Letter from Nathaniel Branden on Morality

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I was delightfully surprised to receive the following letter from Nathaniel Branden yesterday concerning the questions I recently raised on RoR, then later here on OL in the "Rants" section, The Ayn Rand Love/Hate Myth – Part 2 – Moral Ambivalence. My emphasis was on ethics and rights for children in emergencies.

By and large, the greatest opposition - and a good deal of it drastically overheated in the emotion department - has centered on government intervention in an individual's life. This focus has been stubbornly maintained even where the topic evolved and no longer warranted it.

Nathaniel cut deeper, as he is wont to do. The crucial issue he raised is one that I strongly believe needs to be addressed in Objectivism.

(For the record, I asked for Nathaniel's permission to post this as he wrote it and he authorized me to do so - with my heartfelt thanks.)

Michael

Dear Michael,

I want to suggest another angle for that question about the abandoned, starving child.

If you saw a passer-by, with plenty of food in his knapsack, ignore the abandoned, starving child on the roadside, there would be another question to be asked beside the question of whether or not one should ask for government intervention.

It is simply this: What do you, the bystander, the observer, think about this passer-by who walks on doing nothing to help the child? I think a high percentage of us would feel moral indignation.

But why?

According to Objectivism, “there are no unchosen obligations,” and therefore there is no reason to get indignant or angry at the passer-by who refuses to save the child.

So I invite whoever hears about this issue to look into your own emotional reactions toward the passer-by who does nothing, when he has the power to save the child’s life at no significant cost to himself. The indignation I believe most of us would feel reflects an underlying premise that needs to be brought into this discussion.

Something here screams out: “This is wrong!” Yes, wrong, but by what standard? By what moral principle?  

Some new thinking is required, folks!

Nathaniel

[Rich Engle]

NB's different vantage point definitely gets it deeper!

The very basics of things in life: What is good (ethics), what is true (science), and what is beautiful (art/aesthetics)?

Looking at the scenario with the child. What is good about the situation?

Pretty much nothing. Suffering, and pending danger. I don't see any good, do you all?

That's one reason why I would want to act: because there is no goodness there, and that could be changed.

[Ciro]

I am sorry the guest is me!

So, I think that the man with plenty of food in his knapsack needs help!!!

I would feel compassion at this point for the man!

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Anybody want to suggest a moral principle?

Or is proper Objectivism being guided only by feelings in this case?

Michael

[Roger Bissell]

Michael, someone already HAS stated a moral principle. In "The Ethics of Emergencies," Rand wrote that "a man who values human life...should help men in an emergency." (p. 55, The Virtue of Selfishness) She gives appropriate qualifications and context for this principle, but it's right there in black and white. I'm a bit puzzled what "new thinking" Dr. Branden thinks we need to supplement this.

He states that we would be indignant or angry at a passerby with plenty of extra food who wouldn't stop to help a starving child, and yet he claims that current Objectivist thinking would let the passerby off the hook, because there are "no unchosen obligations," and the passerby would simply claim: "I DIDN'T CHOOSE TO BE OBLIGATED TO FEED THIS CHILD."

Well, since the obligation to help the child and the emotional impulse to help the child both naturally, normally spring from the same source -- a normal, mentally and emotionally healthy person's value of human life -- the indignation and anger would be simply such a person's way of saying to the passerby: WHY DIDN'T YOU? WHAT KIND OF PERSON ARE YOU?

And the implication behind such indignation and anger is the evaluation that such a passerby is not fit company for decent, life-valuing human beings, and that he'd better get his head (and heart) on straight if he doesn't want to find himself "on the outside looking in" on normal, human society.

REB

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Roger,

I agree with Rand's formulation, but I find it incomplete as a moral principle covering this example, despite the "if... then" form.

Simply valuing human life is not enough to justify the moral outrage most people feel with this. I think the principle (or principles) needs to be fleshed out more.

I can think of many important things I value (and value very highly) that do not elicit such outrage on being ignored to their detriment by a passing stranger.

Michael

[Paul Mawdsley]

There are some thoughts I have had in this area. I wanted to respond to the related discussion elsewhere but did not feel well enough informed as to the flow of the arguments. Now we have a new beginning I will offer some of my thoughts to see if anyone considers them of value.

