Let us now consider a series of objections to the argument just stated. I begin with what I take to be simple misunderstandings, and proceed to what I regard as more subtle and substantive objections. I have included no objections that I have not actually met, and have tried to include all that I have met from anyone even remotely sympathetic with Objectivist principles. Inevitably, some readers will complain that I have included what they regard as clearly trivial, while ignoring the real, the conclusive, the obvious objection, namely.... But that sort of dissatisfaction is inherent in any disputation that is not a direct one-to-one exchange.

  (1) The competence of our minds is an axiom; any attempted disproof is absurd.
  (2) The competence of our minds is an axiom; any attempted proof is superfluous. 
  (3) The competence of our minds is an axiom; hence every mind however produced 
  must be competent.
  (4) Design does not imply competence. 
  (5) A mind accidentally produced can still be competent. [The genetic fallacy] 
  (6) Our thoughts are caused, and therefore connected to reality. 
 
  (7) Natural Selection can produce, without a designer, results that look designed
   (Psychological Darwinism).
 
  (8) The origins of consciousness are more subtle than this argument allows for.
  (9) An unchosen belief is a contradiction in terms. 
(10) A child comes about as a result of its parents’ having intended it. 
(11) A design explanation of man’s mind fails to explain the designer’s mind. 
 
(12) Power and goodness
(13) Error and the God of truth 
(14) Omniscience is a subjectivist concept

Someone hearing this argument will often reply: “But you don’t seem to realize that the competence of our minds is an axiom!” It is not always clear what the speaker means, but I understand him to mean one of the following:

(1) Since competence is an axiom, any attempt to disprove it is absurd.
(2) Since competence is an axiom, any attempt to prove it is superfluous.
(3) Since competence is an axiom, any notion of an incompetent mind is meaningless.

Objection:
    This argument concludes that the human mind is incompetent. Any argument leading to so outrageous conclusion deserves to be scornfully rejected along with its proponents.

Reply:
    The skeleton of the argument is as follows: Accident implies Incompetence. Incompetence is false. Therefore, Accident is false. The skeleton of Dr. Branden’s argument is as follows: Determinism implies Incompetence. Incompetence is false. Therefore, Determinism is false. Both are instances of the argument form known as modus tollens. [1] If this child is the missing heir, then this child has a birthmark on its arm. But this child does not have a birthmark on its arm. Therefore, this child is not the missing heir. If p then q. But not q. Therefore, not p.

Now when emotions are involved, many people seem unable to follow a modus tollens argument. Some years ago, a student said to me, “I reject language about right and wrong as meaningless.” I replied, “Then you think that it is meaningless to call Hitler’s Jewish policy wrong?” He stammered for minute, then called me a dirty Fascist and stormed out of the room. When you point out to people that their premises lead to contradictory, or disgusting, or otherwise unacceptable conclusions, they will quite frequently blame you rather than their premises. [02] And indeed, some modern logicians have undertaken to construct logical systems in which the use of modus tollens is restricted. [03]

But I do not see how any student of Objectivism can fail to understand and accept modus tollens as a valid form of argument. Besides being explicitly recommended by Professor Hugh Akston and his pupil Francisco, [04] it is one of Miss Rand’s own favorites. [05] The moral of Atlas Shrugged might reasonably be stated as: “If altruism is true, then morality demands that the human race perish in a welter of war, starvation, and moral cannibalism. But morality does not demand that the human race so perish. Therefore, altruism is not true.” (If p then q. But not q. Therefore, not p.) And many of her articles, [06] as well as Atlas Shrugged itself, could be summarized as: “Here are the results of your ideas. If you dislike the consequences, check your premises.” Or more briefly: “Brother, you asked for it.” [07]

(2) Objection that an axiom cannot be proved

Objection:
    Why do you assume more than you have to? Why do you assume that the human mind is designed and thence deduce that it is competent? Why not simply begin by assuming that it is competent? Not only is this simpler, it is necessary. Any proof that the mind is competent is circular, since you have to assume the competence of the mind before you can begin to prove anything, including the competence of the mind. We are bound to assume competence, and we are not bound to devise a theory of the origin of man’s mind that implies competence.

