the NIOF principle


Arkadi

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Jacobi famously complained regarding Kant's "thing in itself":  “without that presupposition I could not enter into [Kant's] system, but with it I could not stay within it.”

I believe that the same, mutatis mutandis, could be said about AR's Non Initiation Of Force principle. On the one hand, she claimed it to be her greatest philosophical achievement. On the other, following it strictly would make all taxation--and thus the existence of state--impossible, which according to her would result in a disaster.

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In 1976 at The Philosophy of Objectivism lectures, Rand was asked what she regarded as her most important philosophical discoveries. She said her ethics, her theory of concepts, and her identification of the non-initiation of force principle as the objective mark by which individual rights can be determined. (She made some sort of caveat about realizing that some might wonder whether she was the first on that last one, but anyway, it was one of her most important finds.)

No one should merely accept this assessment of importance among the elements of Rand’s philosophy that are original with her. Readers of a philosophy should think through for themselves the degree of importance of its various elements found true and original. See here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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On November 23, 2007 at 9:00 AM, Guyau said:

Arkadi, these concern right funding of government.

On November 27, 2007 at 9:35 AM, Guyau said:

Dennis, I thank you, and I thank Michael too, for the comments on my 1987 essay.

Is the assessment on rents at which I arrived, the assessment which would pay for the military defense of the land state (which is at the core of any state), a tax? It is what it is, regardless of whether we call it a tax. But should we think of it as a tax when we are being exact?

The American Heritage Dictionary defines tax as:

1. A contribution for the support of a government required of persons, groups, or businesses within the domain of that government.

2. A fee or due levied on the members of an organization to meet its expenses.

Black’s Law Dictionary defines tax as a pecuniary contribution that shall be made by persons liable, for the support of government. Black’s goes on to say:

Quote

In a broad sense, taxes undoubtedly include assessments, and the right to impose assessments has its foundation in the taxing power of the government; and yet, in practice and as generally understood, there is a broad distinction between the two terms. Taxes, as the tem is generally used, are public burdens imposed generally upon the inhabitants of the whole state, or upon some civil division thereof, for governmental purposes, without reference to peculiar benefits to particular individuals or property. Assessments have reference to impositions for improvements which are specially beneficial to particular individuals or property, and which are imposed in proportion to the particular benefits supposed to be conferred. They are justified only because the improvements confer special benefits, and are just only when they are divided in proportion to such benefits.

I suppose that in political philosophy we have some leeway whether we shall use the terms under their general dictionary usage or whether we shall use them as they would be used in law. If we go with the latter, it seems that the rent assessments which fell out of my analysis come to rest somewhere between taxes and assessments.

As most readers here know, Ayn Rand and most modern libertarians opposed any form of taxation, at least in the most just state that might eventually be reached. But what was Rand’s definition of a tax? She writes that they “represent an initiation of force.” She writes in her 1964 essay "Government Financing in a Free Society"

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"What would be the proper method of financing the government in a fully free society?”

This question is usually asked in connection with the Objectivist principle that the government of a free society may not initiate the use of physical force and may use force only in retaliation against those who initiate its use. Since the imposition of taxes does represent an initiation of force, how, it is asked, would the government of a free country raise the money needed to finance its proper services?

In a fully free society, taxation—or, to be exact, payment for governmental services—would be voluntary. . . .

For the reasons given in my essay, the assessments on rents would not be an initiation of the use of force. It is false that owners of land (in the general economic sense) have ownership already perfected against all rational contests to those ownerships independently of the land state at the core of the state. The claim of any such perfect property right would be false, so no such right is infringed by the assessment.

Because Rand’s characterization of taxes as entailing the initiation of force is so widely presumed by readers here, it is probably best to decline calling these fundamental assessments on rents a tax. Dennis sensibly writes:

“The dues you speak of are clearly a form of taxation, since a person cannot decide not to pay and cannot secede from the alliance. However, the tax is levied against income from land, whose property rights exist only because of the alliance, so it is reasonable to demand that the cost of the alliance supporting the owner’s right be paid by him. Is this how I should understand your meaning?”

The second sentence, exactly so. Concerning the first, I would say a little more than I have already in this post. As it happens in my own personal case, I have never owned any real estate. I’m just a renter. It’s not so bad. If my landlord did not want to pay the land state’s assessments on his rents, he would have to sell the house and become a renter. In his case, he would go to a nice home for seniors and continue his good and very free life. My serious point is that I don’t see liability to such an assessment on rents as necessarily a great burden to people’s freedom and well-being.

Unknown to me are the macroeconomic differences that would come from financing national defense by assessments on rents rather than by income tax (and inflation).

. . .

