Choosing death and murder

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Right. If a mass murderer uses his rational thought to achieve his goal, he's living "qua man". No doubt that's what Rand meant by survival as "man qua man"...

Dragonfly,

The real issue is to understand the standard "man qua man." This phrase means that man will use his reason to attain his goals. He will also use his reason to choose his goals.

So the mass murderer is using his reason to attain his goals but not to choose them. To the extent he is using his reason, he is living "qua man" (but only to that extent, since there is a part where he does not use his reason). I cannot imagine a bear or tiger going on a mass murder rampage planned over several weeks. They cannot exist "qua man."

This is all pretty elementary.

The kind of objection you made commits the same error that you accuse Rand of making: oversimplifying to the point of being ridiculous.

Michael

(Note: There was an error in the phrase "So the mass murderer is using his reason to attain his goals but not to choose them" that is given and corrected in posts below. It has been corrected here.)

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Bob,

I have spoken my piece and you insist on the same error. I am bored. The floor is yours.

Michael

[tjohnson]

So the mass murderer is using his reason to attain his goals but not to achieve them.

I don't see what the difference between 'attain' and 'achieve' is. Do you mean he uses his reason to plan and execute his murders but the goal of murdering is not reasonable?

[bmacwilliam]

So the mass murderer is using his reason to attain his goals but not to achieve them.

I don't see what the difference between 'attain' and 'achieve' is. Do you mean he uses his reason to plan and execute his murders but the goal of murdering is not reasonable?

Said another way, the argument is that the murder is objectively wrong ethically because a contradiction exists. The person must choose life-affirming, rational action in order to accomplish his goal of anti-life murder. Therefore it's life that is at the top of the heap value-wise even though he has 'evil' intentions.

I sounds logical 'n all, but it's nonsense as explained earlier.

Bob

[Dragonfly]

So the mass murderer is using his reason to attain his goals but not to achieve them.

I don't see what the difference between 'attain' and 'achieve' is. Do you mean he uses his reason to plan and execute his murders but the goal of murdering is not reasonable?

It doesn't make sense to me either.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

So the mass murderer is using his reason to attain his goals but not to achieve them.

I don't see what the difference between 'attain' and 'achieve' is. Do you mean he uses his reason to plan and execute his murders but the goal of murdering is not reasonable?

GS,

Thank you for catching that. I made a mistake. The correct phrase should read:

So the mass murderer is using his reason to attain his goals but not to choose them.

I am going to correct my original post above, but this post and the ones following it stand as a record of the way it was.

Michael

[Dragonfly]

Nobody uses reason to choose his goals, unless they're a means to achieve another, further goal (but that's merely shifting the subjective choice). Ultimately there is always a subjective choice smuggled in (which may of course be rationalized afterwards).

[Ellen Stuttle]

This simplistic view of life at the top of the hierarchy is also anti-evolution, and it's not too surprising that Rand conveniently sidestepped the evolution 'problem'.

Again, addressing the anachronistic nature of that charge: At the time when Rand wrote Atlas Shrugged and "The Objectivist Ethics," the idea that individual survival was the locus of evolution was the dominant theory (though some argued group-survivalist theories). Though Rand wasn't interested in the subject of evolution, she was not out-of-synch with the way the issue of "survival" was thought of by evolutionists -- or with the mainstream radical environmentalism of psychology, anthropology, sociology, in all of which fields determinants other than evolutionary were thought to have taken over with humans as of the development of the big brain. For evolutionists, the problem of what's called by them "altruistic" behavior presented a headache: How, in a Darwinian paradigm, could such behavior have evolved? The "selfish gene" solution, though some evolutionists were thinking along those lines, wasn't popularized to the world at large until 1976, well after Rand's writings on O'ist metaethics and at a stage of Rand's life when she'd had an operation for lung cancer, her husband was in serious decline physically and mentally, and she was pretty much withdrawn from paying attention to intellectual currents. Just who in her circle might even have brought The Selfish Gene to her notice? Harry Binswanger? Is there any evidence he understands the issues, or that he discussed them with Rand? Even if he did, I repeat (1) this was years after her writings on metaethics; (2) her non-interest in any relevance of evolutionary theory to specifically human behavior was shared by the mainstream intellectual climate of the time. (Where she differed from the mainstream was in opposing determinism of any variety, not in her radical environmentalism.)

