Objectivism and Rage

[Roger Bissell]

I know, but I just fixed it and checked it, and it works now.

Cheers.

REB

[Rich Engle]

You know, that's where it's totally fucked up with the Objectivism; too much sitting on the dime.

David K. is a quick read, but that's not ever, ever, ever good enough for some of these folks. He is a wonderful mind. And, on top of it all, he incorporates the heavily-attacked "benevolence" and "tolerance" terms. That's part of the rub, really- I've seen these two words taken out, rode hard, and put away wet more times than I can count.

They are not the real words. There is a real word, and it's like kryptonite the second you roll it in to O-world. MSK gets it. A lot of people I know here get it.

But boy, oh boy, don't roll out that pesky word.

[Paul Mawdsley]

Rich, forgive me for being a little dim. My x-ray vision doesn't seem to be working. How do you spell the real word for "kryptonite?"

Paul

[Rich Engle]

Rich, forgive me for being a little dim. My x-ray vision doesn't seem to be working. How do you spell the real word for "kryptonite?"

Paul

You can do it. It's easy. Think a bit more. Hint: 4-letter word.

[Paul Mawdsley]

You can do it. It's easy. Think a bit more. Hint: 4-letter word.

Good, care, kind, love, hugs...?

Edited August 12, 2006 by Paul Mawdsley

[Rich Engle]

You can do it. It's easy. Think a bit more. Hint: 4-letter word.

Good, care, kind, love, hugs...?

It's in there. Go for the obvious one. That is precisely my point, easy to see if the word is invoked. It makes prickly O-folk run out of town faster than a (non-PC joke involving gender group leaving upon job offer, say).

It's too big. It's too real. It occasionally makes even trolls and curmudgeons get gooshy.

[jenright]

Must be love.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Victor,

You wrote in an earlier post:

Evil itself, you see, exists independently of ideas and the “cognitive realm.” Kelley sees choice, not as choice in the “cognitive realm”—the choice to focus or evade—but as a choice simply among “alternative actions.”

Actually this is exactly the opposite of what Kelley states. I am reading The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand for the first time. I had skimmed parts of it before. If you make the statement you just made, it is obvious you have not read that work yet. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

He defines moral judgment on p. 21:

Moral judgment is the particular form of evaluation concerned with what is volitional, with the realm of man-made facts. The distinctive feature of moral judgment is the attribution of moral responsibility, of blame or credit for an action, and this is appropriate only where choice is involved.

Essentially he holds that evaluation is a subcategory of cognition. But all facts can be evaluated according to correct or incorrect. Once again, to quote him on p. 21:

I hold, with Ayn Rand, every value has a factual basis. This implies that some facts have value significance, but not every fact does; the latter is a separate issue.

Before I continue with a discussion of Kelley, I have been moonlighting on RoR with Bill Dwyer. This discussion there illustrates perfectly what I see the problem to be. He asked, "So, would those who believe that bad ideas like "Kill the infidels" are not evil nevertheless admit that these ideas pose a threat to human life?" I answered:

"Kill the infidels" as pure idea.

Not evil in a comedy.

Not evil in the mind of a historian or student in a historical examination of Islamic culture or Hollywood films..

Not evil as an example of grammar.

Not evil written by William Dywer in a question about meaning.

Not evil... (I could go on.)

Evil in the mind of an Islamic fanatic with dirty rotten intent.

Notice in this last that the idea is only one component of the evil. By itself, without the intent to act, it is too incomplete to be evil.

He then responded that he was talking about an idea as a belief - that intent to act on it was needed. And that was what I had just said. This seems to be silly when you put it my way, though. But I have seen far too many cases of the obnoxious type Objectivists bullying people online by using the sleight of hand of confounding the two.

The standard argument is something like "If you believe that government regulation of the transport of explosive or otherwise dangerous substances is valid, then you believe that the government should interfere in everyone's life. Thus you believe that man must be a slave to the government. That means you are trying to enslave me and condemn my life to your hell. You are a fascist. You are evil. Get off the forum. You are not wanted here." Variations of this kind of crap occur abundantly in Objectivist listland.

Back to Kelley, he charges Peikoff with taking Rand out of context in "Fact and Value" with the "is and ought" statement. He first states the following on p. 20:

Peikoff claims that "every fact bears on the choice to live." The claim is obviously false as stated. The number of hairs in Plato's beard, or the blades of grass in Peikoff's lawn, have no bearing on my choice to live. Perhaps in light of such examples, he qualifies the claim by restricting it to the facts we know about.

He then makes a brief summary of Peikoff's view and cites some quotes. But there is a highly interesting footnote (number 2) to this:

FV, p. 1, emphasis added. Peikoff cites Ayn Rand's statement ("The Objectivist Ethics," p. 24) that "Knowledge, for any conscious organism, is the means of survival; to a living consciousness, every 'is' implies an 'ought'." Since this statement is not elaborated, and since it occurs in a passage that is not concerned with the issues Peikoff and I are debating, I am not sure that his interpretation of the statement is correct. Suffice it to say that if she meant what he takes her to mean, then I disagree with her, for the reasons adduced in the text.

He then goes on to make some extremely valuable statements about limited thinking resources (we simply do not have enough time or brains to evaluate every input in the vast flood of information that we constantly encounter, so we must be selective). Then he comes to the most important point of where his critics get it wrong – and this is probably due (in part) to using words like "attenuated" and “datum” instead of "highly limited" or “detail” other simpler terms. He talks about an extremely important concept – "epistemological value judgment." Here is the quote, p. 20-21:

In any particular case, therefore, we must decide whether it's worth our while, in light of our purposes, to evaluate a given fact. When we make such a decision, of course, we are passing an epistemological value judgment. We are assessing the cognitive worth of a given fact as the datum to be retained, attended to, explored further. In this attenuated sense, it is true without exception that all cognition involves evaluation; the point follows from the fact that cognition is goal-directed. But this is the only conclusion Peikoff's argument will support.

Obviously, an "epistemological value judgment" does not entail good or evil at that level. It merely is the judgment of the starting worth of an idea. Do you pursue it or do you discard it?

And here's one of the main points, Victor. "Evil" is an advanced integration - a higher concept. An idea by itself is much lower in cognitive function. (By "higher" I mean more complex and by "lower" I mean simpler.) By claiming that the fundamental essence of an idea can be evil is to distort its essential meaning – putting the cart before the horse. An idea must have an identity – it must mean something – before it can be judged.