The principles of Objectivism require that we identify the facts of reality, integrate them with our understanding, and act according to our rational self-interest. I have noticed that there is a whole class of facts that are typically ignored by Objectivism: the class of facts we can call one’s empathic experience. I think this missing element of reality from the Objectivist perspective, is at the root of the above discussion and of any consideration of a new moral principle.

For an Objectivist, Social Metaphysics has traditionally been one of the great evils and is punishable by excommunication. Social Metaphysics has its roots in an individual’s ability to take on an empathic perspective. I think Objectivists have tended to throw out the starving baby with the bathwater. The capacity to experience another’s perspective as one's own has tended to be disowned in the same package as Social Metaphysics because this class of experience has not been well explored, identified, and understood by Objectivists.

As NB (quite sternly) pointed out to me at one time, Social Metaphysics is a concept with a very precise meaning. In Taking Responsibility p. 68, Branden says, "Remember that in philosophy 'metaphysics' is one's view of the ultimate nature of reality. To the [social metaphysician], reality is other people. In his or her mind, in the automatic connections of his or her consciousness, people occupy the place which, in the mind of an autonomous, self-responsible individual, is occupied by reality." Social Metaphysics, then, identifies a particularly extreme psychology where objective reality is replaced by an inter-subjective reality. What is real is not what can be objectively observed but what people, especially other people, say is real. In such a consciousness, one controls reality by manipulating other people’s perspectives of reality. One affects (pseudo) self-esteem by manipulating relative social status. In practical terms, the social metaphysician gets caught inside a myriad of empathic perspectives with no independent perspective strong enough to maintain a grasp of objective reality.

The point is that, while Social Metaphysics is extremely unhealthy and antithetical to Objectivist living, taking an empathic perspective is neither healthy nor unhealthy. It is neutral. Taking an empathic perspective is just an epistemological tool. It is a means of perceiving reality. It is a means of acquiring information about a certain class of objects; conscious objects.

Please correct me if I am wrong, but I get the impression that it is part of the Objectivist culture, a rite of passage, to disown the empathic perspective. A “good” Objectivist should always be looking outward experiencing the world first hand, not looking inward at his empathic(“second hand”) experience. Holding onto one's empathic experience tends to push a person to the outside of the Objectivist movement.

Empathic experience is a game for mystics and collectivists. Wrong! Disowning one’s empathic experience is against one’s self-interest. One’s empathic perspective is part of the self. An integrated self is definitely in one’s self-interest. The information from one’s empathic perspective should be evaluated from and integrated into one’s independent, personal (ideally Objectivist) perspective.

As NB has pointed out, if we cannot see clearly the world within us, we cannot see clearly the world in front of us. Again, sight works in both directions or it works in neither. If we disown our empathic experience, we cannot experience another’s intrinsic value. We can only see the value of others as an abstraction or in terms of their value to our ends.

Is the empathic perspective infallible? No, but nor is visual perception. Is it valuable? Damn, yes! It can offer us great insight into the world around us. Is it an individual’s to own? Absolutely! As part of our own independent perspective, information attained via empathic experience does and should affect our choices and actions.

This bring me back to the above discussion. By what moral standard would the observer experience indignation at the passerby? Yes, we have Ayn Rand’s very objective statement, "a man who values human life...should help men in an emergency." (p. 55, The Virtue of Selfishness) (Thanks Roger) But this is not what stirs the blood.

Actually, I don’t think the moral standard changes. The standard is still acting in one’s self-interest. It is the information the individual acts upon that has changed. The observer empathically experiences both the child’s perspective and the passerby’s. The result of our emotional and ethical evaluation of this empathic experience is compassion for the child and moral revulsion for the passerby. We understand that the passerby must disconnect from both the value of his own inner world and the value of another human being to act as he/she does. This is unhealthy. This is anti-life. This is unethical.

On the one hand, we can feel compassion for a being who’s experience has lead him/her to the state of the passerby. On the other hand, we can despise the being who acts with such callousness. Not being responsible for how he/she got here, and seeing only who he/she is now, I would like to slap him/her in the face (with fingers clenched) and say, “Look at what is right in front of you and value your sight.”

