In the opening of his essay on the analytic-synthetic dichotomy, Peikoff provides the following anecdote about a discussion he had with a professor which illustrates how Objectivists use definitions and logic to evade facts while assuming the very point at issue:
Some years ago, I was defending capitalism in a discussion with a prominent professor of philosophy. In answer to his charge that capitalism leads to coercive monopolies, I explained that such monopolies are caused by government intervention in the economy and logically impossible under capitalism.... The professor was singularly unmoved by my argument, replying:
"Logically impossible? Of course -- granted your definitions. You're merely saying that, no matter what proportion of the market it controls, you won't call a business a 'coercive monopoly' if it occurs in a system you call 'capitalism.' Your view is true by arbitrary fiat, it's a matter of semantics, it's logically true but not factually true. Leave logic aside now; be serious and consider the actual empirical facts on this matter."
Doubts arise, of course, as to whether Peikoff has accurately related the professor's argument. But even if this professor said what Peikoff claims he said, the professor nonetheless has a point. Objectivists do in fact tend to resort to definitional arguments. Such arguments suffer from the fallacy of begging the question. Grant someone's definitions, and the rest follows, logically. But since definitions merely establish what one means by the words one uses, this is not enough.
If Peikoff's professor had really said, "Leave logic aside now," he was making a poor argument for his case. He would have been better served by saying, "Leave definitions aside now; let's start with the actual facts of the matter."
While Peikoff is entirely free to define capitalism any way he pleases, he's not free to assume that his definition accords to anything we find in reality. That's empirical question dependent on the actual facts relevant to the case at hand. Peikoff's proof that "coercive" monopolies cannot arise under capitalism is entirely circular. It's contained in his definitions of capitalism and coercive monopoly. Arguing from definitions is not how one ascertains truth. If you're serious about acquiring true knowledge of reality, you have to go beyond your definitions of words and actually test your actual beliefs (as opposed to the meanings of your terms) against reality. And that's what Peikoff does not want to do, because it's much more difficult to establish his views on the basis of empirical testing rather than on speculation based on arbitrary definitions. To begin with, capitalism as he defines it has never existed, nor is it plausible that such a system ever will exist. If we seek out systems that approximate Peikoff's definition, we find that his assertions about "coercive" monopoly a tad bit exaggerated. What we find when we look at the "lightly" regulated capitalism of the nineteenth century is a very strong desire on the part of many firms to discover and attain monopolistic advantages, which sometimes led to monopolies which even Peikoff would admit are "coercive." It is often through such monopoly advantages that profits are secured against the uncertainties of market competition; and profits are the lifeblood of every business.
It matters little if Peikoff responds by insisting that his (and Rand's) definitions are "true." Definitions define the meaning of words. How one goes about defining one's terms is, at least initially, entirely "arbitrary." Once one's terms are defined, one needs to stick to the initial definitions, or risk equivocation. But the meaning chosen is neither true or false. As I have repeatedly elucidated when discussing the Objectivist view of definitions, words by themselves don't tell us anything about reality. It's only when something about reality is asserted using these terms that the issue of truth is broached.
The issue of monopolies under "capitalism" is very complex. Any sophisticated understanding of political systems strongly suggests that the sort of "laissez-faire" or "unregulated" capitalism imagined by Rand is a fantasy. Human beings tend to respond to incentives; and built-in to any social system featuring widespread division of labor are incentives, spread across various factions, against the vague, poorly defined "unregulated" capitalism advocated by Objectivists. Politicians don't want laissez-faire; lawyers don't want it; speculators and investors don't want it; most businessman don't want; the rich don't want it; the poor don't want it. It turns out that, when the matter is examined closely, almost everyone wants at least something from the government: security for their investments, security for their employment, security for the old age, security against natural disaster, security against the vicissitudes of competitive life. Real life (as opposed to the type of existence imagined by Rand) remains threatened from all sides by uncertainties. Individuals seek hedges against this uncertainty; and the government, as the most powerful institution in society, remains for many the most attractive hedge of all. Given the constitution of human nature, it's extremely unlikely that very many individuals can be persuaded by a mere ideology not to regard government as an attractive hedge against uncertainty.
So when we come to investigating the monopolistic side of "capitalism," it simply will not do to dream up how things would work in an imaginary, political unfeasible version of the system. Empiricism requires that we stick to plausible versions of that system, not merely imaginary ones. Once we do so, we are confronted by a far more ambiguous set of facts, none of which yield the simple, easy answers propagated by political ideologies.
352 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 352 of 352"And there are still cultures without access to his thought today. Living in jungles, covered in lesions and mud."
This is something Rand was often guilty of: assuming that less-developed cultures are by definition more squalid and miserable.
Not that there aren't miserable conditions about in the world, but by "living in the jungle" you seem to be indicating primitive people untouched by modern ways.
Unless you're telling us you have direct experience and contact with these peoples, how can you say they are "covered in lesions and mud"? This is a stereotype - and possibly a racist one, at that. Granted, a primitive culture doesn't have access to modern medical technology or many other things we in the "first world" enjoy, but that doesn't mean such people are universally sick. In fact, such truly isolated cultures that still exist today are relatively healthy. No heart disease, less carcinogens - dental caries didn't exist before agriculture and refined foods.
It's only when civilization sticks its nose in and tries to impose its idea of modern convenience on a place that you wind up with the truly squalid dense slums, pollution, rampant disease, environmental disaster and the famine that follows, etc. etc. The children that are shown on commercials for charities aren't living in jungles, they're living in wretched CITIES.
Perhaps we can't blame Aristotle directly for that, but we can blame the supposedly elevated cultures that were supposedly lifted up by his philosophy, and used that wisdom to go in and wreck other places for fun, conquest and/or profit.
(I'm reminded of when Rand said that taking land away from Native American peoples was justified because they were all brutal savages, as proved by the depiction of same by Hollywood movies.)
ungtss:
"i didn't come to understand it until my mid-20s. and when i discovered it, it allowed my mind to function at a much higher level than had previously been possible to me."
Would you mind giving a handful of examples of how you applied occam's razor? And, if possible, contrast that with how you think your though process would have been had you not been familiar with occam's razor at that time.
Anon, I spent my formative years in Cote d'ivoire, Ghana, and Saudi Arabia, among other places overseas. lesions and mud are only the beginning. The things you take for granted as common sense are _absent_ among those who don't have access to educational materials that pass on those _philosophical concepts_. This is not remotely racist, as the people in those countries who do have access to these ideas -- or the ability to develop them themselves -- live a different sort of life. And many suburban american white kids never pick a lot of it up implicitly, because your culture in this country is in the process of destroying reason. it is the _ideas_ that make the difference. And since most people do not have the ability to develop thought rules independently, the success of a civilization depends on giving the masses access to them.
Only a person who has never lived in a village in up country Ghana could fail to notice a profound difference between their thought and ours. But most westerners who go to the jungle glorify the lack of reason they find there, and describe it with the myth of the noble savage. But there's nothing noble about the savagery you find there. It's just that the idiot westerners who go to the village hate reason, and are looking for an alternative to glorify.
Rand and I both grew up in places where reason was desperately lacking, and then moved to a place in adult life where reason was under direct assault. You can perhaps understand our reaction.
Uses of parsimony. One major use was in freeing myself from the perverse religious morality I grew up under, by discovering that the terms and basis for the morality were unparsimonious. Specifically the idea that a "god" judges our behavior. When in fact that hypothesis explains no additional facts than a hypothesis that morality arises from our interaction with reality, without respect to a god.
I use it in learning to empathize with my daughter. In particular, looking for the simplest explanation for a tantrum. Which is almost always right. She may tell me she's upset because of some extremely complex, irrational reason. But the right answer is usually "hungry, tired, or feeling out of control."
I use it in forensic investigations in my work, when trying to determine what happened based on limited evidence. I actually sit down, list my facts, list hypothetical explanations for them, identify the simplest explanation, and then identify what facts I can look for to test the hypothesis.
"Rand and I both grew up in places where reason was desperately lacking, and then moved to a place in adult life where reason was under direct assault. You can perhaps understand our reaction."
I've always attributed Rand's development of Objectivism as a reaction in a fit of pique over having to pay income tax, and a way to appropriate terms of morality for behavior she liked as opposed to what the rest of society considered moral.
I won't deny that sections of American society seem to be lacking (or even rejecting) reason. But I wouldn't claim it was "under attack" or that it could be "destroyed".
The problem with adopting Rand's vision of morality is that it is not logically sound. That is, for a philosophy that prides itself for deriving morality (and the resulting emotional reactions) from pure reason, Objectivism fails to establish at its root why its system should be considered to be small-o objectively true.
(I seem to recall you saying you had not read Rand's non-fiction, which is where she lays out her philosophy and how she supposedly derives it. It could be explained how she got it wrong, but that might require some lengthy comment posts.)
Because of that, there's no more logical justification for the Objectivist moral stance than there is for, say, any religion, since it essentially boils down to "some agency tells me this is true and I choose to believe it" in either case.
It is, once again, the is/ought problem - you can't logically derive what you SHOULD do from raw facts about what IS. Rand said at one point in her essays, "so much for the is/ought problem!" when making some point, but the way she presents it, it's not clear that she ever understood what the is/ought question is, let alone that she managed to resolve it (which she did not).
Which is just one of the reasons you will find at this blog much skepticism over claims of Rand's genius, and claims of the effectiveness of her ideas. While many of us allow for individual applications to be in some way successful, we are at the same time quite aware of the fundamental flaw at the root of her philosophy, that renders the whole business not really much more than "here's a set of rules that Rand likes and thinks people should follow".
"I've always attributed Rand's development of Objectivism as a reaction in a fit of pique over having to pay income tax, and a way to appropriate terms of morality for behavior she liked as opposed to what the rest of society considered moral."
How would you account for her expression of the same principles in a more rudimentary form, as expressed in her early writings, when she was working at a laundry? And how would you account for my adoption of her principles in a rudimentary form while living alone in an apartment in the Atlanta ghetto with no furniture, air conditioning or heat, working for tips at a TGI Fridays, and paying no tax?
“That is, for a philosophy that prides itself for deriving morality (and the resulting emotional reactions) from pure reason, Objectivism fails to establish at its root why its system should be considered to be small-o objectively true.”
On the contrary, I think it does so quite well. Her solution to the “is/ought” problem had a profound influence in my life, personally.
The passage you’re talking about is from The Objectivist Ethics. Her argument there is that the fact that a thing is alive necessitates an ought – the “ought” being actions which serve the living being’s life.
This mode of her argument, which pops up in her discussion of axioms, is, I think, brilliant. She acknowledges that no one can “logically prove” the axioms, or the necessity of taking actions consonant with an individual’s life. But she points out that the axioms – and taking actions consonant with the value of one’s life – logically precede all others.
Thus one need not take the actions necessary to maintain your life. But if you don’t, you will die. And when you die, all choices will be removed from you. It’s the same with the axiom of existence. You need not admit that something exists. But if you don’t, all thought is rendered impossible to you.
It’s a mode of thought quite distinct from “formal logic.” It’s fundamentally practical in its nature. It simply points out the consequences of each branch, and lets you take your choice.
The next step in her argument was to point out that the specific types of actions necessary to maintain an individual’s life are not arbitrary. They are dictated by the immutable facts of a living being’s nature. A living man _must_ do certain things in order to live. At the most simple and concrete level, he must eat, drink, and shelter himself from adverse weather conditions. If he does not perform those “oughts” the life will soon disappear. And with it, the ought.
(and incidentally, I’ve read all her non-fiction multiple times, as well as her fiction. It took me over a decade to reach a level in cognitive functioning in which I was actually able to understand what she was talking about. I remember the first time I read atlas shrugged, right after college at the age of 22, my mind was such that I was only able to comprehend one single theme – the theme of merit. The theme that a thing being _good_ was a legitimate value. It was a radical and significant idea for me at the time, as a result of my background, in which the concept of merit was assaulted from all sides. And it was the _only_ thing I was able to understand at the time. After about 10 years, I can say with a fair bit of confidence that I really understand what she was on about.)
Rand's meta-ethical argument has been discussed ad nauseam on this blog, but for the record, it has (at least) two big problems:
1. Equivocation. Rand begins by talking about "life" in the sense of "biological survival." But when she comes to human beings, she switches the definition to mean "the life proper to a rational being." This seems to mean something like "the optimal mode of existence for man." There is a categorical difference between these two uses of the term. To be consistent, Rand would have had to argue for survival at any price (which is the way of nature), but she does not want to advocate this kind of morality, so she fudges her terms. I'm sure she did this unknowingly, but it is still an error.
Note that she continues to equivocate by saying that human beings who don't practice the right ethics will fail to live truly human lives. She even dismisses them, in some cases, as nonhuman. If she had admitted that some (in fact, many) people live fairly successful lives while not practicing the Objectivist ethics, her whole position would have been jeopardized - so she could not admit it, even though it is obviously true.
2. Circular reasoning, or begging the question. At a point in her argument where Rand is still trying to lay the groundwork for ethics, she announces that the standard of ethics is "the life proper to a rational being." This is a normative (ethical) standard. She has no logical right to introduce a normative standard until she has established that an objective, rational morality is possible. By doing so, she argues in a circle (or begs the question). She assumes a valid normative standard in order to prove that there is such a standard.
This allows her to rather arbitrarily list attributes she finds desirable (honesty, productiveness, etc.), and to claim that they are objectively necessary for survival. In fact, there are dishonest, unproductive people who thrive. They may not be living "the life proper to man," but they are living - and in some cases, living longer and (it would seem) happier lives than did Rand herself. Rand deals with this objection by claiming that these people are not really living in the truest sense, or that they are not really happy, or that they are not really people (they're subhuman). But the first response is mere semantics, the second is irrelevant unless happiness has suddenly become the standard, and the third is empty rhetoric.
Another error, by the way, is Rand's fundamental claim that survival is the highest priority of living organisms. As any biologist will tell you, reproduction is the highest priority, and organisms will often risk or lose their lives in the attempt to reproduce. (Think of salmon swimming upstream to spawn, or the male black widow spider.) Of course, an organism must be alive in order to reproduce, but reproduction is its principal purpose, while individual survival is merely secondary or instrumental.
Had Rand been consistent, she would have argued that the purpose of human life is to bear children! Needless to say, nothing could have been further from her viewpoint, but this is where the faux-biological argument should have led her.
"1. Equivocation. Rand begins by talking about "life" in the sense of "biological survival." But when she comes to human beings, she switches the definition to mean "the life proper to a rational being." This seems to mean something like "the optimal mode of existence for man.""
I don't see equivocation there. I see an additional empirical premise by which he goes from biological life to "proper life" more broadly: her additional premise is the empirical fact that for men to live sustainably, without being in a state of constant warfare (in which many die as a result of the war), men must operate on the principles of individual productivity and voluntary exchange, not by force.
Whether this premise is true or not is another question (i think history bears it out nicely). but it's the existence of the premise itself that makes the argument non-equivocation.
She is indeed talking about "life" in two different senses, but she draws an empirical bridge between the two.
"To be consistent, Rand would have had to argue for survival at any price (which is the way of nature), but she does not want to advocate this kind of morality, so she fudges her terms."
I don't think that would have been consistent. "Life at any price" is not sustainable. It is an existence of constant fear, depredation, and fratricide, in which human beings are unable to relate to each other as peers, because they do not know when they will have a knife thrust into their back.
"Life at any price" is also an existence in which voluntary trade becomes impossible. And without voluntary trade, the only alternatives are slavery and starvation. and in the long run, slavery inevitably leads to starvation. again, not sustainable.
When she speaks of "the life proper to a human being" she does introduce additional criteria for life ... but "sustainability" is a reasonable criteria for life, since life by its very nature ends unless it is sustained.
"At a point in her argument where Rand is still trying to lay the groundwork for ethics, she announces that the standard of ethics is "the life proper to a rational being." This is a normative (ethical) standard. She has no logical right to introduce a normative standard until she has established that an objective, rational morality is possible"
I don't think this is circular reasoning, because the normative standard she has demonstrated is that a living being's standard of value must derive from the maintenance of its own life, and (as a result of the empirical facts of man's nature) a certain course of affairs maintains human life, and "life at any price" is not one of them.
if you want to see "life at any price," go to uganda or the DRC. that truly is life at any price. it means death, misery, starvation, chronic terror, and rampant gang rapes.
no, "life at any price" is not sustainable. and sustainability is bound up in the nature of life itself.
an analogy might be driving a car. "driving a car at any cost" is simple, but it's also a losing proposition.
