Objectivism is nothing more than naturalism dressed up as something it isn’t. The bottom line for Ayn Rand is this: her ideas taken to their logical conclusion find her (and her followers) caused and determined by impersonal forces of Nature. Logically, her ‘thougts’ were caused by something other than herself. In short, her thought processes weren’t her thought processes after all.
Aristotle had a good mind but when all is said and done, he swam in the muddied waters of naturalism with no way out.
“Objectivism is nothing more than naturalism dressed up...”
You’re right there. I should have used the term “not ‘materialism’” instead, something that implies the impossibility of free will without something spiritual to “animate” it as Irish says.
In short, Rand’s thoughts “were” herself. Absence evidence that no randomness exists in nature, there’s no reason to believe that her thoughts were determined by anything outside the dynamics of her conscious and its physical basis (aka: herself). Environment of course “influences” us, but Objectivism assumes that there is enough randomness in the world (and in our skulls) so that we own ourselves.