Philosophers of Capitalism provides an interdisciplinary approach, attempting to discover the feasibility of an integration of Austrian Economics and Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism. Edward W. Younkins supplies essays presenting the essential ideas of Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises, and Ayn Rand, as well as scholarly essays discussing the theorists and the interaction of their theories.

Philosophers of Capitalism provides an interdisciplinary approach, attempting to discover the feasibility of an integration of Austrian Economics and Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism. Edward W. Younkins supplies essays presenting the essential ideas of Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises, and Ayn Rand, as well as scholarly essays discussing the theorists and the interaction of their theories.

Atlas Shrugged is a novel about business and the people who create businesses. This article describes Ayn Rand’s treatment of business and entrepreneurs in the novel. It begins with an explanation of how Atlas Shrugged demonstrates that wealth and profit are creations of the human mind. The next section compares the worldviews of the novel’s business heroes and villains. This is followed by an in-depth analysis of the novel’s main business protagonists—Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden. The next part provides summaries (...) of other business characters. The last section examines how the novel is used in college-level business courses. (shrink)

This article presents a skeleton of a potential paradigm of human flourishing and happiness in a free society. It is an exploratory attempt to construct an understanding from various disciplines and to integrate them into a clear, consistent, coherent, and systematic whole. Holding that there are essential interconnections among objective ideas, the article specifically emphasizes the compatibility of Aristotelianism, Austrian Economics, Positive Psychology, and Ayn Rand’s Objectivism arguing that particular ideas from these areas can be integrated into a paradigm of (...) human flourishing and happiness based on the nature of man and the world. Such a paradigm will help people to understand the world and to survive and flourish in it. It is hoped that the paradigm will grow and evolve as scholars engage, question, critique, interpret, and extend its ideas. Our goal is to have a paradigm that accords with reality and there is always more to learn from reality. (shrink)

This article makes an argument for Atlas Shrugged as a highly unified and integrated novel. All of the sections of the paper explain how integration and unity are embodied in Atlas Shrugged. Part one discusses the philosophical and literary structure of Rand’s masterpiece. The next section is concerned with issues of political economy. Section three then examines Rand’s techniques of characterization and character development as demonstrated in Atlas Shrugged. The following part analyzes the philosophical speeches. The final major part considers (...) Atlas Shrugged as a means for social change. The conclusion then discusses Atlas Shrugged as the manifestation of a fully-integrated philosophical novel. (shrink)

Eamonn Butler’s Ayn Rand: An Introduction is a short, well-organized, and easy-to-read guide to Ayn Rand’s key ideas. This primer focuses on the essentials, avoids academic details, and is structured around the major elements of her philosophy of Objectivism. Butler’s book is a fine, brief introduction to Rand’s thought.

Ayn Rand wrote and lectured on economic concepts and topics. This volume addresses the economic and business aspects of her writings. The authors of this anthology are from a variety of fields and all of them are enthusiastic supporters of her ideas.

The author of this article maintains that Ayn Rand’s version of virtue ethics can provide a powerful basis for operating a successful business organization. An argument is made that Ayn Rand’s Objectivist virtues can serve as an underpinning for a firm’s long-term sustainable success as well as for the flourishing and happiness of its employees. In order to attain a company’s goals, values, and purpose, these virtues must be integrated with the firm’s vision, culture, and climate. The Objectivist virtues are (...) said to provide an integrated framework for employees’ decisions and actions. Leaders must link these virtues to the survival and success of both the firm and its employees. Toward the end of the paper a diagram is presented to aid the reader in visualizing the linkages among the ideas presented therein. (shrink)

This article provides a summary of economic issues found in Atlas Shrugged. It discusses the role of individual initiative, creativity, and productivity in economic progress as illustrated in this novel. It also shows the novel's depiction of the benefits of trade—and the destruction of exchange relationships and production that results from government intervention in the economy. Rand included a great many valuable insights about money in the novel's famous “money speech.” In addition, the book analyzes Galt's Gulch as a free (...) market economy. The novel is, in part, a treatise on economics providing a literary treatment of proper economic principles. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to discuss the several ways in which Atlas Shrugged is related to social change. It explains both how characters such as entrepreneurs and strikers introduce change in the novel as well as how Atlas Shrugged itself can be employed as a tool for bringing about change in the real world. The potential effects of the novel on readers are examined, as are the efforts of social movements that have embraced and incorporated the ideas found (...) therein into their own philosophy. (shrink)

This book is written for individuals who want to learn about the philosophical foundations of political and economic freedom. It is an introduction and a guide to the principal theoretical ideas on liberty produced by the most influential and creative thinkers in history, with chapters on Adam Smith, Ludwig von Mises, and Carl Menger.

This expository essay relies on the views of scholars writing about Atlas Shrugged to make a case that it is a highly integrated work of imaginative literature. The article focuses on the ways in which integration is manifested in Atlas Shrugged. Part 1 examines the philosophical structure of the novel. Part 2 addresses literary structure. This is followed by a discussion of Rand's techniques of characterization. An analysis of the speeches and the theme of mind-body integration concludes the discussion.

