Critique of Objectivist ethics theory

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I felt uncomfortable responding directly for fear of being dismissed as a Rand-worshipper; there are a lot of very negative comments about Rand on this site, and I was starting to think that was the direction the site was evolving.

Laure,

In my zeal to connect with intelligent criticism of Rand (in order not to run from it or dismiss it out of hand as is usually done on other sites), I have been a bit relaxed, maybe too relaxed, about this. I never have considered you as a Rand-worshipper and I apologize for this impression if it has been the one you have carried in your heart. Please feel free to speak you mind.

I do object to the taunting and downright insults I have seen out of Rand-worshippers. But I have never seen this out of you.

When I personally make a negative comment about Rand, I have reasons for it that I can cite, so that opinion can be reversed if my reasons are seen to be in error. I have tried to be careful to balance that with good comments about her, also (equally backed up by reasons).

I have allowed people to object to her in order to get to the core of their objections. I am far more interested in the ideas than in the personalities. You will find many negative comments about Rand on OL, but there are many positive ones, too. There is no trend to trash her. The search for truth is my overriding concern, regardless of whether this goes for or against her. But balancing this is not always as easy as it seems, so I appreciate feedback from objective pro-Rand minds like yours.

Please, never feel intimidated. You are one of those I admire on this site.

Michael

[Victor Pross]

Daniel,

Our conversation about the is-ought issue (and ethics in general) is being lost among these other posts (however interesting they are). Let's get back. I was perhaps too hasty to say we have arrived at an impasse in the talk. It is a productive talk and lots of people are watching in it seems.

I asked you a few questions (if you still recall them) and I wait for your answers.

-Victor

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Ellen,

Your post below was such a thoughtful post, obviously made with great effort and physical discomfort, that I am repeating it here. I am afraid after all that effort, it got buried in some rapid-fire posts that followed.

Michael

MSK wrote:

[MSK] I don't think she meant "derive" in the sense that man cannot choose his values because they are all derived from facts in the same manner existence and identity are derived from existents. (Man cannot choose whether something exists or what it is. He can only accept that and build on it or run a serious risk of being destroyed by it.) Man can choose and she never tired of saying that.

You [Daniel] essentially stated that man has volition in choosing his values, but not in choosing how natural laws operate. That's about as purely Randish as you can get.

I replied (in part):

[ES] I think you're onto something there, Michael. She certainly didn't solve Hume's problem; I've come to think that the hitch is, she didn't understand it. In fact, as I've a couple times pointed out, she accepted the conditional nature of "ought" statements in her article "Causality Versus Duty." Repeating my synopsis of that article's theme: (1) in the words of an uneducated woman she knew, you "don't gotta do anything but die"; and (b ) there is no unchosen obligation. This agrees with Hume (though Hume wouldn't have put the issue like this). Another way of saying it is that nature dictates no rules, a point with which Rand explicitly agreed. Moral principles are chosen, she said ("Morality is a code of values accepted by choice," quoting the line from memory), not a set of commandments writ on some "tablet" external to human ends.

Darrell begins his reply:

[DH] The problem here is that "derive" is being used in a deductive sense when discussing ethics, while it is being used in some other manner when discussing the laws of physics. Physical laws can no more be deduced from observations than morality can be deduced from human nature. Neither can be deduced. But, there are other ways of reasoning.

Rand's argument concerning ethics is not that an ought can be "derived" from an is in a deductive sense, but that man's choice to live as a rational being is the only rational choice. There is no other choice that optimally preserves both life and rationality. One can attempt to set up other standards of value, but any other standard is incompatible with man's nature. If a person fails to take reason to be his highest value and virtue, then he is irrational, to some degree. If he fails to make life as a rational person his standard of value, then he is irrational (because there is no other standard that is compatible with rationality) and his odds of surviving are lower. Therefore, man ought to take his life as a rational person to be his standard of value because there is no other standard that is fully compatible with what he is.

I don't think you're quite right -- though I think you're partially right -- in the way you're presenting the issue. The Humean problem is one of deduction -- and even in physics, yes, we deduce from certain principles that certain occurrences will happen, though we don't arrive at the principles by deduction and we continue to test the principles by seeing if the anticipated results indeed occur. But the Humean point, if I understand it correctly -- bear in mind that it's been a number of years since I last read Hume -- is that statements of an "ought" form cannot be syllogistically deduced from statements of an "is" form (in the way that "Socrates is mortal" can be deduced from the premises "All men and mortal" and "Socrates is a man"). I disagree with you as to Rand's claim in Galt's Speech. She's terribly sketchy there, but I think she is saying that an "is" entails an "ought."