"properly and sustainably driving a car" requires a person to do number of things in addition to simply hitting the gas and brakes arbitrarily. it requires gassing it up, oil maintenance, knowledge of traffic rules, obedience to traffic rules, staying on roads that will not damage the car, staying off black ice that will lead you to slip and damage the car, adjusting to other drivers, etc. etc. etc.
it's not equivocation to move one's argument from the premise "you want to drive, right?" to "well here's the proper way to drive." the "proper way to drive" is indispensable should one wish to drive sustainably.
and again, i think there's a critical context to rand's arguments that's missing here. at least the way i understand them.
she does not claim the ability to logically compel a person who does not wish to live, or who does not wish to live sustainably, into wishing to do so. she simply claims to provide a philosophy for those who do wish to live. wishing to live, and wishing to live sustainably, is a fundamental value, very similar to her axioms. you can't argue somebody into it. but without it, there's nothing else to do except to die right away, or live recklessly and foolishly until reality finishes you off.
Anon:
>It is, once again, the is/ought problem - you can't logically derive what you SHOULD do from raw facts about what IS. Rand said at one point in her essays, "so much for the is/ought problem!" when making some point, but the way she presents it, it's not clear that she ever understood what the is/ought question is, let alone that she managed to resolve it (which she did not).
You are quite right Anon. The way Objectivists try to evade this is by simply saying, oh, when you say "logic" that's not what we mean by it!
Michael Prescott gives an example of Rand equivocating, an Objectivist simply responds by saying oh, that's not what I would call an equivocation...
And so forth. Playing these kind of word games is the basic tactic Objectivists use to insulate themselves from the obvious criticisms of their doctrines. This evasive tactic starts with Rand herself: how many other philosophers do you know require a specific lexicon in order to be understood - a lexicon that for the most part consists of commonly used words, such as "selfishness"?
The point of generally accepted standards, such as the rules of formal logic, or the meanings of words, is so that doctrines can be properly examined and criticised.
By trying to rewrite the dictionary, or appeal to some other standard of "logic" other than logic itself, Objectivism is attempting to undermine objective standards of criticism and, in effect, mark its own homework. This gives it much of its cultic twist, I believe, rather than Rand's admittedly charismatic personality. The advantage is the self-justifying arguments beloved of fanatics; the price is intellectual paralysis and the contempt of those who endorse independent standards and sit outside the bubble of Objectivism.
'how many other philosophers do you know require a specific lexicon in order to be understood - a lexicon that for the most part consists of commonly used words, such as "selfishness"?'
I think a particularly egregious example of this tendency is "sacrifice," which Rand defined as surrendering a greater value for a lesser one. But this is not how the word is normally used. In baseball, a sacrifice fly is a play that results in the hitter's elimination, but also advances another player around the bases, improving the chance of scoring a run. Scoring a run is a higher value than merely getting on base.
Or take the case of someone who says, "We decided to sacrifice our trip to Hawaii this year so we could afford to remodel the kitchen." Clearly, remodeling the kitchen is a higher value to this person.
Even in the case of literal "human sacrifice," the idea is that one life must be surrendered in order to save the lives of the whole community.
I admit that the word can be used ambiguously, but most of the time it's used in this sense - exactly opposite the sense that Rand imputed to it.
"I don't see equivocation there. I see an additional empirical premise by which he goes from biological life to "proper life" more broadly: her additional premise is the empirical fact that for men to live sustainably, without being in a state of constant warfare (in which many die as a result of the war), men must operate on the principles of individual productivity and voluntary exchange, not by force."
But there's an additional equivocation inherent there: the shift from individual life to collective life. Man as the individual life becomes man as the part of a mutually cooperative community.
If you are a truly self-interested person, what does it matter if other men die in war, so long as you prosper? Why seek equitable trade if you are able to take?
Rand wants to justify some form of social contract - "I won't kill or harm you so long as you don't kill or harm me" but it doesn't really knit together logically with her standard of selfishness. She wants to argue that such cooperation is in a person's self-interest, but does not account for people who "get away with it", so to speak.
Slavery, for example, is bad for the slave. But the slaveholder may find it quite "sustainable". The suffering slaveholders may have felt from the Civil War does not erase the fact that many slaveholders before 1860 had luxurious lifestyles and died peacefully in their beds, having enjoyed much profit at the expense of others. For them, parasitism worked.
Objectivists, faced with the conundrum of such a profitable parasite, will often try to claim things they could not possibly know, such as that such a person could not be truly happy, or that some form of justice would catch up with them, or other unverifiable notions, to fudge around the fact that true selfishness would dictate that one could - if one could get away with it - morally commit acts most folks consider evil.
But the same powers of reasoning that Rand used to construct her philosophy allowed her to become adept at the side-step - at "moving the goalposts" in order to make leaps of faith appear like logic.
'I don't see equivocation there. I see an additional empirical premise by which she goes from biological life to "proper life" more broadly...'
What you just described is equivocation. Changing the meaning of a term - as in going "from biological life to 'proper life' more broadly" - is precisely what is meant by equivocation. It doesn't matter if the new, broader meaning is, in itself, valid or invalid. The switch as such is what is invalid.
'I don't think that would have been consistent. "Life at any price" is not sustainable...'
Whether sustainable or not, life at any price is the law of nature, and nature is what Rand is using as the basis for her argument. Animals in the wild kill each other to survive. Since this is Rand's starting point, she is not entitled to suddenly switch gears and start talking about sustainability or quality of life or whatever.
"... in the long run, slavery inevitably leads to starvation. again, not sustainable."
As Anon points out, Rand has not laid any framework for saying that a human being, as an individual, needs to worry about the long run. Animals in the wild (her starting point) are not concerned with the long run. And individual human beings can live long and prosperous lives by selling or using slaves.
'... if you want to see "life at any price," go to uganda or the DRC. that truly is life at any price. it means death, misery, starvation, chronic terror, and rampant gang rapes. no, "life at any price" is not sustainable.'
But it is. Ugandans are not all dead. Most are still living. They may live in misery and poverty and fear, but remember, we are told that "life is the standard of value," and life (initially) means simple biological survival. There's just no getting around the fact that Rand has fudged on the meaning of the central term in her argument, going from survival as such to flourishing and thriving in a long-term sustainable way with a clean conscience.
This doesn't mean that her specific values are necessarily bad, or that she doesn't say some things that are true. It does mean, however, that she has not solved the is-ought problem. She has not reasoned in a logically ineluctable manner from her premise to her conclusion. Even if what she ends up saying about human beings is largely true, she has not made a valid argument. An invalid argument can still end up at a true conclusion, just as a valid argument can lead to a false conclusion (if one of the premises is false).
"But there's an additional equivocation inherent there: the shift from individual life to collective life. Man as the individual life becomes man as the part of a mutually cooperative community.
If you are a truly self-interested person, what does it matter if other men die in war, so long as you prosper? Why seek equitable trade if you are able to take?"
I don't see an equivocation there either. An individual is better off when he has access to trade with other productive, independent, human beings. Specifically, I am better off because of the existence of the bus driver, the grocery clerk, and the Intel engineer than I would be without them. Because they do work and sell me the product of their work at a lower cost than it would take for me to produce their work on my own. This is the principle of "gains from trade."
That is why it is to my benefit for others to continue to live and prosper. I have a selfish interest in the prosperity of others.
"Slavery, for example, is bad for the slave. But the slaveholder may find it quite "sustainable". The suffering slaveholders may have felt from the Civil War does not erase the fact that many slaveholders before 1860 had luxurious lifestyles and died peacefully in their beds, having enjoyed much profit at the expense of others. For them, parasitism worked."
One must compare apples to apples -- the supposed "prosperity" of a slaveowner to the prosperity of an industrialist operating on the principle of free labor. 19th century industrialists were far more prosperous than slave-owners, because slavery is far less economically efficient means of acquiring manual labor.
In fact the southern economy was collapsing prior to the war, and the southern states were on a socialist, statist track of economic policy. the northern economy was booming, because free labor allowed for a much more efficient allocation of labor, and the northern rich benefitted a great deal from this. not only in their own industries, but in access to the products of other industries.
ultimately, it was the utter collapse of the southern economy that led to their loss of the war.
slavery is and always has been an extremely inefficient institution. it's just that slaveowners are too stupid to realize it.
just like the welfare state. advocates of the welfare state are too stupid to realize that the welfare state they advocate steals $20 they could have had, gives them back $5, and calls it a day.
well, the existence of a large proportion of stupid people is part of the condition. as is the existence of a minority of intelligent people able to understand how things actually operate.
@Anon: But there's an additional equivocation inherent there: the shift from individual life to collective life. Man as the individual life becomes man as the part of a mutually cooperative community.
If you are a truly self-interested person, what does it matter if other men die in war, so long as you prosper? Why seek equitable trade if you are able to take?
Good point. (And good points re slavery, sacrifice, etc.)
Another effect of this equivocation shows up when Objectivists are confronted with the man who needs a life-saving medical procedure he can't afford (and no one else volunteering to pay the bill). Somehow Rand concludes that it is in this man's interest to die because the alternative would be "enslavement" of doctors -- where "enslavement" covers everything from Medicaid to single-payer healthcare systems to, I suppose, actual slavery.
Now, I can see arguing over whether and how much government involvement in health care is good or bad according to some measure of overall well-being in a society. I can see someone believing that his own death due to lack of ability to pay for surgery is an acceptable price to pay for a free society. But ranking "what's good for society" ahead of "what's good for me" is precisely what Rand rejects. So -- exactly how is it better for the dying man that he dies?
I could say a lot more ... but reality calls.
"Objectivists are confronted with the man who needs a life-saving medical procedure he can't afford (and no one else volunteering to pay the bill)"
In the real world, this scenario is utterly fabricated, because hospitals have been required to perform these surgeries, with or without payment in the US, for 30 years. And that has increased the cost, because people need not pay for what they get. Which has made the care less affordable and less available.
They don't ask what sort of person is completely unable to afford surgery, has no friends who value his life, and who is unable to negotiate a deal with the health care provider or creditors. I know what kind of people find themselves in this predicament. They're sleezebuckets. But I'm forced to finance their care so they can go home, use some more dirty needles, pick up a couple new STDs, and die in a DWI.
But leftists don't look too closely at the reason for this scenario.
"In the real world, this scenario is utterly fabricated, because hospitals have been required to perform these surgeries, with or without payment in the US, for 30 years."
But that scenario is exactly the kind of thing Rand WANTS to happen, how she insists things SHOULD operate, so although the scenario is "fabricated", and is not, in fact, likely to become political reality any time soon, it's not as if it's completely divorced from reality. You might as well call Rand's vision for a better society a fabrication, or unworkable, or otherwise not worth consideration, as brush aside the scenario for being not real.
"They don't ask what sort of person is completely unable to afford surgery, has no friends who value his life, and who is unable to negotiate a deal with the health care provider or creditors. I know what kind of people find themselves in this predicament. They're sleezebuckets."
Remember what I said about making claims you could not possibly know? And what's more, it completely ignores the basic point ECE raised - that somehow not being a burden on others and allowing one's own self to die in any way fulfills some kind of standard of self-interest. Your contempt for anyone who finds themselves in such a situation is, well, irrelevant at best to that issue.
Incidentally, Rand herself wound up in medical care that was paid for by social programs near the end of her life. I don't remember hearing about anyone donating to pay for her care, and it was her income such as it was that supported her and her husband.
Asking "what kind of person gets into such a situation?" and then answering "sleazebags, of course!" is just the kind of knee-jerk assumption Rand liked to make; one can only wonder if she ever perceived the irony of all that near the end.
on the contrary, my views about these medical situations are based not on an assumption, but on thousands of hours spent reviewing medical records in litigation. Picture 10s of thousands of pages from dozens of providers, all for stupid shit that any sensible person wouldn’t have gotten themselves into. Because of an utter failure to manage their own life appropriately. And staying alive only because of a masterful ability to work the system. Studying their medical bills and their lives is a good portion of my life.
My point in describing such people as sleezebags was not simply to express contempt, but to place their medical needs in the broader context of an irresponsibly lived life. One does not end up uninsured, without savings, without friends, and without credit if one lives one’s life responsibly. The people who do end up in that situation overwhelmingly (although not always) get there because they are phenomenally irresponsible with their life.
So you ask whether it’s in that person’s best interest to die rather than steal. But you ignore the fact that the person has not been acting in his own best interest for the _preceding years and decades of his life_. It is in that person’s best interest to get a job. To take care of his health. To develop relationships with people who actually value him as a person.
But he didn’t. And that’s why he has 10,000 pages of medical records documenting his every act of stupidity. The head injury he got when he was fighting with his girlfriend. The Chlamydia he got when he went out and cheated on her with a meth head hooker. _those_ choices are what got him in the situation in which he finds himself.
But you drop that context. You pretend he got sick, unemployed, uninsured, and friendless out of nowhere. And _now_ what is he supposed to do?
As to the old hackneyed trope about rand’s taking SSI, it’s nonsense to expect a person to martyr themselves by refusing to take the benefits of a program for which they are required to make contributions. Sheer stupidity. If I find myself imprisoned in someone’s basement, and they offer me bread and water, I am supposed to refuse the bread and water because I oppose imprisonment? Of course not. One’s views on compulsory government programs and one’s decision to partake in those programs when available are fundamentally unrelated. If one is required by law to pay SSI tax, there is no hypocrisy in accepting the benefit while simultaneously opposing the continued imposition of the tax.
in the end, these supposed moral conundrums are nothing more than artifacts of taking moral questions out of context. you point to the slaveowner, but ignore the negative economic effects slavery had on slaveowners. you point to the man in desperate medical straits, but you ignore how he got there.
the biggest lesson to be learned from AR is that morality _cannot_ be taken out of context. in fact, rather than referring to it as "enlightened self interest" as she did, i prefer the phrase "contextual self-interest" to emphasize the specific nature of the enlightenment at issue.
Ungtss, how did you get to see these records? Do you work for an insurance or a law firm? I ask this because this might skew what you see or how you look at it.
People do end up unemployed or in low paying jobs for reasons that are no fault of their own. And will someone like that have friends who can afford to pay for his medical expenses? This is expecting friendship to replace the need for social institutions. In other words you are asking friendship to serve the needs of ideology.
I see ungtss has unloaded a torrent of Objectivist moralizing -- none of which answers my question.
So let me start with a reality check: shit happens to everyone, even Objectivists. Adversity, even life-threatening adversity, is not proof (or even evidence) of bad living. Here's a real-world example:
Two Objectivists get married. He has a job at a pro-individual-rights organization; she gets an adjunct faculty position. In due course, they have a kid. Flash forward a couple of years ... She's diagnosed with cancer, needs surgery and chemo. They have insurance that will cover some, but not all, of her treatment. Plus, she'll be unable to work for months, so their income is reduced. To make ends meet, they turn to begging their friends for money via Facebook. If their friends are sufficiently charitable, she gets treatment and presumably will recover. If not, she will probably die in a year or two.
So her fate is in the hands of her Objecti-friends, who now have to decide how many dollars her continued existence is worth to them ... after all, they wouldn't want to make any sacrifices. (Fun, eh?)
Yes, this really happened. I'd link to their donation page to prove I'm not making it up, but this was 2-3 years ago and the page has been taken down.
Now back to my question: Through no fault of his own, a man needs lifesaving treatment that he does not have the means to pay for. Why is it in his self-interest to just shut up and die?
I'm not asking whether he deserves to die or whether it's in anyone else's self-interest to pay a nickel to help him. I'm also not asking what would happen in a hypothetical Rand-topia. I'm asking about what's in his self-interest as an individual human being: to live, or to die?
That's the question.
"As to the old hackneyed trope about rand’s taking SSI, it’s nonsense to expect a person to martyr themselves by refusing to take the benefits of a program for which they are required to make contributions. Sheer stupidity."
And you're missing the point, again. Nobody expected Rand to martyr herself, but SHE FIT YOUR PROFILE OF A SLEAZEBUCKET: 1) Couldn't fully take care of herself; 2) Nobody else cared enough to provide for her care; 3) As far as we know didn't negotiate any special deals with health care providers.
Even though some of us may have seen her as being somewhat hypocritical in this regard, that really is irrelevant to the reason why it was brought up here and now. YOU defined the standard for "sleazebucket", this is YOUR judgement being applied to not just the examples you have to peruse, but everyone across the board INCLUDING Rand.
"So you ask whether it’s in that person’s best interest to die rather than steal. But you ignore the fact that the person has not been acting in his own best interest for the _preceding years and decades of his life_. It is in that person’s best interest to get a job. To take care of his health. To develop relationships with people who actually value him as a person."
It's ignored because it avoids the question. The question is, how can it morally be not right for a person to take any action whatsoever to preserve one's life if one's own life and self-interest is the moral root from which it all flows?
It is irrelevant whether a person led a moral life - either by Rand's standards or more normal society's - up to the point where the theoretical operation is required. Mentioning it only gives the Objectivist the back-door needed to pass judgement, say "he was bad and should die and I should not have to pay for his care". It does not resolve the fact that for that individual, if his life is still valuable to him, self-interest dictates that it is good and just that he take whatever steps are needed to preserve it, regardless of whether that means taking resources from others.
