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From: colonel@sunybcs.UUCP (Col. G. L. Sicherman)
Newsgroups: net.books
Subject: Re: Objectivism, mysticism don't mix
Message-ID: <2388@sunybcs.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 13-Oct-85 16:30:54 EDT
Article-I.D.: sunybcs.2388
Posted: Sun Oct 13 16:30:54 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 17-Oct-85 01:39:42 EDT
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["At last!  My new gorilla-detector machine!  They can't fool me now!"]

> This should probably go in net.philosophy, but I refuse to post anything
> into that epistemological black plague of a notesfile.

Looks as if the plague is spreading ...

Seriously, I agree that objectivism and mysticism are incompatible.
I think that Mr. Bishop is unfair (un-objective?) to mysticism, so here
in reply to his very clear exposition of objectivism is a counter-exposition.

Rand's identification of existence and perception is plausible at first,
but it ignores the Gestalt principle of perception: that we can
perceive things only as contrasts.  To perceive an apple, or a toothache,
or love, or ghosts, or free will, you must distinguish it from what it
is not.  I suspect that this is what Aristotle meant by the primacy of
dialectic, though he seems to have stood the principle on its head.

Hence all perceived reality is a plexus of relativism.  If you can
accept this--better still, if you can verify it in your own experience--
then the arguments against "anti-concepts" and "unreality" lose their
force.  We are surrounded by things that we can perceive but do not
exist (like Mickey Mouse) or exist but cannot be perceived (like the
Tao).  They nevertheless serve us well, to instruct and entertain us,
and to contrast in a relevant way with reality.  Some of them, for instance
poems, also serve to break down ossified forms of discourse; to distinguish,
as the General Semanticists put it, "the map from the territory."
E. M. Forster, in a celebrated essay, quotes with disapprobation the
platform of the (original) Nazis, to the effect that artists who portray
unrealities are either lying or insane, and in either case ought to be
punished.  I do not know whether Ayn Rand would go so far as Hitler...

On the other hand, Rand appears to share one principle with some
mystics: that you will be happier dwelling among your perceptions than
among your thoughts and abstractions.  This is also a tenet of the
Gestalt school of psychotherapy; if it indeed has therapeutic value (as
I believe), it may account for the evangelical fervor of some
objectivists.