From: [CENSORED]
Subject: (no subject)
To: ayndrej.bauer@cs.cmu.edu
Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 12:55:06 EST
Dear Mr. Bauer: Since you "honestly believe that [my] passage reads like a
piece of Objectivism" you evidently do mean to mock my views instead of
engaging them in argument. This approach will not help your reputation among
professional logiciains and philosophers.
I'm not happy with the changes you made. Why should I be forced to
publicly declare my views on Rand's philosophy simply because you
insist on quoting my work in an inappropriate way in [CENSORED]? I do not wish
to make any public statements one way or the other about Rand's philosophy.
I do not wish to receive email from people on either side of issues
about Rand's philosophy.
The passage you quote may bear certain similarities to some things Rand
says about concepts but only in a very weak sense. What I say in this
passage has been and could be said, for example, by hundreds of philosophers
who hold that cognition exhibits intentionality. So my views hardly bear any
special relationship to Rand's views. Indeed, there are some significant
differences that you ignore. On my view, concepts are abstract. They are
not mental entities. They are fixed and invariant. They do not change.
They are also mind-independent in a rather nuanced sense. Had you chosen to
focus on these features of concepts you probably would not find my work very
useful for your purposes. Since you ignore them you misrepresent my view.
In short, you misrepresent my view, which you then mock, and you involve me
against my will in issues and discussions in which in wish to take no part.
I must therefore ask you, for the third time, to remove all references to
my work from your [CENSORED]. Surely you can find some other text to quote if
you must quote someone.
Please try to put yourself in my situation.
Yours sincerely,
[CENSORED]