Human nature and "reason." Rand places enormous stress on individual conscious reasoning. "Reason" is her chief moral virtue and is considered a necessity to man's survival. Not surprising, Rand regarded "reason" as particularly important in ethics. Rand regarded any attempt to derive ethical behavior from intuition or gut feelings or emotion as mere "whim worship," which she denounced in fierce, vigorous language.
There are several problems with this point of view, some of which have already been explored on this blog. In the first place, it is logically fallacious to reason from two is premises to an ought conclusion, something Rand appears not to have understood. Secondly, it is psychologically impossible to derive a moral end solely from reason. Reason is a method, a means for attaining an end. But an end must be wished for it's own sake, because it satisfies some sentiment or desire. Reason can never provide that end by its own resources alone. And finally, there exists an immense body of research demonstrating that reason is not used to make moral decisions; on the contrary, where reason comes in is after the decision has been made. The role of reason is not to make moral choices, but to defend them after the fact.
If people used reason to make moral decisions, we would expect their decision-making ability to be impaired when operating under a heavy cognitive load. This is not what researchers have found:
If reasoning played a central role in moral judgments, we would expect better reasoners to arrive at different conclusions from inferior reasoners. But this is not what the research finds. Smarter, more educated people don't reach different conclusions, they just provide more reasons to support their side of the issue. When people reason about issues of morality, they are blinded by confirmation bias. [ibid, 78-81]
Reason, as Nietzsche warned us, is a whore. She will sleep with any premises you throw at her, no matter how anti-empirical or absurd. As social psychologist Jonathan Haidt puts it:
There are several problems with this point of view, some of which have already been explored on this blog. In the first place, it is logically fallacious to reason from two is premises to an ought conclusion, something Rand appears not to have understood. Secondly, it is psychologically impossible to derive a moral end solely from reason. Reason is a method, a means for attaining an end. But an end must be wished for it's own sake, because it satisfies some sentiment or desire. Reason can never provide that end by its own resources alone. And finally, there exists an immense body of research demonstrating that reason is not used to make moral decisions; on the contrary, where reason comes in is after the decision has been made. The role of reason is not to make moral choices, but to defend them after the fact.
If people used reason to make moral decisions, we would expect their decision-making ability to be impaired when operating under a heavy cognitive load. This is not what researchers have found:
Can people make moral judgments just as well when carrying a heavy cognitive
load as when carrying a light one? The answer turned out to be yes.... I used a
computer program to force some people to answer quickly, before they had time to
think, and I forced other people to wait ten seconds before offering their
judgment. Surely that manipulation would weaken or strengthen moral reasoning
and shift the balance of power, I thought. But it didn't. [J. Haidt, The Righteous Mind, 36]
If reasoning played a central role in moral judgments, we would expect better reasoners to arrive at different conclusions from inferior reasoners. But this is not what the research finds. Smarter, more educated people don't reach different conclusions, they just provide more reasons to support their side of the issue. When people reason about issues of morality, they are blinded by confirmation bias. [ibid, 78-81]
Reason, as Nietzsche warned us, is a whore. She will sleep with any premises you throw at her, no matter how anti-empirical or absurd. As social psychologist Jonathan Haidt puts it:
Anyone who values truth should stop worshipping reason. We all need to take aBut if confirmation bias is built-in, how is rationality and science possible? That is the subject I will explore in the next post.
cold, hard look at the evidence and see reasoning for what it is. The French
cognitive scientists Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber recently reviewed the vast
research literature on motivated reasoning (in social psychology) and on the
biases and errors of reasoning (in cognitive psychology). They concluded that
most of the bizarre and depressing research findings make perfect sense once you
see reasoning as having evolved not to help us find truth but to help us engage
in arguments, persuasion, and manipulation in the context of discussions with
other people. As they put it, "skilled arguers ... are not after the truth but
after arguments supporting their views." This explains why the confirmation bias
is so powerful, and so ineradicable. How hard could it be to teach students to
always look on the other side, to always look for evidence against their favored
views? Yet, in fact, it's really hard, and nobody has yet found a way to do it.
