacillus as the essence and cause of cholera, dispensing with the competing but correlational hypotheses of foul water or season of year.
 
The mental processes of generalization and application used by both scientists and truck drivers are the same.
 
For example, a plumber reportedly said to a professor, “You pay me for what I know, not what I do,” meaning the plumber and the professor were fellow professionals. “Like hell we are,” was the professorial response, which included a big laugh when I heard the story. But we do pay plumbers both for what they know, as well as what they do, just as we also pay professors for what they know and what they do in the classroom.
 
Mental and physical skill that is performed well, and that we pay for, can indeed be called professional, whether applied to a plumber or college professor. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of condescension toward laypersons among intellectual elites.
 
Conceptualization—valid concepts—is what keeps us in contact with “true” reality. After all, we live and act in true reality, and this reality includes our means of awareness, our consciousness. There is nothing “phenomenal” or “just appearance” about what we perceive.
 
This, of course, does not mean that we never make mistakes or cannot be deluded about reality. Aristotle’s law of non-contradiction is our guide to ensure that the in-here, the content of our consciousness, our concepts, correctly matches, corresponds to, or identifies the out-there, the world external to our minds. If not correct, we have a contradiction between the in-here and out-there.
 
Aristotle’s law also applies, in a more challenging manner, when we introspect to identify the contents and processes of consciousness, because we are using our mental processes to identify mental contents and processes.
 
Conceptualization, especially of broad abstractions, does take mental effort.
 
Perception gives us the data—entities and their attributes and motions. Concepts give us the cognitive expression (language broadly construed) of what we observe to give us bodies of knowledge and to guide us in the improvement of our lives.
 
Truck drivers, and laypersons in general, as well as scientists, perform the same mental processes. And I would add that I have met many a layperson who performs these processes better than some (many?) academics.
 
 
* Ayn Rand calls this process “conceptual identification” and does not include it in the concept of conceptualization. I believe application belongs in that “file folder.”

 

Preface to Epistemological Foundations of the Free Society: Ayn Rand's Theory of Universals Applied to Science, Sigmund Freud's Psychology, and Ludwig von Mises's Economics (available July 1 in print and ebook forms at Amazon.com and others)

A sound theory of universals is fundamental to the defense of a free society.

 

    Plato said that universals, which he called forms, are located in another dimension of reality and only certain people can know them. Hence, his advocacy of a near-communistic society of philosopher-kings who would rule. Thomas Hobbes advocated a theory called nominalism, which says universals are conventional, arbitrary names, not sound or objective concepts that are true. This made him a relativist in ethics and advocate of a strong “public sword,” or monarchy, to keep the peace in society.

 

   Karl Marx did not have a theory of universals, though we might say it was implied in what Ludwig von Mises calls Marx’s polylogism, a theory of many logics that rejects the notion of only one fundamental logic based on Aristotle’s three laws. Thus, Marx claimed that the bourgeoisie have their logic, while the proletariat have theirs, which means the two classes cannot talk to or understand each other. Hence, his advocacy of the  dictatorship of the proletariat to establish that Garden of Eden called communism—or socialism—he considered both terms synonymous. Today’s postmodern Marxists say something similar: “You have your truth; I have my truth.” As consequence, what they advocate in political philosophy is a repressive society, with the so-called victim classes taking the place of the proletariat.

 

   Underlying any theory of political philosophy is a theory of human nature, also called philosophical psychology. A sound theory of universals is required to form and define the concepts that identify and define the essentials of human nature. Do human beings possess the capacity to reason, the word “capacity” meaning we do not reason automatically but must choose to exercise that capacity, which means we have an active consciousness with which we control our lives? Or are we determined by genes and environment with illusions of consciousness and free will? The illusion of consciousness is called materialism and the illusion of free will is called determinism. Both are advocated by Hobbes and Marx. If we do possess a volitional consciousness, however, the idea of a free society—capitalism—follows from basic concepts of rights, freedom, the moral validity of the pursuit of self-interest, and, in particular, a sound theory of universals that explains how objectivity and truth are possible.

    The significance of a correct theory of universals is that our knowledge, with the exception of proper names, is entirely in the form of universal concepts. If those concepts are not valid, they mean nothing when we move from epistemology to ethics and politics, and to all the special sciences, including psychology and economics. That is, we must be able to use and apply the theory of universals to validate science, especially our concept of human nature—to establish the foundations of psychology, to validate the concept of value to establish a theory of ethics, and to validate many other concepts to define the proper function of government. This last includes rights and freedom, along with such additional concepts as the nature and meaning of healthy and unhealthy motivation and behavior and the production of wealth in a social setting.

    A correct theory of universals means our minds are competent to know reality and thus can guide us in our choices and actions to grow, thrive, and prosper.

    Ayn Rand’s theory of concepts, which I will argue is a sound theory of universals, is her most important and significant contribution to philosophy, especially to epistemology. Only by making the theory widely known and understood can the free society be properly defended.

    The present work is not a defense of capitalism per se. Ayn Rand and Ludwig von Mises provide unanswerable moral and economic justifications.[1] The subject of this book is epistemology and its importance in identifying the nature of science, basic and applied, with emphasis on the human sciences of psychology and economics. Its theme is that the essence of science is observation, not exact measurement, and that science employs as its primary and fundamental method the mental process of conceptualization: generalization from observation of particulars to identify universals, then application of previously formed universals to understand new particular cases. The issue of universals, based on Ayn Rand’s theory of concepts, runs throughout, providing the fundamental epistemological foundation for proper defenses of reason in philosophy, individualism in psychology, and capitalism in economics.

    My audience, as a result, is laypersons and academics interested in the underlying epistemology of science, especially the human sciences that, when integrated with psychology and economics, provide the ultimate vindication of a free society and answer to such ill-founded theories as those of Plato, Hobbes, and Marx.

    In chapter 1, using Rand’s theory of universals, or concepts as she calls them, I introduce her notion of measurement omission as the essence of abstraction to address the proper meanings of, and distinctions between, basic and applied science, theory and history, and the cognitive processes of generalization and application. Positivism—logical positivism or logical empiricism, as it is also labeled—and experimentation are discussed, followed by a presentation of what is called the problem of universals.

    In chapter 2, I elaborate Rand’s theory of concepts as an improvement on Aristotle’s theory of form and matter by identifying concepts and essences as neither intrinsic, in the thing, as Aristotle taught, nor subjective as the nominalists assert. Rather, concepts and essences are epistemological, in our minds, created by us and are valid and epistemologically objective if they correctly identify the metaphysical referents on which they are based. I further discuss Rand’s important explanations of abstraction from abstractions and concepts of consciousness. In concluding the chapter, I elaborate Rand’s usage of the terms “metaphysical” and “epistemological,” ending with a presentation of what I consider her radical theory of logic as non-contradictory identification.

    In chapter 3, I discuss several related philosophical issues using Rand’s theory to refute the bane of science, positivism, and to provide valid empirically-based explanations of Immanuel Kant’s allegedly innate “a priori” concepts—space, time, and causality—as well as a non-religious, non-Kantian empirical defense of free will. I continue with a discussion of the distinction between general knowledge, which we all possess to some degree and with some accuracy, and personal knowledge, which is unique to our own experiences. Finally, I conclude with a brief discussion of the role and importance of emotion in both science and our personal lives.

    In chapters 4 and 5, respectively, I apply Rand’s theory to my understanding of psychology and economics as human sciences, with emphasis on the work of Sigmund Freud and Ludwig von Mises. Both Freud and Mises have been criticized as pseudo- or non-scientific for using “literary” (Freud) or “non-quantitative” (Mises) methods to establish their theories. To the contrary, I argue that the methods of both are models of conceptualization, which I contend is the fundamental method of science.

    I became aware of the importance of conceptualization in science when I reread Edith Packer’s Lectures on Psychology after they had been made available as a Kindle book, in 2013, by her husband George Reisman. I realized after reading the book that conceptualization was what Dr. Packer was doing as a psychotherapist, and then realized that Mises, Dr. Reisman, Aristotle, and, when reading him later, Freud, were doing the same thing in their work. Masses of quantitative data and laboratory experiments, I realized, were not the essence of science.

