Rand and Empirical Responsibility 13

“[Intellectual appeasement] is an attempt to apologize for his intellectual concerns and to escape from the loneliness of a thinker by professing that his thinking is dedicated to some social-altruistic goal.” Rand, despite her cluelessness about human nature, nevertheless couldn't help tossing off wildly speculative remarks about the more obscure motivations of the human animal. Where she comes up with some of this stuff is anyone's guess. How, for example, does she know that intellectual appeasement is merely an attempt to apologize for being concerned about intellectual matters? Where would she get such a notion? Where on earth does she come up with the idea that intellectual appeasement involves an "escape from loneliness"? What evidence does she have that such is the case?

Even as a mere conjecture or hypothesis, Rand's remark is not very plausible; yet she emits it as if it were a palpable certainty. On the face of it, Rand is merely indulging in psychological speculation about matters she knows little, if anything, about. The causes of intellectual appeasement, whatever they might be, probably vary from one individual to another. Whether loneliness or self-contempt is the main cause can only be determined (if it can be determined at all) on a case by case basis. In the meantime, a more plausible explanation for intellectual appeasement is to note that most intellectuals, being accustomed to a mode of living that eschews violence, simply either don't have or have never developed any special aptitude for violence, and are therefore prone to cowardice and appeasement.

“Tribalism is … a logical consequence of modern philosophy.” This is a specific application of Rand's theory of history. The trouble with such statements is that, because they are so broad and sweeping, they can neither be corroborated or refuted by empirical evidence. They are merely highly speculative hypotheses, and the question is whether they are plausible in relation to such facts that are known.

Rand makes no attempt to bring any kind of facts in to support her statement, beyond what she gleans from her distorted view of modern philosophy. Despite Rand's tendency to blur distinctions between views that she disagrees with, it would be mistake to regard so-called "modern" philosophy as a mere homogenuous mass. Modern philosophy includes many different positions, often virulently at odds with other positions. It is implausible to suppose that so many disparate views could all lead to tribalism.

But even more to the point is to reflect on the fact that tribalism, historically, has been the default position for the human race. For hundreds of thousands of years, human beings have existed in tribes; whereas the extended order leading to freedom and civilization only began to develop very recently, in the last ten thousands years or so. Since modern philosophy did not exist during mankind's long tutelage in the hunter-gatherer stage of development, it can't be regarded as a cause of whatever form of tribalism may have been prevalent during those tedious millenia. Indeed, it is far more plausible to suppose that tribalism is a hard-wired feature of human nature, prominent in many human beings, and only weaker or non-existent within the exceptional few. After all, we find its dominance, not only throughout mankind's history, but even in the present, in much of the 3rd world and even among 1st world minorities and ethnic groups. Most of the people in these groups are utterly innocent of so-called "modern" philosophy and would probably be incapable of understanding it were it introduced to them. Whatever strains of tribalism may be found in this or that species of modern philosophy probably has its roots in human psychological tendencies. Philosophy, as Nietzsche noticed more than hundred years ago and which cognitive science and experimental psychology continues to corroborate, often degenerates into a mere rationalization of the the desires, sentiments, and interests that afflict various strains of human nature. In the face of everything we know, Rand's conviction that the causation runs the other way, so that philosophy determines human nature, is rather implausible.