Leonard Peikoff: I absolutely disagree that there is a need to be deceived. The only people who have a need to be deceived are people to whom reality is a threat, in some way, and  therefore they need to escape it. They may have some fear of dealing with the world. The most common form of self-deception is through religion, through inventing a supernatural power. People who need to escape reality, which is the essence of deception, have a terrible problem. That is not human nature. That’s a disease. And there are many very wicked people who are not just weak or frightened, but feel joy in subverting reality. Showing that their reason is invalid. Showing that they can get away with anything.

By “need,” I mean a provable requirement of human survival. You need food, you need a mind, you need freedom. But you certainly don’t need to be out of touch with reality. On the contrary, you need to be in touch with reality.

SC: Then why would people search out a magic show?

LP: To me, it’s the same category as watching a great hockey player or baseball player, or a pianist, for that matter. When you see a skill that someone has mastered, and are able to experience complete enjoyment of that skill, it’s a pleasure to anyone who values human life and human achievement.  I mean, how many people in any field acquire that kind of skill?

I don’t have any metaphysical need to come see a magic show. If I thought that you were going to take me into a supernatural world, I would not enjoy it at all. First of all, I would feel fear. If this guy can suspend the laws of nature, then they are not reliable. They’re not absolute. Who knows what’s coming next? I could fall through the floor, or disappear, maybe disintegrate. Plus, I would lose any admiration of you, the magician. Because if you are a vehicle of the supernatural, why should we give you any credit? Why would we admire you?

There is an absolute, legitimate state called the “suspension of disbelief.” This is not at all the same as wanting to be deceived. If you watch a movie, and you see one person stalk another, you won’t call the police. You know it’s not really happening. On the other hand, it has a reality to you. It’s not just shadows on the screen. You’re pulled into it. You feel fear, apprehension. It’s a state in which you know what you believe, but you are suspending that within limits. That’s exactly what you do when you watch a magician. You know that he is not turning a rabbit into a hippopotamus. But you suspend your disbelief by saying, I watched it happen, isn’t that fantastic. While not considering that somewhere there’s an explanation. As soon as you reach the end of the performance, the audience’s disbelief is no longer suspended. It’s a way of enjoying one aspect of a total. But there is no element of escaping from reality.

Click HERE to return to Part 1

The post My interview with Ayn Rand heir, philosopher Leonard Peikoff – PART 3 appeared first on Chamber Magic.

You could not convince a rational audience that you have supernatural powers, that you could suspend the laws of gravity, or that you could make two objects occupy the same space simultaneously.

Because they’ll go back to the fact that they can’t explain it, and that means simply, “I don’t know the explanation. Maybe I’ll never know how he does it.”

No rational person would ever think that what a magician performs is more than a trick. You have to go by facts and the conclusions of logic and science. Over the centuries, a tremendous number of incredulous, unthinking people who go by matters of desire rather than fact… Hundreds of thousands who quote seeing “miracles,” and it’s all nonsense. It’s all motivated by emotion. And I wouldn’t even say that these people have a conviction. They just have the mood of the moment.

You have to ask, is that the kind of audience you want?

Being a magician, you are a rare commodity as a mystery-monger. But if you’re claiming supernatural powers, you have to put yourself up against Buddha and Moses and all the rest of them. To me, that would be a desecration for you, with your talent.

SC: In the forward to Atlas Shrugged, there is an Ayn Rand letter that states: “In a book of fiction the purpose is to create, for myself, the kind of world I want to live in while I am creating it; then as a secondary consequence, to let others enjoy this world, if, and to the extend that they can.”

This passage “spoke” to me, because I’ve attempted to create a world that I allow others to enter during my shows. I wonder, did Ayn Rand feel that she accomplished this goal? I wonder if Ayn Rand thought that people changed their world view after having read her works.

LP: Ayn Rand certainly believed that she created a world that others can enter, and enjoy. Any form of art, at is essence, is able to create a different universe.  It’s a universe that, in some way, slants things differently than the way you actually observe them. It picks out what’s important, and features it. It conveys what is important to the artist, and all the accidental elements of life are removed. Only the meaningful is put in.

Art does create a world that others may enter.

In order to answer your question as to whether people change their world view based on having read her works, I’ll have to give you a complex answer.

First of all, if you asked her readers, hundreds of thousands would say that her books absolutely transformed their lives, changed their views, changed and revolutionized their personal lives. But while this may have an effect on them because it touched on an emotion, I don’t know how long it will last.

There are two different issues here. One is philosophy, and the other is sense of life. With philosophy, we mean your explicit views on questions regarding the nature of the universe. Of man, free will, god, knowledge, values, etc.

Now a philosophical novel like hers can absolutely change your philosophy, if you become convinced that your own ideas are wrong.  And I know any number of cases where the reader went in skeptical or ignorant, and came out gung-ho, thinking, “She’s absolutely right. I’ve changed my views completely.”

