So is there such a thing as a rational end? We have covered this issue elsewhere; but since it is so important, it bears repeating. Can human beings pursue rational ends? Or is it, as Hume asserted, psychologically impossible for reason to generate rational ends?
The philosopher Arthur Lovejoy explored the issue in his excellent Reflections on Human Nature, where he comments on Hume’s discovery:
Hume’s fundamental thesis must have shocked some of his contemporaries… For while they had declared that the Reason seldom if ever does in fact control the passions, they had still assumed, in accord with the long dominant tradition, that it should do so, that control was the function for which it was intended… But Hume challenged the great tradition of moral philosophy, and asserted that it is a psychological impossibility for the Reason to influence volition…. Hume does not … mean by this to deny that the understanding has an instrumental use in the determination of conduct. Given a desire for some end, a reasoned knowledge of the relations of cause and effect may show how to satisfy it by adopting the means without which the end cannot be attained. What he is asserting is that “reason,” the knowledge of any kind of truth, is not a passion or desire, is not the same psychological phenomenon as liking or wanting something; and that a thing can become an end only by being desired. The role of reason consists in judging of propositions as true or false, as in “agreement or disagreement” with the matters of fact to which they refer. “Whatever is not susceptible of this agreement or disagreement, is incapable of being true or false, and can never be an object of our reason.” But “our passions, volitions and acts” are “original facts and realities, compleat in themselves… ‘Tis impossible, therefore, that they can be either true or false, and be either contrary or conformable to reason.” And since reason neither is nor can produce a desire, it cannot even tell us what we should desire, it cannot even evaluate desires; or if it professes to do so, it will only the more clearly reveal its irrelevance and impotence. You either have a desire or you do not; unless you have one, you will never act at all; and a desire can be combatted or overcome, not by reason, but only by another desire. [181-183]
Now the importance of this insight into human nature is that it emphasizes the role that motivation plays in human conduct. All human conduct is motivated by non-rational sources—that is, by desires, sentiments, emotions, call them what you will. In Objectivism, there exists a tendency to make light of motives. The issue, for the denizen of Rand, is not what motivates the individual, but why a person should choose one motive rather than another. Objectivism goes so far as to deny that man’s most basic choices can be explained at all. “Why he chooses one or another [motive]… cannot be further explained,” contends Peikoff. “That is what it means to say that man has choice and is not determined. A volitional choice is a fundamental beneath which you cannot get.” [“Philosophy and Psychology in History”]
This extreme view of volition is tantamount to a denial of human nature. For it challenges the view, shared by all those who have a “constrained” vision of the human condition, that most human beings are strongly influenced by innate tendencies and that if you understand the pathology of those innate tendencies, you can make educated guesses as to the likelihood of various types of social conduct and the probability (or impossibility) of various social and political ideals.
I have discussed the issue of innate tendencies in previous posts (such as here). Outside of Ayn Rand and left-wing social science, nearly everyone believes in their existence. In the last half century, behavioral science has further strengthened the case for these tendencies. Indeed, to deny them is to be guilty of a kind of scientific illiteracy, not very different from denying the theory of relativity or the experimental success of quantum mechanics.
Once we have established the reality of innate tendencies, the next step is to investigate what those tendencies are and how they effect the social and political order. That will be the subject of the next half dozen or so “Objectivism and Politics” posts.
19 comments:
And how did Hume, who denigrated the inductive process, happen to come to such absolute conclusions about reason, emotion, and human nature?
Cavewight,
Is it possible to agree with Hume while disagreeing with his metaphysics?
In other words, do you have a substantive point to make about what was written, or do you just want to troll?
Xtra,
Am I right, or am I wrong? Do you want to debate, or do you want to name-call?
Perhaps you are just a little confused. On the one hand, I seem to be in Hume's camp. On the other, I like to engage in pointing out the errors of his ways.
None of this, however, has anything to do with my actual point.
Using a Humean argument to make a crucial point, as Greg did with his long quote, makes Hume the logical target here, and not Greg or the person he quoted from.
But I thank you, at least, for paying close enough attention to ask such questions.
Cavewight,
Thanks for not answering the question. I never said you were in Hume's camp. I did not ask you not to discuss Hume.
I asked if it was possible to agree with Hume's ethics while disagreeing with his metaphysics.
Your refusal to answer that question loudly voices of your trolling motives.
