Darrell Hougen

I've already answered that question. You're still trying to treat all values as instrumental. You're not allowed to back up another step. It's not rational to choose to be irrational. That's why you can't back up any further. Darrell

I think you're onto something there, Michael. She certainly didn't solve Hume's problem; I've come to think that the hitch is, she didn't understand it. In fact, as I've a couple times pointed out, she accepted the conditional nature of "ought" statements in her article "Causality Versus Duty." Repeating my synopsis of that article's theme: (1) in the words of an uneducated woman she knew, you "don't gotta do anything but die"; and (b ) there is no unchosen obligation. This agrees with Hume (though Hume wouldn't have put the issue like this). Another way of saying it is that nature dictates no rules, a point with which Rand explicitly agreed. Moral principles are chosen, she said ("Morality is a code of values accepted by choice," quoting the line from memory), not a set of commandments writ on some "tablet" external to human ends. The problem here is that "derive" is being used in a deductive sense when discussing ethics, while it is being used in some other manner when discussing the laws of physics. Physical laws can no more be deduced from observations than morality can be deduced from human nature. Neither can be deduced. But, there are other ways of reasoning. Rand's argument concerning ethics is not that an ought can be "derived" from an is in a deductive sense, but that man's choice to live as a rational being is the only rational choice. There is no other choice that optimally preserves both life and rationality. One can attempt to set up other standards of value, but any other standard is incompatible with man's nature. If a person fails to take reason to be his highest value and virtue, then he is irrational, to some degree. If he fails to make life as a rational person his standard of value, then he is irrational (because there is no other standard that is compatible with rationality) and his odds of surviving are lower. Therefore, man ought to take his life as a rational person to be his standard of value because there is no other standard that is fully compatible with what he is. Rand has solved Hume's "is-ought" problem by restating it in a form that can be solved. It is true that the ultimate ought cannot be deduced from an is, but to state the question in that form misses the point. It is sort of like asking what happened before the beginning of the universe. The question assumes a contradiction and is therefore an uninteresting question. If we insist on taking Hume's question in an unanswerable form, it becomes equally uninteresting. But, if we drop the requirement that the ultimate ought be deduced from an is and reword it slightly, an answer becomes possible. If we ask, instead, whether there is some code of values, that is compatible with human nature, and if so, what it is, and whether there is more than one such code, then we can address the issue. The answer is that we ought to take life as a rational being as our standard of value because that is the only standard that is fully compatible with the nature of a rational being. We can debate whether life as a rational being is, indeed, the only standard that is fully compatible with the nature of a rational being, but only after we have agreed that such a solution actually solves the is-ought problem in a meaningful way. In order to get past the deductive bottleneck, we must stop viewing goals as purely instrumental. Of course, most goals are instrumental to the achievement of other goals. For example, the goal of obtaining bread is instrumental to the goal of eating which is instrumental to the goal of living. But, if we insist that every goal be instrumental to the achievement of some other goal, then we have made bridging the is-ought gap impossible a priori. This is the form in which deductive statements are stated when they are applied to values, i.e., as instrumental statements. So, by insisting that every goal be instrumental, we are insisting that every fact be deducible. Both lead to an infinite regress. Her argument with respect to ethics is similar to her arguments with respect to existence and identity. Existence cannot be deduced from prior facts. It is implicit in all facts, but it cannot be deduced from them. That is why it is taken to be axiomatic. Similarly, an ultimate end or goal cannot be instrumental to some even more ultimate end or goal. But, that does not imply that we cannot argue for the validity of such an end or goal --- and I have outline what I believe the proper form of that argument to be above. Darrell

That's a personal opinion... which doesn't mean that we couldn't agree on it. We don't have to prove everything we agree on.What if you can't achieve univeral agreement? You've just stated that there is no means of using logic to convince another person of the correctness or superiority of your position over that of another person. What makes one person's opinion superior to another's? In the absense of cognitive content, your point of view carries no more logical weight than that of a terrorist. Darrell

