thomtg

Here is the single sentence: All five of Nort Buechner's statements and definitions are too narrow, excluding important parts of the science. Look at them one at a time:

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BOTTOM LINE:

Dr. Buechner is doing something akin to what some people do with art: Saying that Picasso is "not art". That way you don't have to explain what's wrong with it, since it doesn't even fall into your category. (Or saying that Quantum Mechanics is "not physics" as opposed to saying you disagree with its fundamental premises.) If you say that a socialist system is not an economic system or that home economics is not because it doesn't involve a pricing system, then you define them out of the category of things to be studied seriously.

I don't see much to fault Buechner's definition of economics. If I must, I would say it is too wordy. Compare it to George Reisman's definition: "economics is the science that studies the production of wealth under a system of division of labor." (CATOE 15b)

A definition in my view should only highlight the positive characteristics of the referents (if it is a positive concept). It should not bring in the abnormal, the fringe, the disputed. It should not zero in on the penguin at the expense of the pigeon in the everyday context. I would prefer understanding the core concept first before venturing to examine the peculiar cases.

In this light, Buechner's introduction for the reader is a good one.

Thanks, Stephen, for cross-checking the term "optional value" against "moral value" in Tara Smith's other book Viable Values. Beyond just thinking that the first term is misnamed, I now think the pair of concepts "optional value" and "moral value" are both invalid. And renaming the first to "variant value" doesn't help either.

The problem as I see it is that the things anybody pursues are concrete. They all differ in every detail. They all vary in every measurement. For example, you can categorize a dish of snails into escargot or into food. On Smith's view, this something, as food, is a nonoptional value, but as escargot, it is an optional value. Moreover, on this view, food is a moral value because it is universally needed by men, but escargot is something only some people want to eat and so isn't a moral value. "Moral values are the most fundamental values that apply for all human beings. They so apply because they are necessitated by our common human nature. (99–100)."

This is incoherent. On this view, reason supposedly is an invariant moral value that applies to all human beings. This divorces "reason" (and even "food") from its referents. Unless you count the whole Earth as one, there is no single concrete thing that is universally needed by men and is valued by all men. If so, then the only way to make sense of Smith's statement above is to interpret her to say that the concept "reason" is that which is valued by men, and that the concept "reason" per se is the moral value.

By contrast, a concrete is a value to someone whenever he deems it objectively to satisfy his needs and acts to gain it. Even reason follows this principle. And it is not "reason" per se but his unique, particular reasoning faculty, which varies in every detail from mine and from yours. And all these concrete things he values become thereby moral values if they sustain the particular concrete life which is his.

The incoherence in Smith's ARNE p. 190 footnote lies in her taking nonoptional values to be concretely real to be pursued by means of optional values. She is reifying abstractions. That is to say, on her account, you eat snails not because it's a value to you but because it's one of the optional means to acquire "food" which is a nonoptional value to you.

Finally, about the passage requiring this footnote, the analysis, about which movie being argued by a couple to go see in the evening, is not even correct. The application of Rand's principle against compromise is inapplicable here. More appropriately, the principle to use is the one against sacrifice. The movie you finally decide not to see (the one you originally preferred) is of a lesser value in relation to the relationship you have with your lover. Besides, once you don't choose a thing, anything whatever, it is no longer a value. So, for Smith to make it into an "optional value" as a matter for compromise is to turn it into intrinsic valuing.

Thanks for the connection to Tara Smith's book, Merlin.

Smith's conception of "optional value" is not any better. Synonymous with "discretionary value", it is contrasted against "basic, universal value" (ARNE 27) or "fundamental value" (265) or "broader value" (274).

If a thing is a value (to somebody, to be gained for some purpose, etc.), then it is an instance of the concept VALUE. But on Smith's conception (and presumably Buechner's), that thing is an optional value AND not a nonoptional value. In other words, on Smith's view, there is no such concrete ~thing~ as a nonoptional value or "universal value" or "fundamental value" or "broader/est value"; yet at the same time, values are to be contrasted against the nonoptional. (See especially footnote, p. 190.) This is fuzzy division. I am beginning to think this notion of "optional value" fails Rand's Razor.