"And how did Hume, who denigrated the inductive process, happen to come to such absolute conclusions about reason, emotion, and human nature?"
Hume did not "denigrate" induction. He simply argued that induction is not rationally justifiable. But Hume does not reject induction merely because it is not rationally justifiable. As is noted on Wikipedia: "Hume’s solution to this skeptical problem [of the invalidity of induction] is to argue that, rather than reason, it is natural instinct that explains our ability to make inductive inferences. He asserts that 'Nature, by an absolute and uncountroulable necessity has determin'd us to judge as well as to breathe and feel.' Although many modern commentators have demurred from Hume’s solution, some have concurred with it, seeing his analysis of our epistemic predicament as a major contribution to the theory of knowledge.
Hume's arguments against the "validity" (or rational justification) of induction were further sharpened and clarified by Karl Popper. More convincing solutions to his "epistemic predicament" have been provided by Michael Polanyi, George Santayana, and Popper.
Xtra wrote:
Thanks for not answering the question. I never said you were in Hume's camp. I did not ask you not to discuss Hume.
I asked if it was possible to agree with Hume's ethics while disagreeing with his metaphysics.
Your refusal to answer that question loudly voices of your trolling motives.
I did not understand your question. Still don't, even though you have revised it to add "Hume's ethics" instead of just "Hume." And please try to keep all the name-calling down to a dull roar.
Greg wrote:
Hume did not "denigrate" induction. He simply argued that induction is not rationally justifiable. But Hume does not reject induction merely because it is not rationally justifiable. As is noted on Wikipedia: "Hume’s solution to this skeptical problem [of the invalidity of induction] is to argue that, rather than reason, it is natural instinct that explains our ability to make inductive inferences.
I have never questioned our ability to make such inferences. The fact remains that such inferences exist. None of your Wiki quote satisfies the question here. Inferences exist, but to what degree would Hume consider them valid? Appealing to instinct does not answer this question because instinct has no authority on the question of truth. Hume was a hypocrite who leveled slurs at reason and then took advantage of its powers to render his own inferences valid for all time, and without justification.
I did not understand your question. Still don't, even though you have revised it to add "Hume's ethics" instead of just "Hume." And please try to keep all the name-calling down to a dull roar.
While Greg has decided to discuss the finer points of Hume with you, my original question was framed in the context of the original post. What did Hume's metaphysics have to do with the points in the original post? There was nothing on the inductive process in the original post so I was asking if you had a point against the original post. I just didn't get where Hume's metaphysics/epistemology came into this, and you should at least thank Hume for supposedly waking up Kant from his slumber, or isn't that how the history of philosophy works?
Cavewight to Greg:
>None of your Wiki quote satisfies the question here. Inferences exist, but to what degree would Hume consider them valid?
The situation is complex, Cavewight, so allow me to explain a little.
Firstly, the situation is muddied because Hume could not accept the results of his own argument. He alternated between despair, and then putting it all aside in exactly the same manner you do, in a kind of "well, we all make these inferences anyway, so what if it's illogical to do so? "
Hume's emotional rejection of his own reasoning at the last moment is unlike the usually tough minded character we meet in the rest of his work. As a result of the ambivalence of the discoverer to his own discovery, his problem went somewhat underground; Bertrand Russell called it a "ticking timebomb" under philosophy (although the ticking was loud enough to awaken Kant; but then not many Objectivists seem to have grokked that it is Hume rather than Kant they should target).
How does Hume's problem open the door to irrationalism? Well there are two problems.
1) The logical problem of induction ie: there is no rational justification for induction.
which leads to
2) The psychological problem of induction ie humans must necessarily believe in induction, even there is no rational justification for this belief; hence humans are necessarily irrational.
Further, if induction is the scientific method, and there is no logical justification for induction, then science is as irrational as any other method of gaining knowledge eg mysticism, astrology, etc.
Quite a problem!
Now, Karl Popper I believe showed the way out of at least 1/2 of this dilemma. He agreed with Hume on 1), that Hume's negative solution was correct. But he pointed out that 2) did not necessarily follow from 1). There is a logical asymmetry between justification and falsification, as to falsify via the modus tollens requires only a single counterexample, as opposed to justify inductively, which can never have enough examples to be valid. By using a critical approach to knowledge, man can adopt a logically valid position, and is thus not necessarily irrational. In fact Popper argued that induction is merely an "optical illusion"; what we are doing is imaginatively generating theories which we then test, rather than accumulating evidence from which we helplessly make invalid inductive conclusions from.