You're putting the choice in the wrong part of the sentence. Ethical choices aren't about choosing if clauses, they are about choosing ought clauses. For example, there may be several ways for you to earn a living, e.g., driving a taxi, being a scientist, gaining political office, etc. So, if you want to earn a living, you could drive a taxi, study to become a scientist, run for politcal office and perhaps you ought to be a scientist. So, the choice is not with respect to your basic goal, it is with respect to the manner in which you attempt to satisfy it. Deriving your basic goal from an is doesn't obliterate your need to make choices. I notice that you didn't respond to my most recent post on this subject. At any rate, I've already illustrated the reasons that non-voluntary parasitism isn't a very successful strategy. Moreover, it can be forcefully argued that people need to live a principled existence if they want to maximize their odds of surviving. Remember too, that is not merely surviving, but living rationally that is the standard of value. Morality has no meaning for those that are willfully irrational (nor does anything else). Darrell

But, you can get an imperative from the fact of existence. Go back and read posts #202 and #93. Even, if you couldn't get an imperative from a fact, I think the conditional (weak) form of Rand's conclusion is a huge step forward because it reduces all of ethics to a single choice, the choice between life and death. In other words, if you choose life, you must have an ethical system taking life as your standard of value. That is a much better result than Hume's statement that it all comes down to the passions. The alternative to choosing life is to either choose some other end (as yet unspecified) or to fail to choose any end, which is essentially nihilism. If no end is given a priiori preference over any other, then all ends are a priori equal, including death. And, if you are a nihilist, there is nothing cognitive to keep you from suddenly deciding to jump off of a tall building or throw yourself under a bus. Note that if one chooses to be a slave of the passions, then one has essentially chosen nihilism. Emotionalism is not a substitute for cognitive concepts. Another possible end is altruism. However, altruism, as it is usually stated, is so vague as to be meaningless. I will have more to say about that in a future post. Darrell

Michael, Nice diagram. Now, if you would just label the gray area, "ethics," you would have the meat of Rand's philosophy. (I guess that means the, ought circle would have to fit within the is circle.) Darrell

Thank you. BTW, thank you for your contributions to this thread. I think you have made some good points that have not been adequately addressed by your opponents. Darrell

Quoted from Huemer: To begin with, let me note that objection 5 is not central to Rand's argument. She merely uses plants and animals (other than humans) as a point of contrast in order to more clearly explain the morality required for man. Man is volitional, while animals are not and plants are not. Animals make choices, but only at the perceptual level and they have no choice about the values they pursue. Therefore, even if Rand's argument is not precise at this point, it is not important to her conclusion. Now, Huemer asserts that nature is not teleological and therefore living things cannot have goals or purposes. The alternative that he suggests is that their actions simply, "result in the maintenance of their lives." However, this is a very inadequate description of the actual situation. In reality, animals, for example, act as if their behavior was goal directed, even if the goal is not a conscious goal involving conceptual knowledge. A good analogy can be obtained by looking at the behavior of a chess program. A chess program acts to maximize an objective function which ascribes a certain value to a move based on the values of the pieces, their positions, and the relationships between the pieces and their positions. It generates a set of possible moves (actions) and evaluates the resulting positions in terms of the values that have been placed on the pieces, etc., by the programmer. It then choose a move --- the one that maximizes its objective function --- and makes the move that it has chosen. The chess program acts as if its goal was to win the game. In fact, its behavior may be fairly characterized in terms of the goal of winning the game. It just doesn't understand its goal in conceptual terms. The same is true of an animal. A cheetah chasing a gazelle is conscious of its goal in perceptual terms. It sees the gazelle and places a certain value on catching it. That leads it to value reducing the distance between it and the gazelle. At each point in time, it is faced with choices of actions which it considers, such as moving downwind, stalking, and giving chase. It places certain values on each possible choice based on its knowledge of the wind conditions, speed of the gazelle, distance to the gazelle, etc. Although it may not be conscious of its goal in conceptual terms, its behavior may be fairly characterized in terms of the goal of catching the gazelle. Moreover, that goal is instrumental to the goal of preserving its life. If the cheetah is not hungry, it places a lower value on the goal of catching the gazelle than if it is hungry. Thus, it is a gross mischaracterization to assert that animals, and other living things are not capable of goal directed or purposeful behavior. If Huemer does not believe that such behavior is possible, I wonder how he would characterize the behavior of the cheetah or the computer program, described above. To state that an action merely results in a desirable state is a gross mischaracterization of the situation and naturally leads to absurd conclusions about rocks having values. In order for something to have values, it must have goals and must have alternatives. Animals and plants do have goals, though they are not conceptual goals. Now, it is debatable whether the goal of an animal is the preservation of its life or not. It is probably more accurate to state that it is the preservation of its genes. The "objective function" that it is born with, tends to cause it to strive to both stay alive and reproduce. However, it is clear that staying alive is a principle goal of all living things. Therefore, Rand is substantially correct, even if she is slightly off. And, her point works as a point of contrast with human nature, and thus bolsters her argument, even though it is not strictly required by her argument. Darrell