There is only one other point I will mention so far (and there are so many to discuss) – the matter of degree in making moral judgment. Kelley discusses evasion, for instance (which he sees as a bad thing), p 23:

There is an obvious moral difference between the person who evades his goal of losing weight, and indulges a desire for a second helping of desert, and a totalitarian dictator who evades the sanctity of human life and murders millions of his subjects. Both people evaded; they both did something wrong, worthy of blame. But there is an enormous difference in degree. The dieter's mental action was a minor lapse, easily repaired; the dictator's was immense and irreparable. We measure the degree of irrationality by considering the scope and value significance of the foreseeable consequences that were evaded. If we consider the mental act of choice in isolation, we will tend to view evasion is intrinsically wrong, apart from its consequences, and will thus view all acts of evasion as morally equivalent.

This speaks for itself. Notice that he mentions "repair." That means "redemption," something those who engage in the kind of moral equivalency he mentioned rarely address and almost never endorse.

If you go to the David Kelley Corner here on OL, you can download a PDF version of The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand from the TAS site for free. If you do not have this work, it is well worth the time to get it and read it. Many of your doubts are addressed there.

Michael

[Rich Engle]

Must be love.

Bingo, we have a winner here, folks.

[Dragonfly]

Roger, thanks for the link. At last we have something more concrete to discuss. In fact there are two different viewpoints in that link: Searle's and Kelley's. As we still don't have a complete text by Searle himself, I've uploaded a slightly adapted version of a post I wrote on the NB forum, in which I comment on an online article by Searle, so that people can get a somewhat better understanding of Searle's argument, as they can read his own words. I haven't read Searle's book that Kelly reviews, but I get the impression from his review that his general argument is not very different from that in the online article.

I won't discuss here Kelley's complete article, but concentrate on that what in my opinion is the most important point, the so-called "free-will problem".

Kelley:

Searle holds that mental states are irreducible to neural states in an ontological sense (they represent different kinds of being); but they are causally reducible. That is, the subjective, first-person character (or being or ontology) of consciousness means that it cannot be equated with anything in the physical, third-person world that is open to observation by everyone. But this irreducibility does not give mental states any causal power over and above the causal powers of the brain. As the accompanying excerpt makes clear, Searle thinks that when we explain a person’s action in terms of his conscious intention—say, to raise his arm—we are simply giving a higher-level description of the same sequence that we could describe in more detail at the level of events in the motor cortex, muscles, and so on. In short, the unity and first-person aspect of conscious experience, including the experience of acting in the world, do not in themselves function as independent causes; they add nothing to the neural machinery.

Here I agree with Searle. Kelley then continues to discuss the causal role of consciousness. He quotes Searle:

Searle himself states the problem this way:

In earlier chapters I claimed that all of our psychological states without exception at any given instant are entirely determined by the state of the brain at that instant…. [T]here are not two separate sets of causes — the psychological and the neurobiological. The psychological is just the neurobiological described at a higher level. But if the psychological freedom, the existence of the gap, is to make a difference in the world, then it must somehow or other be manifested in the neurobiology. How could it be? We have already seen that the neurobiology is at any instant sufficient to fix the total state of psychology at that instant, by bottom-up causation.

Searle considers the possibility that quantum indeterminacy may create an opening in the physical chain of causality, an opening that the brain exploits to create the possibility of volition. He recognizes that this is a difficult hypothesis to swallow, but what is the alternative?

We see that Searle here uses the same argument as in the article I quoted earlier. Kelley thinks he has found an alternative explanation:

It seems to me there is an alternative, and it is suggested by his reference to “bottom-up causation.” Searle is speaking here not of causal relationships between one event and a later event, but of the relationships among the structures and properties of a thing at a given point in time. In your dining-room table, for example, the microscopic bonds among molecules are the cause of the table’s macroscopic solidity, and that causal relation holds at any moment. This is a synchronic (occurring at one time), not a diachronic (occurring over time) mode of causality, and it is typical of the relations among different levels in a complex structure. Searle invokes it to explain the way neural activity at the level of individual cells gives rise to consciousness at the level of the whole system (with many intervening levels involving activity in specific locations in the brain). And he assumes that the arrow of causality can run in one direction only, from lower levels of the system to higher levels. Is that assumption necessary? It has certainly been a common assumption among philosophers and scientists, and they can point to many examples of successful bottomup explanations. Physics has shown how the properties of atoms explain the chemistry of molecules.

[..]

Recently, however, there has been a lively debate about the possibility of “downward” causation. Can the macroscopic properties of organized structures like the brain affect the behavior of lower-level components?

[..]

Of course, anyone committed to the assumption that all synchronic causality is bottom-up will argue that the apparent topdown effect is just a shorthand description of what is really a complex sequence of events at the neural level. But why should we accept this assumption as a universal truth?

Because it is the only logical conclusion. The point is that this whole notion of bottom-up and downward causation is in fact incoherent, due to an equivocation of the word "cause" in different meanings. Causation in the physical sense always involves a cause (event A) and an effect at a later time (event B, where B lies within the light cone of A). What Kelley calls "synchronic causation" is nothing else than a description of the same event at different levels of abstraction. Take for example the physics of billiard balls. We can describe them as macroscopic objects, with a spherical form, certain mass, diameter, friction, elasticity etc. and use classical mechanics to describe the movements of the balls. In principle (though not in practice) we could also describe them as aggregates of molecules, with forces caused by the Coulomb interaction of the electrons, and we would get exactly the same results as with the macroscopic description. The fact that computations with the latter are feasible and with the atomic description not is due to the enormous data reduction that is implied in the macroscopic description. To every specific macroscopic description of the movement of these balls correspond gazillions of microscopic descriptions of the same macroscopic movement (microscopically these are all in fact different movements, but the differences are ignored in the macroscopic description, as they're practically unmeasurable - here we see the principle of ignorance of the details of the lower level activities in the macroscopic description). It's meaningless to say that the events in the microscopic description cause the events in the macroscopic description - they are the same events, only described in different detail.

So far we've considered two physical descriptions at different levels. But we can also abstract further and compare an abstract description with that of a physical substrate. A good example is the software of a computer. The software is an abstract description of what happens in the hardware. Take for example the "print" command. This corresponds exactly to a series of events in the hardware. This is also a good example of what looks like "downward causation": the execution of this command results in a physical action, so it seems as if an abstract command can cause a physical action. But this is in fact a real temporal causation (event A at time 1 causes event B at time 2), and not a downward causation; we're only mixing here two different levels of description (event A abstract and event B physical); we could in principle also give a purely hardware description of the whole event. It's only for our convenience that the computer is made to translate that action in abstract terms that we can easily understand. We can make the example more complex by adding extra steps in the software - a chess computer calculates a large number of possible moves and finally chooses the best move, resulting in output on a screen (or even in the physical movement of a chess piece). This process could in principle be described completely at the hardware level, without any reference to chess terms. But it is the same process, the electrons moving in the logic gates do not "cause" the chess positions in the memory, neither do those chess positions "cause" the movements of the electrons, these are merely descriptions of the same process at different levels of abstraction.

