I am reading the chapter on Reason in Piekoff's 'Objectivism' and thinking that Malcolm Gladwell seems to be speaking directly to Leonard Piekoff with his book 'Blink'. In it he gives emotion primacy over reason in some cases. A debate by the two authors would be interesting.

I will look at this. I am looking at the courses offered by ARI also.
Thanks,
Jim

I am still plugging away at becoming an expert in Objectivism. I've even given myself a goal date of 6/1/2015. Will you please recommend some courses that I can take to help achieve this goal?
Thanks,
Jim

Ah, the curse of the contradiction; people are just full of them, and just can't (won't) see it. It will make your head hurt.
My advice, don't let it bother ya; do your best to lead by example. Also, in my opinion, any good individualist, though alone, should never feel lonely. I am my favorite company to keep. :-)

Law of Identity goes back to Plato. Existence exists is Rand's modern interpretation of Parenides "Being Is"
Consciousness (defined in Objectivism) is Aristotle-awareness of oneself in external reality
(Consciousness seems more epidemiological to me)

I like the chart. Are those three basic metaphysical axioms inventions of Aristotle? (I also noticed that the maker of the chart classified those three basic axioms as metaphysical).

Aristotle, here is a visual chart you may find useful as you're reading.
http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/...

I enjoyed your description of Piekoff's book. The only part that I feel comfortable enough to comment on quickly is the part about the three axioms being metaphysical. I just perused Piekoff's other book "Objectivism", specifically the sub-chapter labeled 'Existence, Consciousness, and Identity as the Basic Axioms' starting on page 4 and I did not see a definite labeling of those three axioms as either metaphysical or epistemological. After rereading that sub-chapter one would assume that they were metaphysical though.
But I am just a novice.
Thanks,