I'm sorry you think that, but it simply isn't true. There are basically two solutions to the problem and I am sure that Rand grasped the first (weak) solution, though I'm not sure that she grasped the second (strong) version. The weak solution starts with the assumption that man is faced with a fundamental choice between life and death. If he chooses life, then he must make life his standard of value because there is no other choice that improves his odds of staying alive. In this solution, reason is instrumental to keeping him alive and is his primary virtue. Therefore, man ought to live a rational life because he is a volitional being and that is his only rational choice if he chooses to live. If he doesn't choose to live, he can do whatever he wants and it doesn't matter whether he is rational or not. In the strong solution, it is argued that a rational life is man's only rational choice and is therefore his only proper (that is logical) course of action. That argument follows from the fact that if rationality is not integral to the proper end, then man is, necessarily, irrational. In other words, rational life, is the only possible end in itself for a rational being. That is, man ought to live a rational life because he is a rational being. BTW, it seems like either nobody read post #93 or no one understood it. I'm not interested in discussing problems with Rand's epistemology on this thread. Epistemology is arguably the most difficult branch of philosophy and I do believe there are problems with her epistemology. However, it is clear that all of us reading this thread do actually know something, so let's keep the discussion focused on ethics. Later, we can debate how we know what we know. I will try to get to point 5 in the near future. Although Huemer is wrong, point 5 is not as trivial as point 2. Darrell

Huemer does seem to be somewhat tentative about it, but it is also listed as one of the eight "fatal flaws" in Rand's argument. I find that very puzzling. If I were tentative about a proposition, I wouldn't list it as a "fatal flaw" in someone else's philosophy. This illustrates the manner in which Huemer misinterprets or misunderstands Rand. Rand never claimed that every occurrence in life requires alternatives, just that the kind of being that requires a moral code is the kind of being that is faced with alternatives and that some alternatives have more value to that being than others. She gives a clear example of an indestructible robot as something that does not need a moral code. If it doesn't matter whether an indestructible robot eats or sleeps or jumps off of a tall building or lays down on a railroad track, then it don't need a moral code because nothing it does has any influence on its existence. For such a robot, a million dollars would have no value because it doesn't need anything in order to continue to exist. It doesn't need money to buy food because it doesn't need any food. It doesn't need money to buy a house because it doesn't need a house. If it wants to ride the roller coaster at the amusement park, it can do so at any time because no one can stop it or damage it in any way. But, if a being is faced with at least some alternatives that effect its existence, then it needs a moral code. So, if I receive a million dollars, I still need to decide whether to pay down my house loan or save it for my children's education or blow it all in Vegas. Therefore, the million dollars is still valuable to me, whether I have any choice about receiving it or not. Moreover, I still can't jump off of a tall building or lay down on a railroad track if I want to continue to exist. The million dollars doesn't change those aspects of my existence at all. I am still finite and still have needs and desires for which I have to budget and physical constraints on my behavior. Therefore, I still need a moral code. Rand explained herself with the illustration of the indestructible robot. To me, the illustration is clear. I don't know if she was ever faced with Huemer's question, per se, so I don't know of any reference in which she answered it. However, I wonder whether your purpose (or Huemer's purpose) is to attack Rand's solution to the is-ought problem or to attack the philosophical notion that there is a solution to the is-ought problem. To me, the second issue is more interesting than the first and if we are discussing the second issue, I don't necessarily have to find references in Rand to support my arguments. I can just speak plainly using logic and examples. If the question is whether Rand's solution to the is-ought problem is adequate or whether her presentation of the solution is adequate, that may require more scholarship and examples. I guess that I'm not really interested in debating whether Rand solved the problem until we agree on whether there is a solution to the problem or not. Then, we can go back and debate the adequacy of her scholarship, debate whether she really understood what she was saying or not, or debate the adequacy of the presentation. I would not, however, underestimate Rand's grasp of the facts. Darrell