Do I think what he did should be illegal? No. As far as government involvement is concerned, I think Objectivist principles should hold. Every individual should have the right, the freedom, and the responsibility to choose his/her own actions. Objectively, the child’s life is not this individual’s responsibility to save. The child’s need is not a claim on this person’s property or effort. If he/she chooses not to adopt the responsibility to help the child, that is the action for which he/she can be morally condemned. Not for killing the child.

The government’s role should not be to compel the action of an individual. It should only be to protect the rights of the individual. The only argument I can see for making the passerby’s actions illegal is to coerce ethically right action. This would be antithetical to the idea that an individual’s life is his own. Just as charity should never be coerced, neither should acting for another’s survival. It seems to me to be a contradiction to coerce a person to act on his empathic perspective. Such coercion requires a disregard for the perspective of the person being coerced. The person doing the coercing would have to ignore her empathic perspective to force another person to act on his. Maybe that would be ethical justice but it can hardly be the basis of law.

Paul Mawdsley

[Philip Coates]

> If you saw a passer-by, with plenty of food in his knapsack, ignore the abandoned, starving child on the roadside...Yes, wrong, but by what standard? By what moral principle? [Nathaniel Branden]

(First one has to stipulate a normal, advanced civilization or everyday context such as in prosperous America out in a national forest or something like that. I.e., we are assuming that this is not a metaphysical disaster, not a visit to Darfur or Somalia where one is surrounded by ten thousand starving children and one's backpack doesn't have enough food to help them all...and where they will starve after you only give them one meal to get them through the day.)

Envision a person who doesn't experience the visibility principle, who doesn't enjoy the healthy living vitality of a plant or a pet (in Dr. Branden's original discussion of the visibility principle), doesn't admire genius or successful people or the ability of a hero in the movie or book to overcome obstacles. He just doesn't *care*.

You wouldn't precisely say that his vice is the lack of any one of the original seven Objectivist virtues - rationality, honesty, independence, integrity, justice, productiveness, pride.

You would be closer to call it a lack of the virtue of benevolence, which has generosity as a component. But you would only say he lacks benevolence if you take benevolence as a *wider* virtue than the way David Kelley characterizes it: "the function of benevolence...is to create opportunities for trade." [unrugged Individualism, p. 26].

In his otherwise excellent book DK ties benevolence too exclusively to the trader principle (this is a point I've made in posts elsewhere, and I believe Dr. Branden said something similar at the Vancouver? summer seminar). That would exclude such actions as helping those one will never trade with or helping a plant or person grow as part of benevolence. This post is not the place to give a precise definition (I discussed it a bit in my TOC talk on benevolence).

Instead, to focus on what is lacking, and what is immoral in this person: it is that he is "anti-life" in a very profound way, lacking benevolence in the deepest way possible. A healthy person who values his own life, and values his own growth and success and would experience revulsion and the desire to act to prevent his own death, or stagnation, or decay cannot help but value life, growth, and success and want to act (within his power and context) to prevent death, disaster, destruction, etc. more generally.

To standy and watch painful death of an innocent in this example, when you could non-sacrificially stop it is, as in the case of not dialing 911 in the Kitty Genovese case, is an act of profound immorality, of deadness inside. You can't be a moral person if you are dead inside. How could that be overlooked in an assessment of your state? How could you have any -other- kinds of values if you don't value life itself? There is a story we learned in middle school, "the man without a country" about another kind of man impervious to values. To apply to this person, it would have to be retitled "the man without a soul."

I think I probably will have more to say on this (even though this is an extremely unpleasant thing to think about...like thinking about necrophilia), but this is the pattern of the answer.

INDIFFERENCE TO EVERY OTHER LIVING THING IS NOT A FORM OF EGOISM.

--Philip Coates

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I want to keep this discussion on morality, not politics, but I want to relate how deep this issue goes inside me.

There is a famous statement usually attributed to Voltaire: "I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it."

I would do so. I would fight to the death for that.

