Friday, November 18, 2011

Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature 13

Gratitude and trust. Although honesty (and presumably trust) are explicit Objectivist virtues, Rand did not appear eager to put any great emphasis on a virtue which often serves as a foundation for trust. In any ethical system that presumes to be "rational," this is clearly a shortcoming, since, as psychological experiments have demonstrated, gratitude seems to stem from innate sources that are clearly in the need of rational direction. As Desteno and Valedsolo have pointed out:

...whether we are fair [to others] and pay back our debts stems more from automatic feelings than from reason. We can always justify why we don't have to pay back just yet, but we can't help feeling grateful. More important, we are wired in such a way that our gratitude can be misdirected, leading us to repay our debts to the wrong person. The danger of this, of course, is that if we're feeling grateful, we're liable to help anyone who requests it. In fact, it an be quite adaptive if it doesn't happen too often, as it encourages people to take the chance on a stranger with whom they might end up having a mutually beneficial relationship. In short, it's kind of like paying it forward, driven by emotion.

Still, this fact also makes us vulnerable to ploys of others. Think about it. When is the best time to ask someone for a favor or for money? When they're feeling grateful (even if it's to someone else). Ever wonder why sometimes those charities asking for donations stick a dollar in the envelope or give you a "gift" of stamps or stickers that you never asked for? As the results of our experiments suggest, these tactics work. So the next time you're feeling grateful and you're tempted to do someone a favor, take a minute to stop and think about whether or not the person asking you for the favor is someone who really deserves it.

That said, most of the time gratitude serves a bigger and more important function in life than just upholding quid pro quo. Gratitude doesn't only help us reap favors, acquire resources, or build wealth. It builds something that may be even more valuable over the long haul: loyalty and trust. [Out of Character, 163-164]


Although Rand may have been very concerned with how feelings of obligation might be exploited by individuals to manipulate others, her orientation is so driven by narrow ideological concerns that she misses all the important nuances of the situation. Moreover, her denial of innate propensities causes her to naively believe that most important social problems can be solved (or at least severely mitigated) by persuading individuals to accept rational premises. But since these innate propensities do in fact exist and do in fact exercise an influence on many, if not most, individuals, trying to resolve or cure them by propagating so-called "rational" premises is a waste of time. Innate propensities cannot be managed wisely if one refuses to acknowledge their existence.


Apologists for Rand are often quick to remind us that the founder of Objectivism is not responsible for her followers. Yet there is contradiction at the heart of this reminder. Rand insisted that individuals were the product of their premises. Their emotions, their aesthetic responses, their very personalities were mere expressions of whatever premises they had accepted, either through focused thought or unfocused irresponsibility. Rand further insisted that only she advocated the the right and proper premises. Her premises, if accepted, should lead to rational, efficacious behavior. Furthermore, Rand also insisted that only she had the right arguments for these "rational" premises; that most other arguments would only lead people to accept contrary premises. Now if Rand were correct about these assertions, one would expect to find a high level of rationality and efficacious behavior among those who accepted Rand's arguments and premises. But this is not what we do in fact find. Even among the Objectivist elite (i.e., those in whom we would expect to find the strongest evidence of the benefits of Rand's premises) we often find an astonishing degree of irrationality and counter-productive behavior. As one example, consider Leonard Peikoff's behavior during the McCaskey fiasco. One can hardly imagine a more blatant example of sheer irrationality than the admissions Peikoff made in a couple of emails detailing his disdain for McCaskey's scholarly objections to Harriman's regrettable treatise. Peikoff reveals himself as an individual beset by many of the worst propensities in human nature. Acceptance of Objectivist premises hardly helped in his case. If anything, they seemed to have made him worse.