Hi Daniel, Here is an example: If I was going to receive a million dollars tomorrow, that would not convert me into a being that is not faced with alternatives. If I receive a million dollars, I must still decide how to use it. If I'm involved in a car crash over which I have no control, I must still figure out how to pick up the pieces and go on. Huemer's argument is just silly, in this case. It is based on a shallow and obvious misinterpretation of Objectivism. I haven't read the whole thing, but if you think he makes a good point somewhere, we can debate that. Darrell

I should add that I agree with you here. Whether mooching is rational or not depends upon the context of a person's existence. It bears a similar relationship to reality as honesty. Honesty is the best policy only when a person is dealing with generally honest or good people. U.S. intelligence told lies to the Germans during WWII because that was the rational way to win the war. Mooching may be rational given the sanction of the victim. Darrell

You can't measure the probability of success after the fact. With 20/20 hindsight, everyone knows whether he or she made the right choice or the best choice, but are the odds ever really in your favor going in? If I win the lottery, I can say that I made the right choice in buying a lottery ticket, but was it really the right choice before hand? Here, you're just speculating. Some white collar criminals may be very successful, but that doesn't imply that the odds were in their favor going in. This is pure speculation. How do you know that the moocher gives up thinking? Maybe he has thought out his situation very well and has he come to the conclusion that this is the lifestyle for him. That you would arrive at a different conclusion for yourself doesn't prove anything, you cannot think for him. I'm not trying to think for him. He may have thought out his situation very well in the beginning, but now that he is hooked up to the gravy train (the welfare check or his relative's handouts) he doesn't need to think any more and he doesn't. If he did, if he came up with a great way to make money and implemented it while he was sitting around receiving his welfare check, he wouldn't need welfare anymore because he would be rich (or at least reasonably well off). So moochers (not thieves) are people who, by definition, sit around year after year not doing much and receiving payments from other people. So, the moocher, in effect, wastes his life. He may have the capacity to use his mind, but he doesn't. He doesn't understand as much as the person that works and isn't as knowledgeable. Of course, the moocher could sit at home and read books, but there is a limit to the amount that can be learned from books. It is often difficult to understand something if you don't do it yourself. It is necessary for the mind to connect abstract concepts to perceptual concretes and explore the effects of actions on those things that are observed. You may think you understand a computer programming book, but until you have actually written computer programs, debugged them, made them work and made them do something useful, you don't really understand how to program. Now, a moocher might actually implement something that he reads in a book in his basement and, being the genius that he is, might discover some new physical theory. But, once the theory becomes known, he is no longer a moocher, but a benefactor of humanity. His only choice, if he really wants to be a moocher, is to take his brilliant new theory to his grave with him. But, would that be rational? Isn't it likely that he would profit much more by making it known? So, I just don't see how a person can be a moocher and live a life proper to a rational being, that is, use his mind to engage in rational thought. Darrell

Michael Huemer's piece is fraught with rather obvious errors. He does not properly identify her premises or conclusions and his objections rely on rather obvious misinterpretations of what Rand meant. Life lived in accordance with reason is the only possible moral standard for a rational being. Death is not a rational choice. I have outlined that argument in post #93. Although the life of "man qua man" has often been interpreted to mean a life of flourishing, I do not believe that interpretation is what Rand had in mind or that anything other than life lived in accordance with reason is required to make her argument. Rand may have been somewhat careless in her use of language from time to time, but I think it is unreasonable to require a writer to put every possible qualification on every statement at every point in a derivation. She tried to illustrate her argument in many different ways from many different perspectives and may have taken some things to be given in order to get to the point when some of those givens are explained in other works. Darrell