 

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4 hours ago, Guyau said:

In 1976 at The Philosophy of Objectivism lectures, Rand was asked what she regarded as her most important philosophical discoveries. She said her ethics, her theory of concepts, and her identification of the non-initiation of force principle as the objective mark by which individual rights can be determined. (She made some sort of caveat about realizing that some might wonder whether she was the first on that last one, but anyway, it was one of her most important finds.)

No one should merely accept this assessment of importance among the elements of Rand’s philosophy that are original with her. Readers of a philosophy should think through for themselves the degree of importance of its various elements found true and original. See here.

I think it's sanction of the victim/impotence of evil, but I don't divide up her philosophy from her art in this case. Continuing in this vein, I don't consider "Objectivism" to be her philosophy, only her philosophy apart from her art and personal values. The philosophy of Ayn Rand was hers alone. Objectivism per se is a philosophical universalizer. So when she mentions her "most important philosophical discoveries," that's both Objectivism and her philosophy for her philosophy sweeps in all of Objectivism and all of her added on cultural artifacts and values. That's integrated--her integration. Others can get those important things apart from all the rest. Thus, anyone who wants to be an Objectivist properly starts with the basic principles and adds on what he/she wants to--this will be done automatically or automatically plus conscious choosing for every active human brain already has its own working philosophy albeit modifiable or changeable or add-on-to -able to some extent--so every Objectivist in an individual in the particular ("a man") and also in common ("qua man"). The big mistake is absorbing to the extent one does, osmotically, the philosophy of Ayn Rand mixing up the particular with the universal and not understanding what is going on. What is lacking is critical thinking and good teachers. There have never been any good teachers of Objectivism. Intellectually powerful and charismatic teachers (Rand and Branden) yes, good teachers, no. That's why the philosophy is up on the beach like a stranded whale not going anywhere until it gets dragged back into the ocean.

--Brant

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"Readers of a philosophy should think through for themselves the degree of importance of its various elements found true and original."

"anyone who wants to be an Objectivist properly starts with the basic principles"

Guyau  and Brant-- So, what (if not the NIOF) are, in you (respective) view(s), the basic/true principles that make Objectivism philosophically original and singular?

Thanks. ~Arkadi

 

 

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Arkadi,

I don’t count NIOF and its connection to individual rights as true, original, and important in Rand’s thought on political philosophy. In this area, I’d count rather her wedding of individual rights and the virtue of self-interested action via the more fundamental ideas that every individual is an end in himself or herself, that the creative rational mind is profoundly individual, and that human survival depends on operation of such minds. That conception of end-in-itself, as well as the conception of individuality of mind, need further development beyond Rand, but so far as she got on to this, she was on to something true and important and apparently original. The importance is magnified when joined with the old libertarian idea that the only proper function of the state is to defend and perfect individual rights. Integration of NIOF with the concept of individual rights is an important project yet to be seriously executed. The problem is that Rand and her libertarian contemporaries, such as Rothbard, all had thin and faulty analyses of property rights in economic land and their interplay with individual rights and the state.

One thing in or preliminary to Rand’s ethical theory I think true, original, and important is her idea that value occurs only on account of the existence of life. The concept value presupposes the concept life. And not only is it that where there is value, there is life; it is also that where there is life, there are values.

In the phrase “where there is value, there is life,” I mean only that whatever can be pointed to as a value, life will be there with it. That is Rand’s idea that only living things have values, that value is found only in the context of life activities. That is, value enters the inanimate world only with life, and any talk of value-concepts (e.g. the concepts problem or correct) has its full sensibleness only when it is understood that one is talking about phenomena derivative of and traceable to the phenomenon life.

That, all of the preceding two paragraphs, is one conception I would say is true, original, and important in Rand’s philosophy. As of her writing of We the Living in the 1930’s, Rand evidently thought that only sentient animals had values; value entered the world with animal sentience and reached its greatest magnification in the human being, especially in certain sorts of human beings. William James (1890) had also held that without sentience, without consciousness, no value is at hand. In her mature philosophy, as you know, Rand drafted a conception of value in which value is in the world where there is life, even in the insentient life of plants; and in the constitution of animals and humans, there are further plays of the forms of life and of value.

There is a conception of Rand’s concerning relation of world and mind, and the conformance of the latter to the former, that so far as I have been able to discover is unprecedented in the history of philosophy. That is her duo: “Existence is Identity, Consciousness is Identification.” Something like the first wing of that was realized by Avicenna. With this insight, Avicenna and Rand (independently of him) were extending Aristotle, but it was a significant extension, and I think, a point true and important. Joined with the second wing, they seem to me a very important and original innovation in the history of philosophy, and a true one.

