[Lecture Ten] Objective Communication
by Dr. Leonard Peikoff
Total Time: 2 hours, 26 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: This session features Dr. Peikoff analyzing student papers on philosophic topics.
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.
| Prior to this lecture, students should read and analyze the selected student writing according to the principles discussed in the course. During the lecture, students should compare their observations to those of Dr. Peikoff. |
Q&A Guide
Below is a list of questions from the audience taken from this lecture, along with (approximate) time stamps.
| 1:47:42 | I would like to suggest a title or direction for a seminar-type course, which would be of great value, I believe, for students of Objectivism. The title might be “Topics in Objectivist Theory,” or along this line. This could be made up of 20 or so students who have already studied Objectivism. The syllabus would be outlined in the first class, where specific questions or problems would be proposed by the students and agreed upon for purposes of discussion. Such a format would permit deeper discussion and questions than was possible in the general course. I for one would be very interested in this type of course, and, if my suspicions are correct, others would be as well. Also, such a course would be, I hope, more interesting to you than grammar, which is not very philosophical to say the least. Perhaps you could read this suggestion to the class. |
| 1:50:12 | Do ideas determine men’s values or do men’s values determine ideas? Or are ideas and values reciprocal? |
| 1:51:46 | What is the word to use to express the healthy and positive social connotations, what I thought were termed “tribalism”? For example, the bond linking Yankees fans, fraternity members, professional groups, the AMA, the American Bar Association, etc. This type of so-called tribalism is best described as what? It’s not racism. |
| 1:53:17 | What are the steps you use in dissecting the oral and written examples in this course? Do you start with an outline of an effective presentation on the subject in question or with a checklist of principles or communications, or both? Next time you give this course, would you spend some time explicitly teaching how to critique? For example, in critiquing written papers, do you have to find the theme first? Is there a more or less ordered checklist of things to look at? Should you extract the outline? Should you do some of the same things you would do if you were writing the paper, such as listing relevant topics and eliminating the less essential ones? |
| 1:58:50 | What is the thing that animates man, what religion calls “soul”? I understand that soul cannot exist without body, but if someone says that the soul has energy to animate the body, why can’t it be possible that the mind could develop to the point where it could animate outside objects? I suppose this is psychic phenomena, but what is wrong here I can’t identify. |
| 2:02:16 | Can you tell me if Capuletti is still painting and if he shows his work in any New York galleries? |
| 2:02:33 | Will Miss Rand be speaking at the Ford Hall Forum in the future? |
| 2:02:50 | Am I correct that there’s an obvious implication in the paper that scientific evidence could show that character is set by heredity? |
| 2:07:12 | Has a publication date been set for The Ominous Parallels? |
| 2:08:41 | Is NBC moving forward with any plans to make an Atlas Shrugged TV movie? |
| 2:09:31 | In the week following the abortive raid to free the Iranian hostages, would you comment on the attempt? A diplomatic approach seems hopeless. What should we do? |
| 2:14:54 | During your course The Philosophy of Objectivism, someone asked if it was ever proper to lie. You answered with a sweeping “no.” yet, Miss Rand holds that morality ceases at the point of a gun. Would you please elaborate? |
| 2:15:46 | In several lectures you seem to be approving of or even recommending the technique of pretending to forget words or phrasing in order to appear to be more extemporaneous. To me this would be dishonest. Please comment. |
| 2:17:56 | It is a principle of Objectivist epistemology, as I understand it, that evidence must be submitted even to assert that something is possible and that, if a hypothesis or possibility is raised without such evidence, one can legitimately dismiss it out of hand. Is one justified in holding the unsupported claim as impossible? One example might be the argument that there is life on other planets. |
| 2:20:37 | How does that relate to the issue of metaphysical vs. epistemological possibility? |
| 2:21:43 | Is your Study Guide to Objectivism still available? |
| 2:22:04 | Someone reading the paper on racism might equate capitalism with racism because of South Africa. What is the Objectivist position on South Africa? |
| 2:25:09 | Please excuse such a personal question, but I can no longer bear the curiosity. How old are you? |