A different issue is a thing we call the sense of life. And that is a feeling about life and the world and other people, that everyone has in some form emotionally, since the time that they were young. But this sense of life is not particularly articulated in words by them.

Most people have one un-articulated sense of life, and then if they discover a philosophy, their ideas will be compatible with it. But for some people, there is an opposition between the two. That is to say that they acquired certain feelings about life, without knowing it, and those feelings become really important to them. And then they subscribe to a philosophy that is incompatible with their feelings. The result is a life-long agonizing conflict that they can’t really explain.  For people like that, a novel can help them reappraise their philosophy. But if you have a sense of life that is antagonistic to the author’s, then the novel can’t overcome that.

So I would say that under certain circumstances, people could change their world view but changing their philosophy depends on what kind of sense of life they bring to the novel.

As far as your comment about creating a different world that others can enter during your show, I know that a magician doesn’t have supernatural powers so I entered your world and was thoroughly engaged, but not because I was in some other world. It was still, for me, New York and business as usual.

Click HERE for Part 3 of Leonard Peikoff interview

The post My interview with Ayn Rand heir, philosopher Leonard Peikoff – PART 2 appeared first on Chamber Magic.

A few days later, I emailed Dr. Peikoff, requesting an interview for my blog. Although I’ve been a magician my entire life, I’m always trying to learn more about the subtle wrinkles of my field. By interviewing a preeminent thinker in another field, I hoped to find answers to questions in my own field.

—

Steve Cohen: I don’t often get a chance to speak with a philosopher, and you don’t often get a chance to speak to a conjuror.

Leonard Peikoff: [laughing] No, very rarely!

SC: I wonder about the lifestyle of a philosopher. How about Ayn Rand? Where did she live? Did she have an elaborate home?

LP: She lived in a New York apartment most of her adult life. After she came from Russia, she lived for a short while in California. But the bulk of her adult life was on 36th Street in Manhattan. Between Madison and Park – 36 East 36th. Then she moved to 120 East 34th.

I spent a lot of time in conversation with Ayn Rand, two or three times a week, for eight to ten hours at a stretch.  I read the entire book Atlas Shrugged in manuscript form. And we had to keep waiting; there was a two-year delay while she wrote John Galt’s speech. We read everything up to there, and had to wait two years to hear what happened next.

SC: When you write a book of such breadth, each of the characters must be incredibly well-developed. How did she keep track of them?

LP: She had extensive journals for all of her novels, and all of that has been published under the title, The Journals of Ayn Rand. Everything. So you can see it. And she did all of that in advance of starting.

SC: I’ll have a look at her Journals after I finish Atlas Shrugged this time. I’ve prepared several questions about the nature of belief, deception, and magic, and would like to hear your opinions.

LP: What’s your first question?

SC: Do you believe in magic?

LP: My own response to magic is admiration of the skill of the magician. I take it in the same way as watching a brilliant athlete or pianist, and get pleasure from the ease and delight with which they exhibit their genius. I certainly do not take it as evidence of a power of unreason lurking behind the scenes. On the contrary, part of the delight is knowing that there is a rational explanation which the magician is so skillfully concealing. If I thought it were real, I would run for the hills.

SC: We often hear the axiom “seeing is believing.”  However on p. 319 of Atlas Shrugged, there is a quote from Dr. Ferris’ book “Why Do You Think You Think” that states: “Only the crassest ignoramus can still hold to the old-fashioned notion that seeing is believing. That which you can see is the first thing to disbelieve.”

My question is: what can we trust if not our eyes? What is the nature of belief, and how can someone like me (who is forever trying to convince people of something that is not necessarily true) create conviction in others?

LP: I say that, absolutely, seeing is believing. You can trust your eyes, and all your senses. In fact, they are necessarily valid because the only way to establish any truth is by reference to the sensory data. That’s the basis on which we form concepts and conclusions. If your senses aren’t valid, you can’t even have such a word as valid.

Now people get confused on this, because they don’t distinguish what the senses tell us from the interpretation that we place on that data. If I see a man in a red suit and a white beard and a big stomach, and I say, “I see Santa Claus,” my senses do not deceive me, but my interpretation does.

That’s true of all alleged cases where you perceive something, and then blame the senses.

So for any issue, you must distinguish: what do you see? And what do you make of it? Now a lot of people will see something that they can’t explain, and then come up with mystical interpretations. Whether that’s the occurrence of the seasons, or the tides, the attraction of magnets, or whatever it happens to be. They will resort to inner spirits, God, and so on. Their senses – what they see – is valid. However, their interpretation, their mysticism, is not relevant.

A proper attitude would be, if you can’t explain something that you do perceive, you just say the truth: “I do perceive it, and I can’t explain it.” Half of the things that were not explicable in the past, later became so. And many of the things that are not explicable yet, will be in due course. That would be a rational attitude.

Click HERE for Part 2 of Leonard Peikoff interview

The post My interview with Ayn Rand heir, philosopher Leonard Peikoff – PART 1 appeared first on Chamber Magic.