Rand did not successfully negotiate that issue in a logical fashion. Laying smokescreen like this implies that you cannot answer that question directly, either.
how do you know she couldn't fully take care of herself? afaik she died with a substantial estate intact. i think she could have cared for herself, and chose not to.
"The question is, how can it morally be not right for a person to take any action whatsoever to preserve one's life if one's own life and self-interest is the moral root from which it all flows?"
the answer is, "you're creating a fictitious scenario in which a person is left with the options 'confiscate or die' and no other options."
this is not a real-world scenario. in the real world, people have more options than that.
they may choose not to exercise those options. but if they choose not to exercise those options, leaving themselves only with the options "confiscate or die," they've already opted out of the moral choice.
once they've opted out of the moral choice, it's _their fault_ the moral option is no longer open to them. they had it, but then _defaulted_ on it.
is it moral for them to do whatever they have to do to survive after they've forfeited their moral options? no. their immorality was in forfeiting their moral options. and now they're stuck with what they left for themselves.
this is far from a smokescreen. it's placing moral conduct in context. and the context here is, "once you forfeit an option, it's gone."
"the answer is, "you're creating a fictitious scenario in which a person is left with the options 'confiscate or die' and no other options."
this is not a real-world scenario. in the real world, people have more options than that. "
Says you.
Rand herself does not deal in "real world" situations by proposing her ideas. The economics she favors have never existed, the majority of people do not share her moral views, her ideas are utopian and not likely to ever be implemented in any serious way. If we don't discount Rand's writings as "fictitious", then it doesn't follow that a hypothetical example of a sick person can't be of use.
You say a person can't resort to moral grounds after having been immoral. Really? No one can reform or become "saved"? Do your immoral acts that you may have committed before you fully embraced the Objectivist way doom you to being morally impure forever and ever? That's what you're implying.
And it STILL doesn't logically explain why a self-interested person should consider themselves morally unable to take any steps they feel necessary to further their own life. "Oh, I screwed up earlier in life, so I guess I should just die now."
All you do is explain why YOU think that guy should forfeit his life and die, not why HE should interpret self-interest into any stance that prevents him from taking those steps. I can't tell if you honestly don't see the question or are just doggedly, deliberately refusing to address it head-on.
@Anon, to ungtss: All you do is explain why YOU think that guy should forfeit his life and die, not why HE should interpret self-interest into any stance that prevents him from taking those steps. I can't tell if you honestly don't see the question or are just doggedly, deliberately refusing to address it head-on.
I'd guess ungtss doesn't see the question. This particular form of blindness is characteristic of Objectivists. I suspect it may be a necessary condition of becoming and staying an Objectivist. Once you confront the question head-on -- instead of sidestepping into "he deserved it" or "doesn't he have friends" --it's a fairly short step to seeing Rand's massive equivocation on "survival." And then the whole ethical system collapses, like a house of cards.
@Anon, to ungtss: All you do is explain why YOU think that guy should forfeit his life and die, not why HE should interpret self-interest into any stance that prevents him from taking those steps. I can't tell if you honestly don't see the question or are just doggedly, deliberately refusing to address it head-on.
I'd guess ungtss doesn't see the question. This particular form of blindness is characteristic of Objectivists. I suspect it may be a necessary condition of becoming and staying an Objectivist. Once you confront the question head-on -- instead of sidestepping into "he deserved it" or "doesn't he have friends" --it's a fairly short step to seeing Rand's massive equivocation on "survival." And then the whole ethical system collapses, like a house of cards.
The answer's been explained half a dozen times but you people seem unable to absorb it. Objectivism isn't about forcing other people to think a particular way. I'm not sure how anyone could be so stupid as to believe anything can serve as a basis for requiring someone else to think a particular way. But apparently you are. You keep demanding that objectivism tell non-objectivists how to think. Very few things could be more absurd. If a man wants to screw up his life and then come begging for survival, he's going to. I'll meet him with a gun.
The whole plot of atlas shrugged is that of allowing those who wish to live in delusion to experience the results of their delusion. Not argue them into changing their minds. If you want to destroy yourself, have at it.
But you seem to think that because a person can feel he's right in screwing up his life and demanding payment, that his view is somehow remotely legitimate. And that's where you're wrong. Just as he's not obliged to accept reasoned thought, I'm not obliged to pretend his "life at any cost policy" is legitimate. I'm free to act accordingly.
"Objectivism isn't about forcing other people to think a particular way."
Making Echo's point. Who said it was? (Although Rand certainly was fond of saying that anyone NOT thinking her way was an inherently bad person.)
The issue is whether Rand's rationale for her morality is logically consistent, and each time one tries to get you to give a straight answer on the matter, you don't, or what answer you give can be shown to not make sense. When an example of how Rand's logic fails is provided, i.e., the example of the sick self-interested man, you pull some other diversion out of your hat. This "Objectivism doesn't force you" canard is of a piece with the rest of it. What does that have to do with Rand's morality being derived from faulty logic?
At this point I think it's evident that you can't or won't make an effort to respond to the actual issue without trying to load up some sort of irrelevancy in order to cloud the original question (in favor of some stance you feel more comfortable arguing against). And so I think I'm done here for now.
We'll see if Epistemology 31 provokes some other storm.
Ungtss,
This is something that it is hard not to unintentionally equivocate on because all languages that I know of lack the word to unambiguously express a certain concept.
Life is the process of living. As far as I can see it is the same thing as metabolism.
But we do not have a word for the acivity of consciousness. And so we usually call this life. Understandable for historical reasons but it causes confusion.
What was Rand referring to whenshe talked a bout life? She seems to have some idea of the distinction that I mentioned above but not a clear one. This actually puts her ahead of people.
When she was talking about a life proper to man she was obviously thinkng about the activity of consciousness. But when she was talking about survival what was she talking about? If she was talking about life itself then the jump from that to moral imperatives is imposible. She was wrong in saying that survival was the purpose of life. Life as such has no purpose, it simply is. Only once consciouness comes into the picture do we have purpose.
And when she talked about conciousness what did she mean? Did she mean awareness? Did she mean emotional experience? Did she mean self awareness? Did she mean all of these or was she only concerned with the part of the mental processes subject to self awareness? Or as appears to be the case did she believe that all mental processes were subject to self awarenes? If so she had a very faulty picture of consciousness, worse than that of most.
Ungtss,
what is the place of intuition in your world view? You have never mentioned it.
I seeit as the part of the mind's information handling that the part of the mind concerned with self awareness cannot look at. It's weakness is this lack of oversight. It's strength is that it can handle more information than one's self awareness can look at. Have you ever seen a logically compelling argument that just felt wrong. And then later you found ot that it was wrong, you pinned dow what made you feel uncomfortable about it. When logic and intuition disagree sometimes logic is right and sometimes it is wrong.
"The issue is whether Rand's rationale for her morality is logically consistent, and each time one tries to get you to give a straight answer on the matter, you don't, or what answer you give can be shown to not make sense."
Anon, that's one of the issues. The other issue that keeps getting bandied about is how i can tell somebody else they have to accept it. Those are two different issues. Since you didn't respond to the problems i identified with the latter, i assume you're conceding my point there.
As to whether it's logically consistent, i've explained repeatedly that it is, _when taken in its full context_. and it's the context you want to ignore. "life" exists in an _emotional_, as well as a logical, context. thus a person can be biologically alive, but in a miserable emotional state such that he does not _value_ his life -- as in the case of a suicidal.
Life demands a certain emotional context in order to be _enjoyable_.
Now a life lived mooching off others is a life without pride. So a person for whom life is not worth living without pride _would not find such a life worth living_. if faced with a deadly disease, he would do everything he could to live, and to enjoy his life, recognizing that in mooching off others, life would cease to provide him with a sense of pride, and would therefore cease to be worth living.
For the umpteenth time, I cannot force somebody else to believe this. But I know it to be true myself. There have been numerous times in my life, even before I read AR, in which i surrendered available comforts and chose to live in squalor for the sake of maintaining my pride. because mooching would have destroyed my pride, and therefore destroy my joy in living.
The logical evaluation, then, is whether pride is a logical value in life -- so logical that one might refuse to steal from others, even if this refusal increased your risk of death.
Absolutely I would. It seems so transparently obvious to me I'm unceasingly amazed at how others don't see it. AR helped me understand the mentality of those who don't. But I still have a difficult time believing such a type of human being can actually exist.
Lloyd,
Brilliant and fair questions. I'm not authority but I'll do my best.
"What was Rand referring to whenshe talked a bout life? She seems to have some idea of the distinction that I mentioned above but not a clear one. This actually puts her ahead of people."
As I understand it, she conceptualized life as something of a continuum, extending from -- at its most basic level -- biological functioning, to -- at its highest level -- a state of noncontradictory _joy_.
Thus the highest form of human "life" to her was a _joyful_ life, while the lowest form of human life was a miserably unhappy life, with its organs still operating.
"When she was talking about a life proper to man she was obviously thinkng about the activity of consciousness. But when she was talking about survival what was she talking about? If she was talking about life itself then the jump from that to moral imperatives is imposible. She was wrong in saying that survival was the purpose of life. Life as such has no purpose, it simply is."
Her argument was that a living being is faced with a choice -- to take the actions necessary to sustain its life, or not. she did not "morally command" people to take the actions necessary to sustain our lives. she simply pointed out that if we do not, we will die. she invites her readers to choose whether they prefer to live or not.
And then she examines the _facts_ regarding what sorts of actions are necessary for a living being to maintain his own life.
Thus you're right, the "purpose" of life is not to live, but life has a choice about whether it _wants_ to live or not, and if life wants to continue living, there are certain things it must do to accomplish that goal.
"And when she talked about conciousness what did she mean?"
AFAIK, all of the things you listed. At a fundamental, basic level, it's "awareness." and thus it's every aspect of our awareness.
"what is the place of intuition in your world view? You have never mentioned it"
I think AR would use the word "subconscious" for what you describe as "intuition." she argued against the existence of "intuition," but in doing so, she meant something different than you do.
although i think if you substitute the word "subconscious" for the word "intuition," she'd agree with you entirely.
""The issue is whether Rand's rationale for her morality is logically consistent, and each time one tries to get you to give a straight answer on the matter, you don't, or what answer you give can be shown to not make sense."
Anon, that's one of the issues. The other issue that keeps getting bandied about is how i can tell somebody else they have to accept it."
Where you picked this up, I have no clue. It's not that I concede or not concede it, it's that it's completely out of left field. The closest I can think is someone saying that Rand's theories do not convince by virtue of their logic, and without that logic there is no compelling reason to act as Rand (or you) thinks one should act - and you have interpreted that as a claim that we're saying you're demanding Objectivist behavior from us. Certainly Rand *condemns* non-Objectivist behavior, but aside from that I don't see any place where I, at least, have said it is demanded of us, just that the logic doesn't compel us, as it is broken.
In fact, I'm beginning to suspect that this "demand" issue is entirely of your own invention, something you want to argue that is not part of any issue I've raised, as a sideshow to keep from having to address the logic issue.
"As to whether it's logically consistent, i've explained repeatedly that it is, _when taken in its full context_. and it's the context you want to ignore."
Well, you *claim* these things, but they are not true or verifiable. I ignore the supposed "context" for good reasons: 1) irrelevancy; 2) assumptions of facts not in evidence. To wit:
"Now a life lived mooching off others is a life without pride."
To make your logic even plausible, one has to believe this is universally true for all people. And why should we, just on the strength of you saying, "well, **I** feel that way"? I know plenty of people who (by Rand's standards, at least) "mooch" off people and still have pride and enjoy life. You may think they have no reason to feel as they do, but that does not change the fact that they do.
So okay, now we're down to anecdotal evidence vs. anecdotal evidence again, and this still doesn't resolve how someone committed to a fully self-interested moral principle would defer life-saving treatment - unless they share your outlook on pride, which cannot be assumed to be universal. (Don't your own examples of sleazebuckets kind of prove that point?) And that's not a logical rationale, it's an emotional one: mooching makes a person feel bad. Your "context" has little to do with the actual issue, except as you try to push it into the question so as to avoid dealing with the issue as it was originally presented.
By attempting to insert emotion into the equation, you completely miss the point of the is/ought problem - that one cannot logically derive what one should do from the bare facts about what is real. Of course, you can say "well, such and such action makes me feel bad, so I avoid it", but that's the whole point - your motivation then becomes not logical, but emotional. You are reacting to non-logical feelings to determine what you do next. Even if you use logic to chart the best way to avoid those feelings (or encourage other feelings), you cannot escape the non-rational nature of the root of any action you take.
It's a conundrum Rand seems to not have understood at all. I'm not sure you do either.
And now I really think I'm out, barring any radically new position on the matter from you.
“Where you picked this up, I have no clue.”
I picked it up here:
Anon: “And it STILL doesn't logically explain why a self-interested person should consider themselves morally unable to take any steps they feel necessary to further their own life”
I can’t explain why a person, self-interested or otherwise _shouldn’t_ consider themselves morally unable to do anything. What I can explain is why an _objectivist_ would consider such a course of action self-defeating, and explain why an objectivist would oppose any non-objectivist who tried to engage in this sort of behavior.
But you’re asking for something different. You’re asking me to logically explain why someone else shouldn’t believe something. Which is nonsense. And absolutely unrelated to anything AR had to say.
"Now a life lived mooching off others is a life without pride."
“To make your logic even plausible, one has to believe this is universally true for all people.”
There you go again, making the same mistake. I’m not saying anything is true of all people, nor that everyone should think the way I think. A person might take some sort of perverse pride in his ability to mooch successfully. You may define that sort of thing as a successful, happy life. I do not. And my reason for not doing so is that I do not take pride in holding myself up at the expense of other people. I do not consider that a relationship with respect to others that merits a sense of pride.
You may be proud of your ability to mooch. And I can’t tell you why you “should” think differently. I can just tell you the meaning and consequences of that policy. The rest is up to you. You may continue to disagree, and continue to live your life however you like. But when you show up at my house, you’ll find out what I think of you.
As I think about it, your offense seems to revolve around the fact that objectivists disagree with your chosen values. That they think you’re wrong. Well what of it? So what if we think you’re wrong? Don’t you think we’re wrong? Does it hurt your feelings that people look at the world through a lens different than yours? It certainly doesn’t bother me when you judge me. I find it amusing. Particularly in the context of our prior discussions regarding whether there is a “right way to think.” There isn’t. Except when it’s useful to you. Then one magically appears that serves your every need. And then it disappears again when you imagine somebody else is telling you how to think.
“By attempting to insert emotion into the equation, you completely miss the point of the is/ought problem - that one cannot logically derive what one should do from the bare facts about what is real. Of course, you can say "well, such and such action makes me feel bad, so I avoid it", but that's the whole point - your motivation then becomes not logical, but emotional. You are reacting to non-logical feelings to determine what you do next. Even if you use logic to chart the best way to avoid those feelings (or encourage other feelings), you cannot escape the non-rational nature of the root of any action you take.”
As we discussed before, there is no detaching the logical from the emotional. They are inextricably intertwined at all points. We never resolved that issue, because you dropped the topic. But my arguments and explanations are still sitting there, waiting for you to try and refute them.
There is no such thing as a non-logical feeling. You may have an illogical feeling, based on bad logic. But one cannot have a feeling without a logical and factual context from which to derive an interpretation of the situation which causes us to feel something. There’s simply no such thing as a feeling detached from logic, or of logic attached from feelings. As I explained previously, repeatedly and exhaustively, only to be ignored.
In asking for logical proof without “inserting” emotion, you’re asking me to perform an impossible task. But it’s not impossible because of any flaw in the proof. It’s impossible in the same way it’s impossible to run a mile without breathing.
"Now a life lived mooching off others is a life without pride. So a person for whom life is not worth living without pride _would not find such a life worth living_."
Even if this were demonstrably true, it would only mean that happiness, not life, is the standard of value. Indeed, you seem to concede as much later on when you say:
'Thus the highest form of human "life" to her was a _joyful_ life, while the lowest form of human life was a miserably unhappy life, with its organs still operating.'
This probably was Rand's position, and it is related to the ancient Greek idea of thriving or flourishing as opposed to merely surviving. But it is logically inconsistent with her faux-biological argument, which concerns the physical survival of an organism.
Basically your position boils down to eudaimonism (happiness is the standard) and subjectivism ("I’m not saying anything is true of all people, nor that everyone should think the way I think").
I'm not arguing that this position is wrong. It's pretty Aristotelian, actually, and probably a better approach than many alternatives. I tend to think that if a given belief system works for someone, they should stick with it.
My only points are that a) it doesn't solve or even address the is-ought problem, and b) to the extent that Rand's thinking is clear on these matters, she doesn't seem to have endorsed this position. She explicitly rejected happiness as the standard, and she opposed subjectivism.
But forget Rand. In terms of Aristotelian philosophy, your position is pretty cogent. As you may know, the Greeks saw virtue as essentially skill at living. The more skillful you are, the more likely you are to thrive and flourish, and the happier you will be. Thus, moral excellence, personal success, and joy are all bound up together to make the "great-souled man."
