Peikoff's Peculiar Notion of Honesty

[Jonathan]

Recently I was comparing some Objectivists' interpretations of The Fountainhead, and I came across Peikoff's opinion, given in this podcast from January 12, 2009, that Roark wasn't dishonest in conspiring to allow Keating to pass off Roark's work as his own.

Peikoff's view is that Roark was "simply retaining his right to privacy," and that he wasn't lying, but just "not telling" the public anything; he was "not distorting the facts," but just "refusing to discuss them," which is perfectly acceptable.

Peikoff also says that "it would be a very different thing if he was going around places saying, 'You know, I had nothing to do with this thing...'" Peikoff says that "then it would be deception."

Well, apparently Peikoff needs to brush up on the details of the novel, since Roark did indeed deny that he had worked on the Cortlandt Homes project. When questioned by Wynand, he claims to not know what Wynand is talking about, and explicitly tells him that Keating designed Cortlandt Homes.

Aside from that, though, it's interesting that Peikoff thinks that the act of knowingly and intentionally entering into an agreement to pass off one's work as someone else's isn't in itself dishonest. It gives the impression that Peikoff believes that only words, and not actions, can be dishonest.

I have to wonder if Peikoff's views apply to everyone, or only to those whom he has deemed to be official Objectivist heroes (fictional or otherwise). Would I be merely "retaining my right to privacy" if I conspired with a friend to allow him to claim that some sketches I whipped up were originals by Capuletti or O'Connor, with the intent of selling them to gullible Objectivist collectors? After all, I wouldn't say anything. I wouldn't make any false claims. My business partner would be the only person making false statements, so my role in the scam -- my intentionally creating art for the purpose of selling it as someone else's -- wouldn't be dishonest, right?

And I wonder what Peikoff would think if a student in one of his classes, or in classes sponsored by the Objectivist organizations that he endorses, went into the business of writing term papers for his fellow classmates, knowing -- expecting -- that they'd be handed in under the names of those who didn't author them. If caught, would Peikoff punish only those who turned in the papers, but allow the person who wrote them to remain in his classes unpunished because he did nothing dishonest?

J

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Jonathan,

I can't resist a quip answer to your questions:

Only if done heroically.

Michael

[ginny]

Peikoff does have a slanted view on honesty. He went on record in his lecture in saying that absolutely NO white lie (except to a dying patient) is ever acceptable. I've learned that that means anyone ELSE is guilty of lying. He and other objectivists are retaining their privacy if they wish to twist the truth. But as Michael says, Peikoff does it in a heroic manner, so it's okay.

Ginny

[Brant Gaede]

When my Father was in college 80 years ago he earned a little money by typing term papers. However he corrected spelling and grammatical mistakes, maybe tidied up the prose a bit. He was called in and told he could type them but only as written.

Roark acknowledged he shouldn't have helped Keating, not because it was dishonest but because of the effect on Keating.

I think a lot of Rand's desire for privacy might have had serious roots in Soviet Russia where honesty could get you or family or friends killed.

-- Brant

[jeffrey smith]

I think a lot of Rand's desire for privacy might have had serious roots in Soviet Russia where honesty could get you or family or friends killed.

-- Brant

It may well have begun even earlier. She was the child of a (heavily assimilated, but not converted) Jewish family in Czarist Russia. One Czarist Prime Minister is said to have summarized his policy towards Russian Jews as have a goal of one third converting to Russian Orthodoxy, one third emigrating from the Russian Empire--and the remaining one third he intended to starve to death. Although a lot rarer than in Soviet Russia, the mere fact of being a Jew could get "you or family or friends killed".

[jeffrey smith]

Peikoff does have a slanted view on honesty. He went on record in his lecture in saying that absolutely NO white lie (except to a dying patient) is ever acceptable. I've learned that that means anyone ELSE is guilty of lying. He and other objectivists are retaining their privacy if they wish to twist the truth. But as Michael says, Peikoff does it in a heroic manner, so it's okay.

Ginny

I'm more than a little puzzled here. I thought one of the points in the litany that proved Kant was the False Prophet of the Apocalypse and the Father of Evil was that he thought one should never lie, even for the sake of saving another person's life. Or was that a non-ARI approved criticism? (It came, IIRC, through Diana Hsieh.)

[Robert Campbell]

It looks to me as though Dr. Peikoff is just elaborating a little on the unexplicated claim he made in Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, that one is entitled to lie to protect one's privacy from "snoopers."

Diana Hsieh used to oppose "privacy lies." I don't know her current position on the matter.

Will he next be telling us that blowing up Cortlandt Homes would also be OK in real life?