Now let's transpose this to our case (with the same restrictions, one-on-one, immediate vicinity, non-sacrificial aid, etc.): "I do not agree with watching a stray child starve to death when you are near him and have enough food, but I'll defend to the death your right to watch him die like that."

I would not defend that right to the death.

I simply cannot generate the enthusiasm inside me to do that. On the contrary, my own sentiment goes against the indifferent person. I am still sorting through all the reasons.

I know that I also would not fight to the death for a society that sanctions easily preventable starvation of children and does nothing to protect these little citizens from such a death. If the price for the right of one person is the easily preventable death of minors, then I can only generate indifference at best for that right. (I am fighting myself like the dickens to maintain objectivity for now because there actually is that voice inside screaming out, "This is wrong!")

To contrast once again, I hate the doctrines of socialism, many parts of religions, etc., with a passion, yet I would fight to the death for a society where people can discuss these issues in a manner I disapprove of and their right to do so. (I am very big on the First Amendment.) I would not fight to the death for a society where indifference to the suffering and death of human beings - especially minors - crosses a certain line. This includes any right that grants a moral sanction to this.

Anyway, I don't want to talk about rights. The issue right now is morality. I merely want to register how all this impacts me inside. I wonder if I am alone in this sentiment among Objectivists.

Michael

[Rich Engle]

Social metaphysics? I think it's a lot easier to call it the "we" part of life.

Just as the inner domain exists, and the solid "it" part of the world exists.

One does not exclude the others, they are all part of the whole.

[Paul Mawdsley]

Michael,

You do not have to create a thought experiment to confront this issue. There are children in 3rd world countries as well as in our own backyard for whom survival is a very real issue. What should be done?

Should legislation be enacted to "encourage" people to act morally? I don't think you would say so. The foundation of Objectivist Ethics is the right of the individual to act on his own sight, knowledge, judgement, and values. Disagreeing with any part of an individual's processing of information is never grounds for negating his basic right to act from his own processes.

Consider a reformulation of your transposed case. "I do not agree with watching a stray child starve to death when you are near him and have enough food, but I'll defend to the death your right to act on your own sight, knowledge, judgement, and values." (...even if I consider you blind and immoral.)

You are right. I share your sentiment that I would not want to belong to a society that sanctions a disregard for human life. My blood would boil at the sight of such moral depravity. But what means would you enact to meet your ends?

Objectivist Ethics has its roots in identity-to-action causation. What an individual is determines how he should behave. To enact legislation intended to bypass the individual's identity to cause what someone else considers moral behaviour, is to reject the foundation of Objectivist thought and replace it with action-to-action causation. Do we really want to say: the threat of coercive action determines how a person should behave?

If we don't want to resort to action-to-action causation as a principle of ethical behaviour, then we must seek morality within the individual. We can argue, we can educate, we can encourage therapy for poor sight, knowledge, judgement, and values. We can denounce immoral actions. But we should not try to bypass the individuals right to make his own choices. This is not a society I would want to sanction.

Paul Mawdsley

What a thing is determines what it does. And so should it.

[Dragonfly]

What I'm missing in all these discussions is the fact that there is a big difference between the emergency situations that are described, and the socialist idea of an institutional altruism. The special character of the described emergency situations is that the person who can in that situation save the life of another human being, is at that moment the only one who can do so, the life of the other one literally depends on the action or non-action of that single person. That is a heavy responsibility for that person, which he didn't ask for. But not everything we're confronted with in life is asked for, whether we like it or not. In such a situation, where an action, without any risk for your own life, is the only way to save the life of another person, I see absolutely no problem in making failing to do anything helpful punishable by law. This is an either-or situation, a life-or-death situation, and has nothing to do with the fate of the poor children in some third-world country, the straw children of all those orthodox Objectivists. If the Objectivist formulas say that that person shouldn't be held responsible by law, my answer is: throw those formulas in the dustbin of oblivion and forget the whole Objectivist circus, or go home and think up some rationalization to amend those principles. Perhaps even I could do it if I'd like to, but in fact I've more interesting activities waiting for me.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Paul, you wrote:

But what means would you enact to meet your ends?

That's the million dollar question. That's one of the things I want to examine later, after this moral thing is discussed in more detail. I suspended my earlier stance of wasting the creep so that discussion of this could go deeper.

