Why does man need a code of values?

[Laure]

Right on, Victor.

[Daniel Barnes]

Laure:

>So Daniel, you practice ethics out of concern for the well-being of others, and you just hope and pray that they will feel the same way and act out of concern for your well-being, rather than just acting for your own well-being and respecting the right of others to do the same.

Laure,

If you are going to criticise my position, you need to be clear about it.

I act out of concern for my well being, and the people I care about.

Other people do exactly the same thing.

Sometimes the interests of my well being, and other people's interests in their well-being, clash. (Example: Someone wants to sell me their car at the highest possible price. I want to buy it at the lowest possible price. Should they tell me information about that car - that it will need an expensive repair in a few months - that might lower the price I might pay? This is an ethical dilemma)

When this happens, we have conflict.

Ethics are rules for trying to avoid and/or resolve these conflicts. How should I behave when interests clash? How should I balance my interests against those of others, given that we are all pursuing our individual interests?

OK?

[Daniel Barnes]

Victor:

>Why should we care to resolve conflicts? For what purpose? Is 'conflict resolution' an axiom, or does it rest on something else?

Well, obviously because many people want to avoid violence, me included.

I do not consider violence to be a good solution, tho it is obviously sometimes necessary.

This is a moral decision I've made, and I take personal responsibility for it. I can produce various arguments as to why this should be so. I can point to logical consequences, and factual situations in support of them.

But I do not claim my decision itself a logical derivation. Because it is not. (and cannot be)

Edited March 26, 2007 by Daniel Barnes

[Brant Gaede]

"Trust but verify"?

--Brant

[Victor Pross]

Victor:

>Why should we care to resolve conflicts? For what purpose? Is 'conflict resolution' an axiom, or does it rest on something else?

>>Well, obviously because many people want to avoid violence, me included.

Well, that begs the question.

But I do not claim my decision itself a logical derivation. Because it is not. (and cannot be)

IF (and I do say IF) your moral foundation is the altruist ethics, I agree. The same goes for a relgious approach to ethics, and so on.

-Victor

[Laure]

OK, maybe we are getting someplace. It seems you're admitting that the purpose of ethics is your own self-interest, and what's missing is an explanation of why it is in your own self-interest to be honest and respect the rights of others.

Maybe it's ironic, but I don't find such situations to be very difficult at all. My difficult moral dilemmas almost always involve what I personally should do to better my own life.

Of course you should tell the prospective buyer about known defects in the car. If you do the right thing and tell the buyer about the defect, you eliminate buyers who will be bothered by the defect, and you wind up with one who is appreciative of your honesty, and you will be free of the worry that your actions will come back to haunt you later.

As for the wider question of why I shouldn't steal and cheat: Well, if it's OK to do it some of the time, wouldn't it be OK to do it all of the time? What would happen then? You'd get found out, for one thing. You might get caught right away, and get sued, costing you time and money. You might get away with it some of the time, but eventually reality would catch up to you, people would find out, and your reputation would suffer, and other people would be wary of dealing with you. Also, you'd know that you were benefitting by cheating other people, leading to feelings of lower self-esteem because you know you are not self-sufficient. Worst case, everybody finds out what a jerk you are, and you end up in jail, or maybe on the street because nobody trusts you enough to give you a job or a place to live. Best case, your low feedback numbers make it really hard for you to sell anything on eBay!

Also if it's OK for you to do, by what reasoning could you conclude that it wouldn't be OK for anyone else to do? So, do you want people trying to cheat you in each and every transaction?

I don't think it's that hard really.

[Daniel Barnes]

Victor:

>Well, that begs the question.

No, it answers the question. It would beg the question if all conflicts were violent, but not all conflicts are obviously!

>IF (and I do say IF) your moral foundation is the altruist ethics, I agree. The same goes for a relgious approach to ethics, and so on.

Victor,

Enough about all this "moral foundation in altruist ethics" already. It is, as even I am beginning to tire of saying, a logical issue. Do you think logic is "altruist"? Please.

Look, all you need to do is show me the logic.

Then you win.

And as a special added bonus, you get to be the most famous philosopher of the last 100 years!

So where is it?

Get back to me when you got it.

Edited March 26, 2007 by Daniel Barnes

[Daniel Barnes]

Laure:

>I don't think it's that hard really.

