rhartford

Thirded! Thanks, Stephen for your thoughtful commentary in post #10. I heartily agree with Merlin Jetton and Robert Campbell that a version of that review would be appropriate for submission to JARS, and the breadth and depth of your knowledge in the subject area would make it a valuable contribution. The details of the transition from Objectivist ethical theory to Objectivist political theory have never felt satisfactory to me. Rand said when unclear about a concept we should look to the facts that give rise to the concept. That seems like good advice when unclear about a theory as well. When looking out at existence, I didn’t see any entities, attributes, actions, or relations that could be labeled a “right.” After all a right is a moral principle, not a label that can be attributed to an existent. But, I did see actions that could be labeled “a political freedom” or not. That was the reason I focused on deriving a standard for determining what is, and what is not, a political freedom. I think that that close fidelity to facts made for some interesting analysis.

I have done minimal reading in the history of individualist thought, so I very much appreciate the knowledge and insight that George brings to this site. I want to focus on one paragraph from his post. Suppose person A has a rocking chair. Someone, person B, wants to take it from A and A wants to stop B from taking it. Suspend moral judgment for a moment. Each “have chosen” “to act in a manner” that they “would like.” Only one can have their chosen action take place. The other will be subject to constraint or restraint as described above. Before adding ethical considerations, the situation is symmetrical. Of course, the solution is that the owner (be it A or B) of the rocking chair (the owner’s property) should be free to act and the other should be restrained. But, ownership and property are social concepts prior to political theory. When a value is created, the creator – not anyone else in the social context – is the owner and the value the owner has created is the owner’s property. In political theory, the decision to protect the owner/property relationship, and prohibit transfer of property without the owner’s consent, determines whether A’s “chosen action” is protected and B’s restrained, or vice versa. The essence of justification of protection of the owner/property relation is the nature of value creation and its role in supporting a man’s survival and happiness. The essence of implementing protection of the owner/property relation is to protect the owner’s consent. In my view, focusing on protection of consent may lead to more fruitful advances in political theory than focusing on prohibiting the use of force to violate consent, the NIOF principle.

From Wikipedia: “Occam's razor (also written as Ockham's razor) is the English equivalent of the Latin lex parsimoniae --- the law of parsimony, economy or succinctness. It is a principle urging one to select among competing hypotheses that which makes the fewest assumptions and thereby offers the simplest explanation of the effect.” Considering some quotes from previous posts: “keeping [values] by force (by mere physical possession), not by right—i.e., keeping them without the consent of their owner.” “[fraud] consists of obtaining material values without their owner's consent” “holding $1000 that belongs to Y, does not give Y his money voluntarily, then he is holding Y's money by force, i.e., without the consent of Y.” Isn’t the “simplest explanation” for a political standard the prohibiting of the violation of an owner’s consent, rather than adding the assumption that the violation is “indirect use of force” and therefore allowing the violation to be included as a referent of the NIOF principle?

The above analysis seems somewhat forced to me. Below is from the paper referenced in post #284 : "NIOF leads to such oddities as defining fraud as 'indirect use of force,' which is an ad hoc, unsatisfying, and unconvincing attempt to include fraud under the rubric of the NIOF principle. "Fraud can be handled naturally and easily by adopting the protection of voluntary consent as the political standard. A perpetrator of fraud places an obstacle in another’s valuing chain by obtaining voluntary consent for one action while actually performing a different action. Hence voluntary consent was not in fact given and the victim of fraud has a political right to rectify the violation."