    In chapter 6, I conclude the work with a summary of its thesis, elaborating on what I call thinking in definitions and clarifying the meanings of scientific law and principle. Finally, statements about Kant’s legacy and, subsequently, Ayn Rand’s complete the book.

    The significance of focusing on Freud and Mises is that they both provide fundamental concepts and principles for the foundation of a free society, Freud for the individual to pursue a healthy, happy, and psychologically independent life and Mises for individuals to cooperate with each other to achieve peace and prosperity. Both are experts on human nature, explicitly so for Freud, implicitly for Mises, and both, despite the comments of their critics, consider themselves to be scientists. This work aims to provide Freud and Mises a needed epistemological foundation.

    The meaning of free society that I am using is Ayn Rand’s concept of laissez-faire capitalism as a social system, presupposing an ethics of rational self-interest. That is, capitalism is not just the private ownership of the means of production, as economists, Mises in particular, define it, but a system based on the primacy of individual rights, especially property rights, with all property privately owned, allowing social cooperation to be achieved by voluntarily trading value for value. Rights are freedoms of action—deriving from human nature as a rational being—to speak and write openly and to work with others to pursue property, careers, relationships, hobbies, education, and happiness without the interference of initiated physical coercion, that is, physical force, by the government or criminals. Self-defensive coercion is delegated to the government unless involved in an emergency situation.

    The importance of defining capitalism as a social system is that it broadens the concept beyond economics alone. This is significant because totalitarian states are called such because they seek to and often do—in the name of an ethics of self-sacrifice—control every aspect of the individuals’ lives, not just their economic lives.[2] Totalitarianism means total control. Capitalism means total freedom—from direct or indirect initiated physical force of any type, economic or political.

    A further point about the meaning of Rand’s concept of capitalism. It is not what we have today or had in the late nineteenth century, though Rand acknowledges the United States came close in those earlier years. Her concept is a goal, a moral and political ideal, to work toward to achieve at some point in the future. It is not Marx’s utopia or creation of a “new man,” as Marx said communism would give us. Capitalism requires hard work and self-responsibility with no one expected to provide handouts. The problems with the apparent capitalism that we had in earlier days, and have today, is that many big businesses and governments have colluded with each other to gain favors and wealth for themselves, ignoring everyone else. This is not capitalism, but corporatism or, more precisely, fascism.

    For this reason, one of the best ways to describe capitalism is that it is a system in which business and state are completely separated in the same way and for the same reasons as we now have the (nearly) complete separation of church and state. And by “business,” I mean any organization that operates to earn a profit by offering value to paying customers. I include schools, roads, and utilities, today’s publicly owned and mixed institutions. I also believe that there should be no so-called nonprofit organizations. All societal institutions, business, church, or otherwise, should be privately owned and operated and expected to earn an excess of revenues or donations over expenses. If there is to be taxation to support the considerably limited government, it should be a flat tax applied to everyone, including to those so-called nonprofits. As Ayn Rand indicates, there are other options in financing government in a free society, but the issue is far removed from today’s problems. For the most part, it should be postponed for debate until we come closer to a truly free society.

    I did not come up with the theme of this book until recently, but the idea behind it was implanted in me during the spring quarter of my freshman year, 1966, at the University of Denver. I took the course “Modern Philosophy,” taught by Leonard Peikoff. The course covered Thomas Hobbes, the Continental rationalists (Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz), the British empiricists (Locke, Berkeley, Hume), and Immanuel Kant—in ten weeks.[3] The issue of universals and political philosophy arose immediately because Dr. Peikoff’s lectures began with Hobbes and the consequences of Hobbes’s nominalism. The issue continued throughout the course, at least indirectly, when we came to John Locke’s inability to find a “something I know not what,” Hume’s failure to find a necessary connection between cause and effect, and, of course, Kant’s failure to find reality.

    An important note here is that Ayn Rand’s theory of concepts did not begin to be published until July of that year, and Dr. Peikoff’s teaching style was to present the best case he could for a viewpoint he did not accept, even bending over backwards to make it sound like he supported it. He knew Ayn Rand’s theory at this time but did not present it in the course.[4] Lively Q&A’s went on throughout the term, but no solution to the problem of universals was found. I concluded, reluctantly, that those of us most interested in the topic were left on the floor, desperately trying to find Aristotle’s intrinsic essences. After that quarter, Dr. Peikoff returned to New York City where he had lived for many years.

    When Ayn Rand’s theory was published, I memorized key definitions to think about them, for example, when waiting for my next class.[5] In the ensuing years, my interest in epistemology and the problem of universals never waned. It was a treat to read the discussions of epistemology by Ludwig von Mises and, though not exactly a treat, my knowledge of epistemology helped me in graduate school to fend off the assaults of that god called positivism.

 

     My relationship to Ayn Rand’s philosophy, which she named Objectivism, is that I am a follower of her philosophy, but do not describe myself as an Objectivist. I call myself a student of Ayn Rand, in the same way I call myself a student of Sigmund Freud and Ludwig von Mises. In 1968, in the aftermath of Rand’s break with Nathaniel Branden, she emphasized that Objectivism was her philosophy and that followers should take care not to speak for her, but to continue working as independent intellectuals in their own fields applying her ideas as relevant.[6] This is how I have viewed my scholarly work for many decades. In the present book, I emphasize that I am presenting and applying her ideas as I understand them. Elaborations and applications are mine.[7]

    My thirty-six-year academic career was spent in the applied science of business marketing, teaching and writing about fundamental ideas—Ayn Rand’s, as well as those of psychologists and economists—applying them to the business disciplines and education.

     The many references used in this book indicate a wide variety of influences on my thinking and writing. I endorse some, reject others or attempt to refute them, and some are neutral, providing important information as background and history. Aside from Ayn Rand, Freud, and Mises, my most significant influences are psychologist Edith Packer and economist George Reisman. My primary and permanent influence is my wife, soulmate, and editor, philosopher Linda Reardan. Her conceptions both of post-Kantian, modern Aristotelianism and of emotions as data for reasoning have influenced this book. Our daughter, a mechanical engineer, has also been helpful when challenging me to explain to her, in simple terms, the thesis of the work.

     The formatting, as with all my books, follows The Chicago Manual of Style, though not completely. I still prefer superscript numbers in the footnote reference, for example, as opposed to Chicago’s recommendation to use full-sized numbers followed by a period. Clarity and consistency are the criteria of formatting, which I learned from Carol Fisher Saller, The Subversive Copy Editor.

 

     For references to the internet, I have shortened most of the uniform resource locators (URLs) to their domain names. When searching for my reference, I recommend using what is called the “site operator,” for example, site:freud.org.uk private meaning or site:mises.org economic calculation. This will almost always, at the top of the search, return the words that follow the domain name. Digital object identifiers (DOIs), unique locators usually of academic journal articles, have not been shortened. Citations to print publications have been shortened after the initial reference. All sources are listed in the bibliography in full, including uniform resource locators.

 

   A final note on “self-plagiarism,” a term I believe to be a ludicrous contradiction in terms that has gained some notoriety in the academic world. I emphatically do not endorse the notion that a writer can plagiarize him- or herself, especially when acknowledgment is made about the so-called recycling of one’s own work. For the record, I have been writing and posting monthly blogs for nineteen years and more than twenty of the posts, since 2021, were written as drafts for eventual use, after editing, in the present work. A few excerpts from the draft of this work have also been posted as blogs.[8]

   Notes    

 

   [1] I must add George Reisman and his magnum opus Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics. Reisman is a follower of Ayn Rand’s philosophy and former student of Mises.

 

    [2] The ethics, especially today, is usually a variant of Kant’s duty-over-inclination maxim, imposed at the point of a government gun (or Hobbes’s public sword). The individual’s life belongs to the state and must be sacrificed to it when and as requested. 

 

    [3] The quarter system at the time was ten weeks plus a week of finals, and classes were five days a week, fifty minutes each. I took Professor Peikoff’s introductory philosophy course during the previous winter quarter, along with 160 of my closest classmates. The modern philosophy class consisted of about thirty-five students.