Ellen

PS: None of the above is meant to disagree with you about what you called the "fallacy of hidden double definitions" (your post #9) in Rand's derivation of ethics (and in MSK's arguments). The standard logic-lexicon term is "equivocation," but Rand used "double definitions" so prominently in her arguments, I like the coinage of a special term for the technique.

Edited December 14, 2007 by Ellen Stuttle

[Mike11]

Wow, thank you all for your replies. You have given me a wealth of information that will take me some time to sort through. I'm going to mow all this over and reply maybe in a few days.

Thanks again.

[BaalChatzaf]

This is a thought experiment that was presented ...

Reminds me of the time in ninth grade geometry when the guy in front of me said, "Prove that I exist." He had me stumped then, but I found a solution later. This ObjectivismOnline Feed must be where today's ninth graders hang out.

Three words: "Man qua man."

That happened to me in the 9th grade too. I threw a blackboard eraser at the questioner. When she deflected the missile I pointed out that had she not existed the eraser would have continued in a straight line, which it did not. I believe Samuel Johnson used a similar argument against Bishop Berkeley.

P.S. I was suspended from school two days for throwing the eraser.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Edited December 14, 2007 by BaalChatzaf

[bmacwilliam]

This simplistic view of life at the top of the hierarchy is also anti-evolution, and it's not too surprising that Rand conveniently sidestepped the evolution 'problem'.

Again, addressing the anachronistic nature of that charge: At the time when Rand wrote Atlas Shrugged and "The Objectivist Ethics," the idea that individual survival was the locus of evolution was the dominant theory (though some argued group-survivalist theories).

Point taken, and admittedly I am not clear on the historical details of how evolotionary thought evolved - pardon the pun. But, when was it more clear that the idea of survival was generally considered secondary to gene replication? In my biological education, the gene replication or reproductive emphasis in evolution was front and centre and survival was not.

Also, this is again not the only place where evolution blew holes in her ideas.

Bob

[bmacwilliam]

Ellen:

"(2) her non-interest in any relevance of evolutionary theory to specifically human behavior was shared by the mainstream intellectual climate of the time."

While again I don't know the historical details here, and am not disagreeing with you, but WTF? What else could possibly be relevant to human behaviour other than evolution? God? Magical Fairies?

Bob

[Dragonfly]

Whether Rand can be excused for having particular views while she based them on what was considered to be common knowledge at the time is not really important. The point is that we now should know better. However, this is in conflict with the orthodox view that her philosophy is finished and forms an integrated whole that cannot be changed. This leads sometimes to attempts to reinterpret what she wrote, in a way that is similar to the attempts to fit the Genesis story to modern science (a "day" in Genesis is not what we call a day today, etc.). But others just maintain that we should take her literally and that she is right, whatever insights we may have gained in the decades after her death, it's just unthinkable for them that she might have been mistaken, even if understandably so. They don't let those pesky data destroy their ideas. Compare that for example with Einstein, whose general field theory ended where it did belong: in the trash can and simply forgotten. Of course he did have some good ideas as well, but that has been no reason to try to keep his failures alive.

[Ellen Stuttle]

This is just a hasty reply to 3 posts in one. I think the whole subject of the battle evolutionary thought as applied to human behavior has faced would be an interesting one to post about -- after the New Year's. Last night, since I was looking for a particular name (Lumsden) which had slipped my memory, I re-read a long passage, in a book I have called Sense and Nonsense, about the enormous fracas which ensued upon the publication in 1975 of E. O. Wilson's Sociobiology. I find the arguments between those who want to think of human behavior in evolutionary terms and those who resist (a category by no means restricted to Creationists and fellow travelers but including some very prominent biological scientists) extremely interesting. So I hope to return to this, after New Year's, on a separate thread.

Meanwhile, some quick comments:

[...] admittedly I am not clear on the historical details of how evolotionary thought evolved - pardon the pun. But, when was it more clear that the idea of survival was generally considered secondary to gene replication? In my biological education, the gene replication or reproductive emphasis in evolution was front and centre and survival was not.