". . . what general rule do we [use to] identify legitimate exceptions [to the NIOF principle] ? The above posts by Dennis and George have reached to the fundamental issue of the anarchist/minarchist debate, the status of the “non-initiation of force” (NIOF) principle. The fundamental principle for identifying political freedoms is “protection of voluntary consent along an individual’s entire politically legitimate valuing chain.”* The non-initiation of force principle handles only one type of violation of voluntary consent. “. . . non-initiation of force . . . [is an] admirable [goal], [but it tries] to establish a positive—protecting voluntary consent—by negating a negative—prohibiting the violation of voluntary consent [by force]. One might just as well, and just as inappropriately, define existence as the absence of non-existence”* George asks “what general rule do we [use to] identify legitimate exceptions [to the NIOF principle]?” I would suggest that the “protection of voluntary consent along an individual’s entire politically legitimate valuing chain.”* is that principle. The paper referenced below explains the voluntary consent princple in some detail. One reader said, "It was interesting how you built your case for political freedom on a foundation in some ways even more basic than the non-initiation of force/non-aggression axiom.” Whether the “protection of voluntary consent” principle requires initiation of force to establish a government mechanism to protect political freedoms is a question worth examining. (Quotations with a * following are from “A Political Standard for Absolute Political Freedom,” The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 11, no. 1 (Issue 21, July 2011): 45-62. I have several extra copies of that issue. If you send a request and your snail mail address to apf (just the 3 letter the acronym for Absolute Political Freedom) at carolina.rr.com I will forward a copy while they are available. The pdf of that paper will be released into cyberspace later this summer.)

I think the concept “property” refers to a relational intermediary between a person’s action and the consequent beneficial effect on the person’s life. In addition, in order to be property and not just a personal value, that intermediary must be capable of voluntary transfer to another individual for benefit to that individual’s life. The transfer is subject to voluntary acceptance of a set of conditions to be adhered to by both parties. Some intermediaries, for example food, can benefit a person’s life by supplying bodily physical nutrition. Other intermediaries, for example a novel, can benefit a person’s life by supplying “mental nutrition.” That which is properly protected as property is the aspect of the intermediary – food or novel – that contributes to the beneficial effect on life. The political means to protect the property must be based on the nature of the property to be protected. Protection of the novel as a tool of “mental nutrition,” and a tool brought into existence by the writer, may be more effectively and efficiently achieved, not by contracts requiring non-disclosure, but by a copyright system that imposes coercive penalties on someone using the tool without the property owner’s voluntary consent. It seems to me that the aspect of the novel that makes it a tool of “mental nutrition” is the intellectual property to be protected. George’s posts are often thought-provoking. The above are some of the thoughts he provoked.

The quote above from The Scots Magazine (August 1776) is quite interesting. “Prior to my having any right at all as a man, it is certain I must be a man, and such a man I certainly cannot be if I have no life;” At the risk of reviving a different thread, just as one cannot predicate existence as an attribute of an existent, one cannot predicate “life” as a member of the set of actions a life has a right to take. The right of Liberty is the fundamental right because it is the recognition that a human being may take any action that meets the standard for being a political freedom. A thorough derivation of the political standard for what action is a political freedom and what action would violate a political freedom is not as simple as merely asserting a “right to life.” The opponents of Liberty can too easily us the “right to life” to argue for policies that are opposed to political freedom.

The above is not a full characterization because the meaning of "freedom" is not specified. Freedom, or more specifically "a political freedom," is conceptually prior to the concept of rights. A right is an abstract principle that summarizes and describes a set of political freedoms with common characteristics. When a conflict in choice of action occurs, and the conflict cannot be voluntarily resolved, one of the actions is a political freedom and the other action would violate that freedom. "Because ethics is the discipline devoted to discovering principles for guiding all of an individual’s action, principles for resolving conflicting actions must be derived from a valid ethical system." In doing so one can derive "primary political freedoms" and "secondary political freedoms." A political standard provides the cognitive guidance to identify the political freedom put in jeopardy by a conflict. The standard will "protect ethically right egoistic action, i.e., primary political freedoms, and the standard will also protect many actions that violate the principles of ethical egoism—actions that are based on erroneous judgment or on some improper epistemological, ethical, or social principle. Although those improper actions are not directly referred to in the criterion for a political standard, analysis in this paper will indicate why many such actions, i.e., secondary political freedoms, are protected by the standard. A secondary political freedom is any action that is not a primary political freedom and does not violate any primary political freedom." The above quotes a small portion of my paper, "A Political Standard for Absolute Political Freedom." Please see that paper in The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, Vol 11. No 1. if you find the above of interest.