 

    [4]    In the introduction to philosophy course, Dr. Peikoff had nearly everyone convinced he was a determinist. In the modern philosophy course, I knew that he knew Ayn Rand’s theory because he taught it in a graduate seminar during the fall quarter of 1965. I even had the audacity to walk into his office, before attending a single college class, to ask him if I could audit his graduate seminar. He said “no,” because it would not be fair to others. He did, however, give me the telephone number of the local representative of the Nathaniel Branden Institute that presented lecture courses on tape of Ayn Rand’s philosophy.

 

    [5]    Rand’s theory of concepts was initially published in eight monthly installments in The Objectivist magazine from July 1966 to February 1967. One of the (non-epistemological) definitions I memorized was her notion of capitalism as a social system. When I mentioned it to a classmate, the classmate was surprised, and I was surprised that he was surprised—because I had assumed that Rand’s definition was self-evident and that everyone must have known it! 

 

    [6] Ayn Rand, “A Statement of Policy,” The Objectivist 7, no. 6 (June 1968): 7–9. 

 

    [7]    In the present work, I have concentrated on avoiding any tinges of moralism, a trait that unfortunately is sometimes present in Rand’s writing and in the demeanor of some of her followers. See my discussion of the anti-conceptual mentality in Jerry Kirkpatrick, Independent Judgment and Introspection: Fundamental Requirements of the Free Society (Kirkpatrick Books, 2019), 108–110, and below, chap. 3, the section titled “Defensive Habits and Free Will,” pp. 67–69.

 

    [8] See jerrykirkpatrick.blogspot.com for the blogs. I have always considered my blog posts to be drafts of whatever I might later publish. See Richard Posner, The Little Book of Plagiarism (Pantheon, 2007), for his discussion of the legal and moral issues involved in plagiarism and “self-plagiarism.” The term “self-plagiarism” likely applies more correctly to students who turn in the same paper for two different classes. 

Triumphs of the American Sense of Life

Below is a repost from November 13, 2018. In the first line of paragraph four, I link to two earlier posts that make good companions to the present one. The first is from February 8, 2017, posted shortly after the 2016 election, “Condescension, Intelligence Defense Values—and the Deplorables—And Oh Yes, The Putsch Mentality.” The second is from January 12, 2018, “More on Condescension toward the Weak, Stupid, and Ignorant,” a more detailed discussion of how the elites view the “deplorables.” At the end of the present post, I have added a brief note on the current state of the American sense of life and what it is up against in today’s elites. 

 

“Boy, you all want power. God, I hope you never get it. I hope the American people can see through this sham. . . . I hope [they] will see through this charade” (Senator Lindsey Graham, Kavanaugh Hearing: Transcript, p. 702, September 27, 2018).

Fortunately, the American people have seen through the sham and charade, but those holding and seeking additional power continue their campaigns to gain more.

Is the American sense of life strong enough to slow down and defeat the leftists’ rabid—and rapid—march toward dictatorship?

I have written in earlier posts (1, 2) that our current president won his election two years ago by tapping into what Ayn Rand calls the American sense of life. He did not, and still does not, condescend toward the “deplorables” of middle America. He respects them, and unlike many (most?) politicians, is straightforward and honest with them.

Sense of life is a composite emotional sum of who each one of us is as a person. It consists of what Edith Packer calls our core evaluations, as well as our level of self-esteem. It expresses our view of ourselves and our attitudes toward other people and the world in general (Lectures on Psychology, pp. 9-10).

Ayn Rand describes sense of life as a “pre-conceptual equivalent of metaphysics,” “a generalized feeling about existence . . . with the compelling motivational power of a constant, basic emotion—an emotion which is part of all [our] other emotions and underlies all [our] experiences” (The Romantic Manifesto, pp. 25-26).

Sense of life is what an artist projects in a work of art and what patrons of the arts respond to. It is also what one does or does not fall in love with in a member of the opposite sex and what one initially likes or dislikes in another person.

An astute observer of emotions might notice that one person is “eaten up with envy” and another “really loves life and is at ease with himself” (Packer’s examples). These are descriptions of the two individuals’ senses of life. It is possible and not uncommon for individuals to hold contradictory core evaluations and therefore a contradictory sense of life.

A nation is a sum or average of its individual citizens’ values and behavior, which means a country’s sense of life can be identified, albeit not easily, and described based on its citizens’ dominant traits and emotional expressions.

Ayn Rand identifies the dominant American sense of life as essentially individualistic and hardworking, with fundamental values placed on achievement, initiative, effort, earning your own way, genuineness, a strong reality orientation, and a defiance of authority. Typical Americanisms that describe the sense of life are “you can’t push me around” and “my money’s as good as the next fella’s” (Philosophy: Who Needs It, chap. 18).

The American sense of life insists on the right to the pursuit of happiness and Americans generally are happy and optimistic—happier and more optimistic than the citizens of many, perhaps all, other nations in the world. The American sense of life represents the freedom, accomplishments, and well-deserved benefits of capitalism, while most of the rest of the world is mired in varying degrees of statism and dictatorship, including abject poverty.

This American sense of life, therefore, is best (though certainly not exclusively) represented by the so-called deplorable dregs of society, the ones who live in flyover country and are mocked by the bi-coastal elites, especially those members of the communist-fascist left and their sycophantic followers. The elites, which include most college professors and the condescendingly leftist press, derive their sense of life from European intellectuals and aristocrats. They do not share the same sense of life as the “deplorables,” or at least in the same degree.

The “deplorables” are the ones who voted for our current president in 2016 and supported his program and candidates in the recent midterm election. The elites are the ones who labeled, and continue to label, anyone who exhibits the American sense of life a racist and a bigot.

If we go back a few decades in our political history, we can see the American sense of life in operation in several presidential campaigns. In 1964, the press and leftist elites, for example, were beside themselves when someone like Senator Barry Goldwater could win the presidential nomination of the Republican Party, especially after their incessantly relentless charges of racism and bigotry against the senator and anyone who supported him. Sound familiar?

At that time, Ayn Rand commented on the press’s loss of respect and influence, as well as their considerable myopia and the criteria they must have been using to report the news: “It is as if newsmen, with ‘their ears to the ground,’ had heard everything except an earthquake in full progress.”*

It was their leftist (and European) anti-American sense of life that clashed with that of the deplorables and prevented them from seeing (or feeling) the earthquake. Unfortunately, Goldwater’s subsequent campaign collapsed in anti-intellectualism, causing him to lose by a landslide.**

In 1972, however, the American people were offered explicit socialism in the form of Senator George McGovern. His opponent, the less-than-inspiring Richard Nixon, won forty-nine states. The American sense of life spoke—against McGovern, not for Nixon.

Later expressions of the American sense of life can be seen in the Reagan years and, less enthusiastically, in the years of the two Bushes. The sense of life came back in 2016 and also this year, though not nearly as strongly as the previous years, especially 1972.

The problem with a sense of life is that it is an emotion and emotions are not infallible, nor are they permanent, especially as new generations are educated in the anti-capitalist government-run schools and constantly confronted with the ferocious onslaught of leftist propaganda.

If the American sense of life is not articulated explicitly in terms of philosophy, economics, and psychology, it cannot survive—especially in today’s postmodern Orwellian climate of doublespeak and deliberately chaotic disingenuousness.

The American people and their sense of life have thus far heeded Senator Graham’s call not to fall for the shams and charades of the left. The American people also have not fallen for the Soviet tactic of condemning as “mentally incompetent” both Senator Graham and Judge Kavanaugh for their angry and correctly expressed moral indignation at the left’s flagrantly unjust and dishonest attempt to prevent the judge’s confirmation.

No, our current president is not perfect, though he is committed to defending the American way of life, flawed as his conception may be. He is the best public figure to come along in many years to express the sense life.

Intellectual articulation of that American sense of life is available in the works of Ayn Rand, Ludwig von Mises, George Reisman, and Edith Packer. These fundamental ideas urgently need to be read, discussed, and understood—and taught in universities, which unfortunately is not likely to happen for some time—then expanded upon so they may trickle down to the press and politicians.

And to the “deplorables.”

Those who feel the American sense of life understand emotionally what the American way of life stands for. They need to understand it intellectually.


* “‘Extremism’ or The Art of Smearing,” The Objectivist Newsletter, September, 1964. This section on the media was deleted from the article’s reprint in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (chap. 17).