[DH] Rand has solved Hume's "is-ought" problem by restating it in a form that can be solved. It is true that the ultimate ought cannot be deduced from an is, but to state the question in that form misses the point. It is sort of like asking what happened before the beginning of the universe. The question assumes a contradiction and is therefore an uninteresting question. If we insist on taking Hume's question in an unanswerable form, it becomes equally uninteresting. But, if we drop the requirement that the ultimate ought be deduced from an is and reword it slightly, an answer becomes possible. If we ask, instead, whether there is some code of values, that is compatible with human nature, and if so, what it is, and whether there is more than one such code, then we can address the issue. The answer is that we ought to take life as a rational being as our standard of value because that is the only standard that is fully compatible with the nature of a rational being.

Again, I partly agree and partly disagree. (This, incidentally, is an example of why I find that I can't answer your posts in the amount of time I usually have for writing emails. It's because I think you're mixing together in the same "train of thought" statements which require considerable disentangling. If the lecture I was supposed to go to tonight hadn't been cancelled because of the snow storm, I wouldn't be able to try to answer this post.)

I disagree with your first sentence, that "Rand has solved Hume's 'is-ought' problem by restating it in a form that can be solved." Again, she's very brief in what she says, but as I read her, she hasn't restated, she's swept aside.

I agree with your statement "It is true that the ultimate ought cannot be deduced from an is," but then that is exactly Hume's point. And as I read Rand, this is the point with which she was disagreeing in her brief comment. This is why I think one would get farther by setting aside what I see as her gaffe there, and proceeding to examine the rest of what she says.

One next runs into the problem that she did attempt to deduce an "ought" from an "is": she attempted to deduce from the observation -- with which I agree -- that it's only in the context of life that the issue of value arises that therefore for any given living entity that entity's life is its standard of value. I think that this is the statement on which she tries to make a logical case for her ethics -- but with the result, as Dragonfly and Daniel have pointed out a number of times -- that she then switches her standard when "survival as such" isn't doing the trick to "man's life qua man." In short, in addition to thinking that no deductive attempt at getting a standard of value will work (a point to which I'll come back), I think she doesn't carry through with the reasoning of her own initial argument.

Your next sentence I agree with, just taking the sentence by itself:

"If we ask, instead, whether there is some code of values, that is compatible with human nature, and if so, what it is, and whether there is more than one such code, then we can address the issue." [Darrell}

I think that this is an addressable issue. Addressing it, though, is going to require your delineating what you mean by "compatible with human nature." And there I'm not going to agree with your approach, since in other things you write, you show that you want to use as your idea of "human nature" the "rational animal" definition of "man," a definition which I think is debatable and which in any case "loads the die" in regard to the factual question of whether or not there is "more than one such code." In brief, as to that question, I'd say, many codes have been accepted during the course of human existence, and humans are still here. Thus you'd have to switch the question to whether or not there is more than one code which could produce "optimal" human survival, i.e., you'd have to bring in, as Rand did, some standard of quality of life.

You proceed to answer your own question:

"The answer is that we ought to take life as a rational being as our standard of value because that is the only standard that is fully compatible with the nature of a rational being." [Darrell]

And there I again disagree -- and think you've gone straight back to foundering the argument on the Humean "is/ought" problem because you've left out the conditional, the "if" a person cares whether or not his/her life is "fully compatible with the nature of a rational being." Assuming the person does care, and assuming that your ethical code is the only possible code compatible with that nature, then, yes, the person ought to live by your code. But that's where the ball stops bouncing, IMO. You require the person's being motivated before the person is going to accept your "ought."

You continue:

[DH] We can debate whether life as a rational being is, indeed, the only standard that is fully compatible with the nature of a rational being, but only after we have agreed that such a solution actually solves the is-ought problem in a meaningful way.

As indicated, I don't agree that this solves the Humean problem. Instead, I think that the sensible thing to do is to acknowledge that any choice of an ultimate value in terms of which to structure a moral code is a choice from desire.

[DH] In order to get past the deductive bottleneck, we must stop viewing goals as purely instrumental. Of course, most goals are instrumental to the achievement of other goals. For example, the goal of obtaining bread is instrumental to the goal of eating which is instrumental to the goal of living. But, if we insist that every goal be instrumental to the achievement of some other goal, then we have made bridging the is-ought gap impossible a priori. This is the form in which deductive statements are stated when they are applied to values, i.e., as instrumental statements. So, by insisting that every goal be instrumental, we are insisting that every fact be deducible. Both lead to an infinite regress.