The historical development of respect for rights is different than a logical derivation of the validity of rights. The development can inform and aid the derivation, and the derivation can add perspective to understanding the development. My analysis in the paper mentioned in post #57 adds new insight to the derivation of rights. Otherwise, I hope, The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies (JARS) would not have published it. At the risk of sounding arrogant, I would call the analysis in the paper Hartfordian rather than Randian. I would be happy to forward a copy of the JARS issue to the discussants on this thread. If the email feature of OL is working, just request a copy and include your snail mail address.

I agree that rights provide the moral framework of a free society. In fact, this has been my point all along. My major disagreement with Dennis has been over his claim that only Randian egoists (in effect) can provide a rational justification for rights. This is incorrect. . . . Implicit in a theory of rights (as understood by libertarians) is the moral right of individuals to pursue their own interests. In this broad sense, a theory of rights is inherently "egoistic." Nevertheless, many people in a free society may believe that their interests are best served by voluntarily helping others as much as they can, because this is what makes them happy. So how are such people undermining rights? I don't get this at all. Implicitness is often risky in philosophical analysis. Because Rand left too much implicit in her arguments from egoism to rights, I wrote the paper referred to in post #57 and examined the issue starting from the nature of human judgment and choice. It lead to, what is to me new and interesting, the concepts of primary and secondary political freedoms, the distinction between politically legitimate valuing chains and ethically valid valuing chains, criticisms of the non-initiation of force principle (NIOF) and the non-aggression axiom (NAA) as inadequate political standards, the rejection of the idea of "limits" to political freedom, and other ideas that I hope can serve as catalyst for fresh thinking by others.

I have been lurking and learning on this thread. Thank you George and Dennis. I especially want to register my support of the above paragraph. One of my major interests has been the derivation of rights. A right is an abstract principle, so I applied Rand's advice to look at the facts that give rise to the principle in order to clarify my understanding. A right summarizes and integrates the proper resolution of particular kinds of conflicting choices of action when the conflict cannot be voluntarily resolved. A single factual instance of such a conflict requires analysis to determine which of the actions is a political freedom, and which of the actions would violate that political freedom. Analyzing choice of action necessarily leads to appeal to a moral code. My paper, "A Political Standard for Absolute Political Freedom," in the latest issue of The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies advocates absolute political freedom and begins with: This paper advocates a society that unfailingly protects political freedoms and unfailingly constrains those who would violate a political freedom. Such is the advocacy of absolute political freedom. The paper derives the political standard as "protection of vountary consent along an individual's entire politically legitimate valuing chain." Of course, the paper must, and does, explain the meaning of "politically legitimate valuing chain" and derives that meaning from consideration of ethical egoism as the moral foundation. As Dennis said, a "moral code will dictate the society’s political structure." That structure is built on a framework or rights, and my paper is an attempt to add arguments in support of a political standard based on ethical egoism, a standard that enables understanding of the rights principles that summarize and integrate proper resolution of political conflict.

George Smith quotes a review of "For the New Intellectual" Goldberg's analysis of the quoted description of reason is not unreasonable. The problem is the quoted description is not found consistently in Rand's writing. In the fifth Printing of the 1964 Signet paperback version of "The Virtue of Selfishness," p. 20, we read: "Reason is the faculty that perceives, identifies and integrates the material provided by man's senses." In the tenth Printing of the 1964 Signet paperback version of "The Virtue of Selfishness," p. 20, we read: "Reason is the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man's senses." Why was "perceives" dropped? Nathaniel Branden explains in: NATHANIEL BRANDEN "Objectivism: Past & Future" (Lecture) Copyright 1996 by Nathaniel Branden California Institute for Applied Objectivism a talk he gave at the 1996 IOS (Former name of The Atlas Society) Summer Seminar. The following is a summary of an 8 minutes long passage from the talk: In 1960, Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Branden recorded answers to sent in questions and mailed them back to listeners of recorded NBI lectures. A student asked what "perceives" was doing in the definition. Ayn "went almost immediately ballistic" and "began to read the riot act" to the student. A month or two later Nathaniel Branden was rethinking the incident and knew he shouldn't refer to that student. Instead he said "Ayn, I was thinking about the way we define reason. And I said, you know, we don't perceive the evidence of our senses, we perceive reality by means of the evidence of our senses. Long pause. She says 'that's true.'" Ayn then said she didn't need perceives in the definition. When she gave the new definition, Branden asked if she should make a note of the change for her careful readers. Branden had the feeling, he could not prove, that Rand did not want to admit in writing that she made a mistake. Branden asked us to suppose he had never had that conversation. He wondered if Randists [my word] would bring down their wrath and loyalty considerations on anyone who wondered if perceives should be in the definition. The above is only a taste of the interesting 8 minute passage. I don't know if the recorded lecture is still available from The Atlas Society. But, the incident and the review highlight the importance of proper definitions and consistency, ideas that are essential components of the philosophy of Objectivism.