This conception of ethics does not address the is-ought issue, which was unknown in Aristotle's day (David Hume identified it), and so it is, to a degree, necessarily subjective. Still, it's a noble and workable approach, and throughout history many people have benefited from it and been inspired by it.
You have probably read Aristotle's description of the great-souled man, but if not, you can find it here:
http://tinyurl.com/b7h53q2
This is a multipage excerpt; I've linked to the first page.
A more modern version of the same basic idea is Kipling's great poem "if."
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/if/
With that, I bid you adieu!
"But it is logically inconsistent with her faux-biological argument, which concerns the physical survival of an organism."
here, she links life and happiness by means of the pleasure-pain mechanism. happiness is a barometer of a living being's achievement of its values. and ultimately, its values either serve its life or sabotage its life. therefore, if a person values his life, he will pursue goals which serve its life. and upon achieving those goals, he will experience happiness.
"here, she links life and happiness by means of the pleasure-pain mechanism. happiness is a barometer of a living being's achievement of its values. and ultimately, its values either serve its life or sabotage its life. therefore, if a person values his life, he will pursue goals which serve its life. and upon achieving those goals, he will experience happiness."
So when Howard Roark endured years of painful struggle, his pleasure-pain mechanism was leading him astray? He should have been happy because he was pursuing rational values? Or maybe he should have been sad, but powered through his sadness in the expectation that if he deferred gratification long enough, he would eventually prosper?
To the extent that the pleasure-pain mechanism is the standard, we're talking hedonism and immediate gratification. To the extent that we're supposed to postpone gratification in the name of long-term goals, we're overriding our pleasure-pain mechanism.
Rand can't have it both ways.
Incidentally, I think it's an error to believe that achieving goals will make us happy. Happiness born of achievement is fleeting. That's not to say we shouldn't pursue goals, but happiness is found in the moment, not over an ever-receding horizon.
Developmental psychologists will tell you that "achievement consciousness" is a low-to-middling state of development. In the West, most people stay at this level until they hit a midlife crisis, at which point they realize that their achievements have not really satisfied them. In an optimal case, they use their midlife crisis as a spur to develop a richer appreciation of life. In less healthy outcomes, they may simply become depressed or cling to immature behavior (arrested adolescence).
If there's one theme in the fountainhead, it's that Roark took pleasure in his work. He did not merely endure it. He loved it for its own sake. His struggle was created by those who wished to hurt him. And he had to endure their torture. But he endured that torture so he could continue to do the work he loved.
If one limits the scope of "goals" to be merely outcomes, then I agree it is fleeting. But if one takes a broader understanding of goals, to include "doing work you love," then it is not fleeting. Personally, I love my work. It's fun. It's an end in itself.
I agree with Michael that achieving goals will make us happy. I achieved a lot of big, amazing things in my short life and none of them made me happy for long. Finally being able to afford a $1000 a month skydiving hobby made me no happier than playing tag with a bunch of kids. Now at 29 I am completely tired of chasing after yet another horizon.
The Fountainhead captures that spirit you have when you're chasing a goal, which is worth appreciating. But what really grates on me is that Rand turns her form of goal seeking into a moral imperative, and then her peabrained acolytes play endless word games to justify every opinion that ever issued forth from her mouth.
Sorry, I meant "will NOT make us happy" above.
In my experience, when achieving your goals does not make you happy, that means you've chosen the wrong goals. Peabrained as it may be. My experience of achieving goals is that it makes me exquisitely happy. But I choose goals other than being able to afford skydiving. I choose creative goals.
"The other issue that keeps getting bandied about is how i can tell somebody else they have to accept it.
[...]
I picked it up here:
Anon: “And it STILL doesn't logically explain why a self-interested person should consider themselves morally unable to take any steps they feel necessary to further their own life”"
Those are two different things. I'm not asking you to tell me how to accept it, I'm asking you to prove it through logic, that a truly self-interested person would come to the rational conclusion of setting aside one's life in favor of other factors.
You can't.
That's the whole point.
You have to say, "but an Objectivist feels such-and-such" - and you've already at that point discarded logic for an emotional, non-rational response. Which brings us to:
"As we discussed before, there is no detaching the logical from the emotional. They are inextricably intertwined at all points. We never resolved that issue, because you dropped the topic. But my arguments and explanations are still sitting there, waiting for you to try and refute them."
Logic and emotion are not "intertwined", except inasmuch as any human being is able or unable to suppress their emotions when attempting to perform logic. Logic is not emotion, emotion is not logic. As some folks like to say, A=A. Since emotion is by its very nature not rational, trying to graft it onto a logical question serves only to make the question not at all logical. We don't say "2+2=4 except when I'm sad and then it equals 5." You can claim that you cannot separate the two, but there is no reason to accept this claim. It is untrue.
What's more, it's somewhat beside the point, as Rand seemed intent on making the case for her version of morality through pure reason - that is, supposedly she logically proved that her reasons for her moral stances were the best reasons, and any emotions felt were derived from those moral stances. But her reasons fail in a purely logical sense, as any attempt to derive an ought from an is will. To insist "logic and emotion are intertwined" is to capitulate the point, to admit that indeed there is no unavoidable logical root for believing in Rand's system over any others, and that it all comes down to which system you just LIKE better.
If Rand had actually gone this way and said, "I just like these rules for living the best", then there would be no argument. Rand could enjoy her rules, and everyone else could say, "well, I like these rules better, and those are how I'll live" and that would be the end of it. But she didn't - she attempted to prove that rationally, all people should behave in the manner she prefers, and that those who don't abide by her standards are, to borrow your word, sleazebuckets out to destroy all life through income tax.
So be it - the Objectivist minority is hardly in any position to affect my life for good or ill, so how they view the world or me is of little consequence to me in the end.
But I will not concede, at least not with the faulty arguments of Rand, that her view of morality is logically sound, or that from a truly rational standpoint it is any more based on reality than any other religion. It all comes down to some basic emotion, some non-rational spark, that is in essence "I think this way because it makes me feel good somehow." Without the cachet of reason, Objectivism loses much of its claimed superiority and is just another "ism" among hundreds.
“I'm asking you to prove it through logic, that a truly self-interested person would come to the rational conclusion of setting aside one's life in favor of other factors.”
What I’ve repeatedly pointed out is that the choice “set life aside or other factors” is not a real world choice. In the real world, one always has more than these two options. This dichotomy exists only in the imaginations of people trying to create fictitious scenarios that negate morality. As one example, if one has cancer but cannot afford chemo, for instance, there are many other ways to fight off cancer. Arguably some of them are more effective than chemo. I know people who have beat cancer without chemo.
One does not simply “set aside one’s life” in the real world. One chooses means of preserving one’s life as best as one can, with the caveat that a life lived by mooching off others is not worth living to a man of self esteem, and is therefore not an option worth pursuing.
“Logic is not emotion, emotion is not logic. As some folks like to say, A=A.”
True, but irrelevant. To be intertwined is to be distinct, but interdependent. For instance, in the case of A=A, there is a logical component, but also an emotional component.
For some neuroscience on point, you might read “Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, written by neurologist António Damásio.
In that book, he documents the observed effects patients’ _logic_ suffers when the centers managing _emotion_ are damaged. It’s a great read. And he’s no objectivist. He’s a scientists. Documenting research that tends to show you’re wrong.
You cite A=A as a logical premise without an emotional link. But there’s plenty of emotion around A=A. For instance, the courage it takes to accept it. In fact, denial due to anxiety is a rampant human folly. And denial is denying that A=A out of fear. The converse of denial is the courage to accept reality. Thus A=A demands courage.
A=A also leaves you with the question, “why should I care?” Why should I believe A=A instead of something else? Why prefer logical truth to logical error?
The purely _emotional_ answer to why I should believe A=A is that I wish to be happy and successful in this life, and I know that happiness and success demand an understanding of reality as it is.
I could go on and on about the emotional aspects of A=A, but these should provide food for discussion anyway.
““To insist "logic and emotion are intertwined" is to capitulate the point, to admit that indeed there is no unavoidable logical root for believing in Rand's system over any others, and that it all comes down to which system you just LIKE better.””
To insist they’re intertwined is to invalidate the false premise smuggled into the question. Of course there’s no purely logical root to rand’s system. There’s no purely logical root to anything. Logic depends on emotion. Emotion depends on logic. Read Descartes’ Error.
“But she didn't - she attempted to prove that rationally, all people should behave in the manner she prefers, and that those who don't abide by her standards are, to borrow your word, sleazebuckets out to destroy all life through income tax.”
Again, that may be what you drew from what she wrote, but I do not think that was her purpose. I think her purpose was to lay out a different way of thinking for those who wished to accept it, in the full knowledge that the vast majority of people would not, and could not be cajoled into it. That’s the heart and soul of Atlas Shrugged. Don’t try and force them to think like you. Don’t even try and talk them into it. Let them rot.
Here's a song written by a young objectivist (who played all the instruments, sang, and produced it himself, himself) expressing the premise: "Let them rot if nobody follows."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LEmlJPhzUg
"What I’ve repeatedly pointed out is that the choice “set life aside or other factors” is not a real world choice."
Again, irrelevant when considering the logical question. Even if we grant your statement (which requires special knowledge of all situations on Earth to be able to declare that the situation in question could never ever happen), it is irrelevant to the question, WHAT IF these conditions were to occur? By testing out a logical problem with hypothetical examples, flaws in its logic can be exposed. You would rather plaster the flaws over with denial or goalpost-shifting.
The fact that such a situation might never happen, or that people might generally feel emotionally disposed to not take one action or the other, does not change the basic idea that from a purely self-interested standpoint, where life is the highest goal and standard, life at any cost is the most sensible course of action. The fact that your personal emotional sensibilities prevent you from reaching this conclusion does not change the logic of it at all.
"Of course there’s no purely logical root to rand’s system."
And therefore, Rand's claim to superior reason is bogus. She cannot claim her style of morality is superior through reason alone, she must make an appeal to the emotions of others.
If that suffices for some people, very well.
"Antonio Damasio"
"Documenting research that tends to show you’re wrong."
Remember all the talk of cognitive science earlier? This is some of that. This is stuff incompatible with Rand's theories.
http://aynrandcontrahumannature.blogspot.com/2008/01/cognitive-revolution-objectivism-part.html
(Damasio is cited here.)
"Even if we grant your statement (which requires special knowledge of all situations on Earth to be able to declare that the situation in question could never ever happen), it is irrelevant to the question, WHAT IF these conditions were to occur?"
It would indeed be irrelevant to that question. And that question would be irrelevant to morality. because morality is not concerned with hypothetical situations detached from reality. morality is fundamentally contextual. when stripped of a real world context, it becomes warped.
i remember in 7th grade, long before i ran across AR, i had an english teacher who tried to do the same thing you're doing now. in class she required us to get into groups of 7. we were then given a scenario in which we were all in a nuclear fallout shelter, and only 6 of us could survive. and we were told to decide who "should" be sacrificed to save the other 7.
i remember at the time being sickened by the scenario, and thinking there was something deeply wrong with her for making us do it. but i couldn't figure out what it was.
now i know what it was. she was taking morality out of context. she was giving us an artificial scenario with no real-world nexus, which was specifically designed to create the illusion that the individual must be sacrificed for the collective.
but in the real world, that scenario does not occur. one is never in a situation where "only 6 can survive." the illusion that collectivism is a legitimate moral premise is simply an artifact of the bogus scenario.
far from running from this question, i am hitting the question head on. your scenario asks moral questions, but takes morality out of context, when morality is inescapably contextual. you're doing the same thing my 7th grade english teacher did.
"The fact that such a situation might never happen, or that people might generally feel emotionally disposed to not take one action or the other, does not change the basic idea that from a purely self-interested standpoint, where life is the highest goal and standard, life at any cost is the most sensible course of action"
The question of the "most sensible course of action" cannot be answered without respect to a particular context. How can you decide what's sensible without knowing all the details of the person's situation? You can't. and that's the point. You want to prove that something's sensible by concocting a scenario in which all _real world_ sensible alternatives have been removed. your question is designed to create the illusion that your answer is true. that's why i reject the question.
"And therefore, Rand's claim to superior reason is bogus. She cannot claim her style of morality is superior through reason alone, she must make an appeal to the emotions of others."
your argument is premised on the assumption that "superior reason" must exist without reference to emotion, and that reason that makes reference to emotion is invalid or bogus. your premise is false. not only can reason be correct with reference to emotion, but _no emotion is possible without it_.
"Remember all the talk of cognitive science earlier? This is some of that. This is stuff incompatible with Rand's theories."
You might actually read the book. What d'Amasio really falsifies is the idea that logic can be separated from emotion. Which is your idea.
Rand did not view emotion and logic as being at war with one another, as you do. She did not believe that the fact that a premise is emotional necessarily invalidated it. She did not claim to have created a philosophy which made no reference to emotion. On the contrary, her philosophy was bound up in emotion through and through.
But you think that the integration of emotion into logic makes logic _invalid_. and that's where you're wrong. all logic is necessarily integrated with emotion. there's no escaping that, as I demonstrated with specific examples you failed to respond to.
as an analogy to illustrate the invalidity of your question, consider another question whose constituent parts are taken out of context:
"what is 2 divided by cheese?"
can't do it. bogus question.
in the same way, it's a bogus question to ask "what's a person to do if his only options are the steal or die?" because it's a moral question, morality is inherently contextual, and you've created a bogus context for the question.
"It would indeed be irrelevant to that question. And that question would be irrelevant to morality. because morality is not concerned with hypothetical situations detached from reality. morality is fundamentally contextual. when stripped of a real world context, it becomes warped."
Like laissez faire economics? Like the stories in Rand's books? Shall we name how many things in Atlas Shrugged are not actually based in the real world as it is? Sounds like you're trying to have it both ways - or at least Rand is.
What's happening is that a theoretical context you don't like is introduced, so you refuse to acknowledge it as possible in order to avoid the messy problems it raises. You just say "oh, well, couldn't happen, so I don't have to wrestle with that conundrum!" And you complain about me not dealing with your examples?
Speaking of which, I am having a hard time recalling any of your "examples" that were little more than your own opinions dressed up with rationales no more probable than any of my hypotheticals; if you want to pick a couple good ones and refresh my memory I'll attempt to address them.
"she was giving us an artificial scenario with no real-world nexus,"
That's just your rationalization. Nothing you say she said as a possibility is completely implausible. Atomic war was once a much stronger possibility. It is possible for people in disasters to become trapped and isolated, in peril. In fact, it has happened. The Titanic? Who gets lifeboats, who stays on the ship, who jumps in the water? The numbers may be different, but the principle is the same. That you are repelled by the notion and think it could never happen is not valid reasoning, nor does it make the hypothetical situation necessarily "artificial", as if it were prevented by the laws of nature or something.
"Rand did not view emotion and logic as being at war with one another, as you do."
Oh? but she did say emotions were not tools of cognition.
I suspect you may not be as in-tune with Rand's positions as you may think.
"You might actually read the book."
You might actually read the link.
You are mistaking my position. I do not deny that emotion drives quite a lot of human behavior. I accept that there is quite a lot of emotion wired into our brains that drives our thoughts (much of which are subconscious and beyond the reach of our conscious minds). What I dispute is that when those emotions drive our brains into taking actions, logic is somehow automatically what is happening. Logic is a tool, a means to achieve emotional goals, and it takes particular effort to use it. But the emotional urge itself isn't logic. Your distaste over your teacher's classroom activities isn't logically-derived, it is some innate emotional response. What you do in response to that distaste may follow some form of logic. Or it may not. But the idea that your initial distaste was somehow logic-driven is far less plausible than the imaginary doomsday scenario.
"Like laissez faire economics? Like the stories in Rand's books? Shall we name how many things in Atlas Shrugged are not actually based in the real world as it is? Sounds like you're trying to have it both ways - or at least Rand is."
to the extent rand and economists drop context in order to create the illusion of a point, they're just as wrong as you are. that doesn't make you any less wrong. and it doesn't identify which areas they supposedly dropped context.
there is a difference, however, between an idealized context like the one projected by rand and the economists, versus your stripped down, naked, desperate non-context. their projections give us something to shoot for -- a _desirable_ scenario toward which we might work. your projection gives us no choice but to gnaw each other's flesh like wild animals, and then asks us why it's wrong to gnaw each other's flesh.
""Rand did not view emotion and logic as being at war with one another, as you do."
Oh? but she did say emotions were not tools of cognition."
Of course they're not tools of cognition. They're the _reason for_ our tools of cognition. Why seek to understand? For emotional reasons. The only question then is what emotions. The emotions of desire, curiosity, hope, pride, and joy? Or the emotions of hopelessness, envy, despair, and sadism?
How does one sort out one's emotions? By reference to logic. Why does one engage in logic? For the sake of emotions.