Reply:
    Everything said by the critic is true. Competence is indeed an axiom, and can never be a theorem. But although we need not devise, or accept, a theory of origins that implies competence, we must reject a theory that implies the denial of competence. The argument is not that design implies competence, but that accident implies non-competence, or (what is logically equivalent) that competence implies non-accident, i.e., design. We are not setting out to deduce the axiom of competence; we are making a deduction from it. And surely it is legitimate to make deductions from axioms!

(3) Objection that the axiom is a necessary truth

Objection:
    It is axiomatic that consciousness is conscious. To be conscious is to be conscious of something, aware that something exists. But this means that the object of consciousness does in fact exist. [08] Consciousness implies, and therefore guarantees, the existence of its object. Therefore a mind, whether brought about by design or accident is competent to investigate reality, not by coincidence, but because it is the nature of a mind to be competent.

Reply:
    Suppose that Jones encounters a stick and mistakes it for a snake. Is Jones conscious? If so, is conscious of a snake? of a stick? Some say that he is conscious of a snake in the path; but then he is conscious of something that does not exist. As just noted, this is not an Objectivist position. Some say that he is not conscious, since consciousness and error are incompatible. But this is not an Objectivist position either. [09] Some say that Jones is conscious of the stick, but believes himself to be conscious to be conscious of a snake. In this I concur. It may be helpful to distinguish between object and content. The stick is the object of Jones’s consciousness — it is the objective reality that he is in fact dealing with. The snake is the content of his consciousness — his thoughts are snake-oriented rather than stick-oriented. In one sense, then, he is thinking about the snake — “I hope it’s not poisonous” — and in another sense, he is thinking about the stick — it’s what’s there! It’s the “that” referred to when he says (incorrectly), “That’s a snake.” Given that distinction, we see that every act of consciousness has a content and an object, but that one may fail to identify the object correctly (i.e., object of consciousness and content of consciousness may be altogether different). Consciousness is infallible in realizing that the object is, but not in realizing what it is. [10]

The argument that, since consciousness is conscious, every mind must function competently comes perilously close to maintaining that, since belief must be about something, the mere existence of a belief is sufficient to guarantee its correctness. And surely this is not an Objectivist position. [11]

Finally, I remind the objector that he is bound to produce an objection to my argument that is not equally an objection to Dr. Branden’s argument. Dr. Branden says: “Determinism implies Incompetence. But Incompetence is false. Therefore, Determinism is false.” I say: “Atheism implies Incompetence. Incompetence is false. Therefore, Atheism is false.” How does the observation, “But Competence is an axiom!” refute either argument? Dr. Branden says:

In appraising any theory of the nature of man’s mind and its operations, it is necessary to consider this: since the theory is itself a product of man’s mind, its claim to truth must be compatible with its own existence and content. Otherwise the theory is contradictory and nonsensical.... [12]

I say, “Hear, hear!”

Objection:
    The writer keeps warning us that if our minds are the product of accident, we have no basis for trusting them. By rhetoric about how sick we are, he avoids questions about whether his patent medicine will do us any good. In fact, granted his diagnosis, it will not. Consider his example of the stick in the desert. He tells us that if it was dropped by an eagle, it is only by luck that it will point to the oasis. We are accordingly invited to accept the alternative suggestion, that it was left by a guide. But we know that not all guides are truthful. How did we happen to end up with one of the truthful ones? Was it sheer luck? What is the practical difference between saying, “I was lucky — my guide happened to tell the truth and point to the oasis,” and saying, “I was lucky — my eagle happened to drop the stock so that it pointed to the oasis.