Well, you lost me there; I don't follow you. I'm not saying that every goal is instrumental. I think an ethical code (to be consistent) does rest on an ultimate goal. But I'm not thereby insisting that "every fact be deducible." To the contrary, I'm disagreeing that ultimate goals are deducible.

And here we get to something which I think is a deep unease a lot of people have but which I don't share. I'm unbothered by what I see as the impossibility of saying that there's some ultimate goal which inherently "ought" to be accepted. My belief is that the vast majority of humans do want to live an emotionally satisfying -- a fulfilled, and a happy -- existence, and that if one can present a way of living which they believe is going to work to that end, there will be a lot of takers. That some people would remain holdouts doesn't trouble me. It's always been so, no matter what ethical code has been devised. But I think that with an ethical code which truly did work to produce emotional fulfillment, there would be fewer holdouts than has historically been the case.

This reverts to something I said earlier, about a stroke of illuminating lightning. That pertained to a thought about the evolutution of ethical behavior in relationship to current (frequent, by my sampling) Objectivist behavior. I think that ethical behavior -- behavior governed by internalized standards of right and wrong -- did initially evolve in the species as a means of social control, a means of forging a workable group existence; thus the focus was on behavior toward others. It's only with considerable development of an existence past the hunting/gathering band that such notions as "personal fulfillment" can really begin to come into play. (For instance, there wouldn't have been just a whole hell of a lot of debating what "career" one wanted to choose in a hunting/gathering band; there was a degree of specialization of labor, but not much.)

I do think that Rand's ethics represents a step in the direction of placing personal fulfillment center stage. But I think that ways of thought from the stage of projecting the source of ethics outward onto an authority delivering commandments carried over, both in her thinking and in that of many of her followers. (I'm speaking there of those of her followers of whom I have some knowledge, in person and/or in listland. There could be lots of people out there in the world at large who have been affected by Rand's thinking but haven't introjected the moralistic attitudes which I think make O'ist's use of the O'ist ethics often so "insufferable," as Dragonfly described it.) I hope that eventually people will be able to eliminate all the moralistic aspects of the way she herself and at least some of her followers have gone about it, and instead focus on the main goal, pursuing one's own satisfying life. Furthermore, I think that recognizing the ultimately conditional nature of one's standard -- as she did in the "Causality Versus Duty" article -- would help in getting rid of O'ist's using ethics as a bludgeon for bashing others (and a scourge for castigating themselves, the other half of that syndrome).

Well, I gave a bit of a speech there. Concluding with your last paragraph:

[DH] Her argument with respect to ethics is similar to her arguments with respect to existence and identity. Existence cannot be deduced from prior facts. It is implicit in all facts, but it cannot be deduced from them. That is why it is taken to be axiomatic. Similarly, an ultimate end or goal cannot be instrumental to some even more ultimate end or goal. But, that does not imply that we cannot argue for the validity of such an end or goal --- and I have outline what I believe the proper form of that argument to be above.

Possibly you're right in seeing the similarity in her argument for life as the standard and her arguments with respect to existence and identity, but I disagree that she didn't try to deduce a validating standard from the fact of life; and, as said, I think she didn't stick to that but instead switched her supposed ultimate end and standard from survival to "man's life qua man"; also, I don't think it's possible to validate this goal as an ought preceeding desire; instead I think that accepting a fulfilling life as one's goal and hence standard remains a matter of choice beyond which there's no argument.

Ellen

PS: Fair warning that I'm unlikely to reply again at the length of the above. Along with my having much else to do, it really is a terrible strain on my neuromuscular problem to sit at a computer screen long enough to write point-by-point answers to complicated posts. I expect that you and I will remain in disagreement over several details under dispute. But I'm not the type who's prone by general inclination to keeping on with an argument attempting to convince someone who disagrees with me. I'm content just to disagree and leave it there in a great many circumstances (not in all; something urgent to my own existence is another matter, but I don't view this dispute as being such a something).

___

[Daniel Barnes]

Victor:

>Huh? Life can’t be defined? There is no logical way to resolve what?

No, life can be defined various ways. However, there is no logical way to resolve differences of opinion over the definition of words, a fact that seems to be too little understood in verbalist disputes. That is what I meant.

>I think this is all slippery talk because I suspect the very crux of ethics rests on life, human life—and you know it.