It is therefore no mystery that an abstract thought can have physical results. It's also an example of a description at two different levels. In this case the "hardware" description of what happens in the brain is so terribly complex that it's impossible to determine, we can only follow it in the abstract description of ideas and thoughts, that is the only way we can understand what is happening. But the logic of those thoughts (if I do this A will happen and if I do B will happen. I prefer A, so I'll do "this" etc.) is always inexorably coupled to the events in the brain, they do not "cause" those events, nor do the events in the brain "cause" the thoughts, they are two different descriptions of the same proces. Of course event A at time 1 can cause event B at time 2, but this is a normal temporal causation. The confusion arises when we describe A and B at different levels, and call this upward or downward "causation".

So the whole illogical notion of "downward causation" is no solution. The real solution to the "problem" of compatibility of free will with a deterministic system lies in the fact that at the abstract, intentional level of our thoughts due to the ignorance of the processes underlying our consciousness we can't predict our own thoughts and several different futures seem to be possible. The system is at this level of description not deterministic, but that doesn't rule out the possibility that the far more detailed description at the hardware level is deterministic as I've argued elsewhere. As no extra assumptions are needed, we'd better remove them with Occam's razor.

[CNA]

I haven't read all the posts and I KNOW I said I wasn't going to post any longer but I just can't resist Rich and his LOVE...LMAO ;) How much will I post, I'm not sure as of yet since I'm still dealing with the crap that happened offline. I really enjoy posting on message boards but still debating if I should find another site to go to (which there are one or two I have in mind, NB or another one) or just completely stop or head over to an O'ist live chat site.

Anyway, since I just can't resist Rich and his LOVE ;) , I'm still finding this topic very very interesting and will do more reading from all major parties cited above. It sounds intriguing. Since I haven't put any more thought into this thread because of other things going on and my focus being directed elsewhere, I don't want to provide an opinion as of yet with the exception of what I posted earlier and what was obvious to me. But ultimately whether to act on that idea is what will determine a person's character. But I also find this interesting as to the individual that would have "such" hateful thoughts (ideas) in the first place. Some circumstances I can understand having hateful thoughts, wanting justice, etc. But I'm looking at my own life and my own thoughts, knowing that I don't have "such" hateful thoughts of doing harm to others so will take some time to weed through it and come to my own conclusion regarding it based on looking at my own life and the unfortunate events of my own life and what I was thinking at that time and so on.

Of course, at some point or another, even those that are "good" will have thoughts (ideas) that are not so pleasant. My situation with my father is a good example of this and wanting to get back at him; ie, justice. But I never acted on those evil thoughts. I never kicked him so to speak while he was down and out other than leaving him so he could come to grips with his own life and the choices he had made up to that point; the causal chain that brought him to that alley, etc. But just because I've had these "evil" thoughts (ideas) in regards to my father or certain others (payback is a bitch) which everyone has had at some point in their life, even those that are "good", it does not mean I am evil or they are evil. Those temporary thoughts (ideas) won't mess up my Atlantis (what I've found) or take it from me, trust me. It's called wanting JUSTICE and to punish him for what he did. I think Mike's idea of wanting murder for the database being deleted was a definite over reaction and was out of context but was an idea in the name of justice; although it was overboard.

It's been a very very long time that I've had a thought or idea of serious payback or having "evil" thoughts (ideas) towards someone else. In fact, I don't have these types of thoughts, period, of wanting to do harm to others. Justice I totally understand of course, been there, done that. But "evil" thoughts in the way that they are talked about in the posts I've read so far, I'm personally not this way, especially in regards to the thoughts to the extreme that some were talked about in this thread so I find it very interesting as to the psyche and/or values of the individual that does, etc. But I don't want to jump the gun so to speak as I need to think more about this.

Angie

Maybe more later ???

Edited August 13, 2006 by CNA

[Paul Mawdsley]

Must be love.

Bingo, we have a winner here, folks.

A four letter word for benevolence and tolerance.....Man, I suck at crosswords! My mind just doesn't work that way. You need someone to build something-- a desk, a room, a house, a model of existence-- I'm your man. You need someone to find something-- car keys, a wallet, a pen, a word , a memory-- your looking at the wrong guy. Oh, there is one thing I'm pretty good at finding: a solution to a problem. No, on second thought, I build them too. ;)

Paul

[Paul Mawdsley]

Kelley:

It seems to me there is an alternative, and it is suggested by his reference to “bottom-up causation.” Searle is speaking here not of causal relationships between one event and a later event, but of the relationships among the structures and properties of a thing at a given point in time. In your dining-room table, for example, the microscopic bonds among molecules are the cause of the table’s macroscopic solidity, and that causal relation holds at any moment. This is a synchronic (occurring at one time), not a diachronic (occurring over time) mode of causality, and it is typical of the relations among different levels in a complex structure. Searle invokes it to explain the way neural activity at the level of individual cells gives rise to consciousness at the level of the whole system (with many intervening levels involving activity in specific locations in the brain). And he assumes that the arrow of causality can run in one direction only, from lower levels of the system to higher levels. Is that assumption necessary? It has certainly been a common assumption among philosophers and scientists, and they can point to many examples of successful bottomup explanations. Physics has shown how the properties of atoms explain the chemistry of molecules.

[..]

Recently, however, there has been a lively debate about the possibility of “downward” causation. Can the macroscopic properties of organized structures like the brain affect the behavior of lower-level components?

[..]

Of course, anyone committed to the assumption that all synchronic causality is bottom-up will argue that the apparent topdown effect is just a shorthand description of what is really a complex sequence of events at the neural level. But why should we accept this assumption as a universal truth?

Because it is the only logical conclusion. The point is that this whole notion of bottom-up and downward causation is in fact incoherent, due to an equivocation of the word "cause" in different meanings. Causation in the physical sense always involves a cause (event A) and an effect at a later time (event B, where B lies within the light cone of A). What Kelley calls "synchronic causation" is nothing else than a description of the same event at different levels of abstraction. Take for example the physics of billiard balls.

Take instead, the example of a vortex such as a tornado. The nature and action of the parts determine the nature and action of the whole vortex in the context of external forces containing this system. The action of the parts give shape to the form of the whole. But there is a reciprocal effect: acting as an integrated entity, the action and form of the whole vortex affects the actions of its individual parts. In this way, bidirectional causation can take place between the whole and the parts of a system. Isn't this part of the notion of complex systems? Isn't this a fitting description of what happens between the particle and the field in quantum theory?

As far as I can recall, this is the first I have read anything of David Kelly's writing. (Yes, I know. I have to correct that.) It seems to me that he had the right idea but chose the wrong model. He needed a more dynamic system to model his thinking about bidirectional causation.

