I've been
meaning to post something on this web site
"founded in March 2013 by Irfan Khawaja and Carrie-Ann Biondi, professors
of philosophy at New York City-area institutions with long-standing interests
in Objectivism." In short, I recommend checking it out.
Irfan's
latest post
about The Atlas Society's Graduate Seminar caught my eye when he shares his observations
after attending this seminar.
[M]any of the problems I observed at
the seminar were, to put the matter bluntly, an offense against the practice of
philosophy and of inquiry quite generally. I said that many of the presenters
presented their material in a competent, responsible way. But some did not. I
think candor compels the assertion that some of the presentations given were
shockingly deficient in argument, evidence, and coherence. This would be a
relatively minor issue, or at least a remediable problem, if the atmosphere of
the seminar had been conducive to an open airing of the relevant problems. But
it wasn’t. This latter defect--a defect of openness obvious to just about every
participant in the seminar--calls into question The Atlas Society's
much-advertised claim to practice an "open" form of Objectivism not
practiced elsewhere. With all due respect, I must dissent from this claim, and
insist that those who make such claims acquire more inductive evidence about
the rest of the Objectivist movement before they make them. Movement
Objectivists should also (let me suggest) stop deriding academic philosophy and
start learning something from it. The fact is, there is more openness at the
average academic conference--I've run five in the last five years--than there
was at the TAS Graduate Seminar.
I agree with
Irfan’s comments about learning from academic philosophy. While I have never
attended an academic conference (primarily because I’m not an academic
philosopher) I have read books written by philosophers. Their usual style of
building their case is to first present the positions of other philosophers,
critique them fairly (or as fairly as possible) then build the reasons why we
should accept their counter proposal. The acknowledgement sections of these
books (and papers) often cite many people who reviewed the manuscripts and
offered criticisms or suggestions where the argument could be improved.
I know some Objectivists
yearn for the day when the academic world will take Rand and Objectivism more
seriously. Part of the “dues” that need to be paid for this acceptance is their
willingness to let peers critique their work. If what Irfan says is true (and I
have no reason to doubt him) The Atlas Society still has a ways to go.