The table of contents that Stephen typed out is helpful. Thanks. I'll add the book to my Christmas list. Meanwhile, one item in the TOC caught my attention: Chapter 2 - Objective Value : Optional Values Are Objective Values.

What is an optional value? Is it conceived as opposed to "required value"? And if so, isn't that contrary to Objectivist ethics? As I understand the volitional nature of ethics, "optional" is a redundant tautology (like "human rights"); and "required" is a self-contradiction.

Now, perhaps I am jumping hastily. OPAR does mention "moral options" (323), but they are described in terms of degree, variety, possibility. But nowhere is there an implication that some values are optional. Something is either valuable, or else it isn't.

On hearing that I had not watched any episode of it despite the social buzz about its imminent return, a friend this week lent me the DVDs to the half-season of the television series Glee. I have finished watching half of them and am planning to finish the rest this weekend. The show is surprisingly good.

To those who have been watching Glee, do you think it qualifies as Romantic art? By that I mean, that it has a definite story arc; that the theme is about finding joy in whatever one does in life; that the plot-theme is about a group of students joining the Glee club to sing and to compete at some future competition; and that the few main characters (e.g., the Spanish teacher, the dark-haired student-singer, the football quarterback, the cheerleading coach) have purposeful goals and deliberate principles of action. Maybe my standard is set too low, but I think it is Romantic.

Or am I not experienced enough in the Romantic arts to have it categorized appropriately? About Romanticism in the culture, Ayn Rand stated, "It is impossible for the young people of today [1969] to grasp the reality of man's higher potential and what scale of achievement it had reached in a rational (or semi-rational) culture. But I have seen it. I know that it was real, that it existed, that it is possible." [TRM, Introduction]

Here is a WSJ blog article reporting the communitarian Dr. Stephen Chu, Energy Department Secretary, for making a Freudian slip, for not knowing his place in relation to the citizens he works for.

The basic error in the original post is not in correctly stating the definition of reason; the error is in equating the definition for the concept. Just as a spider-like Martian possessing reason is not a man, so a canine process that identifies and integrates perceptual material is not a faculty of reason. By Objectivist standard, a definition is a statement having the purpose of condensing one's knowledge. On a nonobjectivist standard (e.g., nominalism), a definition is a synonym for a label. The case of the latter is a case of massive context-dropping.

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Valkyrie does not "mean" female warrior, at least no more than it "means" fat opera singer in a helmet. It literally referes to the choosers of the valiant dead, female spirits that accompanied a warrior killed in battle to Valhalla.

Hahaha, good one! Now the image is stuck in my head.

Hey, another Tara fan? Cool. I am currently reading her "Viable Values". [...]

Me too, I am a Tara fan. Currently I am reading her Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist. I'm also listening to her 1998 lecture course "Rationality and Objectivity."

The Administration's backtracking on this is too little too late. The problem is not the content of the message itself. The problem is the presumption that the president has any right at all to treat students as a captive audience. School is not a branch of the federal government. The president is not the educator in chief. Moderate republicans like Bill Sammon, as usual, are saying it's okay now that he has changed his message. Sorry, the problem is that he thinks he has the right to make the address in the first place.

It is another example of fighting over the details while conceding the principle.

The PTA organization has been infiltrated compromised. Check out this article.

Parents upset over 'leftist propaganda' video

 http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_13249171?_requestid=5883011

It reports a local Parent-Teacher Association organization in Salt Lake City showing a 4-minute video entitle "I Pledge" to elementary-school students with explicit permission from school administrators. The subsequent protest reportedly was over the concrete, trifling details. The school's theme for the academic year still is "service."