No I do not "know" this. What I do know is that basing ethics on "human life" is about as useful as basing ethics on "human nature", as all our actions can be attributed to our nature. It is not a profound insight in the least; it is a one-way ticket to a barren discussion.

>This is a breezy way of fudging the discussion---just when we are getting to the meat of it. (But I could be wrong).

You have a too-suspicious mind...;-) I am touching briefly on an important issue, namely a good way to avoid inherently pointless arguments. Perhaps you consider such verbalist discussions the "meat" of the issue - some do. I do not.

>is ethics a legitimate field of study?

I have no authority to decide the 'legitimacy' of any field of study! You can study anything you want, including ethics. Who on earth do you think might have such an authority? Ayn Rand?

>What purpose does ethics serve?

Obviously it examines our responsibilities to other people. If you mean what 'purpose', as in some teleological end, I do not believe in such things. We as individuals must choose our ends (and the ends of our ethics), and take responsibility for our choices, as, to return to the topic at hand, they are not derivable from an abstract system. No book will be ever written that will save you from this difficult responsibility, fortunately!

>what is the purpose of the study (of) ethics.

See above.

Edited March 17, 2007 by Daniel Barnes

[Daniel Barnes]

Darrell:

>Are you assuming that people can never choose to be irrational?

No, it seems to me that your argument was that rational people can never choose to be irrational. You seem to say so right here in your #310:

"I'm not assuming that the decider is rational, but if the decider is rational, he must make the rational choice." (Emphasis DB)

It seems in this new post you are now denying this. Would you mind clarifying your position?

[Brendan Hutching]

You're still trying to use deduction to state Rand's argument. But, it cannot be stated deductively, e.g., as a syllogism.

But I’ve just done exactly that, or at least your phrasing of her argument. If you don’t think I’ve stated Rand’s argument, show me where I’m mistaken.

It’s true that not all arguments can be stated as syllogisms, but your formulation of Rand’s is-ought argument certainly can: “Therefore, man ought to take his life as a rational person to be his standard of value because there is no other standard that is fully compatible with what he is.” You are arguing that a certain conclusion necessarily follows from a certain premise, and that is the form of a deductive argument.

The point of the syllogism is to show in convenient and abbreviated form the flaws in the argument. But you don’t have to use a syllogism to point out those flaws.

As for your implied rejection of instrumental or deductive reasoning, I don’t follow this comment. Perhaps you could elaborate.

Brendan

[Guyau]

What is ethics? What is moral value?

Dragonfly #42: “When we talk about ‘is’ versus ‘ought’ it is always in the context of ethics, and not about ‘you ought to eat’ or ‘you ought to breathe’ if you want to survive - these are no ethical matters. The ‘ought’ we are talking about is the moral ‘ought’, which we shouldn't confuse with the ‘ought’ of simply satisfying physiological needs.”

Bob Mac #52: “First of all, as Dragonfly mentioned, we need to get the physiologic values out of the discussion. Food and water as values don't count. We're talking ethics.”

Ross #57: “I disagree; we could not discuss ‘ethics’ or ‘values’ at all if human beings were not biologically capable of doing such in the first place (complex string of biological components here), and further without taking into account a particular ‘nature of man’, those terms would either be useless or incomprehensible. The very idea and need for ‘ethics’ and ‘values’ springs from what we are (or are not) and what we are capable of, and they clearly don't apply to all living organisms, only to a particular subset. The specific nature of those values and ethics (rationally conceived) would also change were it so that human beings operated from a single unified mind, for example, or by some other alternate biological foundation.”

Dragonfly #68: “An earthworm also ‘ought’ to eat if it wants to survive, but I think it would be silly to call the behavior of an earthworm that for some reason doesn't eat ‘unethical’. Ethics concerns our behavior towards other people; only a religion will condemn you for committing suicide or for sexual behavior that doesn't harm other people. That Objectivism tries to extend morality to purely personal and private concerns is [an error].”

Mike Hardy #99: “I entirely disagree on this one [that “ethics concerns our behavior towards other people”]. Ethics should be egoistic. . . . Here is a misunderstanding. It's as if you thought ethics is about condemnation of that which merits it, rather than about how to live. Ethics is in a sense only about personal and private concerns. My conscience doesn't exist in order to help you; it exists in order that I can use it and be guided by it.”

Dragonfly #115: “But when I think of ‘conscience’ it refers always to my behavior with regard to other people, not to the question whether I should brush my teeth, lose a few pounds or read the right kind of books, as long as such decisions can't harm other people.”

