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Below is an online commentary from a few years back, on _Introduction to
Objectivist Epistemology_, by one academic that I think explains to a
considerable extent why it is that academics have by and large ignored Rand's
philosophical work.  I'd be interested in seeing comments on this from anybody
here in h.p.o.
===================================================

Comments by Gary Merrill

Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech,sci.philosophy.meta
From: sas...@theseus.unx.sas.com (Gary Merrill)
Subject: Rand's work: style and quality
Date: Mon, 2 Aug 1993 14:22:06 GMT
Organization: SAS Institute Inc.

Before I begin discussing the substance of any of Rand's ideas, I
would like to consider some questions pertaining to the form and style
of her writings. In part, this is to give an account of why academics
typically have a certain response to these writings, and in part it is
to set the stage for analyses that are yet to come. The questions I
ultimately want to address are these:

  1. What is it that differentiates Rand's writing from the writing of
     academics and professional philosophers?

  2. Is this a significant difference, or is it merely a difference in
     style that can be (and ought to be) ignored in order to benefit
     from the deeper content of those writings?

  3. What is the quality of scholarship in these writings, and does
     (and ought) this effect the manner in which the writings are
     approached and viewed?

I have already (in a previous posting) made some detailed remarks
concerning Rand's style in _The Virtue of Selfishness_. My comments
now are addressed specifically to _Introduction to Objectivist
Epistemology_ (hereafter, IOE). This is an appropriate work for such
an analysis since it is offered as one of Rand's major works in pure
philosophy (in which she "offers a startingly original solution to the
problem that brought about the collapse of modern philosophy"). It is
offered as a "brilliantly argued, superbly written work" as well. (The
quotes are from the back cover of the book.)

What sorts of things impress a professional philosopher about this
work? First, we discover that we have a book that (excluding the
index) is 306 pages in length. Closer examination shows that Rand's
direct and verifiable contribution to this amounts to slightly fewer
than 87 pages. There is in addition a 38 page article by Peikoff, 4
pages of preface by Piekoff and Binswanger, and a 179 page appendix of
"workshops" on Rand. We will need later to consider the status of this
appendix in Rand scholarship. For now, let it suffice to observe that
it was not written, edited, or reviewed by Rand. So having bought a
314 page book, we immediately discover (to my surprise, at least) that
we have only 87 pages of Rand. This is pretty odd, but not necessarily
bad. (Among other things, it means that in reading the original source
of Randian ideas, we have much less to read.) It appears at least a
little deceitful that the cover proclaims Ayn Rand as the author in a
monstrous font while "Edited by Harry Binswanger and Leonard Peikoff"
occurs in a much smaller font much further down the page. But we can
ignore this oddity.

When we look into Rand's 87 pages of text, what do we find that
stylistically differentiates Rand's work from what might be called
"standard scholarship". First, any number of *positions* are referred
to without there being any clue as to who is claimed to hold these
positions. These are the following (numbers in parentheses are page
numbers in which the positions are mentioned):

   * Nominalism (47, 53, 74)
   * Pragmatism (77)
   * Conceptualism (53)
   * Linguistic Analysis (50, 77, 78)
   * Realism (53 and elsewhere)
   * Mysticism (60, 79, and elsewhere)
   * Irrationalism (60)

Sweeping and very strong claims are made concerning these various
positions, and yet the reader is offered not a clue as to exactly
*what* the position is nor *who* has held the position that is being
criticized. Since Rand is offering these as *failed* attempts at
solving certain problems, and since she is claiming that *her*
purported solution succeeds where these fail, it is (to say the least)
irritating to the reader that he has absolutely no way of objectively
judging her criticisms of the positions nor the success of her own
solution. For example, a familiarity with the positions being
criticized may well introduce the reader to certain classic problems
that Rand's solution faces as well. Without such familiarity the
reader remains ignorant. Since Rand herself characterizes the
dependence of argument on such ignorance as argument from
intimidation, it is especially peculiar that she has so studiously
failed to be specific. Either she is *unable* to cite specific
references to support her criticisms, or else she is *unwilling* to do
so. This is simply a mark of poor scholarship and both by the
standards of professionals and her own criteria it is poor and
deceitful argumentation.

At some points she goes so far as to provide *vague* references. For
example, on pp. 50-51 she offers us:

     As an illustration, observe what Bertrand Russell was able
     to perpetrate because people thought they "kinda knew" the
     meaning of the concept of "number" ...

Now I'm hardly a Russell expert, but at one time I had read quite a
bit of Russell, and I did once serve on the dissertation board of a
Ph.D. candidate whose dissertaion was entitled "Russell's Theory of
Number". I can't *imagine* what she is talking about here. But worse
-- she offers me no way of determining what she is referring to and no
way to determine whether her "criticism" (if we can call it that) of
Russell is well founded. In addition, how can this be an
*illustration* of anything since there isn't enough detail to tell
what is being referred to? (To be sure, Russell may have perpetrated
any number of things -- ban the bomb, for example -- but what these
may have had to do with the concept of number is rather up in the
air.)