This book emphasizes the compatibility of Aristotelianism, Austrian economics, and Ayn Rand's Objectivism, arguing that particular ideas from these areas can be integrated as a potential paradigm of human flourishing and happiness in a free society. It constructs an understanding from various disciplines into a clear, consistent, and systematic whole.

Professor Edward Younkins has a very ambitious project, that is, to suggest a solid justification for a capitalist society integrating moral and political philosophy, and economics in support of public policy. With this book Professor Younkins concludes his argument in favor of the compatibility of Austrian Economics with neo-Aristotelian philosophy as the best justification for a free society. That synthesis is understood by many as unsustainable, but with his research the author challenges that common assumption.

Edward W. Younkins's book, Capitalism and Commerce: Conceptual Inundations of Free Enterprise, develops a systematic case for a free enterprise model that restricts state activity to a few clearly enumerated functions. He sets out the ideas of individual rights and property ownership, moving from here to freedom of transaction under the rule of law. He considers entrepreneurship and progress. Finally he discusses the various opponents of free enterprise and responds, concluding with a meditation on the prospects of bringing (...) about the kind of society envisioned here. (shrink)

Gathering information from both published and unpublished material and interviews with Gibson's family, colleagues, and friends, Reed (philosophy, Drexel U.) chronicles Gibson's life and intellectual development and his attempts to synthesize several contrasting intellectual traditions into what he ultimately called an "ecological approach" to psychology. Annotation(c) 2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

The formulation of propositional modal logic is revised by interposing a domain of structured propositions between the modal language and the models. Interpretations of the language (i.e., ways of mapping the language into the domain of propositions) are distinguished from models of the domain of propositions (i.e., ways of assigning truth values to propositions at each world), and this contrasts with the traditional formulation. Truth and logical consequence are defined, in the first instance, as properties of, and relations among, propositions. (...) -/- These definitions have certain interesting consequences. One is that they resolve a question that cannot be answered by the traditional analysis, in which Kripke models directly interpret modal language. The question is, is the reason a modal sentence has a different truth value at other possible worlds due to the fact that the sentence has a different meaning at that world or due to a change in the world? The philosophical conception elaborates the second answer. Another interesting consequence is that modal language, properly speaking, is not intensional, at least according to the classic tests for, and definitions of, intensionality. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In Exploring “Atlas Shrugged”: Ayn Rand’s Magnum Opus, Edward W. Younkins examines Rand’s 1957 novel as philosophy, literature, political economy, and business-education text. The book is constituted mostly by previously published essays. Despite some interpretive difficulties throughout, the introduction and appendix represent worthwhile additions to this collection.

The Dialectics of Liberty: Exploring the Context of Human Freedom. Edited by Bissell Roger E., Chris Matthew Sciabarra, & Edward W. Younkins.. Pp. 376. Hardback/Paperback/eBook: Price $120.00/42.99/40.50. ISBN: 9781498592116.).

A seminal 1921 work by the linguist Edward Sapir, outlining his influential ideas and hypotheses on language and its speakers.

Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged: A Philosophical and Uterary Companion, a new book edited by Edward W. Younkins, provides a reminder of how much Rand's great novel has to say on a broad range of subjects—and of what a joy the book has been for so many to read. This review summarizes and comments on the book's essays.

The so-called ergodic hierarchy (EH) is a central part of ergodic theory. It is a hierarchy of properties that dynamical systems can possess. Its five levels are egrodicity, weak mixing, strong mixing, Kolomogorov, and Bernoulli. Although EH is a mathematical theory, its concepts have been widely used in the foundations of statistical physics, accounts of randomness, and discussions about the nature of chaos. We introduce EH and discuss its applications in these fields.

The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies introduces four new Advisory Board members—Laurence I. Gould, Kirsti Minsaas, Aeon J. Skoble, and Edward W. Younkins—as well as a new Associate Editor: Roger E. Bissell. This issue is dedicated to the memory of Advisory Board member and JARS contributor, the late Steven Horwitz.

Wu-wei as conceptual metaphor. -- At ease in virtue: Wu-wei in the Analects. -- So-of-itself: Wu-wei in the Laozi. -- New technologies of the self: Wu-wei in the "inner training" and the Mohist rejection of Wu-wei. -- Cultivating the sprouts: Wu-wei in the Mencius. -- The tenuous self: Wu-wei in the Zhuangzi. -- Straightening the warped wood: Wu-wei in the Xunzi. -- Appendix 1: The "many-Dao theory" -- Appendix 2: Textual issues concerning the Analects. -- Appendix 3: Textual issues concerning (...) the Laozi. -- Appendix 4: Textual issues concerning the Zhuangzi. (shrink)

This review essay evaluates The Dialectics of Liberty, a recent collection, edited by Roger E. Bissell, Chris Matthew Sciabarra, and Edward W. Younkins. It describes the dialectical turn in libertarian political and economic theory and analyzes the diverse contributions to dialectics by the various authors in this volume.

