I'm quite happy to have her thinking judged by this, which is indeed Rand in a microcosm. You and I differ only in the evaluation thereof.
But I do have to wonder what you find "internally incoherent." Seems to me very clear and straightforward.
--Harry
Very nice. Very self-referential. Internally incoherent and free-floating from what we actually know about grammar. Rand in a microcosm.David Auerbach auerbach@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxDepartment of Philosophy and Religious Studies NCSU Raleigh, NC 27695-8103 On Oct 17, 2010, at 3:54 PM, Harry Binswanger wrote: > All, >> "Americans are trained (through the look-say approach to reading and all allied, Dewey-based ideas of education) to be emotional approximators. The nonobjective, ungrammatical way in which people express themselves today [1969] is truly frightening. What has been systematically undercut is their capacity for objective communication. Americans tend to express themselves guided by feelings, not by thoughts. According to modern theory, there are no such things as thoughts; and even if there were, they could not guide us.>> "I am not a grammarian by profession. I do not know the grammatical rules of English by name, only by practice. But whenever I struggle with a sentence and finally get it straight, I bless whoever invented these rules and I know there is a reason behind them. If they were irrational, they would not survive. Sometimes grammarians do attempt irrational, arbitrary rules; but people do not abide by rules that complicate communication rather than clarify it.>> "One of the most important applications of the [proper] attitude toward reason is grammar. The ability to think precisely, and thus to write precisely, cannot be achieved without observing grammatical rules.>> "Grammar has the same purpose as concepts. The rules of grammar are rules for using concepts precisely. Since sentences consist of concepts, the whole secret of grammar is clarity and the avoidance of equivocation. The grammar of all language tells us how to organize our concepts so as to make them communicate a specific, unequivocal meaning. If you compare the number of concepts we have with the vastly greater number of phenomena we deal with and have to describe by means of those concepts, you will grasp the importance of grammatical sentence structure.>> "If it were not for grammar, we could have words but could not speak sentences. We could merely say, for example, 'Me Tarzan, you Jane.' That is the nature of primitive languages. Civilized languages, by contrast, have a grammar precisely because we deal with more than first-level, perceptually based concepts. If you have to deal with the abstract?-with abstraction from abstractions?-you must know in what order and by what rules to organize them in order to communicate a specific thought.>> "We were all bored by grammar in school. Memorizing rules is very dull. But by the time you reach college, you should realize how important those rules are. Therefore, if you know why we should fight for reason, and for the right view of concepts, then let us?-on the same grounds?-have a crusade for grammar.">> --Ayn Rand, The Art of Nonfiction, [extemporaneous lectures] Ch. 7, "Editing"> > >