Well, as I say to Victor, you can think what you like! The issue in question is a logical one., so show us the logic. Fame and fortune etc awaits.

[Victor Pross]

Victor:

>Well, that begs the question.

No, it answers the question. It would beg the question if all conflicts were violent, but not all conflicts are obviously!

>IF (and I do say IF) your moral foundation is the altruist ethics, I agree. The same goes for a relgious approach to ethics, and so on.

Victor,

Enough about all this "moral foundation in altruist ethics" already. It is, as even I am beginning to tire of saying, a logical issue. Do you think logic is "altruist"? Please.

Look, all you need to do is show me the logic.

Then you win.

And as a special added bonus, you get to be the most famous philosopher of the last 100 years!

So where is it?

Get back to me when you got it.

Daniel,

Why resolve any conflict...violent or otherwise? (You see, I don't see how my question was answered). Grrr!

Show you the logic?

Well, the objections are dealt with (I hope) in a new thread called “The Objectivist ethics: Life as the standard.” It's now posted. :turned:

-Victor

[Daniel Barnes]

Victor:

>Why resolve any conflict...violent or otherwise? (You see, I don't see how my question was answered). Grrr!

Victor, there are no final answers to "why?" questions. It's like I said to Darrell: they are equivalent of "first cause" questions in physics. They lead to boring scholastic debates. Not my thing. If they're yours, well, good luck with that.

[Victor Pross]

Victor:

>Why resolve any conflict...violent or otherwise? (You see, I don't see how my question was answered). Grrr!

Victor, there are no final answers to "why?" questions. It's like I said to Darrell: they are equivalent of "first cause" questions in physics. They lead to boring scholastic debates. Not my thing. If they're yours, well, good luck with that.

Daniel,

I agree that some scholastic debates can be very boring indeed. My new thread, Objectivist ethics: Life as the Standard, takes one step back further (but not to the point of an infinite regress) to put something else before conflict resolution. B)

-Victor

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

It seems that Rand never devised a formal proof of the basic principle of the Objectivist ethics, but she did outline the basic structure of her argument explicitly. I assert that her line of reasoning is sound.

Let’s summarize the steps (for the sake of my question):

1, Living beings—and only living beings—have values (goals).

2, Man, being volitional, must choose his values.

3, Values (goals) may be means to an end, but must lead to some ultimate end. An infinite chain of means leading to no final end would be meaningless.

4, Life is the ultimate end, and the only ‘end in itself.’

5, Therefore, the only meaningful values a man can choose are those which serve to sustain his life.

Victor,

I hesitated to comment on this because it is a highly incomplete smörgåsbord of Rand's logical path to her ethics. Frankly I don't know where to start without restating the entire construction. You merely plucked a few conclusions almost at random and strung them together at whim in an extended syllogism.

Please reread "The Objectivist Ethics" in The Virtue of Selfishness, then make a summary, then criticize that if you wish to make a statement like "it seems that Rand never devised a formal proof of the basic principle of the Objectivist ethics." I almost want to be catty and suggest Atlas Shrugged.

Now I see that you used this as the basis of an article. My suggestion is to spend some time on getting this right, then rewriting the article accordingly.

Nothing is proven by proclamation, but your first 4 points are presented as nothing but opinions. Here, let me show you how this works for religion:

1, God—and only God—creates values (goals).

2, Man, being a sinner seduced by Satan, must choose values.

3, Values (goals) may be means to an end, but must lead either to God or Satan as an ultimate end. An infinite chain of means that do not lead to God or Satan would be meaningless.

4, God's loving will is the ultimate end, and the only ‘end in itself.’

5, Therefore, the only meaningful values a man can choose are those which agree with God's loving will.

Think about it.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Daniel,

Do you include induction and/or inductive reasoning in your concept of logic? You may be talking about one thing and the others another thing.

Michael

[Victor Pross]

It seems that Rand never devised a formal proof of the basic principle of the Objectivist ethics, but she did outline the basic structure of her argument explicitly. I assert that her line of reasoning is sound.

Let’s summarize the steps (for the sake of my question):

1, Living beings—and only living beings—have values (goals).

2, Man, being volitional, must choose his values.

3, Values (goals) may be means to an end, but must lead to some ultimate end. An infinite chain of means leading to no final end would be meaningless.

4, Life is the ultimate end, and the only ‘end in itself.’