Rand's thesis that all well-formed concepts have an implicit (or explicit) measurement-omission structure is a substantial, controversial, and new thesis. It is really two theses, and each is new. One is a claim of empirical psychology, a claim about the origin of concepts in childhood. Rand's claim was that they are formed implicitly by a process of measurement omission. I present evidence on the extent to which that is true and the extent to which it is false: abc.

The other is a claim presupposed by that empirical claim, and it is interesting in its own right. (The empirical claim has other presuppositions besides this one, pretty sure.) It too is substantial, controversial, and new. That is the thesis that all concretes can be placed under some concept or other having a measurement-omission structure. Even if one is including as measurement a scaling having only ordinal structure, the claim remains substantial, controversial, and new. I have found forerunners of this thesis of Rand’s in a number of thinkers, and George Smith has recently mentioned another one. As original and important, I count this idea of Rand’s that concepts of any concretes can always be fashioned according to a principle of suspended particular measurement values along certain magnitude dimensions shared by particulars falling under those concepts. It is only Rand, so far as I have found, who generalized the principle to concepts in general. That was a slight overgeneralization in my view because and only because the logical and set-theoretical concepts implicit in the concept of measurement should not be analyzed in terms of measurement; that would be mixed up. But what remains under her thesis after that excision is enormous and I count the qualified thesis true, original, and important.

Stephen

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I've written some about "Existence is Identity" and the transcendentals here. I've refined that somewhat since then. Maybe I can look at my current version and add the differences here in this thread tomorrow. Also, I'll try to listen to the Peikoff remark that you've linked in the perception thread tomorrow and get back to you there.

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22 hours ago, Arkadi said:

"Readers of a philosophy should think through for themselves the degree of importance of its various elements found true and original."

"anyone who wants to be an Objectivist properly starts with the basic principles"

Guyau  and Brant-- So, what (if not the NIOF) are, in you (respective) view(s), the basic/true principles that make Objectivism philosophically original and singular?

Thanks. ~Arkadi

The top to bottom integration of the correct basic principles (for living on earth). It's complete that way.

--Brant

Edited by Brant Gaede
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4 hours ago, Arkadi said:

Integration was there in Aristotle as well. So, what makes AR's philosophy original and unique is its correctness. Ok.

I cannot discuss Aristotle with you. I strongly suggest reading George H. Smith for the type of information you seem to want.

--Brant

Stephen Boydstun too

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Stephen-- Regarding the "Existence is Identity" thesis, I am looking at your illustration: A floor is nothing but which and what and where and when it is. That is all there is to a floor’s existence if we are thinking by those the total containing all its specifics and particularities. Were one to use a notion of identity so broad as to contain all of those, one could say of the existing floor Identity is existence.

I infer from this illustration that you construe the existence of an individual (e.g., a floor) as the concurrence of its properties (which concurrence you call "identity"), and this is what the indicated thesis amounts to, in your view. Is this right?

 

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10 hours ago, Arkadi said:
10 hours ago, Arkadi said:
10 hours ago, Arkadi said:
10 hours ago, Arkadi said:

Thank you, Brant. I've read quite a few books on Aristotle, and by Aristotle himself--in Greek.

 

 

 

I'm mostly a consumer of philosophy, albeit a very critical one, not a philosopher. My interest in how original Rand is--was--isn't all that strong. She over-estimated her originality, but some--many--of her critics don't give her proper credit as they are so eager to chop her down. She is best judged in her contemporaneous context delineated by her three novels plus ten or twenty years (1957 to early 1970s when she ceased publication of her "Letter"). Stephen seems to be mostly idea oriented and has no interest in all the sundry personal folderol that enveloped her. Let me put it schematically: you for the past, Stephen for the present, me for the future. (This gross over-simplification isn't fair to any of us, but "fair" has nothing to do with it.)

--Brant

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Arkadi,

I wouldn’t use property to cover all elements of the indicated full set. I’d retain property as monadic. Under whatness I’d include things not monadic, but relational, such as susceptibilities and powers. The which, where, and when are also dyadic (or more) relational.

(I doubt I’ll get to the perception-thread until yet another day.)

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Stephen--My question was from a basic Aristotelian perspective, from which the subtle terminological distinction between what you call "monadic" and "relational" predicates is irrelevant. Of course, I'm curious in what sense "where," e.g., is not "monadic," but this is an aside. My main question is this: I infer from your illustration that you construe the existence of an individual (e.g., a floor) as the concurrence of its predicates (which concurrence you call "identity"), and this is what the indicated thesis ("existence is identity") amounts to, in your view. Is this right? And if not, how would you correct my formulation so that it sound right?