My present position is that I have no answer right now. The only thing I know for sure is that I do not find the preventable death of the child in the example acceptable, neither morally nor socially. That is why I brought it up. Until we can get the morality worked out, any social suggestion will be poorly based. I believe the expression is all light and no heat.

One thing is evident to me, though. This issue comes with a high emotional charge for many people. I have experienced a tremendous amount of difficulty in getting it on the table for discussion with Objectivists.

Michael

[Rich Engle]

It's interesting to see exactly how strong someone's conscience really is in extreme situations.

Coming at it from a Unitarian perspective, I would say that taking one for the team is business as usual. They've been burning Unitarians at the stake since the 1500's. For us, it's about action. That's why Unitarians were so involved in smuggling Jews out of Germany during the war (that's where our chalice symbol was developed, it was somehwat of a secret sign).

My point is that generally, the Unitarian view is not about "self-sacrifice".

We will use the term "service." But what it is really about is taking action. It's about doing. And, a lot of times, that means sticking it to the man.

Our perspective involves extending the moral compass, not so much defining the one we already possess.

Doing.

[Ellen Stuttle]

Michael:

One thing is evident to me, though. This issue comes with a high emotional charge for many people. I have experienced a tremendous amount of difficulty in getting it on the table for discussion with Objectivists.

Michael, I suggest that at least part of why you have such difficulty is because of the ease with which you revert to the legal issue instead of keeping the focus on the moral issue. (You see, you've even done that on this thread, while saying you weren't going to do it.) I think a discussion that kept the focus firmly centered on the strong sense of moral revulsion -- the feeling that that's wrong -- might produce some insight. Where does your (and I'd venture to believe the vast majority of other people's) intense feeling of wrongness come from? What's the source of the feeling?

Ellen

___

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Ellen,

Thank you. You are right.

After being called every name in the book about this elsewhere, I became a bit oversensitive, I suppose. I hold great store in Paul and, frankly, I did not want him to get the wrong idea.

Back to the question. Where does that moral outrage come from?

Michael

[Dragonfly]

On the contrary, I think it is especially the legal issue that is the central point here, the moral issue is standard fare, already treated in The Ethics of Emergencies. AFAIR the lynch mob on RoR had no problem in declaring someone who didn't act in such an emergency a moral monster, but they became stark raving mad at the suggestion that he didn't have the right to do nothing, shouting that anyone who proposed such a thing must be a socialist, a fascist, a pathetic piece of shit, a cockroach (hi fellow-insect!), a looter and whatever other compliments a dedicated Objectivist can think of. The discrepancy between the moral viewpoint and the legal viewpoint is the crux of the controversy, and if you want to solve this problem, you shouldn't evade that point, even if it means that you'll have to give up the infallibility of Objectivist dogma (that's of course the only solution, but probably I'm the only one so far to see that...).

[Rich Engle]

I don't think legality is what compels people to do noble and heroic things.

Maybe reverence for life, in the example. My reverence for life might even include the ultimate sacrifice, but even so I am acting in my own self-interest.

Even altruists are really acting in their own self-interest, if you think of it.

It's just that what their self is interested in might be a little effed up.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Dragonfly,

Evade?

E tu, Brutus?

//;-))

Let's do this one thing at a time. Objectivist politics mainly rests on ethics, but it also rests on a certain view of man (and some other stuff). We are rethinking the ethics thing right now. We will get to the politics down the road.

I will not abandon the Objectivist philosophy to those who claim that checking the premises of it is evil (and engage in monkeyshines). I won't chuck out the philosophy, either. No way will I surrender to the irrational.

One of the premises we are checking right now is the Objectivist view of man and his values.

Michael

[Rich Engle]

MSK:

One of the premises we are checking right now is the Objectivist view of man and his values.

That's it, exactly. What do we know of it? Quite a bit. Objectivism is a modern system, so we also know that the differentiating trait is that the focus, the value, was put on man himself That may sound painfully obvious, but it is extremely significant if you look back in history.

So, if we look at how it was laid out, we can look for ambiguities. If we look at the different ways it is practiced, we can look for interpretation errors. Integration errors that cause the pathology...