5, Therefore, the only meaningful values a man can choose are those which serve to sustain his life.

Victor,

I hesitated to comment on this because it is a highly incomplete smörgåsbord of Rand's logical path to her ethics. Frankly I don't know where to start without restating the entire construction. You merely plucked a few conclusions almost at random and strung them together at whim in an extended syllogism.

Please reread "The Objectivist Ethics" in The Virtue of Selfishness, then make a summary, then criticize that if you wish to make a statement like "it seems that Rand never devised a formal proof of the basic principle of the Objectivist ethics." I almost want to be catty and suggest Atlas Shrugged.

Now I see that you used this as the basis of an article. My suggestion is to spend some time on getting this right, then rewriting the article accordingly.

Nothing is proven by proclamation, but your first 4 points are presented as nothing but opinions. Here, let me show you how this works for religion:

1, God—and only God—creates values (goals).

2, Man, being a sinner seduced by Satan, must choose values.

3, Values (goals) may be means to an end, but must lead either to God or Satan as an ultimate end. An infinite chain of means that do not lead to God or Satan would be meaningless.

4, God's loving will is the ultimate end, and the only ‘end in itself.’

5, Therefore, the only meaningful values a man can choose are those which agree with God's loving will.

Think about it.

Michael

Michael,

Well, I regret posting this section alone here on this thread, because your answer drops all that came before this section and all that follows it. Still, the problem with how you did answer me here is…I don’t know what you mean by ‘God’. A normative standard is as only good as the facts it rests on. Where are the facts that support this God thing? B) You cannot conceptually have "ought" without a proceeding "is"; to acknowledge "ought" is to acknowledge "is." Again, a normative science is only as valid as the facts upon which it rests

-Victor

Edited March 26, 2007 by Victor Pross

[Ellen Stuttle]

It seems that Rand never devised a formal proof of the basic principle of the Objectivist ethics, but she did outline the basic structure of her argument explicitly. I assert that her line of reasoning is sound.

Let’s summarize the steps (for the sake of my question):

1, Living beings—and only living beings—have values (goals).

2, Man, being volitional, must choose his values.

3, Values (goals) may be means to an end, but must lead to some ultimate end. An infinite chain of means leading to no final end would be meaningless.

4, Life is the ultimate end, and the only ‘end in itself.’

5, Therefore, the only meaningful values a man can choose are those which serve to sustain his life.

Victor,

I hesitated to comment on this because it is a highly incomplete smörgåsbord of Rand's logical path to her ethics. Frankly I don't know where to start without restating the entire construction. You merely plucked a few conclusions almost at random and strung them together at whim in an extended syllogism.

Strikes me as a good summary -- which just shows the mile-wide gaps in the reasoning. I'd sure be curious to read your restating of "the entire construction," Michael, if you believe it's any sounder than what Victor presented.

Ellen

___

[Victor Pross]

Thank you for saying so, Ellen. It was merely a matter of selecting and connecting the dots of Rand’s starting and finishing points. Not really a big deal. But this is just a section from a wider whole that is the thread “The Objectivist Ethics: Life as the Standard.” (posted tonight)

-Victor

P.S.

Yes, mile-wide gaps, it is merely a summary. :}

Edited March 26, 2007 by Victor Pross

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Still, the problem with how you did answer me here is…I don’t know what you mean by ‘God’.

Victor,

Correct. You can't know. That is the problem with argument by proclamation.

In your case above, there are several problems like that. For instance I don't know what you mean by values or goals. I do know what they mean, but I cannot rely on you to tell me, even as you tell me what the ultimate one is and why I should base my behavior on it. "Because you said so" is the crux of your argument.

1, Living beings—and only living beings—have values (goals).

Why? Because you said so.

2, Man, being volitional, must choose his values.

Why? Because you said so.

3, Values (goals) may be means to an end, but must lead to some ultimate end. An infinite chain of means leading to no final end would be meaningless.

Why? Because you said so.

4, Life is the ultimate end, and the only ‘end in itself.’

Why? Because you said so.

5, Therefore, the only meaningful values a man can choose are those which serve to sustain his life.

Why? Well, it's a syllogism!

If you are going to use logic, you have to move beyond "Because you said so."

I'd sure be curious to read your restating of "the entire construction," Michael, if you believe it's any sounder than what Victor presented.