"What I dispute is that when those emotions drive our brains into taking actions, logic is somehow automatically what is happening."
Nobody's saying that's true. What I'm saying is that whether you're engaged in good logic or bad logic, emotion is always playing a role in your thinking. And the fact that emotion is playing a role in it does not make your thinking illogical, but rather the logical consistency of your interpretation of reality that is creating the emotion, and the logical consistency of your values. Because the two are interdependent, and cannot exist without one another.
You, on the other hand, have repeatedly claimed that if emotion plays any role in an argument, then the argument is logically invalid _because there is an emotional nexus_. And that's completely wrong. Primarily because if it were true, then _all_ human thought would be invalid. Because there _is_ no human thought that is not linked to human emotion.
"Your distaste over your teacher's classroom activities isn't logically-derived, it is some innate emotional response."
The point you keep missing is that it was both logically and emotionally derived, as everything is. It was logically derived because i had to use logic to understand what she was saying, and what its implications were. It was emotionally derived because I wanted to understand her, because I wanted to succeed in her class. It was logically derived because I knew in some vague sense that it was an illogical, deceptive, _wrong_ scenario. it was emotionally derived because i don't _like_ deceptive, false scenarios. it was logically derived because collectivism is false. it was emotionally derived because collectivism is _cruel_.
It's always both. Even for you. You just don't see it yet.
"there is a difference, however, between an idealized context like the one projected by rand and the economists, versus your stripped down, naked, desperate non-context. their projections give us something to shoot for -- a _desirable_ scenario toward which we might work. your projection gives us no choice but to gnaw each other's flesh like wild animals, and then asks us why it's wrong to gnaw each other's flesh."
Because that's the question! Because if you espouse a moral position as the highest value, that moral position ought to hold in any situation, even desperate ones. If someone else comes by and says, "well what if this?", and your response is "oh that's not gonna happen", that is not a demonstration of how the morality holds up and makes sense, it's a demonstration of the morality's weakness in dealing with any situation.
"How does one sort out one's emotions? By reference to logic.
[...]
And the fact that emotion is playing a role in it does not make your thinking illogical, but rather the logical consistency of your interpretation of reality that is creating the emotion, and the logical consistency of your values. Because the two are interdependent, and cannot exist without one another."
This idea that logic creates emotions is one for which I have heard no evidence. As I recall from what I've read of cognitive science, it is untrue. Emotions are not derived from logic in any way. They come from subconscious processes, and so it's impossible for us to apply our conscious logic to them.
Which is to say you are only half-right. Emotions are the root cause for our actions - which is, in fact, the conclusion the whole is/ought problem requires - but logic does not drive our emotions.
" It was logically derived because I knew in some vague sense that it was an illogical, deceptive, _wrong_ scenario."
No. THAT IS NOT LOGIC. That is intuition. That is your hunch, based on your emotional reaction. How can a "vague sense" be considered logic? You didn't reason your way to that feeling. And that feeling is the root of what made you come up with your theory to explain your distaste: "oh, that's an impossible scenario! That could never happen! I must be recognizing that it's all a trick!" (Which, incidentally, was a poor use of logic, as I've already pointed out.) Your use of logic was spurred by emotion, but you have not actually shown how logic created that emotion in the first place. (Nor can you - is/ought.)
So if that's your example, it fails, because you seem to have some difficulty telling the difference between emotion and logic.
Was this cognitive science performed by the scientists' cognitive unconscious, without the cooperation of the conscious rules of scientific inquiry?
If so, why believe it? If not, why is the thought of the scientists exempt from their supposed findings?
This is precisely an example of why Rand's "fallacy of the stolen concept" is not a good method of thought, but instead merely a tactic of rationalization. It's an attempt to determine matters of fact through logical, rhetorical, and moral constructions, rather than through exhaustive empirical tests. Cognitive science is not founded on armchair speculation, Aristolean or Randian "rules of thought," or any such speculative nonsense, but on a large body of peer reviewed evidence. The type of reasoning used here by ungtss is similar to that used Hegel when he decided that the solar system had only seven planets, or that used by the geocentric critics of Galileo. Serious people have grown tired of attempting to determine matters of fact by reasoning on the basis of vague abstractions. The Aristolean methods of thought were abandoned by physicists in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; it's time they were abandoned by epistemologists as well.
"there is a difference, however, between an idealized context like the one projected by rand and the economists, versus your stripped down, naked, desperate non-context. their projections give us something to shoot for -- a _desirable_ scenario toward which we might work. your projection gives us no choice but to gnaw each other's flesh like wild animals, and then asks us why it's wrong to gnaw each other's flesh."
Because if you espouse a moral position as the highest value, that moral position ought to hold in any situation, even desperate ones.”
Desperate is not the same as “non-existent.” As I’ve demonstrated repeatedly, one always has more choices than “mooch or die.” Even in the most desperate of situations. Human life does not consist in absolute dichotomies of that sort. We always have more choices.
The problem with your scenario is not that it’s desperate, but that it’s _nonexistent_, insofar as it artificially and absolutely limits our choices, where no such absolute limitation occurs in reality.
“If someone else comes by and says, "well what if this?", and your response is "oh that's not gonna happen", that is not a demonstration of how the morality holds up and makes sense, it's a demonstration of the morality's weakness in dealing with any situation.”
On the contrary, morality has only to do with _real world choices_, and your ability to posit _non-real world situations_ in which morality fails does not negate the morality’s capacity to deal with _real-world situations_.
“This idea that logic creates emotions is one for which I have heard no evidence. As I recall from what I've read of cognitive science, it is untrue. Emotions are not derived from logic in any way. They come from subconscious processes, and so it's impossible for us to apply our conscious logic to them.”
If you want evidence on this point, read “Descartes’ Error.” In one particular case, damage to the prefrontal cortex – the “thought center” fundamentally changed the victim’s emotional constitution. He had been a stand up, emotionally stable guy. With his logic center damaged, his emotional constitution was damaged as well.
The praexeological demonstration also holds: Say you see a dead person lying on the road. How do you feel? Well, it depends what you think about it. Is it the general of an opposing army? Then it might make you happy. Is it your beloved father? Then it might make you sad. Do you know the circumstances of the death, know who committed the killilng, and know it was an unjust murder? Then it might make you angry.
Your emotional response is _determined by your assessment of the situation_. This is praexiologically demonstrated by the fact that the same stimulus can caused different responses depending on how one thinks about the matter.
In the same way, do you fear death? Depends how you think about death. Do you think death will get you to heaven? Then you might look forward to it. Do you think death is an artificial and horrible aspect of life? Then it might scare you. Do you think of death as a painless, inescapable part of life? Then it might not bother you at all.
Your _philosophy_ determines your reactions.
To the extent you don’t know where your reactions come from – to the extent you fail to identify their source – that’s simply a failure on your part to introspect. Emotion is _impossible_ without logic.
And although you claim neuroscience supports your conclusion, only one of us has cited a neuroscientist on this thread, and it isn’t you.
“That is intuition. That is your hunch, based on your emotional reaction. How can a "vague sense" be considered logic?”
In the same sense that a detective on a case hears a fact and, without knowing what’s wrong with it, realizes that something is odd about the fact. Something doesn’t fit. He may not fully realize what doesn’t fit, but he knows something is wrong, based on his assessment of the way the facts fit together. Then (if he’s a good detective) he sits down and logically puzzles out what it is into a fully express form.
As you may or may not be aware, most of our mental processes take place in the subconscious. And these subconscious mental processes involve a great deal of logic. As when it calculates the enormous number of mechanical movements necessary for the simple act of walking. All without us thinking consciously about it at all. The subconscious is a lightning calculator. It does the bulk of the work. Our conscious mind deals only with one or two problems at a time. The rest of our thought is on automatic.
But the fact that it’s on automatic does not mean it’s illogical. It simply means it’s automatic. Like a computer, performing the instructions that have been programmed into it. Logically.
Greg,
What are those "peer reviewers" doing when they review the papers? Are they thought applying rules of scientific inquiry to the paper to see if the paper complies?
" As I’ve demonstrated repeatedly, one always has more choices than “mooch or die.” Even in the most desperate of situations. Human life does not consist in absolute dichotomies of that sort. We always have more choices. "
You "demonstrate" it merely by claiming it, not by showing it to be impossible. You can claim it is not of the real world, but your claim does not establish that as fact. And as pointed out, Rand's stories and ideals are far more fictional. It's a double standard, you just reject one because of personal distaste.
"In the same sense that a detective on a case hears a fact and, without knowing what’s wrong with it, realizes that something is odd about the fact."
You're still describing intuition, not logic. Also:
" And these subconscious mental processes involve a great deal of logic."
Your evidence for this? If they are subconscious, we can't know what logic they may or may not contain.
That subconscious processes can be *effective* has been documented, but to say that they use actual logic seems to me to be a bit of a reach. You seem to be assuming that if they work, they must perforce be logical.
"And although you claim neuroscience supports your conclusion, only one of us has cited a neuroscientist on this thread, and it isn’t you."
True, but neuroscience has been discussed on this blog several times, and does not seem to support your ideas, and I suspect you misinterpret your sources to fit your own worldview. As example:
"But the fact that it’s on automatic does not mean it’s illogical. It simply means it’s automatic. Like a computer, performing the instructions that have been programmed into it. Logically."
Since earlier discussions on this blog discount this idea, perhaps you can cite a specific quote or passage from your source that proves this claim.
ungtss said...
In my experience, when achieving your goals does not make you happy, that means you've chosen the wrong goals. Peabrained as it may be. My experience of achieving goals is that it makes me exquisitely happy. But I choose goals other than being able to afford skydiving. I choose creative goals.
3/10/2013 05:30:00 PM
ungtss, stating that you've chosen the wrong goals if achieving them doesn't make you happy is hardly a defense. You're just making an assertion. I'm telling you that I've achieved a lot of goals in my life and the happiness never lasted. And yes, I have had creative goals. I spent a year and a half writing a novel that I'm very proud of, and I created a business that pays me an income whether I work or not. I also got my pilot's license, bought my dream house, etc. etc. So I know what I'm talking about.
Each time I achieved a goal, I simply adjusted to the new state of my life and ended up no happier than when I started. So I set more goals, which is what the self-help people and Objectivsts suggest. Same thing happened. Just an endless cycle. It's really no different than the people who keep buying an endless stream of material goods and status symbols in search of happiness. I always thought I was better and less shallow because I wasn't pursuing material things, but experiences and accomplishments instead. Still, when I completed my goal, the same question arose: "Now what?"
Some of the goals seem durable, like the house. But what if the house burns down? What if the love of my life dies? What if I develop a medical problem and can no longer exercise the privileges of my pilot's license?
One of the secrets to happiness is learning to be happy no matter what happens. Or maybe it's THE secret -- how should I know; I'm not feigning total precision and omniscience like Rand.
I don't derive my happiness from owning a certain object, or having a certain accomplishment. I'm happy just to be here. I'm happy with the sky, the clouds, the trees, the breeze on a warm summer night. I'm happy talking a walk or laughing with friends. When every day is a miracle, doing something big like building a skyscraper is alright I guess, but just not necessary. Because I already have enough.
CONTINUED...
Chasing after goals and producing more and more and more your whole life is neither spiritually profound nor morally superior, as Rand asserts. I've found it to be a pressured, anxious, and unsatisfying way to live.
I'm reminded of those horrible Objectivist paintings, but especially the one where the woman is in a skyscraper penthouse overlooking a crowded city, relaxing with a chart with a line that's going nowhere but up. "Just the Beginning" was the name of it. It always made me cringe to look at it because it's so unrealistic, like this is the highest and best way to live. She's gazing longingly out the window, planning her illustrious future. Maybe she just opened one of those skyscrapers in the distance. Probably took a decade of her life. So what? Like the world needs a another big glass box to house corporate drones frittering their lives away producing, marketing, and distributing garbage. If the woman had learned to be happy without that skyscraper or that financial chart in a permanent Objectivist uptrend, she could have skipped the decade of toil that preceded it.
With goals, you're never satisfied. We should learn to be content now, with what we have. We should do what makes us happy, each and every day, without becoming slaves to those artificial goalposts that make us focus more on the future than the present.
Of course, if you follow this philosophy and dispense with an all-encompassing productive purpose for your life, then you're depraved according to Rand. "Productive work is the central purpose of a rational man’s life", she wrote. Isn't it strange that she touted a life of production as the ultimate virtue, which if carried out to its most successful extreme (like a CEO), would help millions of people and therefore be fairly altruistic. But if you've decided that you're produced enough, enough to retire very early, say, then you're no longer producing and you're immoral.
I will leave you with two quotes that you will probably never understand unless you let go of Objectivism, because if Rand hadn't labeled Lao Tzu as a mystic, she surely would, so you're not allowed to approve of anything he wrote. As I am about to turn 30 and I look back on a decade of doing all of "the right things" that should have made me eternally happy but didn't, a broad range of financial, material, and creative goals, I have to say that the one good thing about spending a few years following the Randian prescription for living a virtuous, high acheiving life is that it taught me how unimportant all of it was in the first place. I'm pretty content with the love of my friends and family and waking up every day in paradise (it's paradise because it's where I am right now). Maybe someday you will also have a similar shift your life.
"By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try. The world is beyond the winning."
"A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving."
"You "demonstrate" it merely by claiming it, not by showing it to be impossible."
I gave you one example -- the example of being unable to afford chemo. This is not a "mooch or die" situation. There are many alternatives to chemo. Just because one cannot afford one does not mean one cannot pursue any.
Aside from that, you're demanding that I prove a negative. Which is of course impossible. The basic standards of epistemology dictate that if you want to claim something occurs in the real world, the burden's on you to show that it does exist, not on me to show that it doesn't.
The best I can do is show you examples in which there are additional choices. If you want to create additional scenarios, I'll show you the additional choices in those additional scenarios. But demanding that I affirmatively prove a negative is epistemologically invalid, and you know it.
"You're still describing intuition, not logic"
I'm describing the subconscious, which uses logic.
"Your evidence for this? If they are subconscious, we can't know what logic they may or may not contain."
As evidence, consider the whole field of psychoanalysis:). The basic premise of psycholoanalysis is that the subconsious consists in automated judgments the individual began to make as a child, and continued to make through repetition until they became automated such that the person is not even aware of them. That is why therapists help patients correct their problems by helping them identify the subconscious patterns the patient developed as a child by assessing his situation.
For example, the child draws a logical connection between "powerful male figure" and physical abuse, by inductive reasoning, through the experience of being beaten by a powerful male figure. This connection becomes automatized by repetition, such that 20 years later he's not even aware of that inductive conclusion he drew as a child. But it's there. And a good therapist is able to draw that inductive conclusion out of the subconscious and bring it into the light. And once it has been brought into the light, the patient is able to question the conclusion and perhaps correct the error.
"That subconscious processes can be *effective* has been documented, but to say that they use actual logic seems to me to be a bit of a reach."
You're missing what the subconsious is. The subconsious _starts_ in the conscious mind, and becomes subconscious through repetition and automatization. Consider how you type. When first learning to type, it's a painfully conscious process. You have to consciously learn and remember where the letters are on the keybord.
But once you've repeated it enough, it becomes automatized. And all the complex motor motions.
That's what the subconscious is. It's automatized thought that was conscious at one time.
To learn more about this, I recommend finding a good therapist. A good therapist has the ability to identify those logical deductions and inductions you made as a child, and which you have automated to the point where you are no longer aware of them. But they were conscious when you were 2 or 3, and were drawing those conclusions.
As evidence, I point to the entire field of psychotherapy. A psychotherapist looks at _early childhood experiences_ to find the subconscious. Because that's where they came from.
i cited descartes' error in support of the conclusion that emotion and logic are interdependent, not in support of the conclusion that the subconscious mind consists in automatized logical judgments. For that, you need to look at psychotherapy. And the place to look in psychotherapy is where they look. Patterns developed in early childhood by means of a child's best efforts at a logical assessment of his environment.
Thanks for those fascinating comments, Tod.
Studies have shown that people have a natural state of contentment that does not vary much in the long run. This degree of contentment is unique to the individual; some people are just naturally happier than others. Circumstances can affect our inner barometer of happiness for a short time (for better or worse), but inevitably it resets (or reverts to the mean). This is true even of people who have suffered crippling accidents, surprisingly enough; a year after their injury, even though they were still paralyzed and would be for life, their level of happiness (as self-reported) had returned to where it had been before the accident. This is something that appears to be hardwired into us.
'As I’ve demonstrated repeatedly, one always has more choices than “mooch or die.” '
I think "Mooch Or Die" would be a great name for a reality TV series!
"With goals, you're never satisfied. We should learn to be content now, with what we have. We should do what makes us happy, each and every day, without becoming slaves to those artificial goalposts that make us focus more on the future than the present."