In short, if there is a difficulty about accepting the competence of our own minds, belief in a designer cannot alleviate that difficulty, not can anything else. And once realize that it is in principle impossible to satisfy the demand for a guarantee, outside of our minds, of the competence of our minds, and that nevertheless we know perfectly well that they are in fact competent, we may begin to suspect that the demand for a guarantee rests on a misunderstanding, and that we ought to be content in the first place with the dictum, “Competence is an axiom!”

Reply:
    Perhaps the critic means that we shall have to postulate a second designer to account for the competence of the first, and that so we are trapped in an infinite regress. This objection will be dealt with elsewhere. For the moment, I assume that he is simply objecting that a conscious designer may, through ineptness or malice, turn out a defective product, and that therefore design does not imply competence.

But the argument is not that Design implies Competence, but that Accident implies Incompetence, and therefore that Competence implies Design. What the critic has pointed out is that design by a malicious or inept designer implies the incompetence of our minds (which is absurd), and therefore that their competence implies their design by a truth-loving and competent designer.

Once again, we consider the parallel with Dr. Branden’s refutation of determinism. Admittedly, design is not enough to ensure competence, but then neither is free will. That a man’s thoughts are undetermined is no guarantee of their value. But to not this is not to refute Dr. Branden’s argument.

Objection:
    This argument assumes that a mind that came about by accident could not be competent. But this is an example of the genetic fallacy. That is, it is confuses the question, “What is the origin or cause of this entity?” with the question, “What is the nature of this entity?”

Whether one believes that man is the product of a Creator or of nature, the issue man’s origin does not alter the fact that he is an entity of a specific kind — a rational being.... [13]

A device originating by accident can nevertheless give correct results. Consider a computer — call it Mark I — constructed by an expert. It gives reliable results. Now suppose that monkey, fiddling with a heap of computer parts, happens to assemble them into an exact replica of Mark I — call it Mark II. Surely nothing in the nature of monkeys or computer parts exclude this as a possibility, and probability considerations do not here concern us. Mark II is every bit as reliable, competent, etc. as Mark I, despite being the product of accident rather than design. [14]

Reply:
    This objection confuses two questions about a device: (1) “Are its answers correct?” and (2) “Are its answers evidential?” There is no reason why answers accidentally produced should not be true. A stopped clock displays the correct time twice a day, but never furnishes evidence of the correct time.

Suppose that we undertake to answer a series of true-false questions by flipping a coin. It is certainly possibility that some of the answers will be correct, or even that all of them will be correct. What is not possible is that this procedure should give us a sound reason for believing in the correctness of any of the answers — unless, of course, we ask questions like, “Will this coin show heads or tails the next time I flip it?” [15]

Thus, if I ask a question and Mark I and Mark II give the same answer, their answers must be equally correct. It does not follow that their answers are equally evidential. Knowing that Mark I was devised by an expert and that Mark II by a monkey, I will believe the answer that I get from Mark II, but not because I get it from Mark II — only because it is identical with the answer I get from Mark I.

Similarly, suppose we find two sticks side by side, pointing in the same direction, and know that the first was left by a friend to show the direction to the oasis, and that the second was dropped by a next-building eagle. We believe that the second stick is pointing toward the oasis, but only because we already believe that the oasis lies in that direction because the first stick points that way.

The objection here raised could equally well have been directed against Dr. Branden’s refutation of determinism. Given a rational, sane human with volitional consciousness, suppose that he considers some question and comes to a conclusion about it. Now suppose that a psychotic [16] considers the same question, arrives at the same conclusion, and defends it by the same arguments. Surely this is not impossible. Not every judgment made by a lunatic is necessarily false. Even paranoids have real enemies.

How would Dr. Branden reply to such an objection? Surely he would say that if a man is compelled to believe something, his believe may or may not be true, but is certainly not rationally significant. And this is precisely my point.

