[Lecture One] Objective Communication
by Dr. Leonard Peikoff
Total Time: 2 hours, 44 minutes
Course summary: In this course, Dr. Leonard Peikoff explores the nature of intellectual communication. The course blends student work and examples with Peikoff’s own commentary to elicit the principles of effective communication in writing, speaking, and arguing. In these lectures, he identifies the essential issues unique to the nature of each method of presenting ideas and offers guidance about how to craft one’s thinking around the specific way one will deliver it to an audience. Read more »
In this lecture: In this lecture, Dr. Peikoff presents the essential philosophic bases of communication in Objectivist epistemology. He explains how communication is affected by the nature of our conceptual awareness as well as the fact that knowledge is conceptual and contextual. From these observations, he develops four principles that should guide all communication. Ayn Rand participates in this lecture’s question and answer session.
Study Guide
This material is designed to help you digest the lecture content. You can also download below a PDF study guide for the entire course.
| Describe the ways that attacks on reason necessitate the undermining of communication. |
| How does communicating new ideas play an important part in understanding them? |
| Given that knowledge is conceptual, what responsibility does that imply for communication? |
| Provide an original example of a statement that an audience could understand from different contexts. |
| How does an audience’s context control the content of one’s communication? |
| Describe some examples of how the “crow epistemology” affects communication? |
| Why does the need to motivate have both epistemological and ethical components? |
| What are the main factors that can help determine how to delimit any topic? |
| Using an original example, what are some of the ways that the same points could follow different organizational structures? |
| What would be missing cognitively from a presentation that did not use examples? |
| Why would using too many examples detract from a good presentation? |
Q&A Guide
Below is a list of questions from the audience taken from this lecture, along with (approximate) time stamps.
| 1:39:11 | You have said, I believe, that a good way to learn to write fiction is to read other writers and to figure out what is good and what is bad about their work. I force myself to read the current market, but the level is so low that I not only find the endeavor worthless from a writing point of view, but also depressing, as I have two finished novels sitting on the shelf unsold because they are not commercial enough. Not that they are flawless, but certainly more worthwhile than what is considered to be a commercial book. Could you please give either authors or particular works which would be valuable to develop fiction writing? Thank you. |
| 1:46:22 | Will you finish your introduction to epistemology? |
| 1:46:42 | What plays do you recommend for reading and also performing? |
| 1:48:02 | Why do you feel that consciousness is limited with respect to “A is A” if man is in fact capable of knowing everything? |
| 1:49:39 | How do you recommend responding to alleged facts in an argument? |
| 1:49:50 | Do you deliver college lectures in the same way that you delivered your lecture tonight? |
| 1:50:50 | Do you have any recommendations for future reading on this subject? |
| 1:51:20 | Do you have a view on dimensions, specifically on the value of “three” as an organizing principle? |
| 1:52:56 | You have advised people not to participate in writers workshops. Could you elaborate on this? |
| 1:55:41 | Is Atlas Shrugged going to be aired on television? |
| 1:56:02 | Certain economists, such as Howard Rolfe, are predicting an eminent and large-scale economic depression and possible world war. Could you comment on this prediction and their advice to move away from large cities to avoid the riots and food shortages they say would strangle the cities in a depression or war? |
| 1:58:54 | What would be the course of action for the U.S. in the Iranian crisis? How should we go about getting our hostages back? |
| 1:59:42 | What have been your day-to-day attitudes toward your writing as a job? |
| 2:00:42 | Jane Fonda, who you had mentioned with some form of mockery, in my opinion and that of thousands is committing and taking interest in spreading her beliefs to others. Do you dislike her ideas or her form of communicating them? |
| 2:03:21 | Does your method of communication serve in all aspects of life, such as the acting profession? Do you ever feel you have imposed yourself on any other individual? |
| 2:05:42 | How does your statement during the lecture today—regarding the impossibility of presenting an impenetrable, perfect talk—compare with your statement that perfection is possible to man? |
| 2:07:18 | Why do you call this course “communication” instead of “rhetoric”? Is it because of the negative connotation of the word “rhetoric” today? Should it be reclaimed? |
| 2:08:59 | How long will the lecture be and how many will be attending? |
| 2:09:43 | You have been critical of the Libertarian political movement. Do you think that Libertarians communicate their ideas about freedom and capitalism effectively? |
| 2:11:24 | How do you distinguish between literature and “popular writing”? What makes something literature? |
| 2:14:56 | What do you think of science fiction? |
| 2:14:47 | Are courses on self-improvement valuable or not, and could you name some you approve of, for instance EST? |
| 2:16:49 | Milton Friedman is presenting a program on Channel 13 about his view of capitalism. If you’ve seen it, would you comment on it? |
| 2:18:00 | Will you explain how you go about selecting the names of your fictional characters? |
| 2:18:46 | Would you please explain briefly how you apply the principle of the crow epistemology to the presentation of ideas in your novels? Could you give an example of a violation of this principle in a novel? |
| 2:20:30 | In view of the demands of a writing career, could you give advice to the spouse of a writer to show how harmony is possible? |
| 2:23:14 | Do you have any recommended reading lists? |
| 2:23:25 | Are you teaching anywhere currently? |
| 2:23:45 | Where does your book stand? |
| 2:24:08 | What type of political organization or activity, if any, would you or Miss Rand consider is optimal in the advancement of capitalist or Objectivist ideas? |
| 2:25:37 | Why does Objectivism reject symbolic logic? |
| 2:26:49 | Will you be giving any smaller seminars on this or other subjects in the future? |
| 2:27:56 | Is there a special problem of motivating old people in philosophic discussion? |
| 2:29:48 | What do you recommend in terms of political activity? |
| 2:35:24 | Should one always have a fully developed idea of what one intends to write before starting to write? Can writing properly be used as an aid in helping to develop the idea? |
| 2:36:25 | How does one translate the desire to write into the will to write? |
| 2:36:49 | What would you identify as the main unresolved issues that your philosophy has not dealt with? |
| 2:37:35 | Will you comment on your education in Russia with respect to how well the various aspects of that education prepared you for your career as a writer? |
| 2:40:49 | You praised Stirling Silliphant’s screenplay for In the Heat of the Night. Has he written anything else that you would recommend? |
| 2:42:20 | Do you have any advice on how to view current trends in the visual arts? |