Gack.

Robert Campbell

[Brant Gaede]

It was okay to blow them up in The Fountainhead, an alternate reality. That was the essence of Rand's genius--the creation of alternate realities.

--Brant

[ginny]

Philip, I agree that there's nothing wrong with the way you described honesty. It wasn't the way Peikoff talked about it. He never mentioned ay right to privacy. As a matter of fact, I spoke with one of the high echelon guys (a lecturer at the summer seminars) at the time about an example of a husband being in a store trying to buy his wife some nice lingerie as a surprise for her birthday. When his wife catches him, what should he say? I said he should make up any excuse for being in the store. The other person told me no way. The only option the husband had was to fess up and have the surprise spoiled.

Jeffrey, I don't know how Kant fits in there; I'm just saying Peikoff spoke out several times against any kind of white lies.

[Philip Coates]

> When his wife catches him, what should he say? I said he should make up any excuse for being in the store. [ginny]

I'm with you. And if I'm on your Christmas list, I like briefs not boxers. Hanes Extra large.

Although I'm living in Florida now, so I . . . well, never mind . . .

[Philip Coates]

WHAT HAPPENED TO MY POST IN REPLY TO ROBERT? AND GINNY RESPONDED TO? IT VANISHED --HERE IT IS AGAIN ==>

> the unexplicated claim he made in Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, that one is entitled to lie to protect one's privacy from "snoopers." [Robert Campbell]

Robert, you can't cover everything in one book. Unless I'm having early Alzheimer's, I know I heard him explain and defend it somewhere. Probably oral tradition -- podcast, his radio program, question period in a course. It's an extension of his humorous point about lying to a lunatic waving a bloody knife and asking "where are your children?" Diana H's point [i debated this with her on some discussion list, probably Atlantis] was that you can always protect your privacy by simply refusing to answer. But you can't always. A little thought will provide examples.

Protecting your privacy is analogous to the potential murderer in that it is a -defensive- lie. You are protecting a value you are entitled to want to keep. Very different from the normal lie which is trying to gain the unearned "in matter or in spirit." Sometimes a refusal to answer allows the questioner to infer an answer: "So your father was having an affair?" "Have you ever slept with . . . ?" "I understand you keep valuable jewelry in your house?" So you (sometimes) may need to deceive someone not entitled to take that information from you and/or to infer something by your silence or evasiveness [when a normal person is likely to have simply said no if the answer was no] by saying something other than "I refuse to answer" or "I won't tell you."

The broader principle is that the virtues are contextual. Productivity does not apply when you are an infant or about to die or are still a student (well, on this last, I guess you could say your learning is productive in a sense but that is not the way the term is usually used.) Reason doesn't apply when you're asleep. Honesty doesn't apply "under the gun" - either literal force or any "indirect" attempt to extort a value. Like breaching your privacy, in a case where you are properly entitled to choose to retain it.

Contrary to the title of this thread, "Peikoff's Peculiar Notion of Honesty", there is nothing peculiar about this view of honesty as contextual at all. I bet if you were to ask nine out of ten people in a shopping mall or at a restaurant if they agreed [remind me to try this at Denny's!] , they would say this view of a limitation on honesty is not controversial. And it's what they would do and have done. And it's proper to defend yourself in that way.

The above paragraphs happen to be my view and reasoning. But I recall them as P's also. Though he didn't go into the detail or multiple examples I just did.

[Philip Coates]

[and here is the one I posted immediately after my post above ==> ]

This doesn't suggest I would agree with Roark's lie on Cortlandt (outside of fiction). I wonder whether force or the threat of force was used by Toohey to keep him out of getting commissions?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

WHAT HAPPENED TO MY POST IN REPLY TO ROBERT? AND GINNY RESPONDED TO? IT VANISHED --HERE IT IS AGAIN ==>

Phil,

I just now saw two posts by you in our trash bin. Only Kat, I or you have the technical power to delete your posts here on OL, and I know that neither Kat nor I deleted them.

It's a pain, I know, but you have to read the screen when you click buttons. There is no other way.

This is not a criticism, but an observation for you to be aware of. I, for one, am acutely aware of the irritating newness of the need to constantly do this stuff when migrating from a lifetime of using typewriters and pens/pencils.

Chalk it up to a drunk mouse...

Michael

[Philip Coates]

> It's a pain, I know, but you have to read the screen when you click buttons. There is no other way.

I probably screwed up somehow.

I KNOW I'm SUPPOSED to be infullble.

Proof ofthis is I nevr make typos.