Dragonfly,

How would you situate your treatment of yourself by yourself in relation to moral awareness? Is that never a moral issue? How can your treatment of other people be a moral issue, yet your treatment of yourself not be a moral issue?

Bob and Dragonfly,

Would you think it incorrect to evaluate as morally good or bad your own voluntary actions that affect your physical health in a big way (and that do not affect anyone else significantly)?

I am not trying to slide you into ethical egoism by challenging your conception of what is in the realm of morality. As you may recall, I do not subscribe to ethical egoism.

Stephen

Edited March 18, 2007 by Stephen Boydstun

[Ellen Stuttle]

As you may recall, I do not subscribe to ethical egoism.

Stephen,

I'm sorry to say that I don't recall your saying specifically that. I do recall your saying that you don't consider yourself an Objectivist, but if you posted something giving reasons why not, sources of your disagreement(s) with Objectivism, I missed this. Do you have a link easily to hand you could direct me to?

Also, thanks much for clearing up the mystery of where and when AR was asked about her most important contributions and what she answered. You wrote in post #296:

This note is only a side-bar to the substantive issues in this thread.

Ellen and Rodney, yesterday you were struggling to recall a remark of Rand's saying what she saw as her most important contributions in philosophy. The remark occurred in her answer to a question in the Q&A the evening of Lecture 10 of Leonard Peikoff's 1976 lecture series "The Philosophy of Objectivism." She was asked what she considered to be her greatest intellectual discoveries. She replied that there were three: the non-initiation principle (for political theory), her ethics, and her theory of concepts.

Reading that, I remembered where I originally encountered the information. It was during a strectch on Atlantis when the non-initiation-of-force principle was being discussed; someone said that Rand had listed this as one of her most important contributions and someone else -- probably George Smith -- pointed out that actually she wasn't the first to formulate this idea, though it's unlikely she'd heard of the earlier natural rights theorist who came up with something similar. Next memory lapse on my part: I've forgotten who that theorist was. (I think it wasn't one of the major natural rights theorists.)

Ellen

___

[Ellen Stuttle]

Daniel, Dragonfly, and Michael, thanks for your compliments on my post #299.

And, Daniel especially, thank you for your persistence in this discussion. I'm quite incapable of keeping up and replying on a timely basis, and without your doing the lion's share of the work I'd probably feel too overwhelmed by the sheer volume of posts to try to participate at all.

Ellen

___

[Victor Pross]

Daniel, Dragonfly, and Michael, thanks for your compliments on my post #299.

And, Daniel especially, thank you for your persistence in this discussion. I'm quite incapable of keeping up and replying on a timely basis, and without your doing the lion's share of the work I'd probably feel too overwhelmed by the sheer volume of posts to try to participate at all.

Ellen

___

Damn, wish I had a tag team partner! I'm alone here! :hmm:

[Ellen Stuttle]

It is very difficult to discuss the many implications entailed by the distinction between teleological and deontological ethics.

Victor,

That's the second time (I've noticed) you've referred to a "distinction between teleological and deontological ethics." Again, I wonder where you're getting the description "teleological" as an ethical-system type. "Teleological" refers to a metaphysical, or in later development more narrowly a biological theory according to which nature is characterized by ultimate ends or purposes.

As I pointed out before, I think what you mean is "consequentalist" as the contrasting ethics-theory type to "deontological."

I wrote (in part) in the earlier post -- which I haven't time just now to search for to link:

"Consequentalist" means that correct action is judged by the results; e.g., "utilitarianism," the "greatest good for the greatest number." "Deontological" means that correct action is considered to inhere in the nature of things, that is to spring from ("de") reality as such ("ontology"). Kant's ethics is the prime example. If you looked up "consequentalist" and "deontological" on the Stanford Dictionary of Philosophy website, I expect you'd find loads of stuff about the history and the differences. A standing debate among Objectivists is whether the O'ist ethics belongs in one or the other category or has aspects of both while being neither.

Ellen

___

[Guyau]

Ellen,

A brief remark I made concerning my rejection of ethical egoism is at the RoR site. It was #13 in the Q&A thread "Self Interest?" Sorry, but I have not been able to operate the link function from here.

Edited March 18, 2007 by Stephen Boydstun

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

A brief remark I made concerning my rejection of ethical egoism is at the RoR site. It was #13 in the Q&A thread "Self Interest?" Sorry, but I have not been able to operate the link function from here.

Stephen,

Here is the link to your RoR post: Post 13 (Self interest?)

Michael

[Daniel Barnes]

Ellen:

>I've forgotten who that theorist was.