This assumes that one's goals are artificial goalposts that enslave us, rather than things we _want_. Perhaps those are the sorts of goals you choose. They are not the sorts of goals I choose. I choose goals of which I am the master. I choose goals that are natural and pleasurable and fun.
But if you choose to assume that no such goals exist, and that all goals are simply artificial goalposts and slavemasters, then your conclusion certainly follows.
"Studies have shown that people have a natural state of contentment that does not vary much in the long run ... This is something that appears to be hardwired into us."
Alternatively, it could be a result of the basic habits of mind we develop as infants, which become automatized and therefore outside of conscious view, but which naturally result in a certain, stable, level of contentedness based on our habits in processing our experience.
And Michael, I agree, that would be an awesome TV show:).
ungtss: This assumes that one's goals are artificial goalposts that enslave us, rather than things we _want_. Perhaps those are the sorts of goals you choose. They are not the sorts of goals I choose. I choose goals of which I am the master. I choose goals that are natural and pleasurable and fun.
I have to ask, what great goals have you achieved? Let's hear some specifics.
I've noticed in life that the people who talk most about money are poor, the people who talk most about success haven't accomplished squat, and the people who talk most about religion are atheists.
I wanted all of my big goals. In fact, I _wanted_ them with underscores just like you. I had fun, too. But when the goal was finished, nothing was really different. Amazingly, I can wake up and have fun or pleasure or contentedness without pursuing some big hairy Central Purpose in Life™.
Also, I notice that your writing sounds a lot like an Ayn Rand essay. You use words like automatized, you speculate on what habits of mind an infant might have developed, you rationalize. May I suggest you read and contemplate some stuff not written by Objectivists? Maybe even some stuff diametrically opposed to Objectivism? Because I've been there, and the number one thing in my life that was making me unhappy was Objectivism, and when I began to let go of it, I became a lot happier. (I don't mean letting go of being smart or being able to reason, I mean letting go of the idea that you need to be Howard Roark).
You seem to embody that great Objectivist virtue, being absolutely certain of everything. Is is really wise to seek certainty? You wouldn't want to go into a physical space and stay there for your entire life, so you would you want to stay in the same mental space forever?
Do you think I'm "monstrously evil" for writing that?
It's interesting, ungtss, that despite my little story of life experiences, you continue to stick to your theory. You continue to uphold the abstractions, what should be and ought to be right, in the face of actual experiential data that indicates otherwise. When I said that goals didn't make me happy, you didn't say some version of "maybe that's how it was for you" but instead "you must have chosen the wrong goals".
Is it just me, or is it obvious that despite its claims to the contrary, Objectivism is devoted to creating a map so good that you no longer have to look at the territory? Every Objectivist I ever knew was just like ungtss in this regard. No matter what the physical evidence is, no matter what experience can tell us, the abstractions HAVE to be true. And this is a philosophy that supposedly deals ONLY with cold, hard reality!
"I have to ask, what great goals have you achieved? Let's hear some specifics."
I don't see the purpose of that. You're treating me with profound contempt. As some sort of AR automaton. Why would I tell you the things I'm proud of in my life?
"But when the goal was finished, nothing was really different."
Maybe the lesson to be learned from that is that goals are pleasurable when they open up new and better goals to pursue. When the reward is continual, because it allows you to do things you would not otherwise have been able to do.
"Do you think I'm "monstrously evil" for writing that?"
Dozens of times in AR novels, characters ask what her heroes think of them. The heroes always respond "i don't think of you."
"You continue to uphold the abstractions, what should be and ought to be right, in the face of actual experiential data that indicates otherwise. When I said that goals didn't make me happy, you didn't say some version of "maybe that's how it was for you" but instead "you must have chosen the wrong goals"."
When faced with the datum "my accomplishment of my goals did not make me happy," one is then required to interpret the datum. There are at least two possible interpretations: 1) no goals can ever make anyone happy, or 2) the goals you chose in that particular context did not make you happy, but others might.
Your datum does not prove that 1 is true. It proves that 2 is true. You want to pretend that it means 1 is true. But it does not.
Ungtss,
You claim that everything in the subconscious starts in the conscious mind. But you have provided no evidence for this. Psychologists have uncovered many inborn proclivities. And you have strong reasons to wAnt to believe this, reasons that you do not seem to be making any effort to prevent interference from.
"You claim that everything in the subconscious starts in the conscious mind. But you have provided no evidence for this."
The evidence I provided was the fact that in delving into a patient's subconscious, psychotherapists look to early childhood experiences -- in particular, what the patient experienced, and how he came to understand it -- as a child.
If that's not where the subconscious comes from, then why is that where psychotherapists look to understand it? If that's not where it can be found, then why do they have such success finding it there?
Here's a quote written a PhD in the field:
"A child comes into this world knowing its survival depends on its parents’ love. In response to emotional cues, or “signs,” that caregivers are weak or less than capable of taking care of themselves, much less the child, some children take on the role of the parent’s emotional support system. For example, it’s not unusual for a child of a parent with emotional problems or an addiction, to respond to a parent’s inability to provide consistent care by taking on the role of parent, thus acting as the parent’s primary support system, a pattern that, if uninterrupted, may endure throughout life.
It’s a matter of survival.
Here are examples of at least five subconscious fears, or “lies,” that shape the child’s behaviors to take on role as parent:
1.My parent cannot survive without me. I must protect him or her.
2.My parent cannot take care of him or herself. I must make sure they are okay.
3.My value is based on doing what makes my parent not act in ways that scare me.
4.When my parent is well and not angry, I’m safe.
5.When my parent is unhappy, my survival is on the line.
In a sense, a child takes on the protective role of a parent because he or she is driven biologically to matter and find value in life as critical elements for its survival. The human brain has amazing abilities to get what it needs.
At subconscious levels, these love map stories give us a sense of “control” over our own survival as children. They are misleading “lies” because they are not true. While “dysfunctional” in adulthood, nevertheless, they are critical to releasing sufficient amounts of the “feel good” safety and bonding hormone to survive.
It is safe to say that, in adulthood, however, these neural patterns interfere with relationship building and intimacy. There is good news! Nature did not intend for this inner love map to be a permanent solution. Known as plasticity, your brain has a lifelong capacity to reorganize neural pathways in response to new environmental experiences and integration.
http://blogs.psychcentral.com/relationships/2011/02/the-five-survival-fears-of-a-child-that-takes-on-the-role-of-parent/
Each of those fears is an assessment of this situation, based on a child's logical judgment of his experience.
for instance, the child concludes "my parent cannot survive without me. i must protect him or her." how does the child make this conclusion? by examining the parent's behavior, examining the safety of his surrounding, and logically inferring that certain behavior in the parent implies a certain degree of non-safety.
The child does not do this in a philosophical treatise, of course. But he does it. And because childhood is a long, long time, the same lesson is pounded into his head until the parent gets better or gets out of the picture.
There is no other way for a child to develop propositions like "My parent cannot take care of himself" without looking at the parent, looking at his circumstances, and drawing conclusions.
That's logic. And that habit of mind -- that conclusion drawn at an early age -- can last a lifetime. Unless psychotherapy -- or something else -- draws it out into the light.
Ungtss,
You have merely given some examples of how some things can go from the conscious to the subconscious. You have given no reason to believe that all or even most of what is in the subconscious gets there via the conscious. Look at the earlier threads here on the cognitive revolution and find out what is going on is psychology, not merely psychiatry.
this is psychology, not psychiatry.
http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/features/psychology-vs-psychiatry-which-is-better
as to your request for proof that most if/not all of the contents of the subconscious start in the conscious, i've presented 3 examples. no one has presented any examples of how things in the subconscious arise from anywhere else. but i'm supposed to demonstrate where everything in the subconscious of every human being on earth came from?
No. You've shown you don't know the difference between psychology and psychiatry. Try and show something in the subconscious that doesn't start in the conscious.
ungtss: I don't see the purpose of that. You're treating me with profound contempt. As some sort of AR automaton. Why would I tell you the things I'm proud of in my life?
Because you're proud of them. Why keep them a secret?
Maybe the lesson to be learned from that is that goals are pleasurable when they open up new and better goals to pursue. When the reward is continual, because it allows you to do things you would not otherwise have been able to do.
That's one way to live, and I'm not going to argue with you. Can you agree that some people can be happy without goals?
I don't see the purpose of that. You're treating me with profound contempt. As some sort of AR automaton. Why would I tell you the things I'm proud of in my life?
If I had profound contempt for you, why would I spend all this time writing stuff for you to read? Actually, I'm interested in what you would say. You remind me of a lot of people I know and care about. Even though I don't know you personally, I don't have contempt for you.
"Because you're proud of them. Why keep them a secret?"
Precisely because i'm too proud of them to broadcast to people who assume i've never read anything written by a non-objectivist, and who say i embody the "great Objectivist virtue of absolute certainty" without knowing a thing about me, and then say they don't hold contempt for me. you don't know what i've read in my lifetime. you don't know where i came from. you don't know what i grew up with. it's extremely contemptuous, and presumptuous, to say the sorts of things you said.
"Can you agree that some people can be happy without goals?"
I can agree I have no basis for claiming they can't, since I have no way of measuring another person's happiness.
I can also say with absolute certainty that my years spent within the philosophy you describe was miserable for me personally, and that discovering a philosophy that affirmed, rather than invalidated, my goals was and continues to be an extremely joyful process for me.
i can also say i'm not sure how a person can remain alive without goals. because the mere act of survival requires one to take the steps necessary to achieve goals like "have food" and "get out of cold."
a truly goalless existences seems to me to be one that would end in death within a couple of weeks.
but perhaps you're aware of how a person can remain alive for long without setting and achieving goals.
@Tod: Is it just me, or is it obvious that despite its claims to the contrary, Objectivism is devoted to creating a map so good that you no longer have to look at the territory? Every Objectivist I ever knew was just like ungtss in this regard. No matter what the physical evidence is, no matter what experience can tell us, the abstractions HAVE to be true. And this is a philosophy that supposedly deals ONLY with cold, hard reality!
No, it's not just you. Objectivists are masters at pointing toward whatever pieces of reality seem to fit the theory (and yes, there are pieces that fit quite well) and steadfastly ignoring everything else. Any contrary evidence is easily dismissed with "not essential!" or "never really happens!" or "well, he must have screwed up somehow if the theory didn't work for him!" Objectivists get over it only if they reach a point where they face that contrary evidence and realize that following the theory and following reality are not only not the same thing but also a real either-or (unlike Rand's slew of false dichotomies). I suspect that requires real-life experience; no amount of verbiage in a blog is going to get them there.
"Objectivists are masters at pointing toward whatever pieces of reality seem to fit the theory (and yes, there are pieces that fit quite well) and steadfastly ignoring everything else."
What I've noticed about anti-objectivists on this blog is that they tend to present things they believe are "evidence," and when it's pointed out that their evidence does not support their conclusion, they claim you're ignoring the evidence. because they're unwilling or unable to show how their supposed evidence supports their claim.
specifically, tod said achieving his goals didn't make him happy, therefore achieving goals makes _no one_ happy, and we _all_ need to learn to be happy where we are.
i pointed out that his evidence does not support his conclusion, because it's possible he picked the wrong goals.
he then accused me of ignoring evidence.
but i didn't. i pointed out that the fact that his achievement of the goals he chooses doesn't make him happy doesn't mean that nobody can be made happy by achieving goals.
> ungtss: They don't ask what sort of person is completely unable to afford surgery, has no friends who value his life, and who is unable to negotiate a deal with the health care provider or creditors. I know what kind of people find themselves in this predicament. They're sleezebuckets. But I'm forced to finance their care so they can go home, use some more dirty needles, pick up a couple new STDs, and die in a DWI.
According to you, anyone in this situation of not being able to afford medical care is a sleazebucket. You said it in your own words, right up there.
How's this for a scenario? You're a 22 year old budding Objectivist. You get brain cancer through no fault of your own. You "properly" disowned your parents because they are zealous Christian Scientists who don't believe in medicine anyway. You have no friends because you don't know any other Objectivists in real life and you can't get along with "average people". You're poor because you are young and you haven't had enough time to develop any skills that are of value to the marketplace. You can't get a loan because you don't have enough of a credit history, you have no collateral, you've never had an installment loan, and that's just the way the system works.
I think it's funny that you said I was contemptuous of you for asking you questions and making observations about your writing, but contempt for people in general just spills out of your comments.
read the whole sentence, tod.
"They don't ask what sort of person is completely unable to afford surgery, has no friends who value his life, and who is unable to negotiate a deal with the health care provider or creditors."
You cut out almost the entire sentence, focusing only on one clause.
Do you see how you did that? Do you see how you cut the meat out of my comment, turned it into something it wasn't, and then called it wrong?
Or don't you see it?
Do you understand the communication is impossible so long as you distort what other people are saying into things that are completely different from what they're saying?
As to your scenario, in this country, at this time, you simply google "how can i pay for cancer treatment with no insurance" and up pops an article telling you how to find hospitals in your region that give treatment at no or little cost. you then go to those hospitals, funded by people who want to give money to provide medical care for those who need it but can't afford it.
in a free market scenario, on the other hand, the cost of treatment would be far far lower than it is in our present fascist system. you'd probably be able to pay for it out of pocket.
I'm not arguing for against the present system. My issue is with your statement:
They don't ask what sort of person is completely unable to afford surgery, has no friends who value his life, and who is unable to negotiate a deal with the health care provider or creditors. I know what kind of people find themselves in this predicament. They're sleezebuckets.
You said very plainly that if you find yourself unable to afford medical care, you are a sleazebucket.
There is no guarantee that charity will be available when you need it or at all. Not everyone has enough friends with enough money. It is entirely possible that a decent person can be overwhelmed by medical bills and have no recourse, even in a free market system.
Your entire argument about the free clinics actually depends on people's benevolence, and on their altruism. What if the wealthy decided, in a free market system, that they did NOT wish to fund free clinics -- as is their right and privilege? Which could actually happen if Hell froze over and the country went Objectivist?
But all that is beside the point. You made the sweeping generalization that a person who can't afford medical care == a sleazebucket. It would be trivial to come up with a hundred different scenarios, both under socialized medicine and free market medicine, where this is not true.
"You said very plainly that if you find yourself unable to afford medical care, you are a sleazebucket."
i did not. i said a person who has no money, no friends willing to help him out, and no ability to work out any deals with providers is a sleabucket. you cut out everything but the "can't afford."
can't afford. plus nobody loves you. plus you can't figure out a way to finance it.
tod translates down to "can't afford."
"Your entire argument about the free clinics actually depends on people's benevolence, and on their altruism. What if the wealthy decided, in a free market system, that they did NOT wish to fund free clinics -- as is their right and privilege? Which could actually happen if Hell froze over and the country went Objectivist?"
That's the second part of my answer. The part you skipped over. In a free market system, medical care would be far far cheaper. The fascist system we have at present makes medical care far far more expensive than it needs to be.
But understanding that requires a knowledge of economics. And we're still working on reading comprehension.
Fine. Then revise "can't afford" to "can't afford and can't get". You're splitting hairs over tiny, tiny things. Do I have to retype your entire argument each time I reference it in order for my words to be valid?
I just realized something amazing. Your argument against my hypothetical good Objectivist with no money, family, or friends was that there are free clinics. Therefore, if you are able to resort to a free clinic for care, you won't be defined as a sleazebucket by ungtss.
So basically you are saying, if you can qualify for and receive charity medical care (whether from friends, family, or institutions), then you're not a sleazebucket, but if you can't afford medical care and cannot otherwise get charity, then you ARE a sleazebucket.
Interesting.
"Fine. Then revise "can't afford" to "can't afford and can't get". You're splitting hairs over tiny, tiny things"
This is not a tiny thing. It's an enormous thing. Because it leaves you with the question, "how come all other avenues are closed? why will charity not even take you?"
that's the context that's being dropped here. to have _no avenues available_ to you, in _this country_, there has to be something deeply deeply wrong with you.
"So basically you are saying, if you can qualify for and receive charity medical care (whether from friends, family, or institutions), then you're not a sleazebucket, but if you can't afford medical care and cannot otherwise get charity, then you ARE a sleazebucket."
Bingo. Now what sort of utter shithead can't get charity, won't join the military for their free medical care, doesn't have any family, doesn't have any friends, and doesn't have a job?
How does one get onesself in a spot where one has _no options?_
One does not get there by accident.
Ungtss,
an example of someting that got into the sub conscious without going through the conscious. How about an infant's recognition of faces? This shows up really early. And what a bout people's sexual orientaion and gender awareness. These seem to be determined in the womb. Think of homosexuals and transsexuals. People's upbringing discourages these but they still turn up. And the one's that I talk to say that there was no choice on their part involved.
Are all forms of awareness tied together? Not really. There is evidence of self awareness in only a handful of species but good reason to believe that awareness is much more widespread. But many species can learn which are not self aware. so self areness is not necessary for learning.
