[Lecture Two] Objective Communication
by Dr. Leonard Peikoff
Total Time: 2 hours, 39 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 applies the principles from the first lecture to Ayn Rand’s lecture “Philosophy: Who Needs It?” He explores how Rand used motivation, delimitation, concretization, and structure to communicate successfully to the West Point students. He also considers a paper on “Certainty” as a means of illustrating issues with the quality of argument in a communication, specifically rationalism.
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.
| Before listening to this lecture, students should read the written pieces (“Philosophy: Who Needs It?” and “Certainty”) discussed here. |
| What was Rand’s approach in motivating her topic? |
| How does Rand’s use of motivation keep her audience engaged? |
| When does it make sense to anticipate and address audience questions? |
| Why did Rand use concretes first to get to abstractions in some parts of her speech and vice versa in others? |
| What would guide one in choosing a bottom up or top-down approach on the question of concretization? |
| Where are there options in the structure Rand uses, and where are there necessary choices? |
| How did Rand use delimitation of her subject? |
| What approaches can be used to achieve a self-contained presentation even when all knowledge is interrelated? |
| What is the positive versus negative form of rationalism? |
| Why is it often hard to detect rationalism in a presentation or piece of writing? |
Q&A Guide
Below is a list of questions from the audience taken from this lecture, along with (approximate) time stamps.
| 1:59:35 | How can a person assess whether he has gotten his point across as he intended to? |
| 2:02:34 | You mentioned the intellectual bombardment of ideas that today’s colleges inflict on students. How does one approach the task of sorting out and discarding these ideas, which are abundantly thrust at students? |
| 2:04:46 | How does one differentiate the meaning of the term “eternal” from “infinite”? You have stated that time is finite and yet that the universe is eternal. |
| 2:07:28 | Does Miss Rand have any published work on the concept of space and time? |
| 2:07:36 | Isn’t the obvious question with respect to Miss Rand’s astronaut example: “is this true”? |
| 2:09:33 | Please repeat the points you made about the differences between inductive and deductive reasoning when you were discussing the way Miss Rand began her article. |
| 2:11:55 | Were you saying that the expression in the West Point article “not very active, not very confident, not very happy” reflected Miss Rand’s view concerning inappropriate metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics respectively? |
| 2:13:16 | Would the four points that you made apply equally to fiction writing? |
| 2:15:33 | Can you suggest any professors you think are worthwhile in terms of philosophy? |
| 2:16:19 | Is it valid to criticize an argument or position as being over-simplified? This often amounts to criticizing someone for reducing an issue to its essentials or for not having discussed every conceivable complexity or possible objection. Sometimes, however, a valid criticism is intended that relevant subtle distinctions or complexities have been ignored. Is oversimplification a valid concept or does it entail an illegitimate package deal? If the latter, should a criticism that uses this concept be responded to in part as an explicit rejection of the concept, as one might respond to being called “too black and white” or “too cut and dry”? |
| 2:21:10 | If you are addressing an actively hostile audience, how can you possibly apply the advice of not including material that raises legitimate questions, because this audience doesn’t even accept your axioms? Anything you can try to say to get off the ground, they will legitimately question. So what can you possibly do in that case? |
| 2:26:40 | Could you elaborate on the point that certainty is inherent in consciousness? |
| 2:29:49 | Could you please give some examples of theologians using rationalist polemics? |
| 2:30:41 | Is there any time or audience where it would be legitimate to present a highly abstract presentation without examples? |
| 2:31:58 | If concepts are not equivalent to their definitions, one cannot learn a concept merely by learning its definition. What else is required? For example, does the definition merely point at the kind of existents a concept refers to, and one must then perform the process of differentiation and integration to fully grasp it? Please elaborate. |
| 2:34:17 | Regarding a quote from the paper on certainty. |
| 2:34:57 | Could this certainty paper be rewritten as you suggest and still be accepted in graduate school? |
| 2:36:28 | Is it possible not to become rationalistic after years of higher education? How? |