So we are confronted with a basic contradiction: either Rand is wrong about the beneficial nature of Objectivist premises; or she is wrong to assume that human character, including human propensities, are entirely the product of such premises. Rand might, of course, be wrong on both accounts; but she can only be right, if she is right at all, on one. If human beings are the product of their premises and Objectivist premises are good, we should find this borne out in the behavior of actual Objectivists. This we do not find. Nor is it just Leonard Peikoff. According even to orthodox sources, nearly all the original Objectivists (i.e., those in Rand's inner circle), at some point became "corrupted." Leonard Peikoff claims this happened because these individuals lost interest in ideas. But why should this have happened? Hadn't these individuals, by Rand's own judgment, accepted Objectivism? And shouldn't this acceptance have led to emotional propensities which would have favored maintaining an interest in ideas? It simply makes no sense. If Rand was right, most of the Objectivists in her inner circle should not have eventually become "corrupted" (i.e., ceased to remain orthodox Objectivists in good standing with Rand).

The most plausible explanation for these anomalies is that Rand is wrong on all counts. Human beings are not the product of their premises. Therefore, getting them to "accept" the "proper" premises is useless. Regardless of whatever speculative allegiances an individual may entertain, the innate propensities influencing his judgment and behavior remain. They will shift and color his speculative allegiances in ways that Rand never anticipated. This consideration brings us back to the issue of gratitude and its absence among the explicitly promoted Objectivist virtues. Many people are turned off by Rand's insistence on the "virtue of selfishness." It is assumed, by Rand's apologists, that such people are influenced by altruistic premises absorbed from the prevailing culture. Yet this is not a very plausible explanation. Many of the very same people who are uncomfortable with Rand's emphasis on selfishness would be equally uncomfortable with the view that human beings must live unconditionally for others. In any case, one rarely hears appeals to the extreme kind of altruism advocated by Auguste Comte and denounced by Rand. Discomfort with selfishness, far from being motivated by an allegiance to extreme forms of altruism, is more commonly rooted in a mistrust of unconditional self-seeking. People notice that encouraging selfishness, far from leading to more rational and benevolent behavior, often leads, instead, to irrational, anti-social behavior. It matters little whether we insist that selfishness must be "rational" and "enlightened." Very few human beings are capable of such rationality and enlightenment. (For those who entertain any doubts on this score, see Pareto's Mind and Society, or any well-researched tome on behavioral economics.) Since the cognitive unconscious plays a much larger role in cognition and even decision-making then most people realize, even individuals sincerely committed to "rational" self-interest can easily be led astray. Those who, following Rand, deny the existence of innate propensities, have a vested interest in repressing whatever innate propensities may be influencing their own conduct. Repression sabotages, if not prevents, any attempt to deal with these innate propensities in a rational and wise manner. Instead, the repressive individual merely begins to concoct rationalizations which he uses to explain the contradiction between his innate proclivities and his speculative allegiances. Denying human nature merely leads to rationalization and casuistry on a grand scale.

Experience, if followed wisely, counsels that it is better to emphasize social virtues such as gratitude and empathy, rather than merely personal virtues such as pride and ambition. Human beings tend to be rather biased toward their interests and concerns. Worse, they are often not even consciously aware of these biases. Many people spend a great deal of time constructing narratives which justify both their behavior and their self-esteem. The human being, far from being a "rational" animal, could more accurately be described as a rationalizing animal. In other words, there is often no reason to encourage pride, ambition, and self-esteem, since the desire for these things is built in. But social virtues are not built-in to the same extent. Gratitude is often tied to short-term feelings which wax and wane and which do not have a specific target. Hence it may prove the wiser course to emphasize grateful behavior, rather than merely grateful feelings. And it won't do at all to merely emphasize virtues such as pride, self-esteem, or even justice and honesty. Trust is built, not on speculative commitments to a specific virtue, but on actual behavior; and behavior that exhibits gratitude is more likely to build trust than is the mere "acceptance" of the premise of honesty. Despite all the virtuous noise Objectivists make about honesty, they don't seem particularly honest in their philosophy or in their scholarship. Some of the things Rand wrote about Kant, Hume, Bertrand Russell, and Emerson can hardly qualify as honest. Objectivists seem to be driven to write and say dishonest things about philosophers and critics they don't like because they place far too much emphasis on virtues such as pride and self-esteem (which only serve to exacerbate tendencies toward pretension and self-aggrandizement) while ignoring virtues such as gratitude, empathy, and kindness toward others (which would render them less prone to judge everyone who disagrees with them so uncharitably).