(6) Objection based on causal inference

Objection:
    The argument proceeds as if our minds were isolated from the physical universe, as if there were no causal relationship between our minds and reality. If that were so, then one would certainly be hard put to explain how our minds can learn anything about reality without some kind of help, divine help, if you like. But in fact, our minds, or at any rate our brains, are clearly part of the interlocking causal network of the world. It is therefore no co-incidence if they reflect it, and reflect it accurately at that. You spoke of a stick falling to the ground near an oasis. Now an oasis has no particularly causal effect on sticks dropped a mile or so away. But suppose that it were a question of an iron mine and a lodestone dropped by accident. Would it not make sense to accept the orientation of the lodestone as evidence of the location of the mine? But just as the mine has a causal effect on the lodestone, so the universe has an effect on us.

Reply:
    This sounds promising, but only, I fear, for the moment. It is, of course, perfectly true that the world about us influences us and our thoughts. The question is whether it has any built-in tendency to influence them toward true thoughts. If it does, then Dr. Branden’s objection to Psychological Determinism collapses. And that is not all. Any feeling we may have, for any reason whatever, has the same evidential status as the most careful observation and the most rigorous chain of reasoning. If you have a feeling that a certain long shot is going to win at the races, put your shirt on it. You would not have that feeling if it had not been caused by something which in its turn has some chain of causality connecting it with the horse. Moreover, we must consider judgments of a raving lunatic to be just as reliable as anyone else’s. His brain is also “part of the interlocking causal network of the world.” Ladies and gentlemen, anyone who upon reflection finds this alternative to theism attractive has disagreements with me, and for that matter with Dr. Branden, which go far beyond the scope of this paper. [17] 

References
[Editor’s notes are in blue. Readers who prefer to ignore the links in the text and follow the notes on a separate page, may open a separate page with the references here.]

* The title refers to Nathaniel Branden’s lecture “The Concept of God,” from his lecture series “The Basic Principles of Objectivism.” That lecture is fully transcribed in his book The Vision of Ayn Rand: The Basic Principles of Objectivism (Gilbert, Ariz.: Cobden Press, 2009), chapter 4. Partial and perhaps complete audios seem to be available throughout the Internet. See also R.A. Childs, “The Epistemological Basis of Anarchism,” Note 19.

[01] Webster’s Third, under “modus tollens.”
  Britannica 3, Micropedia, under “modus ponens and modus tollens.”
  Britannica (1961), under “logical glossary” see “modus tollens” and “indirect proof” and “reduction.”
  Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Paul Edwards (Macmillan 1967) under “logical terms, glossary of” see “modus tollens” and “indirect proof” and “reduction.”
  For a discussion and endorsement by Aristotle, see his Prior Analytics, 45a23-45b11, and 62b29-63b21 (ii.14).
  For use by Euclid, see the Elements, Book I, Propositions 6-8 et passim.
  [URLs supplied by the editor. The Sudoku puzzle was not well known when James wrote his Revisions, but it has since become fairly popular. “Modus tollens” is a primary tool for solving Sudoku puzzles.]

[02] AS [Atlas Shrugged] 139x-140u [paperback] (142jj-143hh) [hardback].
  [James Taggart to Francisco at a party]
  “Well, first of all, that nationalization — what are you going to do about it?”
  “Nothing.”
  “Nothing?!”
  “But surely you don’t want me to do anything about it. My mines and your railroad were seized by the will of the people. You wouldn’t want me to oppose the will of the people, would you?”
  “Francisco, this is not a laughing matter.”
  “I never thought it was.”
  “I’m entitled to an explanation! You owe your stockholders an account of the whole disgraceful affair! Why did you pick a worthless mine? Why did you waste all those millions? What sort of rotten swindle was it?”
  Francisco stood looking at him in polite astonishment. “Why, James,” he said, “I thought you would approve of it.”
  “Approve?!”
  “I thought you would consider the San Sebastián Mines as the practical realization of an idea of the highest moral order. Remembering that you and I have disagreed so often in the past, I thought you would be gratified to see me acting in accordance with your principles.”
  “What are you talking about?”
  Francisco shook his head regretfully. “I don’t know why you should call my behavior rotten. I thought you would recognize it as an honest effort to practice what the whole world is preaching.... I have carried out every moral precept of our age. I expected gratitude and a citation of honor. I do not understand why I am being damned.”