Ellen,

Of course it is a hell of a lot sounder!

I have a few issues so far (usually scope-related) and I have mentioned them. At any rate, making an outline of Rand's essay is a good project regardless of what my evaluation of Rand's writing is in relation to Victor's writing. But for the record, I think Ayn Rand is a better writer than Victor and presents sounder arguments.

Michael

[Victor Pross]

Still, the problem with how you did answer me here is…I don’t know what you mean by ‘God’.

Victor,

Correct. You can't know. That is the problem with argument by proclamation.

In your case above, there are several problems like that. For instance I don't know what you mean by values or goals. I do know what they mean, but I cannot rely on you to tell me, even as you tell me what the ultimate one is and why I should base my behavior on it. "Because you said so" is the crux of your argument.

1, Living beings—and only living beings—have values (goals).

Why? Because you said so.

2, Man, being volitional, must choose his values.

Why? Because you said so.

3, Values (goals) may be means to an end, but must lead to some ultimate end. An infinite chain of means leading to no final end would be meaningless.

Why? Because you said so.

4, Life is the ultimate end, and the only ‘end in itself.’

Why? Because you said so.

5, Therefore, the only meaningful values a man can choose are those which serve to sustain his life.

Why? Well, it's a syllogism!

If you are going to use logic, you have to move beyond "Because you said so."

Michael,

Tsk-tisk, you should know that I am not as stupid as my posting picture makes me look. :turned:

Do I actually have to start from A and go to Z on every post? You know what values are. This is an Objectivist site and when one writes of "values" a certain degree of knowledge is assumed. Plus, I said: I regret posting this section alone here on this thread, because your answer drops all that came before this section and all that follows it.

Still, the below is from the new thread: Life as the Standard.

VALUES:

Ayn Rand defined a ‘value’ as ‘that which one acts to gain and/or keep.” So we could ask the following question: “What values or goals ought one choose? Rand emphasizes that only living creatures have, or can have, values. Furthermore, she claims that there can be no meaningful values except those which are aimed at the preservation of the individual’s life. But this is where we run into problems.

Rand makes an argument for life as the standard of ethics which is analogous to the argument for the validity of logic in epistemology. Just as one cannot demand a proof of the validity of logic, since the concept of ‘proof’ already assumes the validity of logic--so one cannot challenge life as the standard of ethical value, since the concept of ‘value’ already assumes that one is talking about a living being. The concept of value is seen to be epistemologically dependent on the concept of value.

OY! :turned:

-Victor

P.S.

Yes, Rand is a better writer. But have you seen her drawing skills as seen in 'The letters of Ayn Rand' ?

Edited March 26, 2007 by Victor Pross

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Victor,

Now I am confused. Didn't you claim you were making the logical proof that Rand did not? And you want to present that logical proof using Rand's arguments by implication?

That does not make any sense to me. Exactly what is it are you trying to accomplish? You failed terribly at making the logical proof that you claim Rand did not. Wasn't that your goal? Or was it another?

Michael

[Victor Pross]

Victor,

Now I am confused. Didn't you claim you were making the logical proof that Rand did not? And you want to present that logical proof using Rand's arguments by implication?

That does not make any sense to me. Exactly what is it are you trying to accomplish? You failed terribly at making the logical proof that you claim Rand did not. Wasn't that your goal? Or was it another?

Michael

Michael,

Goodness, I make no pretensions of intellectual accomplishments that are of the stature of Ayn Rand, no way. I simply assert that Rand has solved the is-ought issue (not that it was a serious issue to begin with until Hume came on the scene and muddied the subject of ethics with the nonsense that is skepticism) and has grounded her ethics in reality, that’s what I’m trying to establish. Rand did that--not me.

I am also trying to establish that if one is to fully grasp and appreciate her philosophical accomplishments—one ought to know their Aristotle. It must be emphasized—as Rand herself did—she is an Aristotelian philosopher. This actually means something. If one knows Aristotle’s works, you would be surprised how aluminous Rand’s works become. Consider this section from my post “Life as the Standard":

‘Rand has demonstrated that life is at the root of all values, but then she goes on to specify the standard of value as “the life of man qua man.” We have made a transition from ‘life’ (meaning pure biological survival) to “life of man qua man”. The critics protests that something other than life (pure survival) is being tacked on, hence all the charges of Rand’s “fudging.” The critic has demanded classification and identification for this seemingly added quality that makes life the “life of man qua man.”