** The European sense of life, says Rand, sees oneself as fundamentally a servant of the state. Europeans, generally and in contrast to Americans, worship the state and consider it an honor to work in the government. “If you told a [European],” says Rand, “that his life is an end in itself, he would feel insulted or rejected or lost.”

Postscript. Small detail can sometimes capture differences between national senses of life. A charming anecdote I would often tell my students when discussing cultural differences comes from Italian journalist Beppe Severgnini, in Brian Lamb’s Booknotes interview on C-SPAN in 2002 (at 00:17:04 in the video). When asking a question, said Severgnini, of an Italian, a Brit, a German, and an American, he would get the following responses (my paraphrase): the Italian would answer with another question, the Brit would tell a joke, the German would give a little essay, but the American would give an answer. Elsewhere in the interview, Severgnini commented on how Americans love competition, because they do not mind losing. It just means they try harder the next time. In Italy, he said, losing, especially failing at a business, means you are labeled for life as a loser.


Addendum, February 28, 2026. The American sense of life is alive and well, as evidenced by the reelection of Donald Trump in 2024 and his followers’ approval of his breathtaking number of accomplishments over the past year. The communist-fascist left has gotten worse, more desperate, more virulent, and violent—all in the name of “democracy,” of course. They show no signs of stopping or of apologizing for past failures. They are even more intellectually bankrupt than they were before, aiming only at the destruction of civilization and establishment of a totalitarian dictatorship. The American sense of life, if it can hold on, must stop this juggernaut.
 

Thinking in Definitions

From the time I first read Ayn Rand’s theory of concepts, almost sixty years ago, I have thought of myself as someone who thinks in definitions.
 
Why? All our knowledge, with the exception of proper nouns, consists of concepts. Combinations of concepts that make important connections to each other are called principles. When concepts and principles are well crafted, they become extremely illuminating, to myself, of course, but also to others when I write and teach. In simple terms, thinking in definitions means I know what I am thinking and talking about and, I would hope, others, my students and readers, also understand what I am saying.
 
Unfortunately, definitions today, if any attempt at a definition is made, fall into the “kinda, sorta, maybe, let’s assume” category, or are the positivists’ nonobjective arbitrary constructs, useful only in pushing words around in rationalistic discussions or writing. Textbooks, in particular, provide definitions that are too long and wordy, nonessential, and violate most of the rules of good definition.
 
What is a good definition? One that identifies genus and differentia of the referents being defined, that is, the general category within which the referents are distinguished and their essential distinguishing characteristic, which as Ayn Rand states, is the one that explains and causes most or all of the other distinguishing characteristics.
 
Human beings, for example, are animals that possess the capacity to reason. “Animal” is the genus and “capacity to reason” is the differentia, the characteristic that explains and causes all or most of the others that humans share, such as the ability to speak a language or to build skyscrapers. The definition is concise and, as Rand says, summarizes and condenses all our knowledge of humans in the “file folder,” to use Rand’s metaphor, stored in our minds.
 
Note that we all have our own file folders of humans that can be thin (for a child), thick (for most adults), or fat (for, say, a biologist or psychologist). The definition is written, to continue the metaphor, on the outside of the folder with the word that denotes the concept written on the tab.
 
The rules of a good definition are straightforward—identify genus and differentia but also ensure that the definition is truly essential and is not too broad or narrow, circular, vague, obscure, metaphorical, or, if possible, negative. It does require practice to become competent at the skill.
 
Thinking in definitions can also be thought of as thinking in ranges of measurement. Ayn Rand identifies abstraction as measurement omission, but that does not mean we forget about the measurements. It means that in the process of identifying the differentia of a concept we must be aware of the “stopping points” or boundaries of those measurements that are omitted. In this process, we limit the concept to a certain range. 
 
Tables, for example, are not a mile long, nor are they only one inch long. Bridges are flat with supports and hold objects called automobiles, but bridges are not tables. A toy table may be flat with supports and hold tiny teacups and saucers, but it is not the type of table adults eat dinner on.
 
The concept “human” is based on the range of measurements that describes our distinctive type of mental processing and distinguishes it from that of the higher mammals, the lower end of the continuum being the point at which we observe humans using reason to form and apply concepts, but not the higher mammals.
 
When the boundaries of cholera, to use three examples from McCaskey’s article “Induction in the Socratic Tradition,” were narrowed to an illness involving an “organic poison,” after dismissing season of year and foul water as competing causes, Robert Koch further narrowed the range of measurements, the cause and differentia, to the bacterium he called the comma bacillus. When Charles Wells, after many experiments, narrowed the boundaries of dew to droplets created in accordance with the laws of heat, particularly liquefaction, he recognized that condensation from vapor in the air was the cause and differentia. In both cases, the range of measurements of the respective differentia, comma bacillus and water condensation, were sufficiently limited to establish the concepts as universal.
 
Lord Kelvin concluded, after two hundred years of imprecise and often inaccurate tidal measurements, that Newton had been right, namely that tides are ocean movements that result from gravitational pull of the sun and moon, measurements omitted.
 
There are options in the formation process, as Ayn Rand points out, because different concepts may use different “stopping points” in the continuum. Hence, the English word “man” can be a synonym of human being or, using the range of measurements describing male and female anatomy, can mean a male person. The Yiddish word “mensch,” now an accepted part of the English language, means a rational, volitional human being who acts with integrity and honor. 
 
Options in concept formation are what make translation from one language to another challenging, because the range of measurements used in the concept’s formation differ from language to language. Keeping in mind the continuums that constitute our concepts enables us to maintain contact with reality, the reality of the different-but-similar referents we are discussing.
 
Thinking in well-constructed definitions especially enables us quickly to bring to mind the meaning of broad abstractions—abstractions from abstractions, and concepts of consciousness. Thinking in not-so-well-constructed definitions leaves us with the “kinda, sorta, maybe, let’s assume” category that even academics are guilty of, rationalists and positivists in particular.
 
The favorite vehicle of argumentation of these rationalists and positivists is to make grossly unrealistic assumptions and then announce, “Let’s assume, by definition, that dogs can fly or that humans are “brains in a vat,” and see where that takes us. If, by definition, they mean, and they usually do, arbitrary, disconnected floating abstractions and flimsily constructed tautologies, which violate all the rules of good definition, knowledge can be anything they want it to be, which is where we are today as consequence of Immanuel Kant’s inability to find reality and his positivist followers who restricted awareness of reality to the level of perceived concretes.
 
Flying dogs (and maybe brains in a vat) may make interesting fiction, but they do not make good science. In economics, the doctrine of pure and perfect competition does not even make good fiction—“perfect” information, that is, omniscience, just being one of its absurd assumptions. (See Kirkpatrick, In Defense of Advertising, 118–21.)
 
Concepts, to emphasize, are not “true by definition.” A concept, and its definition, is “true by reality,” that is, true by our having correctly identified the referents in reality and having summarized and condensed the file folder’s content for ease of use. They are open-ended in the sense that they apply to all referents of the same kind, past, present, and future—because they are classifications and cross-classifications (in our minds) of reality.
 
Concepts and their definitions are cognitive necessities, and they are constructed to meet cognitive needs. They are not “out there,” embedded in the concretes of the world. As Rand states, concepts and essences are epistemological, not metaphysical.
 

On the Nature of Human Nature

Theories of human nature underly theories of political and economic systems.
 
Some people attempt to justify capitalism with the Calvinist theory that says, because of Original Sin, the inherent tendency to evil, we should do our duty by working hard to absolve those sins and ensure acceptance into Heaven. This is the gist of the Protestant Ethic. 
 
Others attack capitalism by saying it assumes an inherent goodness in human beings, at which point they cry hypocrisy and list all the evil that goes on in the world.
 
Sigmund Freud’s theory of human nature is more sophisticated, albeit based on determinism. It says we have two fundamental drives, analogous to hunger or sex, that determine our behavior, namely the life or positive self-assertion drive and the death or destruction drive. The latter gives some of us a strongly aggressive personality that culture—civilization—must control. Hence, our “discontent” that results from living in civilization.
 