23 comments:

Neil Parille said...

Greg,

One thing I've noticed is that I don't think I've ever had a pleasant on-line dialogue with an orthodox Objectivist. It always turns into an attack on me for my lack of belief in the value of ideas, my evasion, my failure to understand Objectivism, and then (as with Valliant) my dishonesty.

I'd like to think that I have something to learn from Objectivists and vice versa.

Since Objectivists apparently have disdain for each other (Peikoff said he wasn't on speaking terms with 40% of the board of the ARI) it's not surprising they have contempt for other people.

I once heard an O'ist say that O'ists were better able to understand Kant by virtue of being O'ists. I'm reminded of Rand's attack on CS Lewis in her Marginalia, which was brilliantly analyzed by Michael Prescott.

If I say something to a friend that offends him, I can apologize because I'm far from a "being of self made soul." I can empathize about how the person feels, even at an unintentional slight. O'ists can't do that -- it has to be an epic conflict based on bad premises, evasion or what not.

Anonymous said...

I would like to make a rather unscientific, unacademic observation as to why Ayn Rand thought the way she did. She was childless and barren. No woman who has been a loving mother could ever come up with the ideas that she espoused. It is interesting that most of her followers that I have met are either men or childless women. Sure there are plenty of selfish, self absorbed women out there that will find Rand's ideas palatable, but I would like to find one "supermom" that has any use for any of her ideas. I would then go on to argue that most women who have raised children, either their own or through work as teachers or care givers are much happier and content with their lives than Ayn Rand ever appeared to be.

Echo Chamber Escapee said...

@Anon: "I would like to make a rather unscientific, unacademic observation as to why Ayn Rand thought the way she did. She was childless and barren."

First, just to clarify, there is no evidence that Ayn Rand was "barren" (i.e., unable to have children); in fact, there is some evidence that she had an abortion. She didn't have children because she didn't want them.

Second, I think you have the causality reversed. Rand didn't have children because of her ideas. For her, children would have been a sacrifice: time taken away from her highest value (her work as a writer) for something she regarded as a lesser value (another human being). My point is she didn't come up with the "virtue of selfishness" out of any lack of experience as a mother. That notion goes way back in her thought, to her earliest days in America and probably even before.

Third, i know a lot of Objectivist mothers (and fathers) who are loving and devoted parents. In fact, in my years of knowing Objectivists, most of them who managed to find mates have had children. As I've noted in other comment threads here, I think their rationalizations of the decision to have kids as being in their self-interest are pretty implausible (there are just too many unknowns around children to make a rational calculation on the subject).

Finally, as a woman I have to question the characterization that "most women who have raised children, either their own or through work as teachers or care givers are much happier and content with their lives than Ayn Rand ever appeared to be." Are you intending to imply that women need children to be happy and content with their lives? I'm pretty sure that's not true.

I think Rand was unhappy and discontented because she came up with a moral code that was impossible to practice without serious psychological damage (since it's so deeply at odds with human nature), then tried to live by it -- and worse, she demanded that those around her live by it too, as the price of being with her. They couldn't do it (and neither could she, much as she pretended otherwise). Not having children was a product of the same code. I don't think she would have been any happier if she'd had children; she'd have just inflicted her code on them, probably to their detriment.

Francois Tremblay said...

Way to suck up to the natalist set, Anonymous. Obviously people who don't have children are all irrational evaders! Why haven't we seen that before? I better start making a baby right away!

Bigot...

Xtra Laj said...

Francois,

It is not natalist to point out that after childbirth, many mothers become addicted to their children's cries. Not that different from pointing out that sex is addictive. Whether motherhood would have affected Rand's views, while unlikely to me because of the case of Alice Walker, is not beyond dissenting speculation.

Francois Tremblay said...