  AS 474x-ee [paperback] (505h-o) [hardback].
  [Dagny to a board of directors]
  “Got what you’ve been asking for all these years, gentlemen?”
  ... [7 lines]
  In the silence of the next moment, she felt their resentment like a starch thickening the air of the room, and she knew that it was not resentment against Mr. Weatherby, but against her.

[03] Allan Calder, “Constructive Mathematics,” Scientific American, October 1979, pp. 146-71. [This article is available from the Scientific American website to subscribers and at jstor.org for a fee. The first page of the article is available at jstor as a teaser.]

[04] AS 191p-r, 315v-z, 913ff-vv [paperback] (199e-g, 331aa-ee, 984s-ii) [hardback].

[05] A. Rand, “Collectivized Ethics” 2/1/4e-f [References of this form refer to The Objectivist Newsletter, so that volume 2, number 1 would be January 1963. After volume 4, the name of the publication was The Objectivist. The page numbers for the latter are those of the original format, not those in the bound volume. James seems to have erred in his Objectivist Newsletter citation here. The correct lines are dd-oo.] and VOS [The Virtue of Selfishness (paperback)] 85.
  And if you wish, give him the following example of the ideals he advocates. It is medically possible to take the corneas of a man’s eyes immediately after his death and transplant them to the eyes of a living man who is blind, thus restoring his sight (in certain types of blindness). Now, according to collectivized ethics, this poses a social problem. Should we wait until a man’s death to cut out his eyes, when other men need them? Should we regard everyone’s eyes as public property and devise a fair method of distribution? Would you advocate cutting out a living man’s eye and giving it to a blind man, so as to “equalize” them? No? Then don’t struggle any further with questions about ...

A. Rand, “The Nature of Government” 2/11/49gg-50b. [December 1963; I have been assuming that James’s letters refer to a line count — a-z for lines 1-26, aa-zz for lines 27-52, aaa-zzz for lines 53-78. If that is true, James has erred in his citation here, which should read 2/12/49dd-50i] and VOS [paperback] 112-13.
  A recent variant of anarchist theory ... is ... called “competing governments.” ...
  Ask yourself what competition in forcible restraint would have to mean....
  One illustration will be sufficient: ... a squad of Police A proceeds to Mr. Jones&146; house and is met at the door by a squad of Police B.... What happens then? You take it from there.

A. Rand, “IAD: Patents and copyrights” 3/5/19cc-dd. [Intellectual Ammunition Department, May 1964; James’s line count is wrong. The text that he is citing is in the second column, lines q-s.]
  Consider what would happen if ... we had to pay royalties to the descendants of ... the inventor of the wheel....

WTL 385-388 [We the Living, 1959 edition, paperback] & FNI 60-62 [For the New Intellectual, paperback].
  (Kira to Andrei on the consequences of altruism — modus tollens)

FH 684 [The Fountainhead, paperback, the later Signet edition bearing the renewed copyright date of 1971; it is page 676 in an earlier Signet edition designated as the “nineteenth printing”] & FNI 83 (paperback).
  The leaders of collectivist movements ask nothing for themselves. But observe the results.

AS 936tt-937b [paperback] (1010j-p) [hardback] & FNI 117-18 [paperback].
  You have destroyed all that which you held to be evil and achieved all that which you held to be good. Why, then, do you shrink in horror from the sight of the world around you? That world is not the product of your sins, it is the product and the image of your virtues. It is your moral ideal brought into reality in its full and final perfection. You have fought for it, you have dreamed of it, you have wished for it, and I — I am the man who has granted you your wish.