The theory of human nature best representing a free society holds that human beings possess free will, are self-responsible, and possess the ability, if they so choose to exert the effort, to raise themselves up from their original stations in life, that is, for example, to achieve and enjoy a higher standard of living than that of their parents.*
 
The theory does not describe human beings as inherently evil or inherently good, or as helpless victims of genes and environment—those theories deny free will.
 
Freedom of the will means that a person’s choices are the essential source of both good and evil, though culture—the environment we were reared in, especially family and education—are also important sources of our thoughts and behaviors. (See my post “On the Nature of Evil.”)
 
This free-will theory is sometimes said to be neutral, meaning we are born neither good nor evil. We have the equal potential for both. Nevertheless, we can challenge this complete neutrality by considering whether humans by nature have a stronger tendency to do good than to do evil. How so?
 
Just as the human body has a tendency to heal itself, so also does the human consciousness.
 
A minor cut on the finger or hand, for example, in most people clots and heals itself in a few days. The tendency to heal ourselves psychologically derives from the biological function of consciousness to use reason to perceive our selves and environment correctly, then choose values and take actions necessary to sustain and enhance our lives.
 
This tendency to goodness can be called, with qualifications, the will to do the right thing. We see this desire in children from their earliest years, depending on parental influence, eagerly seeking to live their lives in a healthy and happy way, and often continuing through adolescence and adulthood even after being confronted with major unpleasant environmental obstacles.
 
This will gives most people in a civilized society a benevolent intention in their lives and slants the theory of human nature more toward an inherent goodness.
 
What precisely do I mean by “the will to do the right thing”? Fundamentally, it is a psychological requirement for our consciousness to function. We have a need to feel right before taking an action. Does this mean we are always right? No. It is a theory based on free will, which means we can make mistakes or do evil things.
 
Psychologically, however, we must believe that we are right each time we select what to do; it is a perception of being right. Otherwise, we will not be able to act.
 
This perception of rightness, that I am calling the will to do the right thing, is analogous to the psychological concept of perceived risk. Just as risk perception varies from person to person, so also does “rightness” vary from person to person. **
 
“Being right” applies to everyone, both good and evil, with a continuum of “rightness” and multiple meanings of the word. Let us now look at some examples along that continuum.
 
The most common usage of the concept “right,” when talking about “doing the right thing,” means doing the morally right thing. It means especially being honest in thought, communication with others, and action. Most people, I submit, at least in American culture, do strive to be honest, so this statement probably can be applied to most Americans.
 
The “right thing,” however, within the science of ethics depends on the moral theory and standard of value one is assuming, though it usually means what we were taught as children.
 
A significant influence on American culture is the ethics of Immanuel Kant, who insists that telling the truth is an unconditional principle that is consistent with his categorical imperative of always acting in accordance with duty, never from inclination. This means it is one’s unconditional duty to tell the truth to a homicidal maniac who comes to your door looking for his or her victim. Kant says there is a difference between doing what is right versus what avoids harm to another person. Telling the truth in this situation is not wrong.
 
Ayn Rand, however, disagrees with Kant and says that both physical and moral principles can and do have qualifications. The statement that water boils at 212º Fahrenheit is not the end of the story. The qualification, varying by air pressure and purity of water, must be added.
 
Similarly, telling the truth does not mean qualifications or consequences be damned (as Kant’s theory says). Honesty means telling the truth unless confronted by direct or indirect initiated coercion, threatened with invasion of privacy, or when a blunt truth might be unnecessarily hurtful to another person.
 
Thus, doing the right thing varies by underlying moral theory, but most people today, I would add (again, in our present culture), are uncomfortable with the strict Kantian ethics of duty over inclination and to a great extent with the concept of Original Sin.
 
Hence, as I continue to say, most people try to do the right thing, however they may understand it, at least on a practical level. None probably have ever had a homicidal maniac come to their door and many likely have fibbed to avoid unduly hurting a friend or relative.
 
My father, for example, seems to have been a good Kantian in ethics, though I am certain he had never heard of Immanuel Kant. He said to me once, “You do your work because it is your duty, not because you enjoy it.” He was raised Protestant on a farm and worked most of his life as a clerk in the post office. His intentions and honesty were decidedly right—and I do think he enjoyed his work.
 
Some people with psychological problems may, to an outside observer, appear not to be honest. Usually, however, such problems are not moral failings.
 
Psychological problems—typically involving self-doubt and the emotion of anxiety—trigger the strong need in us to allay, reduce, or blot out that feeling by adopting defensive habits, such as withdrawal, hostility, or a compulsive behavior. Often, as children, we develop defensive symptoms subconsciously, not knowing how we got them. Nevertheless, the purpose of a defensive habit is to give us the feeling of doing right while also assuaging our anxiety.
 
The psychological need to feel right is the source of what I am calling the tendency to do the right thing—however one might define “right.”
 
The extreme example on the negative end of the continuum of “rightness” is the criminal personality. Rationalization—excuse-making to feel right—seems to be the primary defensive habit of criminals whose self-esteem is low. As one put it, “I am a nothing. If I thought about it, I would have to kill myself.” Thus, the rapist says, “She really wanted me” and the murderer says, “He deserved it.”
 
Rationalization also describes dictators, as they are criminal personalities who must believe (rationalize) they are right in every action they take. See Ayn Rand’s comment, 246, on Nikita Khrushchev’s need to justify his behavior by reciting the mantra of dialectical materialism, and my use of Rand’s comment in Applying Principles, 314, where I attempt to explain why facts don’t matter to many people, including, or especially, dictators.
 
Doing the “right thing” for the criminal is definitely not the objectively moral thing to do, nor is this statement a justification or exoneration of criminal or immoral behavior. It is a psychological observation that criminal behavior feels right to the criminal and explains his or her actions.
 
Surely, then, one might assert, there are people who knowingly do the wrong thing. Yes, as a double standard. This is the criminal personality who enjoys getting away with the forbidden. Yes, the criminal says, I know it is illegal, but that is who I am. The criminal’s identity is such that he or she feels right to rob banks, and worse. 
 
Or, as one criminal said incredulously to a psychologist, “You expect me to get a job to buy what I want when I can just go into the store and take it?” Paying for goods in a store is for suckers, he said. He believed or felt, as his rationalization, that he was doing the right thing.
 
Only suckers, according to the criminal, obey the law. What he does is right, according to his rationalization-infested mind. (See Stanton Samenow, Inside the Criminal Mind.)
 
Most people, as I continue to maintain, exhibit a will to do the morally right thing, indicating that human nature has built into it a tendency to do good, meaning most people can and do exhibit varying degrees of good intentions.
 
According to the theory of human nature presented here, I put most people on the scale of honesty and goodness.
 
Both values are required for a lasting free society.
 
 
* Psychiatrist William Glasser (chap. 1) assumed a similar theory when treating his patients. He said, “We choose our own misery. Thus, we can choose our own happiness.” His goal as therapist was to work with patients to help them choose healthier and happier behaviors.
 
** Perceived risk, also called subjective risk, means, for example, that some people need alcoholic beverages before getting on an airplane, while others like to walk on wings for a living. Risk perception exists along a continuum, which means we can now draw an analogy between epistemology where there is a difference between what we perceive or believe to be true­—and what is true, and ethics where there is a difference between what we perceive or believe to be right—and what is right. In both cases, people vary considerably according to what they believe to be true and right—and what is true and right.

Masculinity and Femininity: The Differences Are Not Arbitrary “Social Constructs”

Following is a repost from August 8, 2018. The issue today needs to be restated.

 

Masculinity and femininity are emotional styles that express our sexual self-confidence as a male or female person in relation to the opposite sex.*

They are psychological achievements that derive from our different anatomies and physiologies. Deficiencies in masculinity and femininity, that is, diminished confidence in oneself as a male or female person, are signs of an arrested development.

At birth, our minds are tabula rasa, which means our minds have no cognitive content. At birth, we begin processing the world we live in, which produces an initial cognitive content. As we grow, especially when we begin to talk, cognitive processing escalates.

Our character and personality, in other words, are self-created; genes and environment can influence us, but they do not create us (Applying Principles, pp. 315-18). How well we cognitively process the world in which we live, that is, how objective and rational are the conclusions we draw, determines how psychologically healthy we will be in adulthood.