Hi Michael, Thank you for the compliment above. I don't believe that something is truly understood until it is possible to give a clear and concise explanation of it. Actually, I don't really believe that something is truly understood until one has constructed (or can construct) an object, machine or device that implements the principles involved, but the first step in that direction is a clear and concise description. I am also happy that we are on the same page with respect to the issue of the existence of the material world and of consciousness. However, based on your comments, quoted below, I'm not sure we're in exact agreement with respect to the nature of consciousness (or of life). Here, I disagree, to some extent. I do believe that life is a property of the system that is related to the organization and ongoing activity of the system. In some sense, this is a reductionist point of view in the sense that each subprocess of the overall system process can be explained in terms of the ordinary laws of physics and chemistry. The possibility of such a reduction is a requirement of the fact that the body of a living organism is a physical object that exists in the physical world. It is ultimately governed by the laws of physics. There is, however, a sense in which life exists that cannot be trivialized. Once the activity of a living organism has been sufficiently disrupted, there is no way to restore it. The life of any person alive today was passed down in an unbroken line through eons of time to the present day. Once that spark of life, which represents the proper organization of the cell or system of cells, has been snuffed out, it is gone forever. That branch of the tree has been cut off and cannot be restored. Agreed. Consciousness is also a metaphysical form of existence. Anything that exists, exists metaphysically. Just as life represents a certain state and process of matter, consciousness represents a certain state and process of the brain. Consciousness bears a similar relationship to the brain as software bears to a computer. Heusdens, I would ask you to reread my response in post #3 on this thread so I don't have to repeat everything that I said there. Darrell

I'm not giving no credit to a person's ability to compartmentalize, I'm simply omitting discussion of the issue for sake of brevity. However, I'm suspecting that your problem with my presentation is actually rather different in character. The creationism versus evolution example works well because it is obvious that belief in creationism is irrational. However, I will try to give more examples with more sweeping implications as I have time. Darrell

Dragonfly's post on another thread got me interested in discussing the nature of knowledge. He apparently does not agree with the assertion that, "if you can't be 100% certain of anything you can't know anything." So, I would like to know why. First, I will put my spin on it. As far as I know, you can either know something as a fact (i.e., be certain of it (in some sense that I will try to elucidate below)) or know the probability of it --- or at least have an estimate of the probability. There are no other ways of knowing anything. Now, in order to know the probability of something, it is necessary to know some things for sure. For example, in order to know the probability of drawing a particular card from a deck of cards, one must know that one has a deck of cards, how many cards there are in the deck and whether the card of interest is in the deck. Without knowing those basic things, it is impossible to know the probability of drawing a card. One cannot argue that there is a high probability that a person is possession of a deck of cards or that there is a high probability that the deck contains 52 cards, because there is no way of calculating those probabilities without knowing even more things. That is, if there is any doubt that I am holding 52 cards, I must know the probability that my perceptual faculty might be in error in order for me to calculate the probability that I am in fact holding all the cards. But, in order to know the probability that my perceptual faculty is accurate, I must know how often it is right and how often it is wrong. But, there is no way to know that unless I have some oracle that tells me when I am right or wrong. Clearly, I cannot depend upon the perceptual system itself unless the perceptual system sometimes produces results of which I can be sure. Generally, when researchers study artificial perception systems, they characterize everything in terms of probabilities, so it is hard to imagine going from those probabilities to a state of certainty. However, there are some results from information theory and minimum description length estimation that may give us some hope. First, according to Shannon, if the channel capacity of a communications channel is sufficiently large, relative to the amount of information it is carrying, then the probability of error can be may arbitrarily small. This is important because the channel capacity does not have to be infinite. There is a finite capacity for which the error goes to zero. So, if a perceptual system is like a communications channel, it may be that there are circumstances under which it can operate in a virtually error free manner. For example, if you get close enough to someone, you may have no doubt about who that person is, particularly if you know that person well. The other result, from minimum description length estimation states that if you collect a sufficient number of samples from a probability distribution that can be described with a finite number of bits of information, the MDL procedure will find that solution and thereafter never deviate from that solution with probability one. That brings us to a discussion of events of probability zero. It may be that we need to make a distinction between certainty in the absolute sense and certainty in the probabilistic sense. To be certain in the latter sense means that one knows a fact with probability equal to one, but that there may be a set of measure zero for which the fact is not true. This could roughly correspond to the notion of contextual certainty within Objectivism. That is, one can be sure, so long as really far fetched ideas are excluded. As an example, consider my car. My car is distinctive enough, that I can be sure, when I find it and examine it closely and put the key in the lock, that it is my car. To say that my car is distinctive, means two things: First, that it has its own identity, and second that it is sufficiently different from other cars that there is essentially no chance of me making a mistake about whose car it is. Therefore, I am sure that my car is my car with probability one. However, I cannot be sure in an absolute sense, because the KGB might have stolen my car in the middle of the night and replaced it with one exactly like it, one which they spent millions of dollars of time and effort on for the sole purpose of fooling me. This falls into the category of far fetched ideas. Even more far fetched, are ideas that have to do with substituting people you don't know for people you do and not being able to tell the difference. Of course, this makes for interesting entertainment, but is virtually impossible in practice. Perhaps advanced space aliens could do it. Such propositions, are, in effect arbitrary since there is no evidence that space aliens even exist. Therefore, I can be certain except on a set of measure zero of arbitrary assertions. Darrell