Wasn't it Lysander Spooner?

[Dragonfly]

How would you situate your treatment of yourself by yourself in relation to moral awareness? Is that never a moral issue?

No.

How can your treatment of other people be a moral issue, yet your treatment of yourself not be a moral issue?

Because "moral" implies for me always some kind of imperative, it tells you what you "ought" to do, which seems to me useful in dealing with others, for which I no doubt can construct a nice rationalization, but which is ultimately based on my gut-feeling, which is probably largely determined by my genetic heritage and my early education. But when dealing with myself alone I reject any obligation bestowed on me, any so-called "rational" system that presumes to tell me how to deal with myself. Whether I want to become a concert pianist, a succesful bussinessman or drink myself to an early death or jump from a bridge, it's my own decision, I owe no one. I choose my own goals and the means to realize them. I'm really the man without guilt.

Would you think it incorrect to evaluate as morally good or bad your own voluntary actions that affect your physical health in a big way (and that do not affect anyone else significantly)?

Yes.

[Brant Gaede]

How would you situate your treatment of yourself by yourself in relation to moral awareness? Is that never a moral issue?

No.

How can your treatment of other people be a moral issue, yet your treatment of yourself not be a moral issue?

Because "moral" implies for me always some kind of imperative, it tells you what you "ought" to do, which seems to me useful in dealing with others, for which I no doubt can construct a nice rationalization, but which is ultimately based on my gut-feeling, which is probably largely determined by my genetic heritage and my early education. But when dealing with myself alone I reject any obligation bestowed on me, any so-called "rational" system that presumes to tell me how to deal with myself. Whether I want to become a concert pianist, a succesful bussinessman or drink myself to an early death or jump from a bridge, it's my own decision, I owe no one. I choose my own goals and the means to realize them. I'm really the man without guilt.

Would you think it incorrect to evaluate as morally good or bad your own voluntary actions that affect your physical health in a big way (and that do not affect anyone else significantly)?

Yes.

I think you are actually deriding the existence of objectively valid personal moral imperatives as opposed to simply making the best choices for yourself by whatever standard(s) even though all choices for people are implicitly moral. You can't have free will without morality or morality without free will. The question then is whether one examines the nature of the morality one is using to validate it and eliminate contradictions so one can make more rational choices going forward. This would be a search for objectification which by your rights and maybe mine must fall short if for no other reason than humans are so damn complicated. To me there is a lot of trail and error involved. For instance, in designing an airplane the designers try not to make a defective airplane, but sometimes they do and the plane crashes, so they go back to the drawing board to make a better, safer machine. They are searching for objectification by using an objective standard. If we want the best personal choices we must start with reality as the standard, just like the designers. This basic choice is objective. Building on this we go subjective out of individual autonomy and uniqueness--that is I can't prescribe for you and you can't prescribe for me. It has to do with valuing. All valuing is subjective. This is objectively true. Now I may think my personal morality is so good and true that I share it with the world--good for you all too--and if some agree with me they might incorporate it--some or part--into their own moralities, modifying said moralities maybe or maybe not making a mess of things. The airplane might crash and burn. Striving for objectification is striving for knowledge. Knowledge is tentative, reality is not.

--Brant

[Guyau]

Dragonfly, when you say

"I choose my own goals and the means to realize them. I'm really the man without guilt."

it sounds like moral pride.

Do you feel pride towards some of the ways you have treated certain others in your life? If you do, would you see that as an aspect of moral consciousness?

Stephen

[Darrell Hougen]

Darrell:

>Are you assuming that people can never choose to be irrational?

No, it seems to me that your argument was that rational people can never choose to be irrational. You seem to say so right here in your #310:

"I'm not assuming that the decider is rational, but if the decider is rational, he must make the rational choice." (Emphasis DB)

It seems in this new post you are now denying this. Would you mind clarifying your position?

A person can choose to be irrational, but a person cannot choose to be irrational and still be rational. First, a person cannot make a logical error and still have a logically consistent system of thought. Second, a rational person certainly cannot purposefully choose to be irrational and still be considered rational. In either case, a person can return to rationality by either discovering the error or by deciding to be rational by choosing to value rationality more highly than whatever irrational conclusion the person had decided to adopt.