The American culture has really changed. There is now a 180-degree inversion in the relationship between the citizenry and its government. Watch the "I Pledge" video, especially at 3:54 into the segment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqcPA1ysSbw

Here is the link at 3:54:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqcPA1ysSbw&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sltrib.com%2Fnews%2Fci_13249171%3F_requestid%3D5883011&feature=player_embedded#t=234

(NOTE FROM MSK: The links are now properly inserted, but for some weird reason the hyperlinking does not work. Instead, the text gets butchered or does not show up. I had to put the links in "code" brackets, which disables the hyperlink, to make them appear at all. So just copy/paste the URL's in your browser and they will take you where the poster wanted.)

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[...] Sacrifice is an act that presumes a prior knowledge of a hierarchy of values. Suppose, right or wrong, a mother values her baby higher than a bunny rabbit. Then, when while driving in a car with her infant, she veers off the road suddenly in order to avoid colliding a crossing bunny at the cost of crashing the vehicle and killing the baby, she is in effect surrendering a higher value, the baby, in exchange for a lower value, the rabbit. Relative to her particular hierarchy of values, she has made a sacrifice.

[...] Sacrifice, then, is a judgment in the context of some hierarchy of values. Relative to oneself, it is the effect of reneging on one's established hierarchy. [...]

[...] Volitional beings need to acquire rational virtues in order to avoid acting sacrificially. In particular, Rand advises that egoists cultivate the virtue of integrity in order to avoid valuing one way but acting another. (TVOS 28) [...]

Here is a real example of sacrifice on the part of a mother who acted imprudently: "Boy, 9, killed rescuing duck from the road" (St. Louis Post-Dispatch).

Here is a follow up to the story: Amazon has apologized for the bulk deletion and is now being sued for stealing the work of a 17-year-old student. Read more on the issue of digital "rights" here.

On your interpretation, Michael, Kindle owners are merely license holders of the authors' books. By this account, the Kindle devices are merely a part of this licensing distribution system.

It has been the case that customers, having bought something, could for a limited time and limited reasons exchange or return something bought from a store. Now the store, Amazon in this case, can at any time electronically go to every customer and take its "licenses" back. This stinks morally.

More reactions from the blogosphere here.

What is the relationship of ownership? What is the right to own property? How do property rights translate to e-books? These are some of the questions raised by the latest action by Amazon.com to "revoke your (electronic) purchase ex post facto". (Hat tip, Twitter EditingWrite)

If I take property rights as a moral principle to use and dispose material wealth, I consider the company's action to be an act of outright theft. What do you think?

An interesting aside.

The Proto-Indo-European (PIE) language, from which English, Latin, Sanskrit, Persian, the Celtic and Slavonic languages and others derived has a three way grammatical gender distinction between masculine, feminine and neuter nominals, i.e., nouns, pronouns and adjectives. This distinction evolved from an earlier animate/inanimate distinction.

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Now, it is interesting that by coincidence, in Swedish as well as some other modern IE languages, the distinction between masculine/feminine has been blurred, leading to a grammatical distinction between common (animate) and neuter (inanimate) nouns. Swedish has two forms for "the" but the distinction is not between masculine and feminine as in French or Spanish but between common and neuter. This loss of the distinction has not spread to third person pronouns, han/hon/den for he/she/it.

So, when speaking Swedish, it remains just as difficult as in English, if not moreso, to avoid using gender distinctions. It's even worse in Semitic languages where even the forms for "you" express gender. So the Swedes, who are being outbred by Arab speakers, will find their quest to become gender neutral (or should that be gender common) ever more difficult as there country's demographic nature changes. And there are languages like Chinese which have no spoken distinction of gender in their pronouns, using "ta" to mean he, she or it. But in the meantime, since their child is animate, but of otherwise unknown gender, it is proper to refer to him using the default animate pronoun, which is he.

This is one "aside" that makes a great point about the use of "he" or "him" for animate, third-person singular pronouns. One should not feel defensive therefore to say: "Every child in my classroom held his embroidery hoop and started cross-stitching"--and not "Every child in my classroom held his or her ..."

This has me thinking as to when a parent's acts cross the line into the illegal and when does the state have a right to intervene. We can all agree the poor kid's going to be a mess. Can this be considered deliberate abuse on the part on parents?