I'm wondering when you acquired your biological education. I expect you're maybe a decade or more younger than I am? (I'm 65.)

Dawkins writes in the Preface to the 1989 Second Edition of The Selfish Gene:

The gene's-eye view of Darwinism is implicit in the writings of R. A. Fisher and the other great pioneers of neo-Darwinism in the early thirties, but was made explicit by W. D. Hamilton and G. C. Williams in the sixties [my emphasis].

When I was an undergraduate -- '60-'64 -- I didn't hear of this view in my standard biology course, though I did pick up glimpses of it through extraneous reading because of my being keenly interested in evolutionary theory. Few then who didn't read biology journals would have known of it.

==

Ellen:

"(2) her non-interest in any relevance of evolutionary theory to specifically human behavior was shared by the mainstream intellectual climate of the time."

While again I don't know the historical details here, and am not disagreeing with you, but WTF? What else could possibly be relevant to human behaviour other than evolution? God? Magical Fairies?

What else? Well...take your pick: If you were a reasearch psychologist, Hull-Spence learning theory, the intricate details of which I was required to master (and have blessedly at this stage mostly forgotten); if you were an anthropologist, cultural determinants; if you were a sociologist, economic determinants (there was, and I think maybe still is -- I'm not up-to-date on sociology -- a strong Marxist slant to a fair amount of sociological theory).

==

Whether Rand can be excused for having particular views while she based them on what was considered to be common knowledge at the time is not really important. The point is that we now should know better. However, this is in conflict with the orthodox view [...].

Of course I agree that what's of primary importance is what's a correct theory, and of course I'm not sympathetic to attempts to say Rand was right when she wasn't. But it isn't only O'ists, as I indicated above, who fight against an evolutionary approach to human behavior. (Nor is it as if there aren't many questions and problems about details of just how behavior does evolve.) I think the subject would be interesting to get into some detail about...later. ;-)

Ellen

___

[BaalChatzaf]

been mistaken, even if understandably so. They don't let those pesky data destroy their ideas. Compare that for example with Einstein, whose general field theory ended where it did belong: in the trash can and simply forgotten. Of course he did have some good ideas as well, but that has been no reason to try to keep his failures alive.

There is an old joke: what is the difference between the Philosophy Department and the Science Department? Answer: They have wastebaskets in the Science Department.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[bmacwilliam]

What else? Well...take your pick: If you were a reasearch psychologist, Hull-Spence learning theory, the intricate details of which I was required to master (and have blessedly at this stage mostly forgotten); if you were an anthropologist, cultural determinants; if you were a sociologist, economic determinants (there was, and I think maybe still is -- I'm not up-to-date on sociology -- a strong Marxist slant to a fair amount of sociological theory).

___

Well, with all due respect to these fields of study, non-science doesn't count.

My education (formal that is) was mid-late 80's. My area was Biophysics, but I did do some work in genetics and standard biology.

Bob

[UncleJim]

This is a thought experiment that was presented to me by the good folks at objectivionline a few weeks back. Let's assume that Johny Q. has chosen Death as is starting point, let's also assume Johny Q will be taking out someone who loves his life before doing so, what will be the ethical status of his choice relative only to him? To the John Galt he kills?

These were the asumptions at the forum -

1. He has no reason to kill Galt, no psychological motive and no percieved value is gained. He killed for the same reason Camus' Stranger killed the arab, because the Sun was bright.

2. Values and virtues depend on one's choice between life and death in Objectivism. Assuming one chooses death the values hierarchy becomes things that result in physical death and the virtues become acquiring these values.

The conclusion reached by me and some others on the OO.net IRC chat was that we ran into some nteresting relativistic aspects of Egoism. The life/death choice can not be judged itself as there is no vantage point to do so, we have a case of 2 contradicting yet valid trajecteries where Johny Q. did nothing wrong (the man is not a lost value if one rejects life as a premise) yet John Galt's death relative to him and those he knows is a tragedy.

Now if you want, feed the "antidogmatist yet domgatic in spite of himself" troll and discuss.

Notice how life is not a choice available to man. This is because it already exists. The only choice man has, in this regard, is whether he will choose to act to its benefit or not.

Edited February 19, 2008 by UncleJim