INTRODUCTION
Do you want the world to change? It needs to. But it won't unless people change their ideas. Is it possible to change ideas? Not according to Dr. Leonard Peikoff, the American philosopher who holds that both our smallest ideas—concepts—and our largest...
IS PHILOSOPHY IMMUTABLE?
In I989, the year the Berlin Wall fell, Leonard Peikoff issued a sweeping declaration about the nature of philosophy. Contradicting an assertion by David Kelley, a former member of the Ayn Rand Institute, Dr. Peikoff pronounced unequivocally that Objectivism is a...
AYN RAND’S ERROR ON “SELFISHNESS”
I have found only one instance of Ayn Rand making an assertion that did not take all the facts into account. She made it in her book The Virtue of Selfishness. (I might add that the four words in the title of the book represent a life-changing discovery for me. So my...
THE FALLACY OF THE NUMERICAL ANALOGY
In her great book Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, Ayn Rand committed a fallacy that has taken me years to identify. It is a fallacy that prevented her observing the variations that can occur in a concept. Before stating that fallacy, here is what she herself...
A NEW CONCEPT OF A CONCEPT
What is a concept? I used to think of it as an idea or a thought, particularly about a class of things. If I had a concept of a ship, I knew there could be a large variety of particular ships that it covered: from tramp steamers to schooners, from sleek motor yachts...
THE PLUSES AND MINUSES OF CONCEPTS
Why should anyone be interested in concept variation? Because concepts are philosophy’s most important tools and they enshrine our perspectives. In fact, they are our perspectives. Many years ago, I read a quotation from the novelist D H Lawrence. I have never been...
THE IMPORTANCE OF ERRORS
Errors in a philosophy are not something to be feared, evaded or denied. They are to be actively predicted and when found rejoiced in. How on earth can a philosophy correct itself or move forward if it will not acknowledge the possibility of error or develop a...