Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

In reply to Roderick T. Long. I’m afraid rancor is sold as-is. But feeding and care rarely require formal instruction. You learn as you go. LikeLike

In reply to Irfan Khawaja. If you really don’t like “wider crusades which just seems to me be getting wilder and wilder with each passing day”, then why do you appear so sympathetic to post-Modernists? Your comment, “no one in t…

Thanks for this response, Irfan. At my website, I had posted this note to Roderick before seeing your response-article: ‘One’s estimations of others lie along a spectrum, esteeming more highly the good people and less highly or not at all t…

In reply to Irfan Khawaja. My focus had not been on the pains or harms of negative self-estimate, but this seems central to how you @Irfan (and Rand) think of these matters. It is not central to mine, at least in this sense: I suspect that one appropri…

In reply to Irfan Khawaja. “there are more nuanced depictions of the phenomenon out there than Rand’s” Maybe so — but since Hicks is a Randian, it’s worth noting that he’s ignoring resources and nuances that are available …

In reply to mlyoung57. @ Michael: I don’t think I quite follow the distinction you’re trying to make at the outset. Both your comment and Roderick’s remind me that I stipulated in my response that as far as the cases I had in mind, in…

In reply to Irfan Khawaja. I’ve griped similarly about how many Randians claim that only initiations of physical force count as oppressive or as objectionable forms of power, when the whole plot of The Fountainhead is about mostly non-force-invol…

In reply to Roderick T. Long. I think I did, actually. There were some bullies and assholes there, but on the whole, I think of my elementary school environment as a kind of utopia. So far, I haven’t found anything to equal or approximate it. Lik…