Scientists generally value rationality highly, both in terms of internal, logical consistency, and in terms of consistency with observation. However, every once in a while, one reads a story about a scientist that was so eager or desparate to make a scientific breakthrough that he deluded himself into thinking that something was true, even when it was not. Conversely, he may have actually made a breakthrough, but his jealous collegues or competitors were unable to accept it. In either case, one or more scientists were placing their own desires above logic. The path back to rationality is to admit that a mistake was made. It is the person that refuses to admit the mistake, either to himself or others, that has become irrational.

Darrell

[Dragonfly]

Dragonfly, when you say

"I choose my own goals and the means to realize them. I'm really the man without guilt."

it sounds like moral pride.

No, it's at most a relief that I won't be bothered by those busybodies that try to tell you what you should do.

Do you feel pride towards some of the ways you have treated certain others in your life? If you do, would you see that as an aspect of moral consciousness?

No, I never feel pride about the way I treat other people. In fact I feel practically never pride at all and I don't miss it. If I've accomplished something, I always see things that could have been done better, so there is no time to rest on my laurels.

[Daniel Barnes]

Darrell:

>A person can choose to be irrational, but a person cannot choose to be irrational and still be rational.

But this is not what I am asking you. You talk about "a person" who is making a choice to be rational or irrational. But you are not saying what is their status at the time of making that choice, and this is the very point at which I think your argument founders.

[Darrell Hougen]

Darrell:

>A person can choose to be irrational, but a person cannot choose to be irrational and still be rational.

But this is not what I am asking you. You talk about "a person" who is making a choice to be rational or irrational. But you are not saying what is their status at the time of making that choice, and this is the very point at which I think your argument founders.

It doesn't matter. A person that was previously rational can choose to become irrational. That is the nature of choice. Even though a person cannot arrive at a decision to be irrational by a logical argument, he can still make that choice at a particular moment in time. Similarly, an irrational person --- a person that has previously deluded himself --- can recognize his error and make a choice to acknowledge it.

The previously rational person and the previously irrational person are two sides of a coin. Although the previously rational person cannot, in logic, find any reason for accepting an unwarranted conclusion, he may do it anyway, perhaps for emotional reasons. Perhaps the truth that he is required (by logic) to face is too painful to accept. So, he evades reality and does not accept it.

Conversely, the person that has previously deluded himself, has a collection of unwarranted conclusions to handle. In attempting to reason, the previously accepted but false statements that clutter his memory keep getting in the way. Nevertheless, if he chooses to acknowledge the source of his error, he can begin to repair his damaged cognitive faculty.

Darrell

[Victor Pross]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-pHxlwFgOc...ted&search=

For interest, and germane to this thread, this is Rand discussing the ethics of rationality.

[Guyau]

These are statements about all organisms, from a single-cell organism to a human being.

Rand

"Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action."

"An organism's life depends on two factors: the material or fuel which it needs from the outside, from its physical background, and the action of its own body, the action of using that fuel properly."

"The automatic functions of living organisms are actions whose nature is such that they result in the preservation of an organism's life."

"The definition of organism (in general terms) would be: 'An entity possessing the capacities of internally generated action, of growth through metabolism, and of reproduction'."

Nietzsche

"The essential thing in the vital process is precisely the tremendous shaping force which creates forms from within and which utilizes, exploits the 'external circumstances'."

Guyau

"Existence and life imply nutrition, consequently appropriation, transformation for itself of the forces of nature. Life is a kind of gravitation upon itself. But a being always needs to accumulate a surplus of force to ensure the amount necessary to maintain life. Thrift is a very law of nature. What will become of this surplus force? . . . . Life has two sides. By the one, nutrition and assimilation; by the other, production and fecundity."

Each of these three philosophers developed a theory of value in general, and human chosen values in particular, around those various general features of living activity. All three knowingly relied on the science of biology in their own age. All were trying to be sensitive to that science in their theories of value and of what one should or should not do.

Both Rand and Guyau described their theories as the first true ethical theories based only on scientific facts. The casting of certain values as norms based on biology and psychology need not be nothing but a scientific casting in order to be a wholly rational casting. Which features of the biologically given and the psychologically given are stressed by a value theorist needs to be watched and remembered by the consumer.

I have finally gotten round to comparing and assessing the ethical theories of these three—Nietzsche, Guyau, and Rand. In the link below, follow especially the two installments “Life Itself” within the topic Life and Selfishness.

http://www.solopassion.com/node/4610#comment-52191

[vladimir_wong]

Bob,

There are some ethics that are completely objective. One is productive work. The other is using reason to judge reality for dealing with it. But here's the catch. Traditional ethics have always been decreed by a higher power, like the Ten Commandments. There is always an "if" (desired result) involved in all ethics. In religious ethics, that "if" is always is pleasing the higher power. (Thou shalt not kill "if you want to please God," and so on.)