Rand has met up to the challenge: there is no distinction between the ‘simple biological survival’ of a human being and the “life of man qua man” She applies an Aristotelian metaphysical principle: to exist is to have identity. To survive as a living organism IS to live the kind of life appropriate to that type of organism. To survive as a man IS to live the life of man qua man. There is no generic survival which comes in a box. A human being cannot survive like a fish or wolf. To survive as a man is to live the life of MAN QUA MAN.’ -

Victor

edit: I also make the claim that Daniel (and others) does not know their Aristotle and know it much less than Rand’s thought, and that does mean something. If you are going to rip a hole in a philosophers system, you better know it well. (That is, if you don’t want others to refute your refutation that do know it well). Daniel, Bob (and whoever else) cheery pick what seems to be faults in Rand’s arguments without fully understanding it (as a scholar would) before engaging in critique that really can account for something. We can see that Daniel’s posts are becoming more flippant which to me is evidence of a man feeling himself on thin ice. :turned:

Edited March 26, 2007 by Victor Pross

[Ellen Stuttle]

I'd sure be curious to read your restating of "the entire construction," Michael, if you believe it's any sounder than what Victor presented.

Ellen,

Of course it is a hell of a lot sounder!

I have a few issues so far (usually scope-related) and I have mentioned them. At any rate, making an outline of Rand's essay is a good project regardless of what my evaluation of Rand's writing is in relation to Victor's writing. But for the record, I think Ayn Rand is a better writer than Victor and presents sounder arguments.

Michael

Of course she was a better writer. She was a world-class, enduring-fame, way-up-there writer, though not amongst the very greatest (Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe, Dante, such like), but WAY good. I do not for a moment dispute her skill as a writer. Her skill as a writer is why I became interested by AR to begin with.

But I think that Victor's summary of AR's "logic" in presenting her ethics was straight on target. Indeed, it's the basic sequence I'd have presented myself.

Ellen

___

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

But I think that Victor's summary of AR's "logic" in presenting her ethics was straight on target. Indeed, it's the basic sequence I'd have presented myself.

Ellen,

I was just looking over "The Objectivist Ethics" and the issue is far more... er... precise than that. Rand's words have specific meanings that sometimes are not the normal meanings everybody else uses. Any critique or presentation of her ethics should at least take those meanings into account.

For instance, I took Victor to task for not presenting what "goal" is. He had stated (proclaimed): "Living beings—and only living beings—have values (goals)." (Incidentally, I rag Victor a bit because I believe in his capacity to do better—it's a form of pushing him toward an excellence I know he is capable of. I am loathe to say that, even though I just did, because he then gets a swelled head and starts preaching all over the place and getting things all screwed up. )

Well, we all know what a goal is. Victor even responded to me (basically) saying that this was an Objectivist site and it was not really necessary to present such meanings.

OK. Fair enough. Still, let's take a look at the meaning of "goal" in a footnote in Rand's essay, "The Objectivist Ethics," VOS, p. 17, just for the heck of it.

* When applied to physical phenomena, such as the automatic functions of an organism, the term "goal-directed" is not to be taken to mean "purposive" (a concept applicable only to the actions of a consciousness) and is not to imply the existence of any teleological principle operating in insentient nature. I use the term "goal-directed," in this context, to designate the fact that the automatic functions of living organisms are actions whose nature is such that they result in the preservation of an organism's life.

Rand literally means heartbeats and digestion are goal-directed actions. Here is the paragraph that the footnote references (pp. 16-17):

Only a living entity can have goals or can originate them. And it is only a living organism that has the capacity for self-generated, goal-directed action. On the physical level, the functions of all living organisms, from the simplest to the most complex—from the nutritive function in the single cell of an amoeba to the blood circulation in the body of a man—are actions generated by the organism itself and directed to a single goal: the maintenance of the organism's life.*

Try an experiment. Go to another Objectivist site, pretend you are a newbie and say off the cuff, without any preparation whatsoever: "What I don't like about Objectivism is that heartbeats and digestion are considered as goal-directed," and see how many people will jump in to tell you that you don't understand Objectivism at all.