The movie gets better every time I see it! The first time I did not catch Francisco calling Dagny "Slug" and she calling him "Frisco" in the scene where Dagny "begs" for money for the John Galt Line. I appreciate the acting more every time I see the scene where Francisco gives Hank the words he will need for the time when he'll need them. For anyone who enjoyed the movie and enjoyed a walk through the architecture of The Getty Center, it might be interesting to know that Dagny probably recently read "The Fountainhead," because she fell asleep while reading "Meier" by Philip Jodidio. It was on the coffee table in her opening scene. Click Here to see the book cover.

An update: 100 Tea Partiers attended, along with 250 others in the 400 seat venue for the 2:40 show. The next showing at 5:10 had to be expanded to two screens in the 22 screen multiplex. A good sign.

A Tea Party group in Charlotte, NC sent an email with an offer of a group rate they negotiated with a local theater. Forty of us will meet together and attend the 2:40 showing on Saturday. A good way to build enthusiam and buzz.

My forthcoming paper, "A Political Standard for Absolute Polical Freedom," to be published in the next issue of The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies (JARS), indirectly deals with this issue. After developing what I hope is a non-bland, non-mushy political standard, I briefly comment on the NIOF as inadequate for a political standard. The standard I develop, involving "protection of voluntary consent along an individual's entire politically legitimate valuing chain," is derived from ethical egoism, the nature of valuing, and the nature of political conflict. I hope the standard and its derivation will have "the power to excite [and] motivate" OL members. I will be particularly interested to see if - regarding the minarchy/anarchy debate - those more knowledgeable than I find the paper useful. If you are not a JARS subscriber, please consider subscribing. Jars Website

How would "one group" know the "other group" was doing "something that is objectively just" without, potentially, one compelling the other to provide sufficient information to draw that conclusion? If that "compelling" is "initiation of force," it seems initiation of force may be a necessary feature of the interaction between the two groups as they go about protecting against something that may be objectively unjust.

The below quotation from my paper, Objectivity and the Proof of Egoism, is relevant to the moral status of "the choice to live" that has been discussed on this thread. . . . Objectivity thus has two distinct roles: its descriptive role for logically proving the choice to live, and its normative role for implementation of the choice to live. Choosing life is both logically and morally valid. Therefore, it is not surprising to find commentary that treats the failure to choose life as a logical failure and other commentary that treats the failure to choose life as a moral failure. Rasmussen, in particular, interprets Leonard Peikoff’s comments on this issue as contradictory. Rasmussen (2006, 310) concludes that Peikoff on one hand “condemn morally the choice not to live” and that Peikoff on the other hand asserts that “the choice to live precedes morality.” The equivocal use of “the choice to live” in the above quotations may make the accusation of contradiction appear valid. For clarity, “the choice to live” often needs to be modified by “to prove,” “proof of,” “to implement,” or “implementation of.” It is not at all contradictory to “condemn morally the failure to implement the choice to live” and on the other hand to assert that “proof of the choice to live precedes morality.” . . . Earlier portions of the paper provide supporting analysis for the above quotation.

If value only has meaning if it is something one "acts to gain and/or keep," and if value only has meaning if one can specify "value to whom" and "value for what," then I don't understand the question, "does one choose [life or anything else] because it is a value?" One chooses to pursue (act to gain and/or keep) something because it contributes benefit to one's life, and by so choosing that thing, it becomes a value to one for the particular benefit it provides to one's life. One chooses to value something because it will benefit one's life. Until one makes the choice to value it, it is a potential "good" for one's life but not one of a person's values. It is the act of choosing, because it would be beneficial if chosen, that converts it from a potential benefit to a value. One can't choose something because it is a value, because it doesn't become a value until it is chosen. Is there any advantage to thinking of some potentially beneficial end as "a value," before it is chosen to be valued and pursued for its benefit?