That is a non sequitur. The question whether you can generalize it is irrelevant. That would imply that you couldn't earn a living as a baker as you can't generalize it: if everyone became a baker the whole society would collapse. The fact that there are so many succesful parasites is proof that it can be a rational strategy.There is one other point I'd like to make regarding the above, namely, that Laure's point is valid insofar as we are seeking general principles according to which all people can live. Clearly, everyone can live if everyone is productive but it is not possible for anyone to live if everyone is a parasite. Therefore, parasitism doesn't work as a general principle but productivity does. The reason this is important is because, early on in life, a person must develop the habits of mind and action that will be used throughout life for survival. Now, if there happen to be enough opportunities for parasites to survive, then learning the mental habits of a parasite might be a successful survival strategy, but if there aren't, then the parasite will have a hard time surviving later because he has not learned or developed the principles necessary for productive existence. The productive person doesn't have that problem because there aren't limited opportunities for a productive person to survive. There is always more room for wealth creators, but there might not be more room for moochers. Darrell

The purpose of morality is to guide your thoughts and actions at every moment of every day. That doesn't mean that other people should be sticking their noses in your business. What it means is that you are responsible for how you spend your time even when no one is watching. Actually, that is a non-sequitur. Just because many people have won the lottery does not imply that it is rational to spend your money buying lottery tickets. What you need to show is that there is a high probability of success --- that the probability of success as a parasite is higher than the probability of success as something else. Now, there are a couple kinds of parasites, those that steal from the productive without their consent and those that have the voluntary consent of their supporters. The former include bank robbers and convenience store thieves while the latter include welfare recipients and those that mooch off of their relatives and friends. Now, it is clear that most parasites of the first kind are not very successful. Most bank robberies net about $1000 (the last I heard) and most bank robbers rob 2 or 3 banks before they are caught. Hardly sounds like a career to me. Convenience store thieves and burglars don't fair any better, on average. I think the average theft of a convenience store yields about $120 and the number of successful robberies is generally less than 20. Burglars probably do even worse. So, that leaves us with moochers. Now, it is true that in a society in which welfare is readily available and others are happy to be victims that moochers can live relatively well. But, I would argue that such behavior is still not proper for a rational being because of the nature of the thinking process. For the same reason that a slave cannot live a life proper for a rational being, a moocher doesn't either. In the first case, the slave is not allowed to use his mind in the sense that he can never test his conclusions and therefore gives up thinking because it is useless. In the second, the moocher doesn't bother to test his conclusions and therefore gives up thinking. But, I think Rand understood the nature of the parasite problem, which is why she loudly decried the giving of money to those that don't deserve it --- the sanction of the victim. In a society in which people generally acted in their own rational, self interest, it would be much more difficult for parasites of the second kind to even survive. Darrell