Many aspects of the sub-consious are an interaction between inborn proclivities and environment and experience. The first draft of or aesthetics and ethics seems to be inborn but it gets modified. Still ethical and aesthetic evaluations are always finally made by the subconscious. All the conscious can do is bring things to the attention of the subconscious. If we try to overrule the subconcious in these matters it feels wrong. The conscious can guide the subconcious but not easilly or quickly. In ethics the intuitions are our conscience.
You have also asked how somone with any pride could mooch as you put it. Did it ever occur to you that other people might see responsibility as mutual support rather than as self reliance or more often they might value both and see a need to ballance them off against each other.
Someone who values altruistic feelings might gain satisfaction in helping others and be willing to seek help when it is needed. When she gave a list of virtues that she prized Rand included productivity but did not include kindness or compassion. I think most people would see this absence as appalling.
Every virtue that I know of has vices that are ssociated with it that can develop if a sensof proportion is lost in acting on that virtue. And exessive value placed on self reliance lead to two vices that I can think of. One is judgmentalism, being excessively ready to condemn and not taking account of others difficulties. The other is ingratituide, refusing to agknowledge the part that good fortune and other's help has played in your successes.
"an example of someting that got into the sub conscious without going through the conscious. How about an infant's recognition of faces? This shows up really early. And what a bout people's sexual orientaion and gender awareness."
as far as i know, there's no indication that face recognition in infants is subconscious. face recognition is fully conscious for us as adults. and infants give all the indications of consciously studying faces. they stare at you, examining your face with full attention, and mimicking your expression. how is that not fully conscious?
with regard to sexual orientation, i know too many people who have switched teams mid-stream to believe it's inherently subconscious or genetic. i have family members and close friends that have gone straight to gay and gay to straight mid-life, based on their conscious experiences. how's that not fully conscious?
to avoid any accusations that i'm ignoring evidence -- what i'm doing is asking how the evidence shows that these things originate in the subconscious. because when my daughter was learning my face at 3 days old, she seemed profoundly conscious to me.
"You have also asked how somone with any pride could mooch as you put it. Did it ever occur to you that other people might see responsibility as mutual support rather than as self reliance or more often they might value both and see a need to ballance them off against each other."
what you're describing is a voluntary arrangement of mutual support. and accepting voluntary support is not mooching, so long as it's voluntary. mutual support is a very human attitude. but that's not what we're talking about with government support programs, because they are not voluntary. they are forced. i'm forced to finance the health care of crackheads and drug dealers and rapists and murderers -- people i despise -- people who would gladly stick a knife in my back -- because some government bureaucrat says so.
ungtss, you might be surprised that I'm actually in favor of free market health care. But if all of its supporters made arguments as vitriolic as yours, we'd deserve to lose.
As far as "dropping context", I could read over the last 200+ comments and write an essay about the number of times you avoided a question, equivocated, changed the subject, or beat around the bush.
I mean this with all sincerity... I think your writing shows that you're a great example of what Objectivism can do for a person. For and to.
Okay, I'm done feeding the troll. I think I'll go whim-worshipping or something.
we weren't talking about your views on health care. we were talking about whether there exists a real-world scenario in which a person is faced with the absolute choice "force others to pay for your health care or die."
i proved there's no such scenario, by providing real-world context to show other alternatives. you then changed the subject. then accused me of changing the subject.
but my favorite is your claim that if everybody made arguments like mine, we'd lose? isn't the free market losing in america? hasn't it been gradually losing for 50 years? without any help from me or my "vitriolic" arguments?
of course it is. because the so-called "advocates" of the free market are too ignorant or chickenshit to name the actual issue.
but surely they'll win, so long as they don't use my vitriolic arguments. they've been doing such a fine job for so long.
BREAKING: TROLL WINS ARGUMENT
MOM'S BASEMENT -- A local internet troll was officially declared winner of a multi-day online argument early Tuesday. In a contest that spanned hundreds of blog comments at all hours of the day and night, the troll claimed victory in the heated debate simply by outlasting his opponents. When reached for comment, the troll said "I know I stunned them with my sweeping generalizations, circular reasoning, faulty logic, and total lack of empathy or compassion. Objectivism wins again!" Observers cited the troll's inhuman readiness to change the subject and make laughably false assertions and bizarre assumptions as the most important factor in his having the last word. At press time, the troll was asking his mom if she washed his Arby's uniform because his shift is starting in a few hours.
I see that while I was otherwise occupied, a newspaper's worth of text came out. Since I think this is elevating to the point of just trading nasty comments, I'll try to keep this brief and then move on.
"i proved there's no such scenario, by providing real-world context to show other alternatives. you then changed the subject. then accused me of changing the subject."
You proved no such thing. You have not conclusively proven that such a scenario is downright impossible, only that you think it is improbable. And your stance only works if the hypothetical person is aware of these "alternatives" and believes them to be viable. Let's stipulate that alternatives to chemo exist, then. I've heard of one: dolphin therapy. That sure worked out well for Michael Landon, didn't it? A person may be aware of alternatives but not believe in their effectiveness, to the point of rejecting them as serious alternatives. Or, in fact, a person may not be aware of alternatives - it happens.
The point is, no matter how much you harp on it, the scenario is not as implausible as you would like to say, and thus, it is something that could happen quite easily in the real world. It is not necessary that alternatives do not exist for the scenario to hold, just that the person in question *believes* his life comes down to mooching or dying. After all, it's his own personal context, which he is certain of (which is all an Objectivist needs, right?) - and so we're right back to square one, with a situation you don't care to address, but now with your objections overruled. But I won't press the issue, curious though I am to see through which hoops you'd try to jump.
A more general comment on the logic/subconscious/psychology thing: It's interesting that you refer to that field, considering that Rand herself seemed less-than-impressed with it, and that there appear to be wild variations in theory throughout the field. I'm fairly certain that if I cared to do the searching, I could find some psychologist willing to say something diametrically opposed to your stances.
In fact, psychotherapy has had its share of incredible mishaps, such as cases of "repressed memories" where patients find themselves recalling things (and then believing in them whole-heartedly) that never actually happened. As a field that often rests on theories over facts (and that's not necessarily a knock, considering the wide variety and complexity of human thought), using it as an authoritative source seems questionable at best, at least in context of Rand's favoring of reason.
And it still doesn't qualify as logic, really. If a child is beaten and develops a fear of all powerful male figures, that's hardly a logical response. It's an emotional response: irrational, gut-driven avoidance of pain and fear. Knowing that later may aid the patient, but it does nothing to indicate that the subconscious proceeds logically, or that emotions are logically-driven or derived. It would seem to indicate just the opposite.
"It is not necessary that alternatives do not exist for the scenario to hold, just that the person in question *believes* his life comes down to mooching or dying."
Well then that scenario can pop up everytime i refuse to acknowledge that i have other options. "Oh look, that person has money and I don't. I see only two options: steal or die."
In fact a lot of people do this. Their live their lives ignoring the possibility that they might live in some other way. Pushing it out of their consciousness.
This is a good way of looking at it, actually. Thanks for bringing things this direction.
"If a child is beaten and develops a fear of all powerful male figures, that's hardly a logical response."
As one who has recovered from a fear of powerful male figures, I can tell you it's profoundly logical. It arises from induction. "Under X circumstances, Y behaves in Z way." When you're young, it's conscious. But by repetition, it becomes such an automatic reaction that you don't even see it happen.
As an adult, once you're able to identify your automated reactions, you can then piece together the logical inductions and deductions that got you there. You can then check your premises, correct your error, and move on.
I understand you seem to discredit psychotherapy as a field. That's fine. I'm going to go a different route, based on my personal experience with excellent psychotherapists. You go ahead and omit the fact that the existence of some irresponsible and ineffective psychotherapists does not negate the possibility of the existence of some excellent ones. You go your road, I'll go mine. See you at the finish line.
tod, thanks for showing me the error of my ways. i realize now that you did not hold me in contempt. i sure wish i'd taken the chance to share with you my most prized personal achievements. surely you would have treated me with exactly the sort of respect with which you're treating me now.
of course, i've expressed contempt for you too. but there's a difference. i wasn't so ridiculous as to ask you to talk about the things in life most important to you. in fact, as soon as you explained that you hold goals in contempt, i knew that nothing could be important to you. and therefore if i were to tell you what was important to me, you would simply take the opportunity to scoff at it.
sorry, bub. maybe the next objectivist will be stupid enough to fall into your little emotional game.
'If a child is beaten and develops a fear of all powerful male figures, that's hardly a logical response. It's an emotional response: irrational, gut-driven avoidance of pain and fear. Knowing that later may aid the patient, but it does nothing to indicate that the subconscious proceeds logically, or that emotions are logically-driven or derived. It would seem to indicate just the opposite.'
Excellent point. Though I think some tendencies and capabilities are hardwired into us at birth, most of the contents of our subconscious surely do originate in conscious experience. But so what? The issue is that this input, even though it is received by the conscious mind, is then shaped and interpreted by the subconscious in ways that are often illogical, or at least in ways that follow a dreamlike logic quite different from the logical rules that apply in the real world.
There are many different schools of psychology. The Jungian school sees the subconscious as a creative agent that follows its own rules and even utilizes universal archetypes that are inborn (the animus and anima, the shadow, etc).
If we think of the peculiar logic of dreams, we begin to get a sense of how the subconscious operates. The whole realm of dreams, intuition, hunches, gut feeling, phobias, epiphanies, etc. suggests that there is far more to the mind than conscious awareness. The conscious mind is more like the tip of the iceberg, with the greater mass submerged and invisible.
Since ungtss and I posted at the same time, let me just reply to this point:
'As one who has recovered from a fear of powerful male figures, I can tell you it's profoundly logical. It arises from induction. "Under X circumstances, Y behaves in Z way." When you're young, it's conscious. But by repetition, it becomes such an automatic reaction that you don't even see it happen.'
I disagree that this is an example of logic in the strict sense. It is actually an example of a logical fallacy -- hasty generalization (generalizing from too few instances). Of course it is perfectly understandable that a child would make such an error. It's still an error, though.
It is, however, an example of "dream logic," which is the logic of the subconscious.
"I disagree that this is an example of logic in the strict sense. It is actually an example of a logical fallacy -- hasty generalization (generalizing from too few instances). Of course it is perfectly understandable that a child would make such an error. It's still an error, though.
It is, however, an example of "dream logic," which is the logic of the subconscious. "
You make a good point here. I'm guilty of using the word "logic" in two totally different ways. I'm not sure there's a word to describe both valid logic and invalid logic. Perhaps "conscious thought" is the best we have. What i meant to describe was the process of thinking, including both valid logic and logical fallacy -- but in contrast to emotionalism.
"Dream logic" is an interesting idea. I guess i'd differentiate between error and dream logic, though. dream logic is utterly nonsensical, while error is more of a near-miss.
Anon:
>A more general comment on the logic/subconscious/psychology thing: It's interesting that you refer to that field, considering that Rand herself seemed less-than-impressed with it, and that there appear to be wild variations in theory throughout the field.
Objectivist psychology is one of the most inane aspects of Rand's philosophy, and probably has some of the worst practical effects. Nathaniel Branden basically introduced psychology into Objectivism. Rand had little or no interest in the field previously, but in doing so Branden effectively provided her with a pseudo-intellectual justification for her absurd moral pronouncements. A good example of this utter bogusness, which I've mentioned elsewhere, is a passage in "The Cult of Moral Grayness" where Rand declares that the order in which people commonly say "good and evil" and "black and white" is, apparently, "...interesting psychologically." Really, the only thing "interesting psychologically" is that Rand finds this interesting psychologically. So that gives you an idea of the essential banality of Objectivist psychology. The unpleasant side effects were things like the witch trials and general sense of conformity and fear of thought-crime omnipresent in the movement during its heyday, and which still persist today.
we have a fairly concrete example of error right now -- in my equivocation of the word "logic" in two distinct senses. but that's hardly "dream logic." it's simply an aspect of this issue i hadn't conceptualized clearly until you brought it to my attention. now that it's been conceptualized clearly, i won't be making that error any longer.
there is a distinct difference between the thought processes of nyquist, anon, and prescott on the one hand, and tod and barnes on the other. clearly you all think objectivism is bunk. yet nyquist, anon, and prescott are at least capable of identifying and responding to points made by those with whom they disagree, while barnes and tod are quite conspicuously unable to do so.
clearly objectivism is not the variable at play here, since none are objectivists. i wonder what the variable(s) is/are.
"dream logic is utterly nonsensical, while error is more of a near-miss."
Dream logic may seem nonsensical, but often it has a deeper meaning. For instance, if you dream that you're talking to your father and suddenly he turns into an eagle and flies away, it is nonsensical on one level, but on another level it may be a very powerful symbolic representation of your fear of abandonment.
"Dream logic may seem nonsensical, but often it has a deeper meaning. For instance, if you dream that you're talking to your father and suddenly he turns into an eagle and flies away, it is nonsensical on one level, but on another level it may be a very powerful symbolic representation of your fear of abandonment."
I guess I would describe that as symbolism and metaphor, rather than "dream logic." Would you describe conscious metaphor as dream logic?
"Would you describe conscious metaphor as dream logic?"
I'm not sure. But the reason I use "logic" in regard to dream symbolism is that the symbolism seems to follow certain rules that have an internal logic of their own.
It is, to some extent, just a question of semantics. There are rules; whether or not they are "logical" rules probably depends on one's definition of the word "logical."
FWIW, my own view of psychology follows that of FWH Myers, a 19th century theorist who is not much remembered today. Myers coined the term "subliminal self," which encompasses more than the unconscious. It's been said that Freud saw the human mind as a two-story house, with a sunlit ground floor and a dark basement. Myers, on the other hand, saw the mind as a three-story house: dark basement (the unconscious, or lower self); main floor (the conscious mind); and a sunny loft (the superconscious, or higher self). The basement and loft together make up the subliminal self, which can produce phobias and other irrational fears, but also can provide glimpses of higher truths via epiphanies and revelations. Another turn-of-the-century thinker, Richard Maurice Bucke, catalogued these higher experiences under the term "cosmic consciousness."
All this takes us far afield from Ayn Rand and into the realm of mysticism, which she deplored (though I don't think she ever studied it or really understood it).
BTW, I don't necessarily think that all of Objectivism is "bunk." I think many of Rand's conclusions were correct, or at least correct in large part. I just don't think she always provided a very sound foundation for them. I also think she overlooked a lot. But she has played an important role in combating statism in the US, and she was a very good writer who wrote a least two modern classics and many memorable essays.
PS - While Daniel's style of argument is a little more barbed than mine, it's good to remember that he's been jousting with Objectivists for many years now, and some of them have been pretty abusive. The notorious R. Bramwell, quoted on this blog's homepage, is an example. I can understand why his patience might wear thin.
thanks for giving me context on patience having worn thin. my limited experience with objectivists who join the "objectivist club" (oxymoron?) is much the same. i'm fascinated by this phenomenon actually, as a "collective" appears to have risen around a philosophy of individualism ... which tells me there's more at play than the explicit ideas ... but i'm not quite sure what it is yet.
i also agree with you that AR missed some stuff, and got some stuff wrong. i don't have much experience with mysticism, so i can't speak to that. but i have a great deal of experience with religion, and i think that while her intuititons were solid, she made claims to things about which she lacked sufficient knowledge to have a justifiable opinion.
still, the good she brought me so vastly outweighs her relatively minor (in my opinion anyway) errors that i'm grateful to her.
i'm interested in your understanding of freud as theorizing a two story house -- i thought it was three -- id, ego, and superego. am i wrong about that?
i am, however, familiar in general with theories that give the id and the superego or the subconscious and unconscious "minds of their own," so to speak. these theories do not fit my experience, however -- my experience is that my own subconscious is tightly linked to my conscious thought, and that it's consistently just a question of identifying the link in a particular context. i've had so much practical success in my life by conceptualizing things this way that i must say i'm relatively committed to it.
one hypothesis i have regarding the "objectivist collective" i've observed is that what's really at play are unconscious fight or flight reactions to anxiety. specifically, there is a growing literature demonstrating that anxiety causes a number of unconscious reactions, including an increase in one's sense of group identity (herd instinct), black and white thinking (splitting), and an effort to exert control.
I'd speculate that AR suffered a great deal from chronic anxiety, and that her philosophy was a salve by which she eased her anxiety by providing a highly nuanced, intelligent view of the world that made sense of things. Because ultimately anxiety springs from an inability to make sense of things.
I'd speculate that this philosophy is popular with high-strung, anxiety prone people precisely because it acts as such a powerful salved.
I'd speculate that whenever you get a group of high-strung, anxiety prone people in a room, you're going to get an exaggerated dose of the symptoms of anxiety -- excessive group identity, black and white thinking, and control.
That's my working hypothesis to explain the contradictions inherent in objectivism _as it worked itself out_.
perhaps it's something of a "neo-objectivism."
"i'm interested in your understanding of freud as theorizing a two story house -- i thought it was three -- id, ego, and superego. am i wrong about that?"