[Ellen Stuttle]

LOL. Are you accusing me of evasion, Dragonfly?

I'm afraid I have to disagree with you on two points. (You might be right about what you describe as "the lynch mob on RoR." That discussion was mega-long, and I only caught the tail end of it. I did think that Michael was being fuzzy between the moral and legal issues, and that that was at least part of why he was receiving so much flak.)

You write:

[...] the moral issue is standard fare, already treated in The Ethics of Emergencies.

I have never thought that the moral issue was well addressed in any of the Objectivist literature. The Ethics of Emergencies seems to me only to scratch the surface. And David Kelley's Unrugged Individualism places the brunt of the argument on a potential of trade. I mean it when I say that I would like to see the source of the moral sentiments involved explored. (I'm not convinced that those sentiments can be encompassed within the Objectivist viewpoint on human nature.)

However, as to the legal issue, I'm in synch with Objectivism since I can see no way in the real world of jurisprudence that one could frame such a law as you desire and keep said law safely constrained to the sort of once-in-twenty-years-of-blue-moons circumstance you want that law to address. Nor do I see what help such a law would be in such a circumstance, since by stipulation in the original scene, no one else except the child and the adult is there to know. If the adult in the scene is so callous as to pass by the starving child, what difference would a law make?

But I really do wish that instead of trying -- straight out of the chute, as it were -- to argue about whether or not a law would be a good idea, people would explore what the source within them is which produces the sense of moral revulsion.

Ellen

___

[Dragonfly]

Michael:

E tu, Brutus?

If you want to say it in Latin it should be "et tu, Brute?".

BTW, I can't remember having stabbed anyone lately...

We are rethinking the ethics thing right now. We will get to the politics down the road.

Ok, wake me up when you've arrived there.

[Dragonfly]

Ellen:

LOL. Are you accusing me of evasion, Dragonfly?

Oh my, that seems to be a Mortal Sin here...

I mean it when I say that I would like to see the source of the moral sentiments involved explored. (I'm not convinced that those sentiments can be encompassed within the Objectivist viewpoint on human nature.)

If you want to explore the source of those moral sentiments, you won't find them in philosophy. I think you'd better study evolutionary psychology. Oh, I'm missing Mike Psychmajor badly now, he would at least come up with some substantial contributions.

However, as to the legal issue, I'm in synch with Objectivism since I can see no way in the real world of jurisprudence that one could frame such a law as you desire and keep said law safely constrained to the sort of once-in-twenty-years-of-blue-moons circumstance you want that law to address. Nor do I see what help such a law would be in such a circumstance, since by stipulation in the original scene, no one else except the child and the adult is there to know. If the adult in the scene is so callous as to pass by the starving child, what difference would a law make?

AFAIK such a law does exist in the Netherlands. I don't know about babies in the woods, but you can't for example with impunity leave someone lying on the roadside bleeding to death if you're the only one at that moment who can save that person. Such things are certainly not once-in-twenty-years-of blue-moons circumstances (that's my problem with the baby example, it's highly unlikely and it has extra complications due to the problem of parental obligations etc.) And that many a murder is not detected is no argument to make no laws against murder.

[Jody Gomez]

Here's an interesting take.

http://www.objectivistcenter.org/ct-1252-N...y_Children.aspx

I have not wrapped my mind around it yet, but morally I think the answer lies somewhere in the fact that children do not have rights per se, because they can not act upon or utilize the rights that rational adults can. A child can neither make rational choices to support his life, nor choices that would destroy his life. He has no means, mentally or physically, to action. It is after all, this reason that we hold parents legally responsible for another's life(albeit their own childs.) Why don't we hold parents responsible for their child for the whole of that child's, even when an adult. The answer somehow lies in the answer to that question I think.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Note to all,

I just received an email giving a correction of a typo that slipped by me in Nathaniel's letter (thanks to T). I am advising this just in case anybody saved it before now for a future reference. The version you saved will have a small difference with the correction I just made.

The line that read before:

According to Objectivism, “there are no chosen obligations,” ...

Has been changed to:

According to Objectivism, “there are no unchosen obligations,” ...

Michael