Brendan Hutching

Philip: “Overthrowing an older philosophical worldview or establishing a new one is thus a major challenge due to the scope of the changes in thinking and action that must be conveyed, accepted, implemented.” True enough, and I would have thought that a consideration of the new worldview would be the starting point, especially for a philosophy that prides itself on the fundamental importance of ideas. I can’t give any definitive explication of Christian notions, much less whether they explain the success of Christianity, but it strikes me that there must be something in the content that had/has sufficient attraction to appeal to a wide variety of people. The most obvious point of appeal is the person of Jesus, even though Jesus doesn’t really come across as a “personality” in the gospels. He is an enigmatic and mysterious, although recognisably human, figure, and it’s this enigmatic quality that seems to have an impact on people. We don’t know what Jesus was “like”, whether tall, fat or thin, his favourite colour, food etc. We know Jesus through the eyes of his followers, and through his activities and teachings. And it’s this “narrative” quality that I think makes Christianity a very accessible worldview, coupled with ethics that are “shown” rather than told. Take the story of the Good Samaritan. Everyone knows the ending, where Jesus says something like: “Who was a neighbor to the man attacked by robbers?” The audience doesn’t need an ethical theory to know the answer, and for the purposes of both the story and the lives of the audience, the theory is irrelevant. This points to a second major aspect of Christianity, which is the overcoming of self-centredness. I think this desire for overcoming the self’s inherent narcissism is a strong motivator, because the narcissism induces guilt, and Christianity shows a way of resolving this guilt. Further, since the resolution of the guilt makes the individual person more “other-centred”, it also fosters social harmony. Contrast this with Rand’s notion of guilt, as exemplified in the character of Hank Reardon. Reardon’s guilt arises from the unjustified demands placed upon him by his relatives and other parasites. In other words, he feels bad because he is really “too nice”. The resolution of his guilt requires him to sunder his ties with the parasites who are so demanding of his time and wealth. So, bad feelings are induced by the needs of others, good feelings are the result of disregarding the needs of others. It’s not hard to see where this attitude could lead when practised consistently by a group of people. All people are fractious, including Christians, but first century Christians seemed to have got it together sufficiently to have spread far and wide, while Objectivism is still thinking about the marketing plan.

Yes, forgetting about the label and examining the facts that are claimed to support this new concept would be the way to go. But your above claims are very far-reaching and ambitious and I think you’d have your work cut out supporting them.

When people use a label such as “altruism”, they are referring to certain types of moral behaviours. As to whether or not they regard the behaviours as good depends on their view of the behaviours, not the definition of the term. If someone thinks it’s praiseworthy to help little old ladies across the street, changing the definition of altruism to exclude that sort of behavior won’t change peoples’ view of the behavior. They’ll just find another label. All you would have achieved is a change in labeling. In my view, Rand’s reworking of the definition of altruism just confuses the issue, and you have to wonder whether it’s based on anything other than word-play with a polemical intent, the whole challenging-2500-years-of –philosophy thing.

I agree you can have win-win situations where the interests of various parties coincide. But that’s not directly related to the matter of the primary principle underlying morality, and as you say, Rand would disagree. I think there’s another, similar way to look at the issue is by classifying moral behaviours broadly in terms of egoism and altruism. There are four options: 1. Rational egoism 2. Irrational egoism 3. Rational altrusim 4. Irrational altruism In effect, Rand has created a dichotomy by collapsing all the “good” stuff (1) and (3) into egoism and all the “bad” stuff (2) and (4) into altruism. To my mind this is an awkward fit and accounts for all those endless arguments about whether an action is egoist or altruist.

You could do that, but I would say that the chances of gaining general acceptance are slim. For a start, from a psychological – or even purely survival – point of view, we want to know that others are prepared to consider our own interests as important in their own right, and not just as the reflection of the interests of someone else. Isn’t that the problem, though? Rand had a particular understanding of the term “altruism”, and all power to her. But if her understanding contradicts the commonly used meaning, she’s not going to be making much headway persuading us that altruism is necessarily a bad thing.

NB: “Altruism: placing others above self. As an ethical principle, altruism holds that man must make the welfare of others his primary concern and must place their interests above his own...” Rand’s definitions of egoism and altruism set up an opposition between the two such that egoism involves self-interest as its sole principle, while altruism involves only its “opposite”, other-interest, as its sole principle.. I don’t think that is how most people view altruism. My dictionary of philosophy defines altruism in terms of its opposition to egoism, but in a way different to Rand’s. That is, if egoism argues that morality can be explained solely in terms of self-interest, altruism argues that morality cannot be reduced solely to self-interest, but must also take into account the interests of others. This definition doesn’t place others either above or below the self. It just means that the interests of others must also be considered. From my experience, this is how most people view moral issues, as a balancing of different sets of interests. Looked at in this way, egoism is a hard sell, because most people will want a moral code to ensure that people are valued for their own sake, and not just in relation to the interests of the egoist.