The absolute minimum this quote shows is that Rand had more than one definition for fundamental terms. In this particular case, when she goes on to discuss "purposive" action, the meaning of that has one fundament in this low-level meaning of "goal" (which means the automatic preservation of life from an automatic action), but there are other fundaments. One of them is the range of actions of higher organisms that makes the need for more complex goals to emerge. On the human level, there is volition. But there are others.

My point is that Rand builds her arguments from the ground up. She doesn't just proclaim things (well, sometimes she does). She goes through the metaphysical fact (usually stated as proclamation, but probably considered by her as induction), and derives an epistemological concept or concepts from it. Only then does ethics come into the picture.

Here is her basic metaphysical observation for building ethics (p. 16, quoting Galt's speech):

There is only one fundamental alternative in the universe: existence or nonexistence—and it pertains to a single class of entities: to living organisms.

That is stated as a proclamation (shall I coin the phrase "to Victorize"? ), but actually, it is an axiom.

Then after stating that the word "goal" on an insentient level essentially means a package of two parts (an automatic action that preserves an organism's life and the automatic preservation of that life), and some other issues like procuring and using fuel, she explains how she arrived at that.

Metaphysically, life is the only phenomenon that is an end in itself: a value gained and kept by a constant process of action. Epistemologically, the concept of "value" is genetically dependent upon and derived from the antecedent concept of "life."

Notice that on the insentient level, "goal" and "value" are related, but they are not synonyms. "Goal" includes the automatic action (as entailment). "Value" is simpler. It is merely the "that which" in her definition of value. Everybody on this site probably knows Rand's definition of value by heart (p. 16):

"Value" is that which one acts to gain and/or keep.

As I was looking this over, I noticed that Rand mentioned "goals" together with "values" all the time. Then later in the essay, she included "actions," making it a threesome. So I started wondering if she ever made the difference clear between "goal" and "value," or if she was using this more as a rhetorical redundancy.

I had to go to another essay in VOS to find her definition of "goal" ("The 'Conflicts' of Men's Interests"). Here "goal" is defined as "a specific value man seeks to gain and/or keep." I had to change some small details in that quote because this appeared in the middle of a statement discussing something else. Here is the quote (p. 58):

In choosing his goals (the specific values he seeks to gain and/or keep), a rational man is guided by his thinking (by a process of reason)—not by his feelings or desires.

At this point, I imagine that Rand is no longer talking about the automatic "goal" of insentient life, which automatically entails action, but instead a narrower form of "value" (a "specific value"). Also, "seek" is included, implying more than an automatic action.

But still, there is another subtle difference. Rand was capable of using the phrase "evil goals" but not "evil values." I did a search of the CDROM and came up with two instances. In the first, she even talks about the moral nature of a goal.

The Ayn Rand Letter, Vol. 1, No. 12 March 13, 1972, "Tax-Credits For Education"

"Ambition" means the systematic pursuit of achievement and of constant improvement in respect to one's goal. Like the word "selfishness," and for the same reasons, the word "ambition" has been perverted to mean only the pursuit of dubious or evil goals, such as the pursuit of power; this left no concept to designate the pursuit of actual values. But "ambition" as such is a neutral concept: the evaluation of a given ambition as moral or immoral depends on the nature of the goal. A great scientist or a great artist is the most passionately ambitious of men.

The Ayn Rand Letter, Vol. III, No. 12 March 11, 1974, "Moral Inflation"

The worst fault of these amoralists—who regard moral concerns as naive—is their abysmal naiveté: they seem to believe that practicality, and the knowledge of what is practical, and long-range vision (i.e., a rational grasp of reality, respect for facts, devotion to truth) have nothing to do with morality and do not represent the rarest of virtues; that these characteristics are innate, instinctual and dominant in all people, that nobody seeks evil goals, and that human atrocities are merely the products of errors. Since it is not likely that anyone could hold such a belief past the age of five, one must ask oneself what unimaginable fear of moral judgment could prompt men to maintain an illusion of that kind.

I also searched the CDROM for the phrases "evil value," "evil values," "evil purpose," and "evil purposes." No hits. Rand could pronounce someone, something or some act as "evil" in an act of valuing (judging), but she did not pronounce it as an "evil value" as such. (I find that interesting even from a psychological perspective.)

