D. Hsieh on Explaining Atheism

[Brant Gaede]

Michael, you've merely introduced the political dimension to the discussion. Just as we have power relationships between countries butting up against each other so too within a country. You've always got to fight for your freedom or what freedom you have is either a mirage or happenstance. Collectivism is now intellectually and morally dead. What's left is blatant power grubbing and riotous discord and fighting. To fight for freedom effectively you need the morality of freedom--individual rights. You don't need Objectivism. Why? Because reality, reason and self interest are implicit in human being. You can reason backwards from theoretical political constructs embracing freedom right into Objectivism without needing the intellectual-cultural smorgasbord of the Philosophy of Ayn Rand, which is really not Objectivism at all though that's the label she put on it. That's a more effective way to educate than just starting with the metaphysics and arguing upwards to freedom. By the time you get to freedom, people will have stopped paying attention to you. Remember "the marble lover of freedom" in Les Miserables? Rand should have paid even more attention to that.

--Brant

[George H. Smith]

George,

Hsieh is pretty good at explaining how to eat retarded people, too.

Seriously. See here.

A couple of quotes for your culinary delight:

It's important, I think, never to sugar-coat one's views. So if we're considering whether anencephalics have no rights, then we have to consider the very disturbing consequences of that, namely that they could be raised and slaughtered just like any other animal. And yes, that could mean seeing human flesh available for sale in the grocery store. That needs to be considered.

Of course, that's pretty horrifying when you think about it. Yet it's a very serious error to allow one's emotions to guide one's thinking in such cases.

. . .

... whatever my feelings toward mankind in general, the fact is that anencephalics aren't more than a human shell, and they don't have any of the value that even very stupid people have. So if I feel repugnance at the thought of eating them, then perhaps that's an emotion that I should overcome by focusing on the relevant facts, rather than just accepting.

This is what happens when you stop thinking of yourself as an individual human being, but instead think of yourself as an individual thingamajigger floating through time and space, totally cut off from the rest of the universe being-wise and limited by a temporal existence.

This is also what happens when you stop thinking about yourself has a rights-bearing human being and instead think of yourself as an innate rights premise.

I finally got around to reading Hsieh's comments about anencephalics. I have no problem with her overall approach. Philosophers discuss this sort of thing all the time, and Hsieh simply uses an extreme, or "stress," case, to test the implications of a principle.

I disagree with Hsieh, however, over the issue of whether anencephalics have rights. I disagree because rights are based on the common characteristics of a species, not on individual variations within that species. Anencephalics are abnormal human beings --not non-human beings of a different species -- and as such they have the same fundamental rights as every other human being. Of course, this does not mean that anencephalics have a "positive" right to be kept alive by unwilling caregivers.

The morality of cannibalism is a different issue altogether, and it should be distinguished from the topic of harvesting anencephalics for a source of food. I agree with Hsieh that our repugnance to eating human flesh (assuming no rights have been violated) is a cultural taboo and nothing more. If I found myself in a "Donner Party" scenario, I would have no moral problem eating human flesh to keep myself alive, though I would regard it as unjust (i.e., as a violation of rights) to kill people for that purpose.

I'm afraid I do not follow your comment about "thinking about yourself [as] a rights-bearing human being and instead think of yourself as an innate rights premise." I seriously doubt if Hsieh would defend "an innate rights premise." She certainly would not endorse the view that a person is "an individual thingamajigger floating through time and space, totally cut off from the rest of the universe being-wise and limited by a temporal existence." I'm not even sure what this is supposed to mean, but Rand emphasized that rights are the application of morality to a social context.

Whatever you might think of Hsieh in other respects, she knows her Objectivism, and she would never base a rights theory on the notion that a person is "totally cut off" from other people. On the contrary, the presuppositions of beneficial social interaction are the foundation of Rand's theory of rights, as they have been for almost every individualistic defender of natural rights for several centuries.

Ghs

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Brant,

I don't care what you call the morality. Objectivism or anything else.

Once you morally justify cannibalism (and killing strangers) and obfuscate the core issue with a lot of highfalutin rhetoric, nit-picking over tangents and sanctimoniousness, you have morally justified the power to kill.

And i'm not talking about self-defense. I'm talking about taking another human being and offing him by intent and design.

Bad guys always latch onto stuff like moral justifications that allow them to do it.

If people want to see the true power of philosophy, let them look at what the bad guys do when they get a rationale.

I see Hsieh's treatment as an inverted "ends justify the means" argument. You narrowly define human nature, and then use any means to justify the end of pretending this is the whole story--even if this reasoning takes you to holding the power to kill strangers and eat them.

In other words, in order to be able to practice your full "rights," you get to kill others.

