San Diego Objectivist Study Group

Having launched Phase 1 today, The Atlas Society’s new web site looks good. Here is the press release about what else needs to be done in the upcoming months to migrate contents from the old site.

Of special note, the main page now has a prominent tab for the purpose of spreading Objectivism to Asia. The mission states: “As Asia rises in wealth and accomplishments, its societies share a common tension between traditional values and the new emerging Asian individualism. Here we chronicle the ongoing tension and its import.”

On the academic philosophy side, I look forward to the forthcoming audio and video programs.

Congratulations, TAS!

John Tierney writes another good article in science—this time in psychology. More specifically, it is about psycho-epistemology, though the neuroscientists working on it don’t know that. Skipping past these psychologists’ primitive theories about mind wandering (including daydreaming and zoning out) as being evolutionarily adaptive or as beneficial against boredom, we come to the real findings about human consciousness: that we have a conscious mind and that we have a subconscious.

[…] They found that when people’s mind wandered, the episode could last as long as two minutes.

Where exactly does the mind go during those moments? By observing people at rest during brain scans, neuroscientists have identified a “default network” that is active when people’s minds are especially free to wander. When people do take up a task, the brain’s executive network lights up to issue commands, and the default network is often suppressed.

But during some episodes of mind wandering, both networks are firing simultaneously, according to a study led by Kalina Christoff of the University of British Columbia. Why both networks are active is up for debate. One school theorizes that the executive network is working to control the stray thoughts and put the mind back on task.

Another school of psychologists, which includes the Santa Barbara researchers, theorizes that both networks are working on agendas beyond the immediate task. […]

And there you have it. Ayn Rand, by introspecting her own mind at work and by observing how people communicate their ideas, wrote way back in 1965: “Psycho-epistemology is the study of man’s cognitive processes from the aspect of the interaction between the conscious mind and the automatic functions of the subconscious.” [TRM “The Psycho-Epistemology of Art” 18a] Neuroscientists and psychologists would do very well if they but studied her writings.

It is a fact of nature that man has volition, and this faculty extends to his ability to control his conscious mind’s interaction with his subconscious, but only if he so chooses. Because of volition, human action is always purposeful (i.e., initiated and sustained for some purpose). Without a purpose, there is no human, i.e., rational, action.  This, too, is a fact, and having a purpose is absolutely necessary if the conscious-subconscious interaction is to be under rational control. Because of the crucial role of purpose, every man needs to internalize a personal hierarchy of values in order to prioritize what he ought to think and do at all times. And this, too, is a fact. A man without values to aim for, without purpose, without active choice, reverts to the default “freedom” of being an animal, free to have random, aimless wandering, both physical and mental.

Want to be more creative? Simply choose to be! It is a simple procedure as far as I can introspect: [1] ask yourself questions of what you need to accomplish cognitively; [2] acquire facts and store your knowledge methodically; [3] give yourself standing orders to integrate for answers; [4] persist toward that purpose. Eureka!

A new car that can fly is now available for anyone who wishes to preorder one. According to a news report, the model, called Transition, is being made by the company Terrafugia. It is a two-seater that can drive normally on land for 30 mpg and can fly as a “light aircraft” at 115 mph for 460 miles with a total cargo weight of 450 lbs. (Its own weight is 1,440 lbs.) It needs but a third of a mile of straight, wire-free road to take off or land.

As a light aircraft, its pilot needs but 20 hours of flight training to obtain a license rather than the full private pilot’s license. As a car, when the wings are electrically folded in, it can be stored in a standard garage. This must-have transport for the well-to-do retails for $194,000 apiece. So far, 70 individuals have put down their $10,000 deposits.

I wonder if it can be accessorized with a trailer hitch, a bike rack, or a surfboard rack.

A couple of us took a road trip this past weekend to Santa Monica, California to attend the invitations-only screening of We The Living. The invitation from Duncan Scott states:

In celebration of its upcoming DVD release, Duncan Scott Productions invites you and a guest to join us Saturday, April 18th at 7:00 p.m. for a rare big-screen presentation of the 1942 Italian feature film adaptation of Ayn Rand’s We The Living starring Rossano Brazzi and Alida Valli.

Duncan Scott, who co-produced the restored film will introduce. Immediately following the screening we will show the original ending to the film. Duncan will explain why Ayn Rand insisted that the scene be removed. This clip, along with almost 40 minutes of additional deleted scenes, will be included as an extra on the new DVD to be released in late May.

We have limited seating in the screening room, so please RSVP for yourself (and up to one guest), as soon as possible.

Duncan said that when Ayn Rand first watched the original ending with him and with the Holzers, and as the Italian word “Fine” appeared and grew out from the center to fill the screen, she reportedly joked, “Well, it certainly is not fine.”