With Objectivist ethics, the "if" always goes back to some reality-based value, then essentially back to the fact that reason is man's main tool of survival. Rand goes overboard and says that reason is man's ONLY means of survival, but the history of cavemen and primitive cultures shows that they managed to survive for centuries almost on the level of perceptual animals. However, reason is our means of knowledge. Here is one example of how this plays out in the social realm.

If you want to judge whether Person A murdered Person B, you need knowledge. Reason is man's means to acquire knowledge. Thus it is ethical to use reason to determine whether Person A murdered Person B. It is unethical to condemn Person A for murder because "God told the accuser" or that the accuser simply felt that the guilty man did it or the accuser had a vision or something like that. A formal movement during an age where this subjective standard was considered ethical, The Inquisition, is now considered, even by Christians, to have been an evil time of abuse of power where innocent people were tortured and killed. Today's suicide bombers are the perfect example of what happens when ethical standards are chosen on subjective, and not objective, criteria. I could do the whole conceptual chain, but that would take too long. Here we see that justice has to include the component of reason in order to be aligned with reality (true or false). That is derived from both reality and man's nature as a rational animal.

I will grant you that there are things Rand tried to include as ethical, such as artistic taste for a glaring example, which exceed the realm of ethics. Or more to the point, the field of ethics (values) was involved, but Rand did not make room for differing values, judging things only on a good/evil basis. On a metaphorical basis (thinking about morality), I say black and white exist in reality, but so does an entire spectrum of gray, and so does a rainbow of colors. When you claim that ethics are ONLY subjective, I see you saying that black and white do not exist at all. I see no reason whatsoever to claim that ONLY black and white exist or that black and white do not exist when I can clearly see black and white with my own eyes, and I can see gray and colors, too.

Sometimes I come across amusing examples of how reason develops on top of an irrational premise and results in turning a practice considered universally evil on its head. For example, cannibalism is usually seen as evil, yet there is a book called Brazil by Uys where the traditional warlike accounts of cannibalism among Brazilian Indians (probably Tupinambá, I no longer remember since I read the book some years ago) were given a different spin. In this version of cannibalism (known among anthropologists by the endearing term "affectionate cannibalism," a loved member who died is eaten so that he will not carry rotting flesh into the afterlife. These Indians were horrified at the white man's practice of burying the dead. I don't know what source Uys used for this, though, and his work is Michener-like fiction.

Also, the head-shrinking of the Jivaro Indians is well-known (they are from the Ecuador and Peru region of the Amazon jungle). If you look them up, you will see that their head-shrinking was to confine an enemy's spirit in the afterlife. Yet I had a friend in Brazil, a very colorful person named Edmund Bielawski, who actually filmed the head-shrinking ritual (he saved the life of a tribe member, so he became friendly with the tribe, and this was before the different armies went in and machine-gunned those Indians practically out of existence). It was quite a story and maybe someday I will write up an article about this person (we were drinking buddies). I have been gratified to see that Edmund must have finished his film because I saw it referenced doing a Google search, EXPLORING OF THE SOURCE OF THE AMAZON RIVER. I do know that Edmund would periodically exhibit an unfinished rough copy in Brazil when he got broke and these events would always result in ample news coverage.

What was explained to him by the Indians was that a friendly person could have his head shrunken, also. The idea was that if a person was doing many bad things in life, there were evil spirits in his head. So to cure him, they would shrink his head to a size that could not contain both his spirit and the evil spirits. The only inconvenience was that they had to decapitate him first in order to help him, but that was a mere detail...

In today's society, cannibalism is ritualized in the Christian communion, where people symbolically eat the flesh and drink the blood of Christ.

In all these cases, cannibalism is considered ethical. So I agree that from this perspective, the ethical consideration is subjective and cultural. But notice that if the premises behind the cannibalism are taken as values, reason is employed in obtaining them. In this sense, reason was not chosen to arrive at the premise, but reason was chosen to act on it.

Objectivism differs from most all other ethical systems in that it uses reason to determine the premises (core values). That is how it derives the "ought" from the "is."

Michael

[vladimir_wong]

Hi Bob

May I introduce myself. I'm Edmuno Bielawski's son Richard. Would it be possible to set up a dialogue between us via email? I really would like to talk to you regarding my father and his film (that I have). I don't even know if we met when I was over in Sao Paulo a number of years ago. If we did meet, please accept my apologies for not recognising you.