You can also become addicted to heroin. That doesn't prove that you need to take heroin to be rational.

Echo Chamber Escapee said...

@Xtra Laj: "Whether motherhood would have affected Rand's views, while unlikely to me because of the case of Alice Walker, is not beyond dissenting speculation."

Speculatively, I'd say it's likely motherhood would have affected Rand's views. It's clear from her writings that she had virtually no insight into developmental psychology, and it's hard for me to imagine she wouldn't have learned something from close observation of a growing child. For example, it seems likely she would have noticed that her child was an individual, with likes and dislikes that no amount of drilling in "proper premises" or "proper thinking methods" could change. Maybe then she would have figured out that character isn't just a product of one's premises and choices. She would have experienced just how dependent children are and how impossible it is to raise one without help. Maybe she would have realized that being alone on a deserted island is not man's natural state and developed a respect for the "social animal" aspects of human nature, losing her myopic focus on the "rational individual" piece. Heck, she might even have noticed that her kid(s) didn't form concepts the way she hypothesized and improved her problematic epistemology.

All that said, Rand chose not to have children because she already held to an ethical theory that told her that, for her, having kids would be altruistic and therefore immoral. Had she chosen differently, she might have fixed her theory, but in order to choose differently, she'd first have to have fixed her theory. Catch-22.

Echo Chamber Escapee said...

I think one problem with Anon's comment is that it isn't clear whether he/she means:

(a) Being a mother would have changed Rand's thinking;

or

(b) Rand's thinking was warped as a consequence of not being a mother.

As should be clear from my previous comments, I'm willing to agree with (a) but not with (b). Looks to me like Francois and I are attacking (b) while Xtra Laj is defending (a).

Francois Tremblay said...

I believe both interpretations are strictly natalist, so I'm attacking both. There is no reason why I can't understand that selfishness is bad or that human nature exists, even though I will never have children. Ayn Rand could have done the same, children or no children.

Having children does NOT impart magical non-selfish knowledge to a person. Actually, there is no act more selfish than having a child. Look carefully at all the reasons why people have children: they are all profoundly selfish. On the other hand, the reasons people give for not having children are sometimes selfish, but also sometimes ethical in nature, in that they take into account the impact on themselves, other people, society, the world, etc.

Anonymous said...

" Look carefully at all the reasons why people have children" Are they the same reasons that all other species have children?

The reasons people give for having children have somewhat of an after the fact feel to me. Rand seemed to be ignorant of many of the emotions and demands that having children place upon parents. Many of those emotions and demands marry up perfectly to what is flawed in her philosophy, so perhaps had she had children the experience would have benefited her philosophy, perhaps not. We cant always challenge our assumptions if we are blind to the fact that we have those assumptions.

Echo Chamber Escapee said...

@Francois: "There is no reason why I can't understand that selfishness is bad or that human nature exists, even though I will never have children."

Agreed. Having children is not a necessary precondition to understanding human nature. I think we also agree that Rand failed to understand human nature.

The speculative question Xtra Laj asks is: if (per impossibile) Rand had had children, would she have come to a better understanding?

Even speculating about this is hard. I think Rand would have had to have been a different, less rigidly dogmatic, sort of person to make the premise even remotely plausible. She'd have to have been capable of valuing another human being enough to accept all the downsides of parenthood.

And if we're going to speculate, I'm going to say, based on hearsay from numerous parents, that it's very likely she would have come to check at least some of her own premises ... and find them wanting.

"Having children does NOT impart magical non-selfish knowledge to a person."

Agreed again. There is nothing magical about the learning process that so many parents experience. They observe their children and think about what they observe; they supplement their observations and thinking with reading, talking to experts, sharing ideas and results with other parents, etc. It doesn't matter whether the children are biological or adopted or just frequent visitors: close day-to-day observation of children is an educational experience, for those adults who are open to educational experiences.

There is, of course, no guarantee that Rand would have actually done this kind of learning or thought her observations all the way through to their consequences for her premises. (I can definitely say that there are a lot of Objectivist parents who haven't.)