If causation is the relationship between an entity's nature and its actions, the bidirectional causation between the higher scale whole entity and its lower scale parts makes sense. In an expanded form of entity-to-action causation that I posted a while ago in the metaphysics section I said: what a thing is is determined by the actions and interactions of its physical components; since what a thing is determines what it does, what a thing does is determined by the actions and interactions of its physical components. I should add: what a thing does is determined by the form of the system it is a part of. How does the field, or the flow, or the current of the whole system (the thing) affect the action of the parts (the components) of the system? The shape of the whole system determines the degrees of freedom available to the individual particle. This limits the possible options for action and, thus, shapes the behaviour of the particle. This shows the possibility of negative action: the directing of behaviour via the voids between particles. The individual particles, on the other hand, act in an integrated manner, on the lower scale, to create a complex system which behaves as a higher scale integrated unit.

The bidirectional causation that is described above cannot, even in principle, be captured by an action-to-action causation model. Because it is intrinsically a local/linear causation, action-to-action causation cannot capture the non-local/non-linear dynamics that is found in complex systems. You described the action-to-action causation model well: "Causation in the physical sense always involves a cause (event A) and an effect at a later time (event B, where B lies within the light cone of A)." Beyond this, action-to-action causation and Newton's laws of motion describe a world in which things only change their actions when something acts on them to change their actions. It is not that something acts on the parts of a vortex to direct its actions. It is that the parts of a vortex must act somehow and the action of these parts is limited by the existence of the other parts that are shaping the vortex. The action of any particular part of the vortex will tend find the path that maximizes the degrees of freedom (also known as the path of least resistence). Non-linear/non-local causation can only be modelled if we start with entities in motion and assume that the entities' environment ( the field, the flow, or the current) acts as a whole to shape the direction the individual entities can move with its pattern of occupied and unoccupied space.

I certainly see no problem conceiving of the mind/brain as a dynamic complex system that functions via bidirectional causation between its parts and the whole. While I think this is an important thing to understand, I don't think this solves the issue of free will in and of itself. At what point does bidirectionality allow one to choose the direction a component action will take? What is the nature of our qualitative experience? How is it that we are able to make choices based on the meaning to us of a qualitative experience? How does our act of choice in the qualitative realm cause brain events via an act of will? Just as I am not convinced we have reached the bottom of the causal story with quantum limit of observation, I am not convinced we have reached the bottom of the causal story with our understanding of neurons. If there is a causal description of quantum events to be found, what is the causal description of quantum events within and between neurons?

Paul

(Sorry for meandering off topic....AGAIN! If it would be better, this could be moved to the metaphysics area.)

Edited August 13, 2006 by Paul Mawdsley

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Continuing the moonlighing on RoR (where my ultimate goal, of course, is to defend Barbara), Bill Dwyer asked a series of good questions. My answer was so pertinent to the discussion here on the David Kelley part that I am reporducing it below.

It is addressed to Bill Dwyer.

***

You ask good questions and I will try to answer them not only to the best of my knowledge, but according to how I am now starting to understand Kelley. Please take into account that I do not feel myself an expert, although I do know quite a bit. I am chewing right now on some aspects just as much as you are. But I am rationally convinced enough of my own understanding to be on the other side of the fence.

You wrote:

If an evil morality is adopted due to an error of knowledge, does that mean, according to Objectivism, that the person who adopts it isn't evil, because his morality is based on an error of knowledge? Or does it mean that he is evil, because he has adopted an evil morality, even though his adoption of it is based on an error of knowledge?

This entails some considerations. Let’s start with at least defining what an “evil morality” is. There are two ways to judge it: (1) by what its practitioners have already done (action) using it, and (2) by comparing its fundamental principles against rational ones in terms of what living by those principles means – in action. Do you know of any other way to judge a morality?

Also, it is very difficult to find a purely evil morality because people have to live by it. So a high enough number of the principles have to make enough sense that the whole package can be swallowed. When we say “evil morality,” we are referring to some specific principles, usually fundamental ones, but not the whole set. That is the meaning I use for the term here.

To my mind, a person who adopts a provably evil morality (because it was examined according to the two standards above), but lives in an environment where no alternatives have become available to his awareness, is not an evil person. He has no way of knowing whether the ideas he holds are evil or not – except by his own rationality, which is limited. He does know some “unconventional” things according to the amount of rationality he has been allowed to develop (or has chosen as a dissenter to that culture). Some rationality must always exist, otherwise he would not exist. I believe that quite a lot must exist, otherwise too many principles would not work in practice and most people in that culture would throw off the morality and search for another. People need basic survival conditions fulfilled. When they are not, people either die or rebel. This can be seen throughout mankind’s history.

If you went by the standard you are saying, that a person is evil because the ideas in his head are intrinsically evil as they go against human life, we would have to judge over 95% of mankind and mankind’s history as evil. And if that were the case, how has mankind become an incredibly successful biological species? (Evil is against human life – right?) By what standard? Mankind’s very existence – added to his magnificent achievements – is proof that he has not been mostly evil – 95% plus evil. If he were, we would not even be writing to each other because most likely we would not exist. Mankind would have committed suicide instead of having a population growth and people with ever increasing life spans.

In the case of the person without alternatives, one makes a presumption that given access to other rational alternatives, he will choose the more rational one – not consistently at first, but in general and on some level. And this will grow. Why do we believe that? Because man is basically good. This is the benevolent universe principle applied to out species.

That is what the leaders of closed fanatical Islamic cultures most fear about the Internet. They are afraid of the lack of evil (rationality) in their subjects - the good in them. Thus the tyrants try to stifle communication with other cultures at all costs. Exposure of the rational means adoption of the rational (usually by degrees).

This is why it is so hard to call those subjects evil. They change for the better in the face of rational alternatives. Essentially they are good people in the throes of a repressive culture dominated by very evil men/women.

In the case of the person who has analyzed rational alternatives and rejected them (especially according to the correct/incorrect parameter), this person is evil. He/she is beyond rational persuasion. That is the one of the main reasons why he/she is evil.

None of this means that the innocent believer – the one without alternatives – is not dangerous. I keep insisting on this. Morality entails volition. Danger does not always. As Kelley points out, an earthquake is not evil, but dangerous instead. Morality is for and about people. And it involves choice by definition.

Then you asked:

If the former [evil morality adopted through error of knowledge], then how can you know whether or not someone's belief is due to an error of knowledge or to an act of evasion, without having privileged access to the inner workings of his mind? If you know the person well, it might seem to you as if he is choosing consciously to evade relevant knowledge, but how could you ever be sure?