Now let's go back and look at Victor's proclamation. "Living beings—and only living beings—have values (goals)." Can you see now why Victor's statement is so empty when it is presented as a summarized premise within a syllogism? It sounds more like an opinion than anything else. It was plucked from the middle of Rand's reasoning and presented almost as a primary, and as if values and goals were synonymous in Rand's writing when they are not really synonymous at all.

Here is another point. If Victor is presenting Rand's views, he presented them completely out of order. Volition should be later, not earlier, and life as an end in itself (with the metaphysical existence/nonexistence condition included) earlier, not later. But even then, too much was omitted. Maybe it is possible to draw up only 5 points and present the entire overall picture of how Rand arrived at "the basic principle of the Objectivist ethics" to quote Victor (and I assume this means establishing the existence of individual human life in and of itself as the ultimate standard of good and evil), but these points would have to be drawn up differently and possibly even one or another exchanged for different ones.

Michael

[Dragonfly]

I see Analytic-Synthetic as a continuum rather than a dichotomy. I agree with Peikoff that ultimately you could consider all truths to be analytic, AND all truths to be synthetic. The reason there appears to be a dichotomy is that some truths rely on a longer chain of reasoning than others. Hence, we can imagine that a truth relying on a long reasoning chain could be otherwise.

No, the length of the chain of reasoning has nothing to do with the question whether the truth is analytic or synthetic. Some mathematical proofs may take dozens of pages, but the result is an analytical truth. Neither is it relevant that analytical truths may seem refer to things in the physical world; there may be a (subtle) mismatch between one or more of our definitions and physical reality, so that we arrive at an analytical truth (which follows from the definitions), which does not correspond to reality (although it may seem to do so). There is a sharp distinction between analytic truths and synthetic truths. A good example is Euclidean geometry. All the theorems derived from Euclides axioms are analytic truths, they follow unequivocally from the definitions and they can never be falsified. Now a quite different question is whether Euclidean geometry can be applied successfully to the world we live in. If we measure the angles of a triangle between three physical points, and we find that the sum of these angles equals 360 degrees, this is a synthetic truth, which may be falsified. If it is falsified, the conclusion is not that Euclid's proof is not valid, that is valid for eternity as it is an analytical truth, it only means that Euclid's geometry is not the correct geometry to describe the physical world. A red herring to be avoided is the fact that many theoretical constructs may have their first origins in empirical research, i.e. in synthetic truths. That the first steps to abstraction may induced by the results of physical measurements does not mean that the results of the abstract reasoning are synthetic. What happens is that from the data an abstract model is built, this is literally an "abstraction", a taking out of properties the physical world seems to have, which is formalized with its own definitions and axioms. That formalized model is then used to derive analytical truths. Einstein put it like this: "Insofar as the laws of mathematics are true, they do not apply to reality. And insofar as they apply to reality, they are not true", which taken out of context may be somewhat confusing, but which is nothing but a concise statement about the difference between analytic truths and synthetic truths.

[Daniel Barnes]

Michael:

>Do you include induction and/or inductive reasoning in your concept of logic? You may be talking about one thing and the others another thing.

No. Inductive reasoning is illogical by classical deductive standards. So it becomes an either/or.

Edited March 26, 2007 by Daniel Barnes

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Michael:

>Do you include induction and/or inductive reasoning in your concept of logic? You may be talking about one thing and the others another thing.

No. Inductive reasoning is illogical by classical deductive standards. So it becomes an either/or.

Daniel,

Whether or not it is illogical is debatable depending on whose definition of logic you use and whether pattern identification is excluded from logic as defined. Be that as it may, when you ask people to establish ethics from facts by using logic, in essence, you are asking them to deduce ethics from facts. Correct?

btw - Last night I read an online essay by Popper (and I intend to reread it today or tomorrow to make sure I understood it correctly, The Problem of Induction. I will comment later, but for now, I am confused by what his criteria for concept formation is and what his idea of a concept is. This is not discussed, however he talks a great deal about knowledge. There are 2 other essays by him on that page that I have not read, "Knowledge without Authority" and "Two Kinds of Definitions," so concept formation might be covered in those.

I find it amusing that according to Popper's reasoning, the concept of the whole field of science itself is untrue because it cannot be falsified.

(We have to be careful to not let Popper prove that science doesn't exist at all.)

Surprisingly, I liked the principle of transference a lot, even though Popper used it to try to remove the legitimacy of induction. More later on that.

Michael