In this paper, the author develops a theory of concepts and shows that it captures many of the ideas about concepts that Leibniz expressed in his work. Concepts are first analyzed in terms of a precise background theory of abstract objects, and once concept summation and concept containment are defined, the axioms and theorems of Leibniz's calculus of concepts (in his logical papers) are derived. This analysis of concepts is then seamlessly connected with Leibniz's modal metaphysics of complete individual concepts. (...) The fundamental theorem of Leibniz's modal metaphysics of concepts is proved, namely, whenever an object x has F contingently, then (i) the individual concept of x contains the concept F and (ii) there is a (counterpart) complete individual concept y which doesn't contain the concept F and which `appears' at some other possible world. Finally, the author shows how the concept containment theory of truth can be made precise and made consistent with a modern conception of truth. (shrink)

At this point I should say something about one of the frequent criticisms addressed to me, and to which I have always wanted to respond, that in the process of characterizing the production of Europe’s inferior Others, my work is only negative polemic which does not advance a new epistemological approach or method, and expresses only desperation at the possibility of ever dealing seriously with other cultures. These criticisms are related to the matters I’ve been discussing so far, and while (...) I have no desire to unleash a point-by-point refutation of my critics, I do want to respond in a way that is intellectually pertinent to the topic at hand.What I took myself to be undertaking in Orientalism was an adversarial critique not only of the field’s perspective and political economy, but also of the sociocultural situation that makes its discourse both so possible and so sustainable. Epistemologies, discourses, and methods like Orientalism are scarcely worth the name if they are reductively characterized as objects like shoes, patched when worn out, discarded and replaced with new objects when old and unfixable. The archival dignity, institutional authority, and patriarchal longevity of Orientalism should be taken seriously because in the aggregate these traits function as a worldview with considerable political force not easily brushed away as so much epistemology. Thus Orientalism in my view is a structure erected in the thick of an imperial contest whose dominant wing it represented and elaborated not only as scholarship but as a partisan ideology. Yet Orientalism hid the contest beneath its scholarly and aesthetic idioms. These things are what I was trying to show, in addition to arguing that there is no discipline, no structure of knowledge, no institution or epistemology that can or has ever stood free of the various sociocultural, historical, and political formations that give epochs their peculiar individuality. Edward W. Said is Parr Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. His most recent contribution to Critical Inquiry is “An Ideology of Difference”. (shrink)

In many learning or inference tasks human behavior approximates that of a Bayesian ideal observer, suggesting that, at some level, cognition can be described as Bayesian inference. However, a number of findings have highlighted an intriguing mismatch between human behavior and standard assumptions about optimality: People often appear to make decisions based on just one or a few samples from the appropriate posterior probability distribution, rather than using the full distribution. Although sampling-based approximations are a common way to implement Bayesian (...) inference, the very limited numbers of samples often used by humans seem insufficient to approximate the required probability distributions very accurately. Here, we consider this discrepancy in the broader framework of statistical decision theory, and ask: If people are making decisions based on samples—but as samples are costly—how many samples should people use to optimize their total expected or worst-case reward over a large number of decisions? We find that under reasonable assumptions about the time costs of sampling, making many quick but locally suboptimal decisions based on very few samples may be the globally optimal strategy over long periods. These results help to reconcile a large body of work showing sampling-based or probability matching behavior with the hypothesis that human cognition can be understood in Bayesian terms, and they suggest promising future directions for studies of resource-constrained cognition. (shrink)

Are humans rational? Various experiments performed over the last several decades have been interpreted as showing that humans are irrational we make significant and consistent errors in logical reasoning, probabilistic reasoning, similarity judgements, and risk-assessment, to name a few areas. But can these experiments establish human irrationality, or is it a conceptual truth that humans must be rational, as various philosophers have argued? In this book, Edward Stein offers a clear critical account of this debate about rationality in philosophy (...) and cognitive science. He discusses concepts of rationality - the pictures of rationality that the debate centres on - and assesses the empirical evidence used to argue that humans are irrational. He concludes that the question of human rationality must be answered not conceptually but empirically, using the full resources of an advanced cognitive science. Furthermore, he extends this conclusion to argue that empirical considerations are also relevant to the theory of knowedge - in other words, that epistemology should be naturalized. from the reviews: 'Stein has done a great service in bringing together all of the important arguments in the human rationality debate and providing a measured critical assessment of them.... This will be an important book and is essential reading for epistemologists, philosophers of mind, and cognitive and evolutionary psychologists.' Choice 'very considerable value... for professionals' Times Higher Education Supplement. (shrink)

This paper discusses certain conceptual tensions in a set of archeological texts from the Warring States period, the Guodian corpus. One of the central themes of the Guodian corpus is the disanalogy between spontaneous, natural familial relationships and artificial political relationships. This is problematic because, like many early Chinese texts, the Guodian corpus believes that political relationships must come to be characterized by unselfconsciousness and spontaneity if social order is to prevail. This tension will be compared to my earlier work (...) on the “paradox of wu-wei (effortless action),” and the Guodian corpus’ “solution” to the problem of teaching spontaneity—drawing upon the transformative power of music—will be placed within the landscape of early “Confucian” and “Daoist” theories concerning human nature and self-cultivation. (shrink)