Here I cannot urge you strongly enough to read The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand by David Kelley. In the chapter, “Moral Judgment,” he talks about some of the more obvious types of things we morally judge. Here is a very brief summary.

1. We judge actions. The fundamental standard is life, of course, but life is too varied to make one size fit all. Thus an action needs to be identified conceptually, and only then evaluated. There are also two inductive parameters that need to be used: (a.) degree (by comparison, not ordinal numbers), and (b.) complexity, especially where different aspects of the same action result in different but conflicting moral principles.

2. We interpret motives. We usually cannot see the motive in the isolated action. As Kelley mentioned, even Peter Keating built skyscrapers. That did not mean his motives were those of Roark. There are several manners of perceiving motives: (a.) Observing emotional behavior like facial expressions, tone of voice, body language, etc., (and this is far from a complete manner of evaluation). (b.) Rationally, we have to analyze other possible motives in light of evidence and decide not only which was the better among them, but which was “the only and best explanation.” (c.) Asking the person. Even though his answer may not always be reliable, it cannot be ignored.

3. We infer character traits. We do this to decide whether we want to interact with a person and how to predict that person’s behavior. This is necessary because man has free will and is never 100% consistent in his actions. Basically we must see whether a certain action was a standing policy or an aberration. A slip-up is one thing. A chosen policy is another.

4. We judge the person as a whole. For negative judgments, we look at negative character traits. In doing so, we have to evaluate the following: (a.) the person’s attitude toward the trait he has, and (b.) the scope and depth of the trait within his character.

At the end of the chapter, Kelley urges us to adopt the temperament of a judge, i.e., analyze all of the pertinent evidence possible before passing sentence and taking that responsibility seriously. Not shooting from the hip. He mentioned that the Peikovian method of passing judgment on everything is simply not possible due to limited time and mental resources for the flood of information we process. This means that many people will not be worth judging. Only those important enough to us should be judged.

I would extend this to include a country, culture or civilization. As a matter of fact, I would extend all of these observations to groups of similar people.

One word of caution: What I just gave was a brief outline of Kelley’s already stated brief outline. He said this was far from complete. Thus it is important to read his work to get the full gist of what he is saying. However, there is a lot already here to think about.

Wouldn’t it just be a lot simpler if we could say the following? “Islam is a pack of evil ideas. People who believe in evil ideas are evil. Muslims are evil.” Or “Islam includes many principles that destroy life on earth if practiced. Whatever destroys life on earth is evil. Islam is evil.”

But would that be really using our rational faculty properly? Or would that be blanking out a truckload of other evidence and considerations? I presume you agree that blanking out – evading – is not rational. Some even say it is evil.

Michael

[Victor Pross]

The Mind-Body Dichotomy in David Kelley’s philosophy of Moral Judgment:

After a careful read, I maintain my position that David Kelley has accepted—or at least proceeds from—the Mind-Body Dichotomy orientation. This is specifically so in regards to his focus on ethical questions, and especially so when it comes to moral evaluation. Kelley unmistakably sieves the Objectivist understanding through the distorting lens of the mind-body dichotomy, via his division between “motives” and “consequences”.*(1.1) His approach is that of a classic deontologist.

In this post, I will demonstrate very clearly why this is so.

First, Kelley states in Truth and Toleration [in regards to moral judgment] that “the particular form of evaluation concerned with what is volitional, with the realm of man-made facts” and then he elaborates thusly:

“Since the fundamental choice is whether to think or not, whether to use our capacity for reason, we must judge people by how they make this choice. In judging an action, therefore, we are concerned not only with its consequences, measured by the standard of life, but also with its source in the person's motives, as measured by the standard of rationality. The question is how to integrate these two factors into a single judgment. Philosophers have long wrestled with this question; they have proposed various theories about the proper weight to assign consequences on the one hand and motives on the other. The Objectivist ethics, unfortunately, has yet to address this question at any depth. But it's clear that we cannot ignore either factor.”*(1.2)

This is where we find Kelley proceeding from a traditional philosophy perspective, as Utilitarians and Consequentialists maintain that the moral status of an action (i.e., whether the action is morally right or wrong) depends on the action's consequences. In any situation, the morally right thing to do is whatever it will have the best consequences. **(2.1) John Stuart Mill's Greatest Happiness Principle: "actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness."**(2.2) Like Kelley, Deontologists deny that what ultimately matters is an action's consequences. They claim that what matters with regard to whether an action is right or wrong is why the action was done.**(2.3)

There are many varieties of deontological ethics (e.g., The 'Golden Rule' - "Do unto others as you'd have them do unto you").**(2.4) Immanuel Kant is the most influential deontologist. Rejecting consequentialism, he wrote: "A good will is good not because of what it effects or accomplishes." Even if by bad luck a good person never accomplishes anything much, the good will would like a jewel, still shine by its own light as something which has its full value in itself." **(2.5)

We can see that philosophers have long grappled with the question of how to integrate motives and consequences into a single judgment-- OR else they simply flip the coin in preference to one side over the other.*(1.3)***(3) Kelley’s starting point, his whole approach, springs from this base, and he does so to purportedly “expand Objectivist thought” since he proclaims it’s an “open system.”

By framing the topic of moral judgment in terms of this standard-issued conundrum, Kelley has set himself at variance with Objectivism.*(1.4) “Whether an idea is true or false, and whether it is good or bad, are related issues,” Kelley writes. “But they are distinct, and the issue of truth is primary.*(1.5) [italics mine]. By conceding the premises of the “motives versus consequences” standard, he’s accepted the core split between mind and body. Regarding the flip-flop choice that traditional philosophy offers, you judge what is more important to Kelley. I'm merely pointed out his dichtomized ethics as such.

In Kelley’s ethics, the mental (the cognitive) and the physical (consequences) of human action are treated as fundamentally detached and distinctive parts, assigning each its own standard of judgment: the standard of rationality for motives and the standard of life for consequences.*(1.6)

To claim that only one element matters, or to judge either by a different criterion---whether motives or consequences—is to place a partition between mind and body, and the debate shifts to a squabble as to which side to focus on in the quest for “the good.” The mental and the physical have been juxtaposed, but not integrated.*(1.7) “If ideas cannot be judged morally in terms of their causes and effects,” Peikoff asks, “why and how can a man’s actions---his bodily movements—be judged morally?” [NOTE FROM MSK: Quote from “Fact and Value.”] David Kelley has never answered that question and, I hasten to add, neither have his Utilitarian friends.

The mind-body dichotomy is clearly evident in David Kelley’s philosophy.

OBJECTIVISM: FULL INTEGRATION.