Note that I have not said, and would not agree, that having children was the only way Rand could have learned the error of her ways. (I learned the error of her ways without ever having kids.) With or without kids, I think she could have learned quite a lot if she had just been more open to input and criticism from the adults around her, and if she had put more effort into actually understanding the perspectives and feelings of her associates rather than foisting her own theoretical constructs onto them.

Francois Tremblay said...

ECE, I wasn't really arguing against you. Besides, I think you kinda disproved your own argument by pointing out that many Objectivist women kept their ethical standards after having children.

Rey said...

I once dated the daughter of Objectivists (she herself was not an Objectivist). She said that before she was born, her folks took parenting classes because, while they knew how they did not want to raise their daughter (i.e., in the manner in which they had been raised), they weren't sure what to do in lieu of their parents' examples. Still, even having taken courses in child-rearing, I can see now that certain Objectivist assumptions were at play in her childhood with serious consequences in adulting, particularly the blank-slate assumption, which I think led to her very low self esteem.

The belief that anybody can do anything they set out to do led to relentless pressure to "achieve," i.e., excel at EVERYTHING, regardless of talent, ability, or interest left her feeling like a loser because she only excellent at some things, not all things. Relatedly, she got little support from her parents when she encountered difficulty because (a) being human, they weren't experts at everything and (b) they believed that you can do anything if you just do it. Period. Suck it up, sister.

Rey said...

adulting=adulthood

I don't even know how I typed that typo.

Echo Chamber Escapee said...

@Francois: "I think you kinda disproved your own argument by pointing out that many Objectivist women kept their ethical standards after having children."

Guilty as charged. :-)

I think my final verdict is: Rand would have had to be a very different person to have children in the first place ... and even more different to let the experience teach her anything.

gregnyquist said...

The belief that anybody can do anything they set out to do led to relentless pressure to "achieve," i.e., excel at EVERYTHING, regardless of talent, ability, or interest left her feeling like a loser because she only excellent at some things, not all things.

The blank slate doctrine can lead to having false expectations about other people, not only in terms of what individuals can achieve, but social groups as well. The false expectations about individuals appears to have had a big effect on Rand's personal life, as it was a major component of many of her break-ups with people. And of course it's a major problem with her political theories, which make assumptions about the potential "rationality" of human beings that are unlikely to ever prove true.

Neil Parille said...

Greg,

But it seems to me that you can believe in a blank slate and also believe that IQ is largely genetic and limits people in life. By blank slate Rand means that people don't have innate knowledge.

The problem I have with Rand is not her belief in a blank slate (although even that is problematic at points) but her extremely positive view of human nature.

Xtra Laj said...

But it seems to me that you can believe in a blank slate and also believe that IQ is largely genetic and limits people in life. By blank slate Rand means that people don't have innate knowledge.

Neil,

I don't think anyone who holds onto both has thought through the issue thoroughly enough. IQ is more like processing power and processing power depends on hardware. Hardware is a form of innate knowledge - in other words, the system is designed to do something, and in fact, some of the facets of it are innate like the operating system, to take an analogy from computer science.

Does it take knowledge to cry or move an arm? My point is that any concept of knowledge that is limited to just learned knowledge is too limited to account for all the information processing people do to live their everyday lives.

Rey said...

My point is that any concept of knowledge that is limited to just learned knowledge is too limited to account for all the information processing people do to live their everyday lives.

After all, I never had to learn how to do calculus to project the arc of a ball so that I could catch it.

gregnyquist said...

By blank slate Rand means that people don't have innate knowledge.

She means more than just innate knowledge (at least by the common view of knowledge); she also denies innate predispositions, an innate component of character or personality. Now of course Objectivists can turn around and claim that predispositions and character are themselves the product of knowledge (i.e., of ideas), but that's a view unique to Objectivism. It's a view that is hardly much more plausible than the opinion that the earth is flat.

The problem I have with Rand is not her belief in a blank slate (although even that is problematic at points) but her extremely positive view of human nature.