How well we process the world depends, in large part, on how well we have been taught by our parents and teachers about psychology, especially about how to introspect our developing psychologies to catch and correct errors in the processing.

Throughout history, and especially in today’s culture, the answer to the question “How well have we been taught?” must be: “not very well, if at all.” Thus, most of us reach adulthood with mental inhibitions, that is, deficiencies in self-esteem, often expressed as anxiety and defensive habits (defense mechanisms) to cope with the anxiety, for example, depression, obsessions, compulsions, projection, rationalization, hostility, and so on.

In today’s culture, consequently, most of us reach adulthood with arrested development in many areas of our psychologies, in varying degrees, not necessarily extreme. An arrested development, nonetheless, combined with mistaken ideas in the culture, may lead us to conclude that we are controlled by genes and environment.

To be sure, environment influences us in both helpful and hurtful ways, but we remain the ones who must process the events of the environment, draw conclusions about ourselves in relation to them, then act to deal with the situations.

This applies to the development of our masculinity and femininity. Thus, depending on our upbringing and schooling, we may conclude that masculinity means to be a “macho man,” with big biceps, and that femininity means to be a “clinging vine” or a fashion model.

Behavioral manifestations can and do express our masculinity and femininity, but they do not define them.

The essence of masculinity and femininity, according to psychologist Nathaniel Branden, derives from our respective sexual roles in a heterosexual relationship, and that, in turn, derives from our respective anatomies and physiologies. Men, says Branden, in addition to the obvious sexual differences, are bigger and stronger—they have stronger upper-body muscle, while women have broader hips. Geneticists, indeed, say there are over 6500 genetic expressions that differentiate men from women, and the differences begin in the womb. “Society” has nothing to say about these differences.

In the romantic-sexual relationship (and only in the romantic-sexual relationship), Branden goes on to say that the man is more active and dominant. “He has the greater measure of control over his own pleasure and that of his partner; it is he who penetrates and the woman who is penetrated (with everything this entails, physically and psychologically” (The Psychology of Self-Esteem, p. 206).

Healthy—fearless and guiltless—self-assertiveness, strength, and self-confidence, says Branden, are desirable in both men and women. Pride in oneself and one’s achievements and admiration of one’s partner are prerequisite to a healthy romantic-sexual relationship.

The difference is that the man feels his masculinity as romantic initiator and, more generally, as protector of the woman, while the woman feels her femininity as challenger and responder.**

To put this difference in the vernacular, the man’s job is to make the woman feel “real good.” In this process, the man also feels, or should also feel, if psychologically healthy, “real good” in performing the role. The woman’s job is to feel sufficiently free and confident to accept and experience the man’s offer of total trust and security, not to mention the pleasure he is giving her (and the reciprocal pleasure she gives him).

The romantic-sexual act of intercourse between a man and a woman truly in love becomes a feeling of total integration, an experience of being one, a union. Branden describes this as “the most intense union” and highest form of pleasure available to human beings (p. 136).

Behavioral manifestations of a confident masculinity and femininity become highly desirable, for example, to “look nice” for the opposite sex, and for men to hold the door open for a woman and for the woman to look up to and admire the man by saying “thank you.”***

Size of biceps, length of hair, and whether or not a man or a woman wears a skirt or pants do not define masculinity and femininity. These are just socially arbitrary conventions.

It is not unfeminine for a woman to run a railroad (as does Dagny Taggart in Atlas Shrugged), nor is it unmasculine for a man to wear tight pants and excel as a world-class ballet dancer (as did Mikhail Baryshnikov).

Masculinity and femininity are objective, reality-based psychological achievements. An arrested development means self-doubt about our sex in relation to the opposite. A young man scared to death to talk to girls, let alone ask one for a date, is one example. A young woman who is afraid to respond to a young man’s rational advances, a man the young woman might actually admire, is another.

The objective, reality-based meaning of masculinity and femininity raises a question that will have to be deferred to another post. Is same-sex attraction and behavior psychologically healthy? [Posted September 7, 2018] I immediately hasten to add that such attraction or behavior is not in any way immoral or a sin.

But is it healthy?


* “Sexual self-confidence” is the term used by psychologist Edith Packer (Lectures on Psychology, chap. 6, section 2). Other psychologists have used the words “gender esteem,” an interesting narrowing of the broader “self-esteem.”

** Branden uses the terms “romantic dominance” and “romantic surrender,” but by using the above concepts I am trying to avoid the older, historical connotations of knights in shining armor and damsels in distress. “Initiator,” “challenger,” and “responder” are words used by Branden.

*** Tradition says a man walking on the outside of the woman, nearer to the street, originated in the days of chamber pots being emptied into the roadway. The man, as a gentleman, eagerly sought to protect his lady. Today, it is simply a pleasant gesture for the man to perform—and for the lady to accept.

Freedom of Speech Presupposes Private Property Rights

The right to free speech does not mean you can say or write anything anytime, anywhere. Private property rights have primacy over speech rights.
 
This means you may not say anything in my house if I dislike it. I may ask you to leave and if you don’t, I can have you arrested for trespass. If you make a vocal fuss, say, on my front lawn, I can press the additional charge of disturbing the peace. Your speech right has not been violated. My property right has.
 
What did Ayn Rand say? “Without property rights, no others are possible.” Why don’t we hear about property rights in today’s environment? Because leftists—socialists—deny the right to property. Free speech has been hung in the air, so to speak, without connection to its foundation in property.
 
After all, “Property is theft,” said the nineteenth century socialist Proudhon.
 
When free speech is disconnected from property rights, what is left? The irrational assertion that anyone who prevents me from talking or writing is violating my free speech rights.
 
Let us take a few problems.
 
Falsely yelling “fire” in a crowded theater is not free speech. It is criminal assault. Epistemologically, assault is the fundamental concept providing the dividing line between free speech and criminality.
 
Practically speaking, unfortunately, assault laws vary from state to state, but epistemologically it means an overt verbal threat to harm you—“I’m going to hurt or kill you.”* It does not require touching—that would be battery. Thus, hate speech, “I hate you,” is not a verbal threat, and is protected speech.
 
The problem today is that we do not have a lot of private property. Streets, sidewalks, universities, and the White House press room, for example, are either completely or partially owned by a government entity.
 
The adage, “whoever pays the bills calls the shots,” is relevant here. It means the city, state, and federal government can impose rules on what can be done or said on their property, provided the rules do not violate other rights. So, a city can control parade rights on its streets by requiring permits, but if you lie down in the street to block traffic or stage your own, unpermitted parade (protest), you are breaking the law, violating the rights of the other citizens, their rights of free passage. The same is true with blocking students’ entry to class and shouting down speakers. The acts are criminal, and arrest is called for. **
 
The refusal to clear the streets and protect the rights of students and audiences is governmental assault on person and property and de facto censorship of speech.
 
In 1977, the Nazi Party of America was allowed by the US Supreme Court to march in the city streets of the heavily Jewish Skokie, IL, on grounds that they were expressing their right to free speech. I disagree, because streets are made for driving and walking, as sidewalks are made for walking, not for giving speeches (protests alleged to being a form of speech). If the city does not provide a specific location for such speeches, then the Nazi Party should be obliged to rent its own venue from a private party or buy its own venue.***
 
Protests on city streets are essentially free advertising for an ideology. To allow it is to say that I must allow interlopers on my front lawn to preach ideas I disagree with.

 
Current “Hot” Issues
 
The White House Press Corps. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) has said that once any members of the press are invited into the White House briefing room, the First Amendment walks in also, meaning the White House cannot exclude any media organization on the basis of its viewpoint. The White House can dictate decorum and protocol for visitors, but not content of speech.
 
Visa and green card holders (1, 2). Both have the same rights as citizens, with certain restrictions, and do not have to take an oath of allegiance to the United States. Green card holders who seek citizenship must take the oath. Both, however, are subject to immigration and other laws, such as the one representing threats to US foreign policy. This last is particularly fuzzy, striking me as falling into the vague and overly broad category, though the US government is the “owner.” Students expressing disagreement with US foreign policy are not posing a threat. Blocking Jewish students from attending their classes, interrupting classes, shouting down speakers, and physically threatening and striking other students are acts of assault and battery, a deporting offense for visa and green card holders.
 