Any serious student of Ayn Rand’s philosophy knows that Rand rejected the mind-body dichotomy out-right. This permitted her to bypass the traditional “motives and versus consequences” quagmire. And yet Kelley states that Objectivism is “yet to address this question.”*(1.8) Ayn Rand swept aside all the mind-body dichotomy questions that Kelley wishes to resuscitate--because they are false from the outset. The thorough integration of mind and body in Ayn Rand’s philosophy has closed the gaps that were false in the first place—false metaphysically.

For Objectivism, justice requires the moral evaluation of a person “for what he is”---as man is being of “self-made soul.” A man of self-made soul is what a man has made of himself--in thought and action.*(1.9)

“Man is an indivisible entity, an integrated unit of two attributes: of matter and consciousness, and that he may permit no breach between body and mind, between action and thought, between his life and his convictions.”

Man is an indivisible entity—and no breach is to be made of “motives and consequences” as well.*(1.10) It’s a man’s ideas—and how the ideas are held and the methodology of how those ideas were derived---the content of his mind that determines the forecast of the existential results. [Motives be damned, the road to hell is paved with them.]

Human action aim at some ends, and they cannot be understood apart from the mental states which generate and guide them.*(1.11) The mental action leads, and the body follows. This position does not entail the straw man argument that ideas are “agents in the world” whatever the hell that is suppose to mean. As an indivisible sum, it means that a man’s actions derive from his mental state--his ideas, his methodology, his philosophy, the content of his mind and the manner in which he holds those ideas--drives his actions.

For people who disdain reason, the destruction of human life and happiness is the natural outcome of their actions—for themselves or others or both. By dividing motives from consequences, aside from his lapse into traditional philosophy, Kelley presents a person’s thinking as having only a vague relationship to the results of his actions. *(1.12)

In Fact and Value, Peikoff wrote:

“There is only one basic issue in philosophy and in all judgment, cognitive and evaluation alike: does a man conform to reality or not? Whether an idea is true or false is one aspect of this question---which immediately implies the other aspects: the relationship to reality of the mental processes involved and of the actions that will result.”

(NOTE FROM MSK: The passage from “Fact and Value” is slightly misquoted. The correct text is: “There is only one basic issue in philosophy and in all judgment, cognitive and evaluative alike: does a man conform to reality or not? Whether an idea is true or false is one aspect of this question—which immediately implies the other aspects I mentioned: the relation to reality of the mental processes involved and of the actions that will result.”)

The above, I submit, is a complete understanding of mind-body integration—as is the totality of Fact and Value.

Let me close with a quote:

“Justice,” writes Ayn Rand, “is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake the character of men as you cannot fake the character of nature, that you must judge all men as conscientiously as you judge inanimate objects, with the same respect for truth, with the same incorruptible vision, by as pure and as rational a process of identification--that every man must be judged for what he is and treated accordingly…”*(1.11)

Judged for what he IS---an indivisible sum, an integrated unit of two attributes: matter and consciousness.

Do you remember the scene in Atlas where Francisco is explaining to Rearden the MORAL SIGNIFICANCE of a steel mill.

"If you want to see an abstract principle, such as moral action, in material form--there it is. Every girder of it, every pipe, wire and valve was put there by choice in answer to the question: right or wrong."

(NOTE FROM MSK: The passage from Atlas Shrugged is slightly misquoted. The correct text is: “If you want to see an abstract principle, such as moral action, in material form—there it is. Look at it, Mr. Rearden. Every girder of it, every pipe, wire and valve was put there by a choice in answer to the question: right or wrong?”)

NOTE FROM ADMINISTRATOR:

* Plagiarized from “David Kelley's Mind-Body Dichotomy in Moral Judgment” by Diana Hsieh. The original passage reads as follows:

(1.1)

Kelley clearly filters the Objectivist understanding of moral judgment through the distorting lens of the mind-body dichotomy, courtesy of the division between motives and consequences.

(1.2)

In the first chapter of

Truth and Toleration

, David Kelley begins his discussion of moral judgment by explaining that it is "the particular form of evaluation concerned with what is volitional, with the realm of man-made facts." He then writes:

Since the fundamental choice is whether to think or not, whether to use our capacity for reason, we must judge people by how they make this choice. In judging an action, therefore, we are concerned not only with its consequences, measured by the standard of life, but also with its source in the person's motives, as measured by the standard of rationality. The question is how to integrate these two factors into a single judgment. Philosophers have long wrestled with this question; they have proposed various theories about the proper weight to assign consequences on the one hand and motives on the other. The Objectivist ethics, unfortunately, has yet to address this question at any depth. But it's clear that we cannot ignore either factor (T&T 9).

(1.3) (quoting David Kelley from “T&T 9”)

“The question is how to integrate these two factors into a single judgment. Philosophers have long wrestled with this question; they have proposed various theories about the proper weight to assign consequences on the one hand and motives on the other.”

(1.4)

Simply by framing his discussion of moral judgment in terms of this standard puzzle, Kelley has already set himself in conflict with the Objectivist metaphysics.

(1.5) (quoting David Kelley from “T&T 27”)

“Whether an idea is true or false, and whether it is good or bad, are related issues. But they are distinct, and the issue of truth is primary.”

(Note: Not technically a plagiarism, but the use of the same quote in the present context should be mentioned.)

(1.6)

By accepting the basic terms of the motives-versus-consequences debate, he's accepted its underlying split between mind and body. The basic question of that debate, after all, is whether a person should be judged primarily by the action intended by consciousness (i.e. the mental) or the actual results in existence (i.e. the physical). The mental and physical aspects of human action are treated as fundamentally separate and distinct parts, as only related by chance.

(1.7)

To claim that only one element matters, whether motives or consequences, is to outright embrace either the mental or physical side of the mind-body dichotomy. More subtly, any attempt to assign "proper weight" to each side also leaves the dichotomy intact. In that case, the mental and physical aspects of human action are juxtaposed but not integrated.

(1.8)

Ayn Rand's rejection of the mind-body dichotomy allows her to bypass the traditional debates about motives versus consequences in moral judgment. It's not that Objectivism has "yet to address this question," as Kelley claims (T&T 9).

(1.9)

For Ayn Rand, justice requires the moral evaluation of a person "for what he is" -- meaning for all that he has made of himself as a human being in thought and action.

(1.10)

… "man is an indivisible entity, an integrated unit of two attributes: of matter and consciousness, and that he may permit no breach between body and mind, between action and thought, between his life and his convictions" (AS 937). (She could well have added "between motives and consequences" to that sentence.)

(1.11)

Since human actions aim at some end, they cannot be understood apart from the complex of mental states which generate and guide them.

(1.12) (Diana Hsieh’s

Comment 30

from the discussion thread to the article.)

By dividing motives from consequences, DK falsely presents a person's thinking as having only a tenuous relationship to the results of his actions.