It's hard because the confirmation bias is a built-in feature..., not a bug that
can be removed... [89]
Hmm. Can't wait to see your next entry, as this is the exact same thing I've been wondering myself...
ReplyDeleteGreg - Another excellent post. I was particularly taken by this:
ReplyDeleteSecondly, it is psychologically impossible to derive the an end from reason. Reason is a method, a means for attaining an end. But an end must be wished for it's own sake, because it satisfies some sentiment or desire. Reason can never provide that end by its own resources alone.
Rand tripped over this in a big way. She seemed to realize that Reason alone wasn't enough for a moral code, since she included two other "supreme and ruling values" in the pantheon of Man Qua Man: Purpose and Self-Esteem. Purpose she described as "his choice of the happiness which [Reason] must proceed to achieve."
The problem is that, other than the general admonition that a proper Purpose is more or less synonymous with productive work (or career), Rand never explained how one is supposed to make this all-important choice. Her fiction provides no clues, as we never learn how any of her heroes decided on their careers. I think the closest we get is a flashback of Dagny at age 9 telling herself she's going to run the railroad one day. But that, says Rand, is just "the final seal of words upon something she had known long ago." How did she know? No explanation. And I don't recall any of Rand's nonfiction attempting to shed any light on how to choose a Purpose.
I do recall Peikoff trying to answer this question several times (in varying forms) in his podcasts. He'd usually tell the questioners to start by figuring out what they like, what interests them, and then look for productive (i.e., paying) activities around those interests. But where does this "like" or "interest" come from? Can the questioners reason their way into it? Or is it just a given? I don't think Peikoff ever answered that.
I don't think he could.
If I recall correctly, the Objectivist view is that the particulars of your career choice don't matter (read: are arbitrary), as long as you engage in productive activity in accord with Objectivist virtues. Dagny was born into the railroad business, but had she been born into the steel business then she would have been a steel magnate. Objectivists wriggle out of this absurdity by arguing that whatever you choose should comport with facts about yourself (facts, hence "objectivity")--i.e. your natural aptitudes and inclinations that will enhance your productivity. This is common sense, but since you can't wrestle it from what Rand wrote, it confirms that Objectivism offers no practical guide for life's big questions.
ReplyDeleteThe standard view is that science is possible because our critical ability is better than our inductive ability and that by criticizing the ideas of others whose interests we do not share, we weed out the ideas that are bad and only the best ideas survive. Would be interested in seeing if Haidt has anything to add to this.
ReplyDelete@Anon69: Objectivists wriggle out of this absurdity by arguing that whatever you choose should comport with facts about yourself (facts, hence "objectivity")--i.e. your natural aptitudes and inclinations that will enhance your productivity. This is common sense, but since you can't wrestle it from what Rand wrote, it confirms that Objectivism offers no practical guide for life's big questions.
ReplyDeleteYep, it is common sense. The problem for Objectivists is that Rand flatly denied this common-sense view. She didn't believe in "natural aptitudes and inclinations." Everything has to be learned. And she means everything. She has Galt claim that before a man can know he should eat, he must first "learn" to identify the sensation of hunger as hunger. Likewise, all emotions (including inclinations toward or away from particular fields or activities) are products of prior value judgments that the rational person can identify if asked to; these too are learned, not "natural inclinations." As for "natural aptitudes," I recall Rand claiming that anyone could raise his IQ by 40 points through proper effort and training. So much for common sense.
Back in my Objectivist days, it used to puzzle me that, for all her emphasis on man as a being of self-made soul, Rand never showed the steps by which her heroes made their own souls. The impression I got was that they were born that way, just as Jim Taggart was apparently born an incompetent moocher. Rand's "born this way" approach to character development seemed at odds with the notion of character as a product of choice.
Now I think the real problem was Rand's failure to recognize that character doesn't come down to a single choice (to think or not to think).