Israel. A note on the Jewish state of Israel and the recent toleration of antisemitism. The current climate is about as disgusting as one can think, far worse than most of the actions of the left in the 1960s. Apologists use the moral equivalence argument, saying that Israel is no better morally than the terrorists. And many actually insinuate, or state explicitly, that Israel is worse. Israel, however, is the most civilized state in the area, with many Arab people willing to live in Israel rather than anywhere else. By far, Israel is morally superior to the terrorists who hide behind women and children. See philosopher Jason Hill on the disingenuous accusations of genocide that are made against Israel.
 
Yes, the conservatives should not pass laws forbidding speech criticizing Israel. That is censorship.
 
Universities. If universities do not like having the US government telling them what to do, they should be obliged to adopt the policies of Hillsdale College in Michigan. In 1984, Hillsdale stopped accepting federal student loans and in 2007 stopped all Michigan state aid. Private universities today, because of the federal and state aid they receive, are hybrid institutions. Whoever pays the bills, calls the shots, and, as far as I am concerned, no so-called non-profit institution should be tax exempt. This is not an issue of free speech. If you make a deal with the devil—the government, federal or state—you must accept the consequences.
 
The fact that certain prestigious universities with multi-, multi-billion dollar endowments are whining over the government’s withdrawal of a couple of billion dollars, claiming it is a free-speech issue, is beyond farce.
 
 
* You can advocate the violent overthrow of the US government, as did the Communist Party of America in the 1950s, but you cannot talk about and recommend specific methods of doing so. The Smith Act, governing this was amended several times before it became more aligned with the “overt act” notion of the First Amendment.
 
** This does not differ from the 1960s students who staged an alleged protest by sitting down in the registrar’s office. The better chancellors and presidents, such as mine at the University of Denver, expelled and arrested the students.

*** Ayn Rand discusses this in the June 1977 issue of “The Objectivist Calendar” and says it is a “complex issue.” She addresses and dismisses as nonsense the notion, popular at the time, of “symbolic speech,” but more importantly, points out that advocacy of genocide of the Jewish people, as the Nazi Party advocates, is not a violation of free speech. The content of speech, she says, is irrelevant when discussing the right of free speech. Freedom of assembly, however, presupposes private property rights. (Excerpt here.)

Positivism

The philosophy of positivism—also called logical positivism and logical empiricism—has for decades been the bane of science, especially the human sciences.
 
The concept “positivism” that I am using is broader than the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle in the1920s–1930s, which attempted, but failed, to find Immanuel Kant’s noumenal world through symbolic logic applied to sense data. Positivism (495–98), as it is still used today and derives from the work of August Comte, means the use of the so-called scientific methods of physics and chemistry to attempt to discover laws of human behavior and events.
 
All science, that is to say, must be quantitative, and if it is not quantitative, it is not science. The post-Kantian premises of positivists, in their attempt to defend science, are the following: the entire branch of philosophy called metaphysics is meaningless—that is, the concept cannot be “empirically verified”—and universals, facts, values, and, especially, truth are similarly unknowable and therefore meaningless. Awareness of reality is restricted to directly perceived concretes. At best, say the positivists, we can try to come up with “successive approximations” of statistical probabilities, but we will never reach “absolute” certainty or “eternal” truth, and, of course, all science must be “value-free.”
 
Thus, an endless parade of statistical studies to incrementally—and slowly—pretend to develop science, never achieving the status of universality because universals, well, as stated above, are metaphysically meaningless. This method, or epistemology, is gospel in the so-called social sciences today, which I prefer to call human sciences, the sciences of homo sapiens that emphasize and study the animal that possesses a volitional consciousness. The human sciences, in other words, study human nature as the being who exercises, or does not exercise, the capacity to reason.
 
The two fundamental special sciences of human nature are psychology and economics, that is, respectively, the science of the motivation and behavior of individual human beings, healthy or unhealthy, and the science of cooperating individuals in a social setting the aim of which is to generate and produce peace and prosperity.
 
Austrian economists do not agree with the positivist mantra, preferring the method of logical reasoning, the process of identifying correct concepts and integrating them into principles, then integrating principles into theories—leaving Newtonian-type algebraic equations to the physicists and chemists. Sigmund Freud essentially did the same thing in the development of psychoanalysis.
 
Austrian economist F. A. Hayek in his 1974 Nobel laureate address did not use the word “positivism,” but did say that scientism and the scientistic attitude of insisting on using the methods of physical science in the social sciences “quite arbitrarily limits the facts which are to be admitted as possible causes of the events which occur in the real world.” Scientism is a close synonym of positivism and is defined by Hayek as a pretense of knowledge.
 
Positivism over the years has been criticized, notably for its contradiction that metaphysics is meaningless—because that statement itself is a metaphysical assertion.
 
What positivism in particular lacks, among its many other faults, is a sound theory of universals and theory of abstraction from abstractions, which I have written about in previous posts (1, 2, 3).
 
According to Ayn Rand, universal concepts are formed by omitting the measurable differences of the concept’s referents—length, width, and height, for example, of several perceived, concrete objects we come to identify and label as “tables.” After identifying other similar but, in some respects, different perceived concretes—such as chairs and beds—we omit the measurements of size and focus on, but also omit, the different purposes of tables, chairs, and beds, retaining their use in a human household to form the concept “furniture,” which is an abstraction from abstractions.
 
When we move to broad abstractions in psychology and economics, such as depression and the business cycle, we require focused attention on the chain of abstractions from perceived concrete to broad abstraction—and back to the perceptual level. This mental effort—and it is mental effort—is precisely what is lacking in positivism because, as they say, the abstractions are “analytic,” arbitrary constructs, subjectively defined. Only “synthetic” perceived concretes can be true or false.
 
The mental effort in forming and correcting our abstractions from abstractions is precisely what led Ayn Rand (67–68) to say, rather pointedly:
 
Like a spoiled, disillusioned child, who had expected predigested capsules of automatic knowledge, a logical positivist stamps his foot at reality and cries that context, integration, mental effort and first-hand inquiry are too much to expect of him, that he rejects so demanding a method of cognition, and that he will manufacture his own “constructs” from now on.
 
Karl Popper (chap. 1) denied that he was a positivist though his premises are positivistic. He attempted to defend science by proposing the still widely accepted criterion of “falsifiability,” that is, the notion that a concept is valid only if it can be falsified.
 
Meaning precisely what? In the human sciences, the answer to this question is that concepts, or rather “constructs,” must be “operationalized” in order to test them using the experimental-statistical methods of the physical sciences. If that cannot be done, the concept cannot be falsified.
 
Operationalization means to make measurable. What is the measuring instrument to be used in the human sciences, where volition is the fundamental premise? Well, first of all, volition is not relevant because it cannot be “falsified” and, besides, real science does not acknowledge such “pseudoscience,” which, as Popper might say, is akin to astrology.
 
Therefore, following the Popperian method, such constructs as “attitude” from psychology and “utility” from economics must be measured by administering a “paper and pencil” instrument called a questionnaire to a sample of five hundred or more people. The collected data is then analyzed, perhaps using sophisticated multivariate statistics. Probability estimates and confidence intervals are calculated. Universals are never discussed or considered relevant or possible.
 
If a concept cannot be measured using this method, it cannot be falsified. It is therefore meaningless and invalid.
 
Popper states that science begins with highly informed guesses” (conjectures) and then attempts to falsify or refute them (chap. 3; my italics). Similarly, economist Milton Friedman (14) says that economic research, in the positivist-Popper tradition, begins with “wildly inaccurate” assumptions that we test and attempt to “empirically verify,” or rather “falsify.”*
 
The problem here is that the terms “guess” and “hypothesis” do not have the same referents. A hypothesis begins with significant evidence about what we are studying, but not enough to draw a definite conclusion. A guess has little or no evidence.
 
 “Empirical verifiability” of the positivists and Popper’s alternative of “falsification” are not essentially different. They both constrict science—all science, not just the human sciences—to perceived concretes and the experimental-positivistic-behavioristic methodology, essentially dismissing broad abstractions and logical reasoning.**
 
As Rand’s theory indicates, the essence of science is measurement omission, not measurement, and the proper method of doing science is conceptualization. The criterion of what is true or false, that is, the correct identification of reality, is Aristotle’s law of non-contradiction. Whatever violates the law in the name of science should be called pseudoscience.
 