I think your differences with Kelley hinge on your differing definition of what it means to be a "value." "Value" and its cognates all imply action by an organism. A "value" is something an organism pursues that is beneficial to its life. For a human, many such actions are chosen. This is the essence of "valuing," choosing "to value" something, and that something is the pursued "value." You seem to view "value" as something that is benefical to your life whether you pursue it or not. Those things may be beneficial or good for one's life, but they are not "values" because they are not the object of a valuing process.

The questions George raises prompt me to think of related issues given my status as an "old man." (Yes, I am even older than George.) When considering my "activism" type of activity, I think increasingly about the benefit of those actions to those I care about, as small as those benefits might be. I do not know to what extent those thoughts motivate me, or if they are simply recognition of the more limited time left available to me compared to younger people. Although in dire circumstances the motivational component of "for the sake of others" might grow, I suspect that it could never, for me, be considered as "solely" for the sake of others.

One of the links Stephen provided includes a quotation from my paper "Objectivity and the Proof of Egosim." A more extended quotation, relevant to the choice to live, is based on my response to three papers in The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies: - - - - - - - - - - - - - The Meaning of “The Choice to Live” The three papers focus on the status of “the choice to live” as the foundational principle of the Objectivist ethics. That seems reasonable since, as a novelist, Rand (1957, 936) stated that the Objectivist ethics “is contained in a single axiom: existence exists—and in a single choice: to live.” But as Nathaniel Branden (1998) has argued, that statement is “highly foreshortened” and requires analysis by scholars to make its meaning clear. Branden also relates a conversation he had with John Hospers in which Hospers said he doesn’t remember making the choice to live. Those comments illustrate the need to reformulate the “choice to live” so that its meaning is clear and so that it can support philosophical analysis. What do people who are actually living life choose? They choose mental and physical actions that are constitutive of life. In light of those real world choices, a better philosopher’s formulation of the foundational principle is that the Objectivist ethics is contained in the voluntary acceptance and use of the principle of “hold[ing] [one’s] . . . own life as the motive and goal of [one’s] . . . action” (Rand 1957, 932). - - - - - - - - - - - - - The full paper is available here. The paper goes on to argue that "The reformulated form of the 'choice to live' allows for more meaningful analysis as well as the possibility of proof."

WOW! Thanks for the reminder! Those scenes would make outstanding theater! It has me looking forward to the movie Part 2, even though I thought Part 1 and Part 3 of the novel were the more exciting parts. I hope Part 2 can be out within a year!

All essays in back issues of The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, Volume 1 through Volume 9, are now available online in pdf format. See Chris Sciabarra’s announcement for February 26, 2011 at: http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sciabarra/notablog/ I am very pleased that my paper, “Objectivity and the Proof of Egoism,” is available at http://aynrandstudies.com/jars/archives/jars8-2/jars8_2rhartford.pdf Congratulations and thanks to Chris for making the archives of JARS available free online!

Thanks for the informative link, Merlin. The quotation below from the linked article indicates the difficulty of ending defined benefit pension plans with conversion to 401(k)-type plans. Besides being treated as a Ponzi scheme, as implied by the second paragraph, it also seems possible to me that the value of private workers 401(k) plans will be eroded away by inflation, while government-worker defined benefit plans will be relatively unscathed. This is another good reason to get us all in the same boat by converting the government defined benefit plans to 401(k)-type plans, even though it will be politically difficult. Then we will all have a vested interest in responsible government monetary policy. “Unlike private companies, most states are constitutionally or contractually barred from changing the pension plans of current employees without their consent. So the new rules are generally voluntary or apply only to new employees. In fact, switching workers to 401(k)-type plans can make the underfunding problem even worse. As contributions move to individual investment accounts, less money goes into the traditional plan to help finance pensions promised to other workers.”