[Robert Campbell]

Robert, you can't cover everything in one book. Unless I'm having early Alzheimer's, I know I heard him explain and defend it somewhere. Probably oral tradition -- podcast, his radio program, question period in a course. It's an extension of his humorous point about lying to a lunatic waving a bloody knife and asking "where are your children?" Diana H's point [i debated this with her on some discussion list, probably Atlantis] was that you can always protect your privacy by simply refusing to answer. But you can't always. A little thought will provide examples.

Protecting your privacy is analogous to the potential murderer in that it is a -defensive- lie. You are protecting a value you are entitled to want to keep. Very different from the normal lie which is trying to gain the unearned "in matter or in spirit." Sometimes a refusal to answer allows the questioner to infer an answer: "So your father was having an affair?" "Have you ever slept with . . . ?" "I understand you keep valuable jewelry in your house?" So you (sometimes) may need to deceive someone not entitled to take that information from you and/or to infer something by your silence or evasiveness [when a normal person is likely to have simply said no if the answer was no] by saying something other than "I refuse to answer" or "I won't tell you."

Phil,

Dr. Peikoff used the example of the guy with the bloody knife in his 1976 lectures. He also specifically indicted Kant for claiming that you would have a duty to tell the truth to the guy with the bloody knife.

He did not mention lying to protect privacy. In OPAR, this was specifically contrasted with lying to criminals or terrorists.

I don't know when "privacy lies" made their debut in his lectures, but for sure it was after 1976. Hence my dissatisfaction with his refusal to explicate, when he brought "privacy lies" up in OPAR.

All he had to do was cut one paragraph of superheated rhetoric, and he would have had room to give some of his reasons.

Robert Campbell

[Jonathan]

This doesn't suggest I would agree with Roark's lie on Cortlandt (outside of fiction).

Which lie? The verbal lie that he told to Wynand, or the act of passing off his work as Keating's? Or both?

I wonder whether force or the threat of force was used by Toohey to keep him out of getting commissions?

Are you saying that if someone uses the threat of force as a means of trying to prevent an architect from getting commissions, the architect then has the right to try to pass off his work as someone else's, or to use whatever other means of deception or vigilanteism he unilaterally decides is appropriate?

It sounds to me as if you might be advocating some form of anarchy, Phil.

J

P.S. - What if a second heroic architect -- a new kid in town, fresh from the quarries -- had recognized Roark's work being passed off as Keating's, and concluded that the entire project was steeped in lies, fraud and political pull, and believed that such practices were a form of force which prevented him from having a chance at getting the job? Wouldn't he then have the right to engage in his own choice of vigilanteism and retaliate against anyone and/or everyone involved, including Roark? And then the second architect's use of force might have been seen by other heroic cub architects as justification to take matters into their own hands as well. It could have ended up being a chain reaction of heroic Objectivist deception and destruction!

[Xray]

Philip, I agree that there's nothing wrong with the way you described honesty. It wasn't the way Peikoff talked about it. He never mentioned ay right to privacy. As a matter of fact, I spoke with one of the high echelon guys (a lecturer at the summer seminars) at the time about an example of a husband being in a store trying to buy his wife some nice lingerie as a surprise for her birthday. When his wife catches him, what should he say? I said he should make up any excuse for being in the store. The other person told me no way. The only option the husband had was to fess up and have the surprise spoiled.

Jeffrey, I don't know how Kant fits in there; I'm just saying Peikoff spoke out several times against any kind of white lies.

Ginny, which even remotely plausbile excuse can a husband make up when his wife sees him at the cash desk with woman's lingerie? Tell her he has bought it for someone else?

Edited August 3, 2009 by Xray

[Xray]

It was okay to blow them up in The Fountainhead, an alternate reality. That was the essence of Rand's genius--the creation of alternate realities.

--Brant

Rand explicitly stated that Roark was "the ideal man", "as man should be".

And would that be a desirable alternate reality where such acts of violence as Roark committed them are thought of as justified (by the author who created it in her book)?

Edited August 3, 2009 by Xray

[ginny]

X-Ray, in my example, the husband isn't holding up a bra for inspection. He's near the lingerie department. He can say he's on his way through to buy a tie.

[Xray]

This doesn't suggest I would agree with Roark's lie on Cortlandt (outside of fiction).

Which lie? The verbal lie that he told to Wynand, or the act of passing off his work as Keating's? Or both?

I wonder whether force or the threat of force was used by Toohey to keep him out of getting commissions?

Are you saying that if someone uses the threat of force as a means of trying to prevent an architect from getting commissions, the architect then has the right to try to pass off his work as someone else's, or to use whatever other means of deception or vigilanteism he unilaterally decides is appropriate?