AS 398gg-ii [paperback] (422z-bb) [hardback].
  “Why James,” said Francisco, smiling, “what’s the matter? Why do you seem so upset? Money is the root of all evil — so I just got tired of being evil.”

[06] A. Rand, “Cashing In: The Student Rebellion” 4/7-9. [July-September, 1965] & TNL [The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution] 13-57. [TNL was later revised and updated to include Ayn Rand’s essay “The Age of Envy” and then later issued under the title Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution. It contained additional essays by Ayn Rand (“Racism” and “Global Balkanization”) and an Introduction and additional essays by Peter Schwartz.]
  A. Rand, “The Roots of War” 5/6 [June 1966].
  A. Rand, “The Wreckage of the Consensus” 6/4-5 [April-May, 1967].
  A. Rand, “Apollo and Dionysus” 8/12 - 9/1 [December, 1969 - January, 1970] & TNL 57-81.
  A. Rand, “The Anti-Industrial Revolution” 10/1-2 [January-February, 1971] & TNL 127-51.

[07] AS 858tt [paperback] (925gg) [hardback].

[08] A. Rand, “Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology,” 5/9/2c. [September 1966] [References of this form refer to The Objectivist Newsletter, so that volume 5, number 9 would be September 1966. After volume 4, the name of the publication was The Objectivist. The page numbers for the latter are those of the original format, not those in the bound volume.] and IOE 38 [Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. (And the reference here is to the original paperback monograph reprinting the articles from the periodical. However, James has erred in his pagination, and the correct page number is 31; the corresponding page number for the Expanded Second Edition containing additional material by Harry Binswanger and Leonard Peikoff (New York: NAL, 1990) is 29.)]

  AS 942g-p [paperback] (1015jj-ss) [hardback].
  Existence exists — and the act of grasping that statement implies two corollary axioms: that something exists which one perceives and that one exists possessing consciousness, conscious being the faculty of perceiving that which exists.
    If nothing exists, there can be no consciousness: a consciousness with nothing to be conscious of is a contradiction in terms. A consciousness conscious of nothing but itself is a contradiction in terms: before it could identify itself as consciousness, it had to be conscious of something. If that which you claim to perceive does not exist, what you possess is not consciousness.

  AS 966i-l [paperback; the quotation actually begins on line h; no hardback citation is given].
  The day when he grasps that the reflection he sees in a mirror is not a delusion, that it is real, but it is not himself, that the mirage he sees in a desert is not a delusion, that the air and the light rays that cause it are real, but that it is not a city, it is a city’s reflection....

[09] N. Branden, “Self-Esteem,” [Part V of a 5-part series] 6/9/8b [September 1965]. [There is a parallel passage in The Psychology of Self-Esteem: A New Concept of Man’s Psychological Nature, page 140 (New York: Bantam, 1971). James did not cite material Branden published after his break with Ayn Rand (May 1969), even when it was presented in terms identical to his earlier work, but only material presented before that break, the idea being that he didn’t want to create an opening for the objection Branden’s later work did not correctly state principles of Objectivism.]
  Rationality does not guarantee infallibility.

  N. Branden, “IAD: The psychological primacy of the choice to think” 3/4/14bb [April 1964]. [The cited text is in the second column, lines g-i; there appears to be no parallel passage in POS.]
  ... when a man is awake and his brain and nervous system are structurally normal, he is conscious — if only passively.

  FNI 19.
  Since no man can fully escape the conceptual level of consciousness, it is not the case that Attila and the Witch Doctor do not think....

[10] AS 942vv-yy [paperback] (1016cc-ff) [hardback].
  The task of his senses is to give him the evidence of existence, but the task of justifying it belongs to his reason, his senses tell him only that something is, but what it is must be learned by his mind.

  A. Rand, “Intro. to Object. Epistemology,” 5/7/g [July 1966] & IOE 6. [Actually, page 11. Expanded edition, page 6.]
  A sensation is a sensation of something.... A sensation does not tell a man what exists, but only that it exists.