Anyway, that's the short version, hopefully you now see where Greg, Laj, and I are coming from as we all are influenced by Popper to varying degrees on this subject. One thing we can say however is that Rand made many bold rhetorical sallies on "induction" whilst later admitting to know almost nothing about it; and as a result many of her followers merely ape this unfortunate pattern.
Daniel wrote: 2) The psychological problem of induction ie humans must necessarily believe in induction, even there is no rational justification for this belief; hence humans are necessarily irrational.
And below you say that (2) is a non sequitur according to Popper.
I have no issue with Popper regarding Hume, only his take on the analytic-synthetic distinction. (Not that it doesn't have its issues...) I'm just saying that Greg quoted someone quoting Hume to support his thesis. And what I want to know is how Hume can be quoted positively if Popper proved him wrong on this point. Perhaps because the quote didn't have anything to do with it?
Xtra:
I didn't think my point about induction was metaphysical. But at this point I think I'll just ask, what if I agree with you that it is possible to agree with Hume on his critique of morality? What effect does this have on my point about induction? It just so happens that induction is used all across the board, whether metaphysics, morality, or in Hume's own Critique.
Cavewight: "but to what degree would Hume consider [inductive inferences] valid?"
Hume would not consider them logically valid. But he also came to think that this was not a big deal. My quote from Wikipedia was merely an effort to explain why. Now you may not agree with Hume's non-rational justification of inductive inferences. It is rather crude. But I don't think it's fair to Hume to claim that he is a hypocrite just because you don't agree with his defense of inductive inferences or his use of such inferences in the rest of his philosophy. Hume was quite sincere in his belief that induction is not logically (or rationally) justified, yet that we still have to make such inferences anyways, due to a kind of force of nature or biological necessity.
Hume discovered that no knowledge about cause and effect is logically demonstrable, and, by implication (since induction is allegedly used to determine knowledge of cause and effect), this reflects on the validity of induction. No one has been able to refute Hume's arguments on this score. Some philosophers, particularly of the anal variety (e.g., Kant, Russell, Rand) were disturbed by Hume's discovery. But that is because they all bought into the false ideal of knowledge as justified true belief, as something that needs to be "demonstrated," like the conclusion of a deductive syllogism. But if knowledge is not justified true belief; if nothing given exists in knowledge; if knowledge of cause and effect is fundamentally practical and must prove its worth in practice, rather than in logic; if knowledge is conjectural right from the start: in that case, Hume's discovery of the invalidity of induction is not that big a deal. We give up certainty, but in return we have the incentive to be far more critical of knowledge claims. And through criticism, these claims are more likely to be true and therefore useful as guides to solving problems. What is more likely to be true? A claim that is allegedly founded on some kind of inductive inference, of reasoning from a limited number of instances to all instances? Or a claim that very many people have tried to refute, but have failed?
Kant, Rand, et al., did more than just be disturbed by Hume's discovery (which is merely skepticism by the way). Kant and Rand both pointed out, in their own respective ways, that Hume was begging the question. Rand called it "concept-stealing."
But accusing Hume of a fallacy is not a good enough answer. And they both have answers to the problem of causality, calling them (along with Russell) "anal" is just your attempt to psychologize them away.
Kant did not try to induce causality at all. He deduced it from the nature of the understanding. That is one way to avoid a problem inherent to a method of reason: don't use the method.
I would not, therefore, generalize from the mistaken attempts to induce causality or what-have-you to declaring that induction is invalid.
I would not, therefore, generalize from the mistaken attempts to induce causality or what-have-you to declaring that induction is invalid.
Cavewight,
That is fine. Do note that
1) the inductive process as generalization can be done from one observation or one million observations, so in the end, the idea of induction through repetition pretty much doesn't have a strict standard on which all can agree.
2) the fact that causality cannot be perceived means that the mind can more easily fall prey to illusions when generating theories through induction.
3) Inductive reasoning makes a person more likely to fall into confirmation bias, because rather than test the limits of an idea, the person is more likely to look for instantiations of that idea and neglect instances when that idea does not hold.
I find in most people who want to hold on to induction as logical a desire for certainty that is dangerous in a world as complicated as ours. While epistemology is not the only thing that controls belief (psychology definitely does too amongst other things), it is puzzling how often people are unable to come to terms with the fact that no matter how certain they might feel about this or that, they can still be wrong. Such an empiricism would definitely open the minds of more people to revising some of the cherished notions they hold that are possibly wrong or at least, very complicated (global warming, business cycle theory, abortion etc.)
