[Lecture Four] Advanced Seminars on Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand
by Dr. Leonard Peikoff
Total Time: 1 hour, 56 minutes
Course summary: In this course, Dr. Peikoff presented material from his then-new book, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. The manuscript had its earliest roots in Peikoff’s comprehensive 1976 lecture course on Objectivism. As he worked on the material for publication, he discovered new connections and implications of major ideas in the philosophy as well as new insights on its integrated, hierarchical structure. Peikoff used these seminars to discuss what he learned in the process and to demonstrate how it would allow students of Objectivism to gain a new understanding of the philosophy. Read more »
In this lecture: Continuing the discussion of the “anteroom” of philosophy, Dr. Peikoff explains the nature of free will, volition, the choice to think, and the distinction between the primary and higher level choices.
Q&A Guide
Below is a list of questions from the audience taken from this lecture, along with (approximate) time stamps.
| 45:10 | A written question: When and by what means does a child become aware of his consciousness and volition, i.e., know that the axioms of consciousness and volition are true? It must be long after his first perception. I know that axioms are true by sense perception. Does this include the axioms of consciousness and volition? Is introspection then a special form of perception? |
| 50:38 | Concerning the primary choice: I can grasp the choice to focus and I can grasp the choice to evade and I can grasp that there’s a state of being in drift. But how do the choice to evade and the choice not to focus differ? |
| 55:50 | Can you judge an individual for choosing to be out of focus if that is their primary choice? |
| 59:22 | One person may be out of focus and know it, doing it deliberately, and another man may be out of focus in the sense of not paying attention while taking action. Are both of those the same state of being out of focus? |
| 1:05:30 | In Atlas Shrugged, when the character of Cheryl Taggart is being courted by James Taggart, is she out of focus? |
| 1:09:27 | Is operative intelligence increased by the proper use of your mind? |
| 1:11:03 | Is conscious alertness on a continuum? |
| 1:13:43 | I said to myself “I have to be in full focus in order to teach philosophy today.” Isn’t my being in focus motivated? |
| 1:18:05 | But first: Does “full consciousness of reality” involve extrospection and awareness of consciousness at the same time? |
| 1:20:10 | Did I have to be in full focus to raise my arm deliberately to ask a question? Is every choice irreducible? |
| 1:25:10 | Aren’t the actions of children you mentioned earlier actually motivated by long-term goals? |
| 1:30:02 | What did you mean by “animals are infallible”? |
| 1:31:50 | If an omnipotent being was completely predictable, how can you call it omnipotent if it has no choice? |
| 1:33:19 | To what extent does the choice to focus or to go out of focus or evade become habitual? |
| 1:38:56 | There’s a paragraph on causality on page 95 and another at the top of page 102 that made the principle of causality much clearer. Why didn’t you put those in the basic discussion of causality in chapter 1? |
| 1:42:24 | Do animals have any kind of choice at all? If not, can you apply a mechanistic explanation to their actions? If animals do have any kind of choice does that non-conceptual choice have any relationship with our primary choice? |