(1.13) (quoting Rand from

Atlas Shrugged

)

“Justice is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake the character of men as you cannot fake the character of nature, that you must judge all men as conscientiously as you judge inanimate objects, with the same respect for truth, with the same incorruptible vision, by as pure and as rational a process of identification--that every man must be judged for what he is and treated accordingly…”

(Note: Not technically a plagiarism, but the use of the same quote in the present context should be mentioned.)

** Plagiarized from “An Introduction to Ethics, Part 2, Some Objectivist Theories” by Andrew Latus. The original passage reads as follows:

(2.1)

Consequentialists

maintain that the moral status of an action (i.e., whether the action is morally right or wrong) depends on the action's consequences. In any situation, the morally right thing to do is whatever will have the best consequences.

(2.2)

"actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness." (

John Stuart Mill's Greatest Happiness Principle

)

(2.3)

Deontologists

deny that what ultimately matters is an action's consequences. They claim that what matters with regard to whether an action is right or wrong is why the action was done.

(2.4)

There are many varieties of deontological ethics (e.g.,

The 'Golden Rule'

- "Do unto others as you'd have them do unto you").

(2.5)

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

is the most influential deontologist.

Rejecting Consequentialism:

"A good will is good not because of what it effects or accomplishes." Even if by bad luck a good person never accomplishes anything much, the good will would "like a jewel, still shine by its own light as something which has its full value in itself."

*** Plagiarized from The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand by David Kelley. The original passage reads as follows:

(3) (p. 22)

The question is how to integrate these two factors into a single judgment. Philosophers have long wrestled with this question; they have proposed various theories about the proper weight to assign consequences on the one hand and motives on the other.

OL extends its deepest apologies to Diana Hsieh, Andrew Latus and David Kelley.

Edited August 2, 2007 by Michael Stuart Kelly

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I just added the following:

Bill,

I would like to add an addendum to the last post, since I did a sloppy job of defining “evil morality.” As regards evil, I prefer to stay with a quote from David Kelley. In footnote No. 1 to Chapter II, “Sanction,” p. 31 of The Contested Legacy Ayn Rand, Kelley wrote:

1. In the previous chapter, I noted that the term “evil” is normally restricted to the moral realm (see note 5). Traditionally the term was used as the most general antithesis of good, referring to natural conditions such as sickness, a natural disasters such as floods, as well as to human vice, corruption, malice, etc.. Today, the broad function of the term has largely been superseded by the word “bad”; “evil” is more commonly restricted now that things that can be evaluated as morally bad. Within the moral real, moreover, the term is usually (but not always) reserved for wrongdoing or vise of the highest degree, as measured both by consequences and by intent. When Rand uses the term in formulating a principle regarding the impotence of evil, and when Peikoff uses it in our debate about error vs. evil (the topic of Chapter 3), I believe they intend to equate evil with wrongdoing as such, with anything that is morally culpable, rather than limiting it to a high degree of wrongdoing. For the sake of this discussion, I have followed the same usage in this and succeeding chapters.

Here is the “note 5” to Chapter 1, “Moral Judgment,” p. 21, that Kelley mentioned above.

5. I would also say that the concept of “evil” is restricted to the moral realm. Though the term is sometimes used to describe anything that causes harm or suffering, it normally implies a wicked motive.

This is the sense that I understand “evil” as it is used in Barbara’s article. For “evil morality,” let us call this "a body of morally mixed principles where some of the fundamental ones result in wrongdoing or human destruction if practiced literally.”

Michael

[Victor Pross]

M,

A quote and then a question:

MSK asked: “If you went by the standard you are saying, that a person is evil because the ideas in his head are intrinsically evil as they go against human life, we would have to judge over 95% of mankind and mankind’s history as evil.”

Objectivism holds that value is objective (NOT intrinsic or subjective) Value is based on and derives from the facts of reality.

Michael, as an Objectivist, you know this. Yet your question proceeds from an erroneous starting point—only actions are evil while ideas are to be judged as only either correct or incorrect. You seem to make the assumption that to approach ethics in any manner other than the Kelley position, is to necessarily embrace intrinsicism, which, I imagine, you wish to avoid. That is, do think that by judging ideas as good or bad makes one an intrinsicist?

Is this the case?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Victor,

You haven't understood at all the point of Kelley nor even my little quote. You should properly understand before you make a wild evaluation. In my case, I was arguing against the idea of intrinsic morality: evil only in the mind without expression in reality (as Bill was arguing) because the conceptual content was inherently evil. He didn't use the word "inherent," but was referring only to mental content - and not even mental action like choosing. This is a false doctrine.

Concepts are derived from reality. And of course values are derived from reality. Most human values are chosen (at least those that are not prewired, like hunger, sleep and so forth). But before something can be evaluated, you first have to know what it is - whether it is real or not - true or false - correct or incorrect.

Of course ideas can be evaluated, just like anything in life can be evaluated. But a moral evaluation is not inherent to all ideas - except one evaluation: epistemological value judgments. Please read the 7th quote in this post.

How does that result in a mind-body dichotomy? On the contrary, as you like to use the jargon, I would state that calling ALL ideas good or evil is intrincisism at its worst (as it covers all ideas). A claim is made that I judge all ideas according to some intrinsic duty, not according to my chosen values. That is a very Kantian-based notion and those who promote this are intrincisists. You asked:

That is, do think that by judging ideas as good or bad makes one an intrinsicist?

You can see from my comment above that the answer is no. I do think some ideas can and should be judged - but they must be based on reality (or not) first. That is the first call and that is what we are talking about. Not later in the cognitive process. Also, for the record, I do think that undertaking the duty (or preaching it) of some inherent need to judge all ideas as good or bad does make one an intrinsicist.

You find the true-false parameter as distinct from the good-bad parameter as being based on the mind-body dichotomy. For the life of me, I can't see the connection. You have to know what something is before you can put it in relation to your life.

In your presentation of Kelley taking recourse to a mind-body dichotomy, frankly your long post jumps logical connections at will and lands all over the place while making a bunch of almost unrelated proclamations. (I don't mean that hostilely. That is my honest first impression.) I don't know what to make of it. Still in the interest of good will, I will reread it several times until I try to get the gist of what you are saying. If I can get a handle on it, maybe we can start to take this from the beginning and reconstruct it step by step.

Let's start with the mind-body dichotomy as given in Galt's speech:

They have cut man in two, setting one half against the other. They have taught him that his body and his consciousness are two enemies engaged in deadly conflict, two antagonists of opposite natures, contradictory claims, incompatible needs, that to benefit one is to injure the other, that his soul belongs to a supernatural realm, but his body is an evil prison holding it in bondage to this earth—and that the good is to defeat his body, to undermine it by years of patient struggle, digging his way to that glorious jail-break which leads into the freedom of the grave.