  A. Rand, “A Letter from a Reader,” 5/10/13c [October 1966].
  ... it is our job to tell people what Objectivism is, it is your job to tell them that it is.

  A. Rand, “Intro. to Obj. Epistemology,” 5/12/5a [December 1966] & IOE 78 [page 55; Expanded edition, page 59].
  The concept “consciousness” does not indicate what existents one is conscious of: it merely underscores the primary fact that one is conscious.

[11] N. Branden, “The Roots of Social Metaphysics,” 6/10/2e [October 1967; parallel passage at POS, page 175].
  Man’s mind is fallible; he can make an error at any step of the thinking process....

  N. Branden, “Self-Esteem and Romantic Love,” 7/2/2a [February 1968; modified parallel passage in POS, page 214].
  It is a fact of reality that man is neither omniscient nor infallible.

  N. Branden, “The Contradiction of Determinism,” 2/5/17jj [May 1963]. [The correct lines are rrr-vvv in the second column. The parallel passage in POS is on pages 54-55. Other parallel passages may be found in the YouTube except from Lecture 5 on free will at 4:15-4:39, and in N. Branden, The Vision of Ayn Rand, page 136.]
    Man is neither omniscient nor infallible. This means (a) that he must work to achieve his knowledge, and (b) that the mere presence of an idea inside his mind, does not prove that the idea is true; many ideas may enter a man’s mind which are false.

[12] N. Branden, “The Contradiction of Determinism,” 2/5/20h [May 1963, page 20, correct line is aaa]. [Parallel passages may be found in POS on pages 56-57, and in The Vision of Ayn Rand, page 139. The YouTube excerpt ends before this passage.

[13] A. Rand, “Man’s Rights,” 2/4/13jj [April 1963; the correct citation should be for line ooo in the second column.] & VOS 94.

[14] I am indebted to Dr. Alan Wilson, formerly of the University of Wisconsin, for this formulation.

[15] See George Smith, Atheism: The Case against God (Nash, Los Angeles, 1974, out of print [hardback, pages 119 ff.]; Prometheus, 1980, 120 f. [paperback]).
  Smith’s discussion of coin-flipping as a means of obtaining knowledge is lucid and concise, as are his discussions of many other points. This is not an endorsement of every statement in the book.

[16] N. Branden, “The Contradiction of Determinism,” 2/5/20a [May 1963] & POS 55. [Parallel passages are to be found in The Vision of Ayn Rand, page 137, and in the YouTube excerpt, 7:42-7:48.]
  One of the defining characteristics of psychosis is loss of volitional control over rational judgment....

[17] N. Branden, “The Contradiction of Determinism,” 2/5/17jj [May 1963; rrr-sss] & POS 54-55. [Parallel passages are to be found in The Vision of Ayn Rand, page 136, and on YouTube 4:15-4:39.]
  Man is neither omniscient nor infallible. This means (a) that he must work to achieve his knowledge, and (b) that the mere presence of an idea inside his mind, does not prove that the idea is true; many ideas may enter a man’s mind which are false.

  AS 391uu-392i [paperback]; (415n-aa) [hardback].
  “Señor d’Anconia,” declared the woman with the earrings, “I don’t agree with you!”
  “If you can refute a single sentence I uttered, madame, I shall hear it gratefully.”
  “Oh, I can’t answer you. I don’t have any answers, my mind doesn’t work that way, but I don’t feel that you’re right, so I know that you’re wrong.”
  “How do you know it?”
  “I feel it. I don’t go by my head, but by my heart. You might be good at logic, but you’re heartless.”
  “Madame, when we’ll see men dying of starvation around us, your heart won’t be of any earthly use to save them. And I’m heartless enough to say that when you’ll scream, ‘but I didn’t know it!’ — you will not be forgiven.”