Cavewight: "Kant and Rand both pointed out, in their own respective ways, that Hume was begging the question."
No, Hume was not begging the question: Kant and Rand over-dramatized the importance of Hume's discovery, because neither of them were willing to challenge the premise that knowledge is justified true belief.
"[Kant and Rand] both have answers to the problem of causality."
True, but, alas, they are the wrong answers! Rand wants us to believe that causality is a corollary of a tautology. Really embarrassing: greater philosophical illiteracy can hardly be manifested. And as for Kant, his solution involved trying to show that "synthetic judgments a priori" were possible. Nietzsche utterly demolished Kant's pretensions on this score: "But let us reflect; it is high time to do so. 'How are synthetic judgments a priori possible?' Kant asked himself—and what really is his answer? 'By virtue of a faculty'—but unfortunately not in five words, but so circumstantially, venerably, and with such a display of German profundity and curlicues that people simply failed to note the comical niaiserie allemande involved in such an answer. People were actually beside themselves with delight over this new faculty, and the jubilation reached its climax when Kant further discovered a moral faculty in man—for at that time the Germans were still moral and not yet addicted to Realpolitik.
"The honeymoon of German philosophy arrived. All the young theologians of the Tubingen seminary went into the bushes—all looking for 'faculties.' And what did they not find—in that innocent, rich, and still youthful period of the German spirit, to which romanticism, the malignant fairy, piped and sang, when one could not distinguish between 'finding' and 'inventing'! ... One can do no greater wrong to the whole of this exuberant and enthusiastic movement, which was really youthfulness, however boldly it disguised itself in hoary and senile concepts, than to take it seriously, or worse, to treat it with moral indignation. Enough, one grew older and the dream vanished. A time came when people scratched their heads, and they still scratch them today. One had been dreaming, and first and foremost—old Kant. 'By virtue of a faculty'—he had said, or at least meant. But is that—an answer? An explanation? Or is it not rather merely a repetition of the question? How does opium induce sleep? 'By virtue of a faculty,' namely, the virtus dormitiva, replies the doctor in Moliere: 'Because it contains a sleepy faculty whose nature it is to put the senses to sleep.' But such replies belong in comedy..."
Cavewight: "Hume's discovery (which is merely skepticism by the way..."
And what is wrong with that? Nietzsche had said, and I agree, that the only decent type of philosopher is the skeptics: the rest don't even know what it means to be honest. But there are different variety of skepticism. Hume, Santayana, Popper, Nietzsche use skepticism as a method of clearly away illusion and wishful thinking. But there are other philosophers who, in their blundering way, wind up using skepticism to make knowledge impossible. Of those, Kant is pre-eminent.
At the heart of Kant's philosophy is, as Santayana put it, a "most terrible negation." "Among transcendental principles [Kant] placed space, time, and causality; so that, if he had been consistent, he would have had to regard all multiple and successive existence as imagined only. Everything conceivable would have collapsed into the act of conceiving it, and this act would have lost its terms and its purpose, and evaporated into nothing. But not at all; as if aware that all his conclusions were but curiousities in speculation and academic humors, he continued to think of experience as progressing in time, trifled most earnestly with astronomy and geography, and even comforted the pious with a postulate of immortality, as if time existed otherwise than in imagination."
Greg wrote:
Cavewight: "Hume's discovery (which is merely skepticism by the way..." And what is wrong with that?
I never said there was anything wrong with that. Skeptics have been rousing reason from its dogmatic slumbers long before Hume. Socrates, who got the whole philosophical ball rolling as a dialogue continuing for the most part for over two millenia, could easily be considered the first skeptic.
So I just thought I would mention, before continuing on with your post, that I am not anti-skeptic. I am "anti-skeptic" perhaps only when skepticism seeks to become self-serving, for example, as a source of personal amusement through annoying others with it.
Greg wrote:
But there are other philosophers who, in their blundering way, wind up using skepticism to make knowledge impossible. Of those, Kant is pre-eminent.
You are burdened with many misconceptions. Take two Kant works and call me in the morning.
I have a question about this:
Rand never explains precisely how one arrives at a rational end and even suggests that her ultimate end is (or is based on) a conditional!
What ultimate end is that?
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