They have taught man that he is a hopeless misfit made of two elements, both symbols of death. A body without a soul is a corpse, a soul without a body is a ghost—yet such is their image of man's nature: the battleground of a struggle between a corpse and a ghost, a corpse endowed with some evil volition of its own and a ghost endowed with the knowledge that everything known to man is nonexistent, that only the unknowable exists.

Do you observe what human faculty that doctrine was designed to ignore? It was man's mind that had to be negated in order to make him fall apart. Once he surrendered reason, he was left at the mercy of two monsters whom he could not fathom or control: of a body moved by unaccountable instincts and of a soul moved by mystic revelations—he was left as the passively ravaged victim of a battle between a robot and a dictaphone.

Is this what you are saying David Kelley does?

Michael

[Barbara Branden]

Victor, your criticisms of my talk on “Objectivism and Rage” appear to fall into a few different categories, which I shall take up in separate posts. But before I discuss these, I want to make a few general comments.

Very often, you criticize my talk for ideas I did not present – or, in some cases, for ideas that I specifically rejected. For instance, you wrote:

“I do not agree with the idea that if one is to accept the benefits of Ayn Rand’s philosophy, then one must also be prepared to accept its 'hazards.' [insofar, that is, that those hazards are allegedly said to be inherent in the philosophy itself.]”

This is not my idea. I said nothing about either the benefits or the hazards of Objectivism. However, assuming that Objectivism has both benefits and hazards – which, in fact, I believe it does – then of course one ought to accept the first and reject the second. This is saying nothing more than that one should accept what is true and reject what is false.

You then discuss the importance of individual responsibility, as follows:

“If I blame Ayn Rand for my mindless decisions to brand someone 'irrational' merely because they have offended me---I’m not taking responsibility. If I blame Objectivism for my choice to practice the virtue of justice, but misunderstand or purposely contort its application---I’m not taking responsibility. If I blame a certain organization’s teachings because I thoughtlessly recycle ideas without applying first-handed independent judgment---I’m not taking responsibility. And by blaming mommy or the devil or Rand, they are seeking scapegoats, which are not offered to explain poor choices, but to justify them. If you want an example of moral cowardice, there it is.”

I agree. But again, what has this to do with my speech? Your implication appears to be that I blame Rand and/or ARI for the unjust moralizing of many Objectivists. I did not say this, or anything like it. However, there is an important issue here that I want to clarify, quite apart from whether or not I discussed it in my talk.

Of course each individual is responsible for his own choices and actions. This includes Ayn Rand’s friends – and it includes Ayn Rand. In "The Passion of Ayn Rand,” I write about the years of Rand’s depression following the publication of Atlas Shrugged:

”Within Ayn’s circle of friends, widened since the inception of the collective, denunciation followed denunciation and moral recrimination followed moral recrimination –always buttressed and validated by the sanction of Ayn Rand, and often occurring in her presence and at her insistence as she became once more the avenging angel she had been during the writing of Galt’s speech. Ayn’s young friends had been disarmed in advance: they had learned from Ayn that reason required that one not ‘withhold your contempt from men’s vices’: they had learned from Ayn and Nathaniel that irrationality and evasion were often found in the most innocent-seeming errors. . .

“The ultimate responsibility for the suffering of Ayn’s friends lay neither with Ayn nor Nathaniel. Her friends – including myself – were free; no gun was held to our heads; we could have said ‘Enough!’ We could have left and found our separate ways to life. We did not say ‘Enough!’ We did not leave. The deadly mixture of idealism and a vulnerability to guilt – with all its variations and permutations in each individual –had formed the stout chains of our own devising that bound us tightly and made us willing to endure more and still more, that made us willing to endure, as the years passed, the awareness that our enthusiasm and zest for life were slipping away, that our authentic benevolence was losing its bright coloration, that our hope was diminishing. We could not abandon reason; we could not abandon morality, no matter what the cost. And that meant we could not, would not, abandon Ayn Rand.”

Victor, do you not see that there is enough personal responsibility for mistakes here to go around? Rand was responsible for her own irrational denunciations, for her hair-trigger assumptions of evil in the most well-intentioned actions. We, her friends, were responsible for our own idolatry of Rand that made us unable to defy her and for accepting unearned guilt. The issue is not, as you put it, blaming Rand and/or Objectivism or else blaming oneself. The issue is to decide whether it is only one’s own errors or also the errors of Rand and/or Objectivism that ought to be held responsible.

[Victor Pross]

M,

In answer to your question about Kelley--in relation to the Galt speech--the answer is: HELL NO. Rand's presentation in that speech is of the explicitly mystic Augustine type of mind-body split. I’m speaking of the Descartes type of rationalism.

I don't know how well versed you are in general philosophy, but the mind-body split is more complex than what Rand covered. If your understanding of it is limited to Rand’s presentation, the larger picture won’t be there for you. This is not a reflection on you—it comes down to one’s knowledge and interests. And that is okay, ATLAS was not meant to be a philosophy text book, and maybe you never read other philosophers on this issue. Hell, I don’t know.

Traditional philosophy? I have been up to my ass in it for 18 years!

Generally, I think my post is crystal clear as it stands, mind you. One does not need to have formal training in philosophy to see the severed splitting and divides between “cognitive” and “physical” and “motivations” and “effects” et al. And the examination of each--by a different criterion--is dichotomization. Ayn Rand's philosophy was about TOTAL integration.

From this premise: Ideas are not to be judged as 'good' or 'bad' but merely correct or incorrect AND "actions are to be judged as good or bad, but not as" yada, yada, is a dichotomy. Rand rejected that whole approach.

Again from my other post:

“If ideas cannot be judged morally in terms of their causes and effects,” Peikoff asks, “why and how can a man’s actions---his bodily movements—be judged morally?”

But this is a fast answer.

Victor

Edited August 14, 2006 by Victor Pross

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Victor,

We are getting really off topic. I suggest you start a new thread so we can discuss David Kelley's ideas - a thread specifically for that.

I also suggest we start from the beginning, with a defining terms stage. Thus my idea is to start all over.

Are you game?

Michael

[Victor Pross]

Michael,

Yes, I am game. I hope Roger will come out and play.

Who will start this new thread?

Wanna toss a coin?

Victor

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Victor,

You do it. I suggest something simple to start - not the whole shebang.

(You now have your hands full on this thread.)

Michael

[Victor Pross]

Michael,

Okay.

Question: Are we to tackle this issue using Kelley's latest edition of T&T and not the original? This might have been the cause of some misunderstanding between me and you on this most interesting subject.

Victor

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Dayaamm! Just start the thing.