SEE: Why start an Objectivist Campus Club, and Precision in Language

Here's the second episode of SEE! I hope you enjoy:



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For those who are interested in my process, I start by writing a simple outline, like the one below (don't spoil the ending, listen first!):

Why start a club?

• Activism
• Discussion
• Social Interaction

Progress so far

• Meeting with club peopleguys
• Email to UR Philosophy club
• Possibility of heavy participation in RIT club instead

Clarity in Language.

• Common view: Language primarily for communication
• Descriptivists: The rules are set by whatever people actually use in order to communicate
• Prescriptivists: The rules are set out, typically by an "established authority", and Must Be Followed.
• Minor aside: Parallel between intrinsicists and subjectivists?
• Difficult to decide between the two
• On the one hand, it seems like the descriptivists might be right that a common understanding is all that's necessary for communication, yet the results range from difficult to understand to unintelligible to outright offensive
• On the other hand, it seems like the prescriptivists might be right that communication needs solid rules, yet typically no basis for the rules is given besides tradition
• The Objectivist view, or the way out: Language primarily for cognition
• Man has a specific kind of consciousness that behaves a certain way
• Precision in language necessary because language shapes thought: sloppy definitions/usages will lead to packaging things that should be separate, or separating things that should be together, even if one knows that such packaging is wrong (Eg: "proselytizing" in Objectivism, "paleo" in diet, "knowledge" in computation)
• The purpose of concepts (unit-economy) rules out unnecessary neologisms (Rand's Razor), but requires new terms be formed when appropriate (psychoepistemology)
• The communication view as meaningless on its own: what happens when one communicates?
• Descriptivists: What do you mean by common understanding, by the other person "getting it"? Some sort of emotional agreement, or what?
• Prescriptivists: Why do your rules matter if language is merely a vessel for spreading thought, which is held in some undefined form in a given individual?
• Possible parallel to ethics: the discussion of moral systems before it is determined what morality is for, defining good as "good for others"

When I actually sit down to do the podcast, I have this in front of me, and for each major section I record in one go. Over time, I'm sure this method will be changed, but that's what I do for now! The outlining for this podcast took me about an hour, and the recording and putting in of transitions another hour.