This has turned into a fascinating discussion of one of my favorite topics, the is-ought problem. I am convinced that Ayn Rand successfully solved the problem, though she didn't always express the solution clearly (in my view). First, it is necessary to decompose what she meant by the phrase, "the life of man qua man." The life of man qua man means life as a rational animal or life as a rational being. So, a morality appropriate for man is a morality appropriate for a rational being. Rationality is man's essential characteristic, so the life of man qua man means a life lived in a manner consistent with this essential characteristic, that is, a life consistent with reason. Another important aspect of the explanation is the volitional nature of consciousness. Every action of body and mind is an act of choice. One must decide, at each moment in time, not merely what to do, but what to think. And, if a person is rational, an action is always chosen that is consistent with a higher value in preference to a lower value. That brings us to the value of reason itself. If a person holds some goal or end to be of higher value than reason (or rationality), then that person is, perforce, irrational. A person may encounter a circumstance in which he must either believe a conclusion that is consistent with reason or a conclusion that is consistent with some other end. And, if that other end is more valuable than the value placed on reason, then the illogical conclusion will be chosen in preference to the logical one. Now, it is clear that if a person knows that he may, based on his values, choose an irrational conclusion over a rational one at some time in the future, he has already abandoned reason and has, therefore, already become irrational. Nor is it possible to choose one day to be irrational and the next day to be rational. Once a person has abandoned reason as his sole means of comprehending reality, there is no guarantee that he will ever regain a rational perspective on life in the future as there is no means for an irrational person to reason consistently to any end. If a person returns to rationality at some time in the future, that is his good fortune, but there is no way for him to rationally choose to become rational when he is, in fact, irrational. Once a contradiction has been embraced, it destroys the logical consistency of all thought and makes rational thought impossible. That is why reason is man's highest value and virtue. As an illustration of this principle in practice, consider the religious person who chooses to believe in creationism in preference to the theory of evolution. Although the creation story is clearly irrational, the religious person chooses to believe it because it satisfies his desire to believe in God which he holds as his highest value, in preference to the value of reason. As long as a person holds his belief in God to be more valuable than reason, he is, of necessity, irrational. Now, in order to be rational, a man must be rational. That means that he must continue to exist, which means that he must continue to live and, therefore, must take the actions necessary to live. Among the actions that he must take is the action of setting up a moral code for himself --- that is, a code of values that define and delineate the proper course of action for him to take in order to survive. And, if he is to survive, the code must be rational and must therefore place rational life at the top of the hierarchy. All other actions and goals must be consistent with that value which is taken to be the end in itself. Therefore, the life of man qua man is the proper end for a rational being. Now, you may argue that people have survived in the past and continue to survive without being totally rational. That is true. But the ease of survival is certainly related to the degree of rationality. During the Middle Ages, when religion was dominant in the West, survival was much more difficult than it is today. Moreover, it is clear that people with irrational ends survive in spite of their morality, not because of it, and they do so by smuggling some degree of rationality into their behavior in a manner that is inconsistent with their ultimate goals or ends. In addition, such a person cannot be termed a rational being because such a person does not hold consistent, rational values. In conclusion, the fact that man is a rational animal implies that he ought to act in a manner consistent with reason. Darrell

Thanks, Michael, for providing a clear and comprehensive statement. Darrell

I find it very wacky. Bush is a mediocre president that could be criticized on any number of points, but to label him a totalitarian or, as others have done, as a facist, is beyond reasonable. I have also heard the U.S. referred to as a police state (though not by Objectivists). If we use such harsh terms to describe a rather mild president, how can we properly describe those who are much worse? Besides the harm that such demagoguery does to the public discourse regarding real deficiencies of Bush and this country's governance in general, it also harms our ability to rationally discuss the deficiencies of other leaders and countries that are generally far worse. Darrell

The phrase, "existence exists," is shorthand for the statement that, "the material world, independent and outside of the mind or consciousness, exists." Darrell

I really do not understand why you think that Objectivism holds the view that things have a "fixed" identity, i.e., an identity that doesn't change over time. I have read a large percentage of Rand's works and have have never found anything to suggest such a belief on her part. For example, I'm sure Rand was acutely aware of the fact that a person is born as a baby, grows into a child and then into an adult, gets old and dies. Yet, at any moment in time, a person, in Rand's view (and in fact), has an identity. Indeed, her view is entirely consistent with what you said in the first quoted paragraph above. In the, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, Rand discusses the manner in which we know the identity of an object, namely, by measuring it --- by determining the quantity of each quality. In the above example of a person, the obvious measurements of height an weight (and every other quality) change throughout life. Therefore, the identity of a person, not who a person is, but his precise nature, changes over time. The only restriction is that the change be causal. The change is not arbitrary but is in accordance with his nature. I find the notion that Rand was unaware of such facts and the notion that her concept of identity was somehow inconsistent with such facts preposterous, at best. Darrell

So, everything is the same as everything else? Darrell