And if that doesn't happen, a far more likely outcome? Convention loses again. Daniel hasn't answered, so I ask you. How does convention work for new words? Invent a neologism. Introduce it into your conversation. If it spreads, convention wins. If it lies fallow, convention loses. Either way, convention rules. If you like, you could try using “selfishness” in the Randian sense, and see how far it flies. Apart from the difficulties you will encounter in communication, you will also need to find a word for the behaviours conventionally described as “selfish”. You will also have to account for related expressions such as “self-centred” and “self-obsessed”, and show why these describe desirable, or at least neutral, behaviours. Eventually, you may ask yourself: what’s the point?, especially when we already have an eminently serviceable word to describe certain behaviours.

By all means. But where does that leave the stubborn person? In futile argument about the “real” meanings of words. Until the stubborn person’s arguments become accepted by a sufficient number of people and the new meaning becomes standard. So convention wins again.

I see. But try this. The word or definiendum, rather than the definition, is the label. You say the tomatoes label is wrong, but that is not saying the definition of tomatoes is wrong. I take it you mean tautological the same way as meaning 5 of analytic here. If that is correct, then why should a definition (more specifically, the definiens) ever be changed? By the way, I think the concept rigid designator coined by Saul Kripke is useful. (That doesn't mean I agree with all he says or has said about it.) Sorry. My bad. A definition is not a tautology. Rather, the definition is logically equivalent to the word it describes. Even so, “soft, red fruit with juicy pulp, used as a vegetable” can function in place of “tomato” as a label. So mislabeling can also involve the definition. But I agree that a definition can be formed well or badly. However, a badly formed definition is wrong because it incorrectly describes the word. So you could define a tomato as a “hard, red, sour vegetable”. In order to show that this is wrong, you could bite into a tomato, but this would only be convincing if there were prior agreement that the word referred to that particular object. If someone insisted that “tomato” meant “hard, red, sour vegetable”, you could only break the stalemate by appealing to convention. The same applies to more abstract terms such as “selfishness” etc.

Merlin: “Please explain how a definition can be both wrong and not false.” A definition is like a label. You open a can labelled “tomatoes” to discover peaches. So the tomatoes label is wrong. Does that make it false? Of course not. When I say that a correct definition can only be “true”, I mean that it is a tautology, or true by definition. But “true” in this sense cannot be contrasted with “false”, since tautologies cannot be false.

In a definition, the definiens is, or should be, equivalent to the defiendum, the word being defined. So the one can substituted for the other without loss of meaning. As for your whale example, “big fish with a blow-hole” is the wrong definiens. But that doesn’t mean the definition “a whale is a big fish with a blow-hole” is false, because it’s not a statement about an object or state of affairs. It just attempts to provide the meaning of the word. A proposition, on the other hand, is a claim about objects or states of affairs. The fact that a definition can be put into a form of words that mimics a proposition proves nothing. The difference is a logical one: definitions are tautologies. A correct definition can only be “true”, while propositions make a claim that may be true or false.

“The earth is flat” is not a definition. It’s a proposition, because it makes the claim: x is the case. And it can be shown to be true or false empirically by, for example, seeing a photograph of the earth taken from space. Definitions are not propositions. They make no truth claim. For example, take a definition of earth that includes flatness: the earth is the flat planet on which we live, third in order from the sun. What’s the problem with this definition? It has no real-world referent. The only referent is a concept: “flat earth”. So there’s your answer if someone tries to persuade you that the definition of the real-world referent called “earth” includes flatness.

I mean the one “true” definition for everybody. If that’s a straw man, fine. We can then agree that the definition is conventional, ie “true” according to common usage.

Tommy ruins Billy’s toys, so Billy refuses to share. Let us agree that Billy’s behaviour is justified. Now, triangulating these behaviours against the conventional and the Objectivist definitions of “selfishness”, how do these behaviours demonstrate the “true” definition?

True, but we don’t disagree that people use the term “selfish” to refer to various behaviours. That’s a given. We’re disagree about the justification for that usage. Take the case of Billy refusing to share his toys with Tommy. In this hypothetical, there is no dispute about the referent: Billy’s behaviour. The dispute is over the labeling: should this behaviour be regarded as “selfish” in the orthodox sense, or should it be seen as a legitimate exercise in Billy’s self-interest (the Randian ”selfish”)? How can we identify the “true” label? Claiming that observation of the referent will reveal the true label ignores the fact that the referent is not in dispute. We agree that Billy is refusing to share his toys with Tommy. Therefore, the label can only be decided, if at all, by agreement.