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I never make that kind of formula and don’t really care for it. But it might be not too bad to say the identity, this full exhaustive sense of identity, is the concurrence (with various unities) of the things its true predicates refer to together with any other facts (if any) in which the existent stands. Whatever formula one makes along those lines must also capture and make salient the idea that all existents have natures. I gather so far that that is different than Aristotle. I vaguely recall he restricted natures to substance (ousia). As you most likely know, Rand’s category entity (which with modifications I so far retain in my own scheme) takes up some of Aristotle’s characterization of substance, agreeing more with substance in Categories than with his further developments of it. (Ditto for potential.) Rand does not restrict natures to entity.

Rand uses this full exhaustive sense of identity at times, including at times in the expression “existence is identity.” However, she is often concerned only with the whatness (quiddity) of any existent, with the correct taxonomies into which it fits and with its correct definitions. I should refresh also that Rand’s “existence is identity” was in its introduction to (i) require specifications of identity for claims of existence and (ii) infer that the idea of a thing itself without any specifics and particularities was nothing. Perhaps (i) is a bit less than her idea that an existent is nothing but its identity in the exhaustive sense. It is with (i), the requirement of specification, that she puts her “existence is identity” to use in barring the “negative way” of approaching God, a regular path in Christian and Judaic theology, salient in Pseudo-Dionysius and Maimonides, and a regular thoroughfare of outright mysticism.

Though not given the pride of place given it by Rand, there is some recognition that existence is identity in Aristotle: “If all contradictories are true of the same subject at the same time, evidently all things will be one . . . . And thus we get the doctrine of Anaxagoras, that all things are mixed together; so that nothing exists” (1007b19–26). Aristotle acknowledges on occasion that any existent not only is, but is a what. He contradicts that principle, however, when he says: “That which is primarily and is simply (not is something) must be substance” (1028a30).

 

 

 

 

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Stephen--In Aristotle, the notion of (primary) substance is used to indicate the individual "this" of which one can predicate being under any of the categories (including "what," or "secondary substance"). He does not, as far as I can see, allow for the possibility that a primary substance exist "simply" (i.e., not as something). 

At any rate, what I am trying to figure out is Rand's notion of "existence." I thought that the thesis "existence is identity" might help to clarify it. Yet admittedly, so far it did not. I have the same difficulty, BTW, with Rand's notion of "reality." She does not seem to be using "reality" and "existence" interchangeably. Yet her understanding of the difference between the two evades me.

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Arkadi, you say “as far as I can see,” but we do see in black and white in the quotation I gave from 1028a30. Is this translation (Ross) incorrect? How to you translate that sentence? If the translation is correct, do you take it as a deviation in Aristotle, a one-off mistake untrue to all else he says? "Now there are several senses in which a thing is said to be primary; but substance is primary in every sense---in formula, in order of knowledge, in time" (1028a32-33, emphasis added).

Why not follow Aristotle’s question “What is being?” and his answer(s) for it with “What is existence?” in Rand? He puts  primary substance as focal meaning of being. Rand puts entity as focal meaning of existence. So shouldn’t some of what you are looking for fall out of comparison between Aristotle’s concept of substance and Rand’s concept of entity? Then too, as Aristotle comes to essence and its setting with being, shouldn’t comparison with Rand on essential characteristics yield some triangulation to the question (in Rand) “What is existence?” (I'd not neglect comparison of Aristotle's conception of substance as its own essence with Rand's "existence is identity" in its devolution "entity is identity.") Some of what has to be assimilated in the comparison is the absence (explicit rejection) by Rand of Aristotle’s matter/form (primary matter/substantial form) conception as well as a good deal of his mature potency/act conception (in the discussion between Walsh, Rand, Peikoff, and Gotthelf in ITOE Appendix).

I have been pursuing all that as part of the second chapter of my own book. I imagine you are already apprised that the Ayn Rand Society will issue a book on Rand and Aristotle. It will be the volume after next. I expect the Rand/Aristotle volume will be in 2019 at the earliest, and I expect it will be very fine.

 

 

 

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On 2/20/2016 at 9:12 PM, Arkadi said:
18 hours ago, Arkadi said:

Stephen--In Aristotle, the notion of (primary) substance is used to indicate the individual "this" of which one can predicate being under any of the categories (including "what," or "secondary substance"). He does not, as far as I can see, allow for the possibility that a primary substance exist "simply" (i.e., not as something). 

At any rate, what I am trying to figure out is Rand's notion of "existence." I thought that the thesis "existence is identity" might help to clarify it. Yet admittedly, so far it did not. I have the same difficulty, BTW, with Rand's notion of "reality." She does not seem to be using "reality" and "existence" interchangeably. Yet her understanding of the difference between the two evades me.

 

Might be the problem is not considering existence axiomatically? And reality too? That would make them interchangeable at that level. It's awkward to say, however, that existence to be commanded must be obeyed. She never did. Existence per se seems passive. It's just there. Reality implies an acting human dynamic.

--Brant

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