After some thought, I vote yes. I believe the field of psychology has advanced enough to make an objective case that these parents are nuts and unable to make proper decisions concerning their child. But damn it, I really hate to get the state involved in parenting.

Ginny

Ginny, I would take the report of Pop's parents literally: their decision was "rooted in the feminist philosophy that gender is a social construction." This is a clear and direct case of philosophy being the motivating factor of social activity. If there is a conclusion to be made from this report, I would say that Sweden is a society in profound decline.

As Ayn Rand has written many times, if you want to change a society and its culture, change its philosophy. So before they change their ways, Pop's parents will need to discover that their feminist philosophy is false. But until then, I think they are quite consistent in their effort at trying to lead virtuous lives.

By contrast, your prescription of getting the state/society involved in Pop's parenting, takes an intrinsicist view of morality. Your assumption is that somebody somewhere somehow knows what's good for the child, and so the parents must be commanded to follow those precepts whether they know it or not. Values are objective, not intrinsic nor subjective. That's the least Objectivists should agree on.

On a TV interview (perhaps an old Phil Donahue Show, first visit), a questioner asked Ayn Rand a question from a questionable source of authority. I don't remember the exact question, but it goes in paraphrase: "I used to read Atlas Shrugged and believed in capitalism, but since then my economics professors tell me otherwise. Why do you still believe in capitalism?" Rand's reply was to dismiss the question. It was asked in bad faith.

If I understand Rand's refusal correctly, I conclude that it is all right to question Rand's belief in capitalism, but it is not fine to frame it prefixed within discredit and from a mutually unrecognized authority. A question is asked in bad faith whenever the questioner has failed to pass judgment on a claim but then gone on to ask a question based on the claim. I call it the "stolen-question fallacy."

The stolen-question fallacy is a species of the complex-question fallacy, which in turn is a species of the fallacy of begging the question. The questioner in the TV show above already presumed capitalism to be false; any reply from Rand would have no effect on that as a foregone conclusion. Rand was correct and rightly so to dismiss the question. (See ARA 132-133 for more examples of such improper questions.)

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Here is the

By the way, what year did Ayn Rand marry Frank O'Connor? Earlier in the segment Rand acknowledged having recently celebrated her 50th anniversary. I am asking this because I am wondering if the date ascribed to the show is correct: 1979. (Also, later in the show, Donahue held up Rand's "latest" book ITOE.)

I disagree with the deep premise of the anarchist article in the root post.

The epistemological question is who is waging a war? On the Objectivist categorial theory (in accordance with the axiom of identity, which subsume MSK's holon idea), it is not soldiers who wage war, nor is it civilians who suffer from war. Technically speaking, waging war and sufferance from war are properties not of invididuals but of the entity "government." "Government" is a social institution in a geographical area with a few purposes related to the citizenry. In this sense, the military is nothing more than an instrument for the government to fulfill its purposes. As guns don't kill people, but people kill people; so neither militaries wage war nor civilians being war victims, but governments do and are.

So, if a government declares war on another, then the better military is one that will cause the opposing government to surrender. Other considerations are side issues and are irrelevant at this macro level. Below this level, there are other considerations of course, and anyone not a medical professional should creep out at the sight of bloodshed. But at the level of governments, ARI's position is consistent with that of TOC/TAS, including the response to the Barbary coast of pirates. The principle is, when a society is attacked (e.g., 9/11), its government must defend its citizens, and that defensive action is war.

This seventeen-minute video from PajamasTV by Bill Whittle explains very well the story of the dropping of the atomic bombs in Japan. Surely, "innocent civilians" were killed, but the real issue is, was the action of the U.S. government moral? With their stolen concepts, the anarchists would say no.

The issue being decided in the case was not clear to me until I read one sentence buried deep in this article from The Washington Post:

Since discrimination is said to be the inequality of treatment, therefore what we are seeing here is a split decision over the notion of equality: equal procedure and opportunity versus equal results.

