Yaron Brook's Call to Action - April 2009

http://www.aynrand.org/

Yaron Brook discusses the recent surge of interest in Atlas Shrugged within popular culture as a result of the financial crisis.

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[qtronman]

I am teaching Atlas Shrugged and the Fountainhead to South Koreans using Internet technology. I have a few students who are really into it.

[Beethovens7th]

Yaron Brook is always right on target, it's a real pleasure to watch.

[ugotpimp]

HELL YEAH ! Atlas Shrugged !!

so pertinent in todays political and econonical climate. God Bless the John Galts in the Country!

downsize the govt and the welfare state!

power to liberty and personal responsability!

[grailmastah]

I've read 'Atlas Shrugged' 6 times, and now I've started again....and as much as I love the philosophy of it all, to me, the thing that makes it so readable is that Ayn Rand was such a great writer......I've read the Piekoff book Objectivism only thrice!

[wtbvideofan]

I'm glad we're in agreement.

"Guessing *might* be done *after* a person has used their reasoning. It is one of a number of ways that one can deal with information that reason establishes."

That's what I said.

[z2b]

The notion that reason can be essentialized based on guessing is wrong. First of all, there is deductive reasoning in which a conclusion *necessarily* follows from a set of premises.

Second, there is inductive reasoning in which the premises indicate a logical conclusion. Guessing *might* be done *after* a person has used their reasoning. It is one of a number of ways that one can deal with information that reason establishes. Its certainly not the act of reasoning itself.

[wtbvideofan]

You are mostly correct, however not entirely. Faith is NOT a method of thinking. Reason is our abilty to "compute" and is a method of thinking. They're not on the same spectrum. It is our ability to reason that allows us to recognize there are things that we have no, or little, information about. At that point, we can apply reason to what we speculate to be the case. We use reason to make a "guess" and stand by our "guess" based on what we have reasoned to likely be the case, or outcome.

[RobertPFreeman]

. . . but maintaining faith would actually be detrimental to their position.

To claim that one has (or could have) both "reason" and "faith" in support of one's claim is to strip both concepts of their distinguishing characteristics and to reduce them to be void of any *definite* meaning.