Rand mentions Kant repeatedly (he seems to be the guy she loves to
hate), but there is absolutely *nothing* that is specific. She *never*
quotes Kant directly, but when she apparently feels a need to justify
her view of Kant she instead quotes from a book published in 1873 by
Henry Mansel whom she describes as "a Kantian". Again, I am not an
expert on Kant, but who is this guy Mansel? I can find him mentioned
in *none* of the histories of philosophy I have, and he is not
mentioned in the fairly extensive bibliography on Kant in Lewis Beck's
_18th-Century Philosophy_. So direct reference to Kant is replaced by
reference to "a Kantian" (and a very obscure one at that). Why do
this? Why not show how Kant himself held the position that is being
attacked? There is no justification for this sort of thing. Again,
poor scholarship. (I do not, by the way, believe that even the quote
from Mansel supports Rand's view of Kant. But I will not argue that
point now.)

These sorts of things would not be so bad, though they *are* bad, were
it not for the fact that she so frequently gets things wrong. There is
the business above concerning Russell, for example. There is the claim
(p. 59) that "modern philosophers declare that axioms are a matter of
arbitrary choice." (no substantiation or reference is provided). There
is the claim (p. 52) that "It is Aristotle who identified the fact
that only concretes exist". (Any of you Aristotle scholars want to
wade in here with a brief account of particulars vs. concretes?) And
*none* of this comes with even a *hint* of specific attribution that
would allow a reader to evaluate it. The closest she gets is along the
lines of (p. 60) "For example, see the works of Kant and Hegel." Now
*that* really narrows it down!

So what is it that differentiates the writing of Rand from those of
classic academics and professional philosophers? It is simply that her
work has every appearance of an extended and multi-faceted straw man
argument that fails to meet even the minimum standards of scholarship.
It has all the marks of what in science would be pseudo-science. If
there is such a thing as pseudo-philosophy, this is it.

Nor is this brand of scholarship restricted to Rand herself. Her
closest followers embrace it as well. Consider Peikoff's article, "The
Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy". This article, said to have been
published first in 1967, contains the sweeping claim (p. 89) that "It
[the analytic-synthetic dichotomy] is accepted, in some form, by
virtually every influential contemporary philosopher -- pragmatist,
logical positivist, analyst, and extentialist alike." Well, consider
please the following:

   But, for all its a priori reasonableness, a boundary between
   analytic and synthetic statements simply has not been drawn.
   That there is such a distinction to be drawn at all is an
   unempirical dogma of empiricists, a metaphysical article of
   faith.  (W. V. Quine, "Two Dogmas of Empiricism").


My copy of _From a Logical Point of View_ has an initial copyright
date of 1953. The original paper appeared in _The Philosophical
Review_ in 1951. Look folks, it simply is *not possible* for anyone
who was aware of what was happening in Anglo-American philosophy in
the 50's and early 60's to claim with any honesty what Peikoff does in
the quote above. So was Peikoff dishonest or ignorant? Take your pick.
He had to be one or the other. If one were forced to select a *single*
paper of Quine's that had the most impact on contemporary philosohy it
would *have* to be "Two Dogmas". But Peikoff appears ignorant of both
it and its impact on the field. Further, it appears that Peikoff's
article appears only in the *second* edition of IOE, published in
1990. Certainly by *this* time someone should have noticed "Two
Dogmas" and at least conceded in a footnote that Peikoff's claim was
unsupportable both now and when it originally was made. Peikoff, like
Rand, goes to great lengths to claim (I would say "make a case", but
no genuine evidence is ever introduced) that *he* is proposing a novel
approach where all other philosophers have failed. In the case of the
analytic/ synthetic dichotomy I've got news for Peikoff: It was done
15 years earlier, and it was done better.

Is this work of Rand and Peikoff "brilliantly argued" and "superbly
written"? In a word, no.

This treatment is getting a bit lengthy. Let me wrap it up. I believe
that I have addressed the point 1 above that I set out to answer. Now
2 and 3 need to be considered. Is the egregiously poor scholarship
found in Rand and her primary followers merely a difference in style
that we can ignore? I'm afraid that I do not think so. It is so
systematic and so deeply embedded in her work that it is virtually
impossible to separate her "ideas" (as some have put it) from the
either poor or deceitful manner in which they are expressed. This is
particularly so since Rand repeatedly offers her own "solution" to
problems that others have failed to solve and this solution is at
least partly explained and justified by contrasting to the "failed"
solutions. Much of her time is devoted to claims against others and to
claims concerning both the novelty and success of her own approach. I
believe I have shown that her treatment is either ignorant and
incompetent or dishonest and deceitful. The question is whether, based
on reading several of Rand's works, it is worthwhile to devote further
study to these and other works of hers. In order to make this decision
we would have to believe that when she turns from the exposition and
criticism of other positions to her own ideas she abandons the
attitude and techniques with which she has approached the work of
others. This is not a reasonable thing to believe.

Regardless of this conclusion I am prepared to consider directly some
of "Rand's ideas", but I will leave that for another posting. I see
that I never did consider the status of the appendix as I said I
would. This posting is too long as it is. If anyone really wants to
see what I think of the appendix, it will have to be in a separate
posting as well.

--
Gary H. Merrill  [Principal Systems Developer, Compiler and Tools Division]
SAS Institute Inc. / SAS Campus Dr. / Cary, NC  27513 / (919) 677-8000
sas...@theseus.unx.sas.com ... !mcnc!sas!sasghm

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