It sounds to me as if you might be advocating some form of anarchy, Phil.

J

P.S. - What if a second heroic architect -- a new kid in town, fresh from the quarries -- had recognized Roark's work being passed off as Keating's, and concluded that the entire project was steeped in lies, fraud and political pull, and believed that such practices were a form of force which prevented him from having a chance at getting the job? Wouldn't he then have the right to engage in his own choice of vigilanteism and retaliate against anyone and/or everyone involved, including Roark? And then the second architect's use of force might have been seen by other heroic cub architects as justification to take matters into their own hands as well. It could have ended up being a chain reaction of heroic Objectivist deception and destruction!

Good questions.

Edited August 3, 2009 by Xray

[Philip Coates]

> where such acts of violence as Roark committed them...

Shouldn't there be an entrance examination on a board related to Rand's ideas in which i) you have to have read and understood Rand's concept of the **initiation of force** and its precise meaning as a moral criterion and ii)therefore no longer use sloppy liberal terms like **violence** instead as a moral criterion???

I mean what did Rand do all those essays for, precisely explaining all this -- if we constantly have these kinds of incredibly basic objections?

X-ray, if you DISAGREE with Rand's concept of what constitutes IOF and what constitutes retaliatory force, then at least show us you understand the concepts.

[Xray]

X-Ray, in my example, the husband isn't holding up a bra for inspection. He's near the lingerie department. He can say he's on his way through to buy a tie.

Ah, I see.

Edited August 3, 2009 by Xray

[Xray]

> where such acts of violence as Roark committed them...

Shouldn't there be an entrance examination on a board related to Rand's ideas in which i) you have to have read and understood Rand's concept of the **initiation of force** and its precise meaning as a moral criterion and ii)therefore no longer use sloppy liberal terms like **violence** instead as a moral criterion???

I mean what did Rand do all those essays for, precisely explaining all this -- if we constantly have these kinds of incredibly basic objections?

X-ray, if you DISAGREE with Rand's concept of what constitutes IOF and what constitutes retaliatory force, then at least show us you understand the concepts.

"The basic political principle of the Objectivist ethics is: no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. No man—or group or society or government—has the right to assume the role of a criminal and initiate the use of physical compulsion against any man. Men have the right to use physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. The ethical principle involved is simple and clear-cut: it is the difference between murder and self-defense. A holdup man seeks to gain a value, wealth, by killing his victim; the victim does not grow richer by killing a holdup man. The principle is: no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force." (Rand)

Who initiated force against Roark which then entitled him to use "retaliatory force"?

Edited August 3, 2009 by Xray

[Xray]

Peikoff does have a slanted view on honesty. He went on record in his lecture in saying that absolutely NO white lie (except to a dying patient) is ever acceptable. I've learned that that means anyone ELSE is guilty of lying. He and other objectivists are retaining their privacy if they wish to twist the truth. But as Michael says, Peikoff does it in a heroic manner, so it's okay.

Ginny

But doesn't the very idea of individualism involve not asking oneself whether a Peikoff (or even a Kant or whoever else, doesn't matter) would "approve" of one's subjective choices to tell the truth to whom and under what circumstances? Isn't that delegating to another person one's own capability to come to a personal decision and assume responsiblity for it?

Edited August 3, 2009 by Xray

[Philip Coates]

> Who initiated force against Roark which then entitled him to use "retaliatory force"?

X-Ray, there's lots of forms of force. Whole law books are full of them. One major category is called 'torts' in the law. If I trespass or decide to squat at your summer home while you are away in Europe, it's force. {If I walk across your lawn that is a very minor form of force, in this case trespass, in Rand's usage.)Force includes any taking away or appropriating what does not belong to you or is not voluntarily given. It can be direct. Or indirect, by implicattion or extension. Rand's concept of force is a broad one. There is not necessarily a physical gun involved, or bruises, etc. It includes for example: fraud, embezzlement, taking away of intellectual property...see any law book for more of this. If a contract requires a building be built a certain way and it is not, then the people who allowed that and/or promulgated that are involved in initiating force against Roark.

Similar thing as what happened to Roark in regard to misapprehension of, let's call it, intellectual property would be this: I write a book advocating freedom and the publisher completely changes my words so that I'm advocating something else.

In both cases, clearly there is an issue of rights being abrogated involved.

( Now in the real world, as opposed to fiction to dramatize a point, I don't blow up something. The courts at least in the case of writing are not swayed by the 'public interest' to side with the publisher. They will protect my rights. But that's sort of a side issue...)

You already read Rand and knew most of this stuff?