I think that kind of reasoning stinks on many levels. The political level is just one.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

On the contrary, the presuppositions of beneficial social interaction are the foundation of Rand's theory of rights, as they have been for almost every individualistic defender of natural rights for several centuries.

George,

I disagree. When I studied Rand, I learned that the foundation of morality (and by extension, rights) was the metaphysical premise that man is an end in himself.

All rights start with the right to life.

"Beneficial social interaction" is a byproduct, not a foundation. That's the way I learned it.

Michael

[George H. Smith]

On the contrary, the presuppositions of beneficial social interaction are the foundation of Rand's theory of rights, as they have been for almost every individualistic defender of natural rights for several centuries.

George, I disagree. When I studied Rand, I learned that the foundation of morality (and by extension, rights) was the metaphysical premise that man is an end in himself. All rights start with the right to life. "Beneficial social interaction" is a byproduct, not a foundation. That's the way I learned it. Michael

Yes, the moral (not metaphysical) principle that man is an end in himself is the basis for Rand' theory of rights, but rights are a specifically social concept. Rand's theory of rights is the application of her basic moral principles to a social context. As Rand put it in "Man's Rights" (VOS, 92):

"Rights" are a moral concept -- the concept that provides a logical transition from the principles guiding an individual's actions to the principles guiding his relationship with others -- the concept that preserves and protects individual morality in a social context -- the link between the moral code of a man and the legal code of a society, between ethics and politics. Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.

Rand's remarks are not consistent with your earlier characterization, unless I seriously misunderstood what you meant to say.

Ghs

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

George,

That's one of the passages where I learned it. And my thinking goes, if rights are a kind of moral concept, you can't divorce the foundation of the morality from those rights without resulting in a stolen concept.

Now here is where I constantly see people in our subculture make a fundamental mistake--they leave out the law of identity when talking about man. (Even Rand did this in characterizing a fetus as a "piece of protoplasm" instead of a human life in the stage between conception and birth.)

Rand identified man as a "rational animal." Then she proceeded to forget all about the animal part, except sporadically when it was convenient. Overall, though, she generally stayed consistent enough for her arguments to suit both genus and differentia. Just a few clunkers. Her progeny like Hsieh take this forgetting the genus part to a whole new level.

"Man is an end in himself" becomes a license to consider oneself (one's own life) as not being a part of a species. All you need to be in order to be a proper individual is be "rational." The rest (even DNA) is simply gravy. Once you do that, you allow a crack to form so that, in certain instances (on a fundamental level), it's OK to consider another person's life as a means to your end. In other words, after a lot of blah blah blah, this ends up at the following place: If another person is not "rational," obviously this person is not a human being. So I can take his life as I see fit.

You thus redefine human nature to fit the rights (or activities) you want to exercise. You invert it. You do not derive rights from human nature--the human nature you are supposed to identify by observing it. You deduce human nature from a principle, then build your morality on that principle as a foundation.

After that, you let logic go ape-shit and get to the point where it's perfectly acceptable (with some qualifications for show so as not to be too icky) to consider cannibalism as morally justified--as an acceptable human value for God's sake. And you put on airs that you are being courageous and not allowing your emotions to cloud your reasoning.

But your premise, your identification of what a human being is, does not align with reality. This is actually no logical problem when you do it inverted. (I.e., when a false premise does not bother you.)

But if you want to do it hierarchically, where you build from the ground up, where are you supposed to get a notion of that reality? Observation. Not deducing identity from a principle. In the Objectivist epistemology I learned, all concepts have to be able to be traced back to sensory data and percepts.

When "man is an end in himself" ends up meaning "a principle is an end in itself," you can literally get good moral cannibals as a result.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Brant,

I don't care what you call the morality. Objectivism or anything else.

Once you morally justify cannibalism (and killing strangers) and obfuscate the core issue with a lot of highfalutin rhetoric, nit-picking over tangents and sanctimoniousness, you have morally justified the power to kill.

And i'm not talking about self-defense. I'm talking about taking another human being and offing him by intent and design.

Bad guys always latch onto stuff like moral justifications that allow them to do it.

If people want to see the true power of philosophy, let them look at what the bad guys do when they get a rationale.

I see Hsieh's treatment as an inverted "ends justify the means" argument. You narrowly define human nature, and then use any means to justify the end of pretending this is the whole story--even if this reasoning takes you to holding the power to kill strangers and eat them.

In other words, in order to be able to practice your full "rights," you get to kill others.

I think that kind of reasoning stinks on many levels. The political level is just one.

Michael

You may be writing a little too fast here, Michael. The "power" to kill has nothing per se to do with morality. It's the exercise of that power. Sometimes it is morally permissible to kill another human being. I am not talking about cannibalism, of course, but self defense. Offing another by "intent and design" is simply murder, assuming not a war context.