I know I am pushing fair use, but this is Barbara's corner and this review is a total delight to read after the sewer of PARC. I feel like I took a bath just now.

I think this is from the May 1988 issue of Liberty magazine. It is online at the link in the title. (btw - Please visit that site. You will not be disappointed.)

Michael

The Critics of Barbara Branden

by David M. Brown

The publication of Barbara Branden’s The Passion of Ayn Rand in May of 1986 was an Event.

[...]

"David M. Brown is a free-lance writer living in New Jersey."

What a wonderful review!

Rising star James Taranto at The Wall Street Journal has a problem with certain "if" statements. He doesn't understand them. See the Friday segment entitled "Dept. of Big Ifs" in his daily "Best of the Web Today" column. Even when he issues the "Homer Nods" correction in today's column, he takes the interpretation from modern formal logic. It goes to show that an error needs to be caught early at the beginning of the transmission belt; otherwise, it will be repeated down the line in new and varied ways.

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The proper policy to hold towards a third party observer of a personal falling out between yourself and another person who is not threatening you with violence is to expect that person to understand that there is a conflict, and expect that person to take into account any relevant evidence based on current or future actions, and to act on that evidence when it becomes conclusive, but not to demand summary judgment, nor the taking of sides based on "loyalty," nor the acceptance of your accusations based upon faith. The proper application of Ayn Rand's dictum that there are no rational conflicts of interest between men requires that when there is a conflict, we allow men to use their own reason.

The third party has his own life. He has a full enough plate as it is without needing to interrupt his own pursuits to investigate another person's alleged non-violent wrongs against you. As frustrating as it may be to you, it is proper only to expect others to acknowledge a conflict, and to expect them to take into account the evidence as it emerges. Passing judgment requires knowledge, and possessing knowledge requires an effort. You have no right to demand that others go out of their way to take sides in an issue for which they have insufficient evidence to make a contextual judgment. And it is improper for you to attempt to manipulate the third party to do so.

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I agree with this aspect of justice in the social, private and noneconomic realm. Often you are friends with a couple who then split up. The one who befriends you first or longer usually claim seniority over you and want you to stick to his/her side and to shun the other person. And yet, if you are objective in your judgments, you might side with the other person, or you might like both and want to continue separate relationships with them. (Or sometimes the breakup is too nasty that you want to avoid both of them.) In any case, it is in your interest to judge independently, and neither of the two parties can or should pressure you. Therefore, you as a third party is your own person, and your relationship with each party is separate and stands on mutual knowledge of each other, and is none of the other's concern.

The difficulty I think is if you are friends with them as couples. When they break up, what happens? Each of you might like to remain friends with the opposite party! Then you bring into your internal relationship their problems. So, you as a third-party individual has to make an additional stance as a third-party couple. And as a third-party couple, you have the problem of the internal veto. If a veto is invoked toward a party, you in your capacity as a couple cannot be friends with that party. It's a messy multi-layered problem.

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[...] I'll take my arguments about essentialism in biology from the biologist Ernst Mayr. The relevant arguments on essentialism vs. population thinking can be found in his The Growth of Biological Thought. [...]

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From Wikipedia:

Ernst Walter Mayr (July 5, 1904, Kempten, Germany – February 3, 2005, Bedford, Massachusetts U.S.), was one of the 20th century's leading evolutionary biologists. He was also a renowned taxonomist, tropical explorer, ornithologist, historian of science, and naturalist. His work contributed to the conceptual revolution that led to the modern evolutionary synthesis of Mendelian genetics, systematics, and Darwinian evolution, and to the development of the biological species concept.

The funny thing is if in England, you ask a man in the street who the greatest living Darwinian is, he will say Richard Dawkins. And indeed, Dawkins has done a marvelous job of popularizing Darwinism. But Dawkins' basic theory of the gene being the object of evolution is totally non-Darwinian. I would not call him the greatest Darwinian.[8]

Thanks for the reference to Ernst Mayr, of whom I have never heard. Wow, what a scientist! And long-lived too. Hist last book was in 2004 when he was 100 years old.