A positive or optimistic view of human nature is usually tied to a blank slate view. No matter how positive your view of human nature may be, you still have to confront the fact at least some human beings have behaved (and continue to behave) quite deplorably. Rand would have been particularly disappointed with previous manifestations of human nature because of her insanely high expectations/standards. She may have had a positive view of human nature in theory, but in practice she tended deplore what she saw both among her contemporaries and historically. While there were a few historical people she admired, her admiration was never completely unmixed. She admired Aristotle, for example, but hardly ever mentions any of his doctrines without finding fault with them. Same with the Founding Fathers. She admired her contemporary, Ludwig von Mises, but wrote all sorts of abusive things in the margins of Human Action. In short, Rand did not have a particularly positive attitude toward what men had been or were. Past manifestations of human nature left her cold. Now if human nature has a significant innate component, that severely limits the extent to which human nature can be improved upon over what it has been historically. Hence, the person whose positive view of human nature is tied to various false moral and political ideals will not be favorably disposed to the view that human nature is in important respects innate. If human nature is innate, all of Rand's moral and political hopes will prove unrealizable, her view of morality out of whack with the actual natural needs of human beings and her politics unrealistic and even utopian.

Francois Tremblay said...

I really don't think you're being fair to the position that human nature is innately good. While I agree that there are a lot of people who believe in blank slate and derive from this a belief in humans as disproportionately malleable and thus capable of being molded completely positively, this is not by far the totality of the argument.

I would invite you to read "The Brighter Side of Human Nature" by Alfie Kohn and/or "Mutual Aid" by Piotr Kropotkin for a more balanced view of the topic.

Neil Parille said...

Greg,

Rand seemed to be of two minds on this issue.

I discussed it briefly a while ago --

http://solohq.solopassion.com/Articles/Parille/Ayn_Rand_Optimist_or_Pessimist.shtml

There are also places in Rand's journals where she speculated that we are living in the presence of unevolved human beings.

Rothbard said of the Rand cult:

___

Every religious cult has two sets of differing and distinctive creeds: the exoteric and the esoteric. The exoteric creed is the official, public doctrine, the creed which attracts the acolyte in the first place and brings him into the movement as a rank-and-file member.
___

I don't think you'd get from reading and listening to Rand's interviews that she was not a particularly happy person and that Objectivists were more prone to marital breakup than the rest of us. Two of Rand's closest associates (I assume the Blumenthals) are quoted in Brian Doherty's book as saying that it was a "myth" that Rand had a benevolent sense of life.

And why, like many 'cults' was there such a strong emphasis on psychotherapy? If we have free will and can easily control our emotions, why would you need to see Nathaniel Branden to get your emotions in order?

-Neil Parille

Echo Chamber Escapee said...

@Neil: Rand seemed to be of two minds on this issue.

I think you have hit on something very important, noting (as did Rothbard) that there are in fact two faces of Objectivism.

One face provides the "man is a heroic being" vision. This face says you should be rational, work hard to achieve your values, admire the achievements of others, etc. It says that you have free will and that there are a wide range of options for what values to pursue.

The other face is the one that really defines "heroic," by setting forth a whole lot of specific criteria for rationality. Objectivism includes a plethora of specific conclusions with which the rational man must come to agree, covering everything from the nature of the universe (deterministic, with the exception of human action), to how to form a concept, to what is the proper form of social organization, to what sort of novel is best. It demands that one must always always always judge others, most strictly, based on whether or not they agree with these conclusions.

So Objectivists end up holding both that man is by nature a heroic being and that very few manage to live up to this. Hence, many Objectivists end up like Rand: admiring "man" at a conceptual level, but despising almost all actual men for their failure to live up to the concept "man."

It doesn't occur to them that if real instances consistently fails to match up to one's concept, maybe the problem is the concept.

There are also places in Rand's journals where she speculated that we are living in the presence of unevolved human beings.

Not just in her journals. Her essay "The Missing Link" (1973, republished in Philosophy: Who Needs It) includes exactly this speculation.