Just joined this forum. I am a student of Objectivism. Everyone here seems to hate Ayn Rand. Makes me wonder if I should leave or stay and fight--just kidding. Hopefully, I have found an outlet for practicing the development of my style and my ability to provide reasonable arguments. Besides just being honest about the the fact that AR is the most important intellectual influence on my thinking, my purpose for being here shouldn't require the need to specifically mention AR; I'm not one the cultist types. Essentially, my interest is in eventually developing a formal structure of Objectivism. AR, who was primarily a novelist, laid down the foundation to develop a formal systematization if Objectivism. In her booklet "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology" she apologized for not getting around to presenting a formal philosophical treatise. But, she says, in this book she deals with the a discussion of the central problem of philosophy, the problem of "universals". As she sees it, the core problem with all post Aristotelian philosophies is that they contain some version of invalidating the efficacy of man's mind. Through a proper theory of concept formation, she shows the way of connecting the mind to reality. I think people hate her because she presented her ideas in a confrontational, exoteric style. But, so did Socrates who went after the Sophists. They had him convicted in court and put to death.