Which seems to be an appropriate descriptive of positivism.
 
 
* Friedman, “The Methodology of Positive Economics.” Friedman, however, apparently regretted writing this essay.
 
** The experimental-positivistic-behavioristic terminology is psychologist Abraham Maslow’s disapproving description of positivist epistemology (xlvi).

On the Nature of Evil

“Evil” is a strong word.
 
The Oxford English Dictionary says it derives from Old English and, when applied to a person, is “the most comprehensive adjectival expression of disapproval, dislike, or disparagement.” It means the person is “bad, wicked, vicious” and causes harm.
 
The concept is on the extreme end of the continuum of immorality. Ayn Rand says that evil people are a small minority in any culture, though their evil is often unleashed by appeasers. Let us take a look at the source and meaning of the concept of evil.
 
Ayn Rand’s moral values and virtues (16) are those that sustain and enhance our lives as rational beings. We are the animals that possess a volitional consciousness and therefore must choose to exercise our rational faculty to successfully live our lives. Some of her derivative values are honesty, courage, integrity, and justice.
 
Most decent people, I would say, think of morality in terms of telling the truth (honesty) and being fair to oneself and others (justice). Lying and unfairness are immoral. What is this continuum of immorality and where does evil lie?
 
Every concept, according to Rand’s epistemology, identifies a range of referents that are similar to each other, such as large and small tables, but different from others, such as beds and couches. The concept table identifies a range, or continuum, of measurements, specifying its essential distinguishing characteristics without the measurements—flat surface with supports designed to hold smaller objects.
 
The continuum of immorality ranges from someone who occasionally tells minor fibs and sometimes treats oneself and others unfairly to the seriously wicked and vicious person who might be justifiably called evil. I put the criminal personality in this evil classification, though the concept of evil is itself a continuum, ranging from the bungling burglar who leaves his identity behind to the murderer who enjoys watching the blood ooze from his victim’s body.
 
The criminal personality, as identified by Yochelson and Samenow, is someone who lies, cheats, and steals as a way of life and enjoys getting away with the forbidden (348–57). It is the criminals’ way of thinking—their thinking errors—that causes them to become criminals.
 
Working for the courts, Yochelson and Samenow for years interviewed criminals who had claimed the insanity defense.* They found few who were psychotic, especially when committing crimes. Interestingly, the criminal’s departure from reality was often a psychosis of conscience (voices and delusions) that prevented them from committing crimes. When the psychosis lifted, they returned to crime (476–81).
 
Also, the authors reviewed the literature on the notion of “psychopath,” concluding that the research is confusing and fails to describe a separate personality that is psychopathic (89–106). They even quote one investigator who says the research is a “wastebasket of psychiatric classification” (99).
 
Yet, the range of evilness that is wicked and vicious, I submit, can reliably be called psychopathic, as long as we do not call them psychotic. They are people, for example, who really believe, as does the rapist, “She really wanted me” and the murderer, “He deserved it.” The beliefs are rationalizations, but that is what constitutes the criminal’s way of thinking.
 
On the less extreme side of evilness, though still talking about people who are decidedly not nice, are what Yochelson and Samenow call the “non-arrestable criminal” (chap. 7). Such behavior is not illegal but often leads to illegal activity.
 
The authors call this behavior “criminal equivalent.” The criminally equivalent person seeks power for its own sake at the expense of others, enjoying the excitement of manipulating, bullying, and giving orders (not always cordially). They exist in all walks of life, at home, school, and work. Some are attracted to law enforcement, the military, fire prevention, and politics.
 
Crossing the line of legality, for example, the non-arrestable firefighter may start a fire, then help to put it out.
 
Ayn Rand says that the root of immorality is evasion of thought, the refusal to exercise one’s reason before acting. And one can readily say that there is likely evasion going on in the criminal’s mind, from an early age. But a question I have raised before, is how does one know that someone else is evading? How do we, or can we, judge others without making the hasty-generalization mistake?
 
My answer in the past has been, “Not easily” (1, 2, 3). I question whether we can judge someone as immoral unless we know that person well. Throw in the fact that many criminals are con artists, pretending to be an honest person, and add hyperbole and BS that many honest people like to use in conversation. You can have difficulty drawing conclusions about your conversant.
 
Indeed, I question whether Ayn Rand could readily make the judgment of thought evasion about another person—because psychology plays such a big part in the determination of our behavior, and Rand acknowledged that she did not know much about psychology. She did allow for errors in knowledge, which is where we can classify psychological defenses.
 
What about public figures—politicians and journalists, for example—who seem to lie as a way of life? They may be “criminal equivalents,” but how would we know without personal contact? I would say that targeting one person or organization with what seems like repeated falsehoods is moving in that direction, while frivolous lawsuits and unjust fines and imprisonments have moved across the line, the latter two the legal line.
 
Can we know these persons’ motivations with certainty? I don’t think so, and, to put a point on it, what does it matter to our personal lives, unless we are the target?
 
If we are the target of harmful and seemingly immoral or evil behavior, we must call out that behavior as wrong. But condemning the person as immoral or evil is a serious charge. With incomplete knowledge, I recommend giving the other person the benefit of the doubt. They have psychologies, after all, just as we do.
 
The most frivolous of frivolous discussions today in ethics is what I call the fallacy of moralizing concretes: red meat is immorally unhealthy, drinking water out of plastic bottles immorally harms the environment, and owning a gun means you want to kill people. The appropriate response here, after an exasperated exhale, would be, “Seriously?” Concretes—red meat, plastic bottles, guns—are neither moral nor immoral. The truth of the first two statements is doubtful, though your doctor may recommend a different diet. The moralizer of concretes is possibly a criminal equivalent who wants the power—and excitement—of banning the concretes.
 
Moral values and principles are broad abstractions that each of us must apply to our own lives. Honesty is not Immanuel Kant’s dictum of never lying. It is the principle of telling the truth, unless under duress, threatened with invasion of privacy, or when a blunt truth might be unnecessarily hurtful to another person. And justice means judging oneself and others correctly and, when appropriate, praising or denouncing.
 
The criminal suffers a deep character flaw of enjoying lying, cheating, and getting away with the forbidden. Crossing the legal line makes criminals easier to judge, though even here, one must ask, “Is the law valid that is being violated?” Am I immoral if I refuse to pay my taxes? No, but it is a practical issue. Ayn Rand paid her taxes because she did not want to go to jail. I certainly pay mine.
 
Most laws that criminals violate are crimes against person and property. This makes it easier to judge criminals as falling into the evil classification. Though even here, I am tempted to say that the really bad, wicked, and vicious ones are more on the psychopathic end of the scale, the types who enjoy watching blood oozing from their victim’s body.**

* Yochelson died at age 70 in 1976, but his co-author Stanton Samenow continued their work, and still continues today. Samenow has several books. I recommend Inside the Criminal Mind, The Myth of the Out of Character Crime, and Before It’s Too Late (advice to parents). I have cited this work on the criminal mind in earlier posts. See especially these two in Applying Principles (267–69, 280–83).
 
** Can ideologies and historical figures—such as communism and Hitler—be judged as evil? Yes, but extensive fact-finding must be done before condemning. A topic, perhaps for another blog.
 
Follow-up to last month’s post “On Writing”: I forgot to mention an important form of short writing in business: the conference memo. Say, you and your boss attend a meeting with the client. You, the junior person, will likely be the note taker and writer of the subsequent conference memo. The memo itself is no more than one page and summarizes the essence of the meeting, such as purpose, problem and suggested solutions, and, as the final section, next steps, which states who will do what, when, with a specific deadline for the project.
 
Speaking of deadlines, they do exist, whether for term papers and exams in school or for manuscript submission of books and articles (or, to go one further, for payment of taxes and credit card bills). My advice to students and myself: do the work ahead of time, allowing a chance for reflection on what might also need to be done. This is the subconscious “percolation” I mentioned last month, the process of filtering and integrating the knowledge you presently have. (And the deadline I give myself for these blogs is that it be posted sometime during the month.)