I'm getting a feeling we are talking about the baby abandoned in the woods again--ignored by the passerby to die.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Offing another by "intent and design" is simply murder, assuming not a war context.

Brant,

So what would you call the following, self-defense or murder? This are Ms. Hsieh's words,.

She is "considering whether anencephalics" "could be raised and slaughtered just like any other animal. And yes, that could mean seeing human flesh available for sale in the grocery store."

Is that murder or self-defense?

I sure as hell see power involved.

Does this justify it? "... the fact is that anencephalics aren't more than a human shell." (Hsieh's words again.)

This is a perfect example of what I'm talking about--redefining human nature to fit the principle. You say anencephalics aren't rational so you claim they're really not human beings. And they aren't by your very definition of human nature. So we can eat them. You get to preach murder as a human value (as moral, morality being "a code of values to define man's choices).

Michael

[ThatGuy]

Diana Hsieh: "Of course, that's pretty horrifying when you think about it. Yet it's a very serious error to allow one's emotions to guide one's thinking in such cases."

Michael Stuart Kelly: "This is a perfect example of what I'm talking about--redefining human nature to fit the principle."

Something about all this reminds me of something from The Passion of Ayn Rand:

"When he arrived at my apartment early next morning-collecting a speeding ticket on the way-it was clear from his face that something of extraordinary meaning had happened to him. They had talked long into the night, he said excitedly; her conversation was brilliant, powerful, overwhelming in its clarity and consistency. She had talked about reason, and why reason versus mysticism, mand's mind versus faith, was the most fundamental of all philosophical issues…As she discussed the absolutism of reason, he had interrupted to say uneasily, 'But there's a problem.' Ayn was later to explain that the exchange that followed was, for her, the highlight of the evening, convincing her that Nathaniel was an unusually intelligent and promising young man. He has said, 'Even if I were somehow rationally convinced that I should murder, say, my wife, I don't think I'd be able to do it. So doesn't reason have limits?' 'Did you say rationally convinced?' Ayn had asked quietly. 'Oh…' he had answered. Then he had laughed. 'Of course.'"

It brings to mind Nathaniel Branden's comment that "awareness moves freely in both directions, or it moves in neither." (From memory, don't have the quote in front of me.)

I think the passage and quote from Barbara and Nathaniel Branden, together, should be remembered by anyone asking taboo questions from the viewpoint of Objectivism, in the way that Ms. Hsieh has done. What if Mr. Branden had been "rationally convinved" to kill his wife?" Would it have been rational, or a rationalization? If "rational," it may not feel good, despite any moral justification. And if awareness moves freely in both directions, then if one moves in the direction of asking such questions, one has to ask about the emotional effects of the other direction (one may have a rational reason that clashes with their emotional rejection of such things, as a human being.) Otherwise, you get uncomfortable examples like Nietzsche's influence on Leopold and Loeb (recently discussed here) and Rand and Hickman.

[Brant Gaede]

Offing another by "intent and design" is simply murder, assuming not a war context.

Brant,

So what would you call the following, self-defense or murder? This are Ms. Hsieh's words,.

She is "considering whether anencephalics" "could be raised and slaughtered just like any other animal. And yes, that could mean seeing human flesh available for sale in the grocery store."

Is that murder or self-defense?

I sure as hell see power involved.

Does this justify it? "... the fact is that anencephalics aren't more than a human shell." (Hsieh's words again.)

This is a perfect example of what I'm talking about--redefining human nature to fit the principle. You say anencephalics aren't rational so you claim they're really not human beings. And they aren't by your very definition of human nature. So we can eat them. You get to preach murder as a human value (as moral, morality being "a code of values to define man's choices).

Michael

That's murder, legally and morally. And here's a practical problem, assuming it isn't murder and such people can be raised to be eaten: You've got about a thousand of these people on your farm, fattening them up as if they were cattle. How can anyone be sure that half of them aren't cognitively normal but drugged up to keep them quiet before they're transferred to the slaughterhouse?

--Brant

Diana, please stop calling yourself an Objectivist--please!

Motel Hell

[ThatGuy]

Diana: "So if I feel repugnance at the thought of eating them, then perhaps that's an emotion that I should overcome by focusing on the relevant facts, rather than just accepting."

Nathaniel Branden: "...feel deeply to think clearly."

[Brant Gaede]

Diana: "So if I feel repugnance at the thought of eating them, then perhaps that's an emotion that I should overcome by focusing on the relevant facts, rather than just accepting."

Nathaniel Branden: "...feel deeply to think clearly."

Dearest Diana: If you ever read this I wish to inform you that never have you ever been more full of shit insofar as I've ever read anything by you.

--Brant