The deleted scene is no more than two minutes long, but it does change the whole sense of life of the movie. It shows Kira walking away from the viewing perspective, uphill toward a hillcrest, in the snow, in her white wedding dress, toward the supposed border. Several rifle shots rang out. She slumps to her knees, gets up, climbs the hill some more, reaches the summit as the music crescendos, and then collapses and dies!

The film action in this sequence does not reflect the psychological triumph Kira achieved in the final pages of the book. I definitely agree with Rand that the scene had to be cut.

I enjoyed watching We The Living on many levels. It certainly is a romantic film. The actors are certainly pretty to look at. The climax is especially suspenseful and tearful (at least for me). A dialog that put a lump in my throat is by Andrei to Kira: “You are my highest reverence.” Now how often do you find a line like that in a movie?

The capacity-filled audience had an extended chat with Duncan after the screening. The DVD should come out next month but not before the third DVD of the history project.

With the popularity of Atlas Shrugged resurging on account of governmental fascism, the movie deal is reviving, again. This article, mentioned on Drudge Report today, details the principal players for the Hollywood project.

Ryan Kavanaugh of Relativity Media is being reported as the new financier. Randall Wallace continues to be the scriptwriter, as are the Karen and Howard Baldwin the producers, and Lionsgate Films the distributor. David Kelley, according to Ed Hudgins in a radio interview, continues to be the co-producer and has final say about the script and its philosophical implications. Film shooting, if it is going to happen, must take place before the end of 2010; otherwise the film-rights option, currently held by John Aglialoro, will expire and revert back to the Rand estate.

The recent effort, with Vadim Perelman as director and Angelina Jolie as Dagny Taggart, fell through in late September 2008.  It has been in limbo, until now, only with the threat becoming real of reality imitating art.

David Kelley, philosopher and Chairman of The Atlas Society, has announced that the annual summer seminar, a centerpiece of the mission of TAS, planned for the summer of 2009, has been cancelled. The announcement letter is posted here.

As an organization funded solely by contributions from members, TAS is very much affected by the global economic slowdown. I encourage you to examine TAS and evaluate whether it has a place in your hierarchy of values.

Happy New Year, and may your pursuits of values be realized!

The Atlas Society has just posted on YouTube two eight-minute videos (No.1 and No.2) of Barbara Branden discussing Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged. The event took place at the Cato Institute on the occasion of the Atlas Shrugged 50th Anniversary Celebration that was hosted by the Society on October 6, 2007 in Washington D.C.

Prostitution is no longer the only profession for poor, urban, young women. In India, a woman can rent out her uterus. ”Surrogate motherhood—carrying to term and giving birth to another woman’s baby—once was limited in India to helping close relatives who couldn’t complete a pregnancy due to medical difficulties. But leading gynecologist Dr. Kamla Selvaraj says it’s now becoming a regular ‘profession’ in India, with more and more women willing to carry babies for others, for a fee.”

Since this is an issue about individual rights, of course, Indian collectivists want to halt the new trend and to smear it as crass commercialism. In this case, though, I think selfish individualism will win out. There is definitely an international market for this kind of service. If India bans this form of outsourcing, some other, poorer country will take up the opportunity.

“The debate is not over,” with respect to the cause of global warming. That is John Stossel, reporting in his recent “Give Me a Break” segment on 20/20 at ABC television. His is a reply to Mr. Al Gore’s mantra to the contrary. Mr. Gore commits the fallacies of appeal to the majority and of appeal to repetition—as if repeating the same thing said by many people over and over will somehow, by the enchantment, make it true. But the highlight in Mr. Stossel’s report is this fallacy-buster: the many rises in the level of CO₂ have lagged behind, not preceded, the rises in global warming periods in geological history, according to ice core records. The evidence shatters the political environmentalists’ claim even to a post hoc fallacy.

Below is the eight-minute videoclip. You can read Mr. Stossel’s report here. Also, Willisms has a close-up of the datagraphs of the gas-to-temperature lag on his site here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uO9laiUXS1o

The Ayn Rand Institute has made available online The Ayn Rand Lexicon, edited by Harry Binswanger. Here is the newsclip from ARI:

Through a special arrangement with the publisher, the editor, and the Estate of Ayn Rand, ARI has received permission to present The Ayn Rand Lexicon—now available in its entirety, free of charge, to Web visitors. Edited by Harry Binswanger, and with an introduction by Leonard Peikoff, this important book presents all of the key ideas of Ayn Rand’s philosophy, in an encyclopedic reference of stunning breadth and depth.

Check it out at http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/.