No, you're not wrong. I guess I was oversimplifying a bit. But Freud's superego is not the same as Myers' higher self. The superego is seen as a social construct, which (I believe) is supposed to inhibit and repress the wild urges of the id. I could be wrong, since I am no authority on Freud.
You're probably right about the insecurities of many Objectivists. I would say that social anxiety is very common in this group. This may be why relatively few Objectivists have become famous in their own right - it's hard to make a name for yourself when you are insecure or shy. There are some relatively famous Objectivists - Steve Ditko, the creator of Spider-Man, is an example - but not as many as one might expect.
Actually I think the behavior of Objectivists, as a group, is not dissimilar from that of many other intellectual movements. Paul Johnson's book "Intellectuals" gives many examples of intellectuals (mostly on the left) behaving badly. You see the same infighting and clique-ishness among Marxists, neoconservatives, libertarians, etc.
"Actually I think the behavior of Objectivists, as a group, is not dissimilar from that of many other intellectual movements. Paul Johnson's book "Intellectuals" gives many examples of intellectuals (mostly on the left) behaving badly. You see the same infighting and clique-ishness among Marxists, neoconservatives, libertarians, etc."
I agree. And there's much to be learned from that.
The irony is that Rand's whole philosophy laid out the danger of groupthink in excruciating detail, then she and her friends, and ultimately a slew of followers, fell into the same trap.
That creates something of a contradiction, demanding that one check one's premises.
Perhaps the premise upon which she was mistaken was in failing to recognize that the many harmful phenomena she observed and documented (from groupthink to denial to responsibility shifting to deliberate ignorance) are all biologically determined effects of unidentified anxiety.
If one takes the premise that unidentified anxiety is the root of the dangers (which she called evils), one can then use that fundamental root cause to cast an even wider net for errors leading to threats. one could conceivably catch the errors rand and her followers missed, and continue to miss. and avoid the self-sabotage and self-destruction they all suffered because of it.
if one grants the premise that the ultimate cause of her "evils" is unidentified anxiety, one runs into a further irony: both objectivists and their opponents, in attacking the errors and excesses of the other side in a threatening, anxiety-provoking manner, are only exacerbating the unidentified anxiety of their opponents, thereby exacerbating the problems they are attempting to fight.
and perhaps this explains the difference i observe between you, nyquist, and anon, vs the other two. perhaps something in my behavior is triggering a threat response in them that is causing them to exhibit all the characteristics i'm expecting to find in an opponent of AR.
a self-fulfilling prophecy.
whereas for some reason, i'm not triggering the same reaction in you. and so you're able to think, and write, rationally.
ungtss:
>and perhaps this explains the difference i observe between you, nyquist, and anon, vs the other two. perhaps something in my behavior is triggering a threat response in them that is causing them to exhibit all the characteristics i'm expecting to find in an opponent of AR.
An alternative explanation is that like so many Randians you don't have very many interesting arguments, but simply rely on equivocation and fudging to evade criticism, as myself and several other commenters have observed. The idea that such weak arguments, papered over by verbalism might trigger a "threat" response is rather amusing, given we have seen the same shapes thrown ad tedium for year upon year. ungtss has somehow interpreted my irritation at the predictability of his debating style as a "threat" response to the awesomeness of his arguments, a remarkably self-flattering view that his arguments themselves scarcely merit. As David Ramsay Steele remarked, "Randian doctrine is bluff, buttressed by abuse of all critics". It seems to me that ungtss is just another bluffer. If the excellent Michael Prescott thinks otherwise, well perhaps I am wrong, but so far it has been a typically underwhelming exercise.
"ungtss has somehow interpreted my irritation at the predictability of his debating style as a "threat" response to the awesomeness of his arguments,"
And what if your perception of predictability is the threat? I can certainly relate to feeling threatened by the sense that I am talking to someone incapable of original thought, who simply repeats arguments i consider to be vapid. Like being trapped in a small room with a stupid stupid person. That freaks me out. Is it possible it freaks you out?
your latest comment simply confirms my suspicion that i am doing something to threaten you. you are engaged in splitting. when i say "perhaps something in my behavior is triggering a threat response" you automatically conclude i am engaged in self-flattery. but the phrase "something in my behavior" could be anything, including my being a total asshole. you can't seem to understand that though. you seem unable to hear what i'm actually saying. and i'm curious why.
ungtss:
>your latest comment simply confirms my suspicion that i am doing something to threaten you
I am even less interested in pursuing meta than I am in traipsing through the hills and dales of verbalist equivocations.
If you have some fresh and compelling argument to make about some important Objectivism related issue that perhaps I have missed over your voluminous posts, please summarise it clearly and concisely, and let's have a look at it. Otherwise it's getting all a bit Great Cornholio for me....;-)
"Well then that scenario can pop up everytime i refuse to acknowledge that i have other options. "Oh look, that person has money and I don't. I see only two options: steal or die."
In fact a lot of people do this."
You, for example. Here's a bit I missed on my first skim-through of some of the backlog:
"The fascist system we have at present makes medical care far far more expensive than it needs to be."
The fascist system? Indeed? Here is an example of Objectivists' tendency to excuse behavior in themselves that they do not tolerate in others.
Because I've heard "fascism" used by Objectivists many times (ugh, how VERY many times) to describe the US government and the fact that they are required to pay taxes/contribute to moochers/have the very blood sucked from their veins/whatever. As well as "tyranny", "force", "anti-life", and so forth.
But it's not fascism, not tyranny. You are not forced to do these things, you have a choice.
You can leave. Leave! Give the big middle finder to the ol' United Snakes of Amerikkka and bail, and be free of their terrible demands. No one will stop you. You can renounce citizenship and go away and the IRS will no longer be able to kick in your door and shoot you.
Since you have the option to leave, if you DON'T leave then you are implicitly agreeing to abide by the system in place, including all the wicked taxes and social programs.
If at this point, you are reading this and your knee is jerking to make a response, hold on - since I've heard variations of this more than once, I can almost predict what you might say: "But with my life as the highest standard, I HAVE to live here, since this is where the best opportunities are!" --or some form of this. The benefits of living in the US or the Western world or wherever you live compel you to remain right where you are.
Perhaps so, but maybe you see the parallels now - between a guy who assumes he has two choices, mooch chemo or die, and a guy who insists he must live where he lives in order to maintain his life, and leaving is no REAL option.
Perhaps you don't go as far as other Objectivists. Perhaps you acknowledge the choices you could make. But if you did, it seems odd you would use the hyperbolic "fascist" term. Who would submit willingly to live under fascism? And yet you do.
You say our system is fascist because i can leave. But Fascism does not hold as one of its tenets that people cannot leave. Fascism was articulated by hitler and Mussolini, and "leaving" was permitted for most of their fascist tenure.
Fascism has a technical meaning. It means an economic system in which resources are nominally in private hands, but in reality are controlled by government regulation "for the public welfare" and "for the benefit of the state.". You should read Mussolini. He's not what your mindless propagandists say he was.
As to whether the ability to leave negates force, there's a fundamental moral difference between moving to find opportunities, and moving to avoid the use of force by other human beings. Fundamental to the statist frame of mind as treating the two as equivalent. Failing to distinguish between cancer threatening to kill me and you threatening to kill me; to distingush between reality refusing to give me what i want and you refusing to guve me what i want. By that simple equivocation, they're able to rationalize a lot of bad stuff.
Ungtss,
You are making a quite common mistake by thinking of Fascism as an economic system. While fascists follow a dirigist economic policy, a form of partially government guided but mostly privately owned system , this is not their main focus.
The main focus of fascists is authortarian nationalism and what they see as natianal vitality and renewal. Militarism is also a major characteristic. Their economic policies are not unique to them and are seem by them as a way to support their primary aims.
Libertarians and objectivists are particularly likely to mischaracterize Fascism the way that you have because in their preocupation with the market they tend to presume that everyone else is as precocupied with the economy as they are just in different or even opposite ways.
"The main focus of fascists is authortarian nationalism and what they see as natianal vitality and renewal. Militarism is also a major characteristic. Their economic policies are not unique to them and are seem by them as a way to support their primary aims."
Isn't our current administration concerned with what it sees as national vitality and renewal? Aren't its economic policies simply a means toward that end? Isn't it militaristic?
Hey, ungtss. There's a new post up (Ayn Rand & Epistemology 31) ... you might want to get a jump on it if you want to maintain your 5:1 posting ratio.
"and "leaving" was permitted for most of their fascist tenure."
Tell that to the Jews.
So we're back to arguing over a definition. Fine. Let's rephrase:
If you find US laws intolerable, to the point of describing them as some sort of threat ("enforced at the point of a gun" is used a lot) it would seem sensible to find a way to escape such a system. Who would willingly live where they make you pay taxes by threatening to shoot you?
By staying in the US, you consent to abide by the system. You are not forced to abide by US laws, since you are able to leave. Yet it is a common claim by Objectivists that, in order to maintain their life, leaving is not a real option, thereby claiming that there is force involved, since they "can't" leave.
This the contradiction: to describe the US as tyrannic and forcing the Objectivist to do things they object to, but refusing to abandon such a system that supposedly directly threatens an Objectivist's life if one has the ability. Not fleeing a threat to one's life in order to preserve one's life.
(The logical impasse is that one must either not be a real threat, or so much less of a threat that the other option is preferable. In any case, this means that one or other of the descriptions can be chalked up to Objectivist exaggeration.)
If the reason for staying is also related to preserving an Objectivist's life, then we have a clear parallel between this situation and the idea of someone who is so committed to preserving their own life that they will mooch from others to have chemo and reject all other possible choices as being unfeasible. In both cases, less attractive choices are rejected as no choice at all.
Why is the Objectivist excused, then, from having to face up to and choose one of their other options, but the sick man isn't?
This blog has been covering Objectivism in detail for many years. We are very, very familiar with Randian doctrines, often more so than their proponents. Nothing would delight us more than to get a well-considered challenge that we haven't come across before.
So I repeat:
If ungtss has some fresh and compelling argument to make about some important Objectivism-related issue that perhaps I have missed over his voluminous posts, could he please summarise it clearly and concisely, and let's have a look at it. (Merely disagreeing over the various shades of meaning of words like Fascism, for example, do not count as fresh and compelling arguments).
Ungtss,
Fascism involves an extreme degree of identification of the individual with the nation. The present US administration does not. In fact it could do with a bit more nationalism. The present US administration is not miliararist. Militarism is the idea of trying to make the value system of the miliary the value system of its society. Fascism has this preocupation with what it sees as decadence and disdains the seeking of a comfortable unheroic lifestyle. It sees bourgeois economic concerns as part of that decadence. None of this applies to the current administration.
""and "leaving" was permitted for most of their fascist tenure."
Tell that to the Jews."
they're exactly why i was thinking of. from 1933 to 1941, under german fascism, they were not only permitted to leave, but encouraged to leave. by your standards, not force.
"By staying in the US, you consent to abide by the system."
there's an ambiguity here in the word "consent." i certainly abide by the system, because i judge the costs of refusing to comply to exceed the costs of compliance. but complying with a system as a practical matter is not the same as consenting to a system in the sense that i acknowledge its moral legitimacy.
"You are not forced to abide by US laws, since you are able to leave."
And as demonstrated above, the fact that the jews were permitted to leave german does not mean the fascist system was remotely morally legitimate.
"This the contradiction: to describe the US as tyrannic and forcing the Objectivist to do things they object to, but refusing to abandon such a system that supposedly directly threatens an Objectivist's life if one has the ability."
Not at all. If one sees that living in an unjust system is better than any alternative, then one can choose to live within it peaceably and compliantly while still judging it morally illegitimate.
"Not fleeing a threat to one's life in order to preserve one's life."
You really think objectivism demands fleeing all threats?
"Why is the Objectivist excused, then, from having to face up to and choose one of their other options, but the sick man isn't?"
Because, as explained above, the limitation on choice imposed by law is imposed by humans, and therefore morally significant, while the limitation on choice imposed by sickness is not imposed by humans, and therefore is not morally significant.
"Fascism involves an extreme degree of identification of the individual with the nation."
on whose part? you mean the government identifies the individual with the state, or the individual identifies himself with the state?
"The present US administration is not miliararist. Militarism is the idea of trying to make the value system of the miliary the value system of its society."
that's an interesting definition of militarism, and under that definition, i agree. i was thinking of militarism in terms of our drones which shoot unarmed men and their families without trial in countries with which we are not as war.
"It sees bourgeois economic concerns as part of that decadence."
You don't think our current administration disdains bourgeois economic concerns?
Extreme identification with the nation, not with the state. A nation is a community. A state is an institution.
Militarism involves glorification of the military life. The current US administration does not do this.
The current administration is concerned with prosperity, especially the prosperity of the less well off.
There are plenty of reasons to criticize it but confusing it with something radically different does not help when opposing it. What it actually is is something between Amarican conservatism and European social democracy (not socialism).
i don't know that i am confusing it with something else, but i do think it's particularly ironic to be told my (admittedly broader) definition is "wrong" in the context of a series of threads on how definitions can't be "right" or wrong."
one can always find distinctions to pull a thing "in" or "out" of a definition. this is particularly common in religion, where people argue endlessly about which doctrines or rituals one must adopt in order to fall within the definition of "christian" or "muslim" or whatever.
the distinctions you point to between the US system and the historical fascist systems are true, but i'm not sure that those distinctions constitute a "correct" definition of fascism such that mine would be wrong. particularly your distinction between "state" and "nation." in the context of a racially heterogenous state, what exactly is the "nation" other than the "state?"
that's not to say the factual distinctions you describe are false, only that i'm not sure there's a "right" definition of fascism that would require them. i'm not sure a broader definition of fascism (such as mine) is necessarily wrong.
Ungtss,
An empire is a form of state that includes multiple nations. That is not a complete definition.
Definitions cannot be right or wrong but can be more or less useful. One very important aspect of usefulness is that people understand what others mean by the term. Unfortunately fascist has far too often become merely a term of abuse.
We want a description that helps us clearly talk about historical fascism. One that describes what they saw as most important about themselves is the obvious choice. And that was not their economic system. There are other political systems that have similar economic systems.
I think nationalism was far more central to fascists than economics. Describing as fascists groups which merely have similar economic systems runs the risk of implying that they are similar in other ways when they are not.
that's true, if one assumes there is no link between the economic system and the other aspects of fascism you're describing. the objectivist view -- and the view of the austrian school of economics -- is that the implementation of the economic system creates the social conditions that make the rest of it possible -- that the economic system is the cause, and the symptoms you're describing are merely the final stages of a society's implosion as a result of adopting the economic policies. see, e.g., "the road to serfdom" by hayek.
Ungtss,
I'm not suggesting that there is no link between the economic system and other aspects of a political system. I'm suggesting that it can go in the opposite direction from what you are expecting it to. And I'm suggesting that you should take fascists at their word when they say that their primary concern is social bonds within the community, not individual goals or altruistic behaviour towards other individuals.
The importance that you place on economic concerns is leading you to try to interpret others behaviour in economic terms when often they have other primary concerns. And this is a barrier to understanding them.
"And as demonstrated above, the fact that the jews were permitted to leave german does not mean the fascist system was remotely morally legitimate."
But "morally legitimate" is not the issue. The issue is whether the supposed terrible system in place in the US is actually a threat to an Objectivist's life (and if so, what should be done about it).
Do you think so? I've encountered Objectivists who do, who insist that things like taxes are "anti-life" and are direct threats to their own existence. If you don't feel that way, that would make you a few degrees saner. But the vitriolic arguments I've heard against even the slightest notion of having to contribute to the country's common good suggest a dire struggle against imminent death - but when challenged on this score, when urged to act in accordance with the level of their rhetoric, well, maybe taxes weren't so grim as they made out, since no Objectivist I've yet encountered has ever seriously considered "going Galt" and putting their actions where their mouths were.
"You really think objectivism demands fleeing all threats?"
That's not what I said. If the threat is described as an attack on life itself, then shouldn't defense of one's life take priority? Since storming the White House with your Objectivist buddies to overthrow the unjust regime is more likely to get you killed than taxes, we can assume that avoidance is the next most logical step. In the case of taxes, since only leaving the country is likely to succeed at enabling you to not pay taxes to the US, that would be the logical option - IF, indeed, taxes were the dire, life-killing threat Objectivists have made it out to be. (Since there is no such exodus as far as I know, we can infer that the Objectivist position on taxes is well overblown.)
"Because, as explained above, the limitation on choice imposed by law is imposed by humans, and therefore morally significant, while the limitation on choice imposed by sickness is not imposed by humans, and therefore is not morally significant."
Uh, no.
Because the treatment, and who may receive it, IS imposed by humans, very much so. It would be one thing if a person contracted a terminal disease with no known cure - then mooching would be useless. But if treatment is available, but cannot be had just for the asking, then the issue of mooching to retain one's life becomes quite morally significant.
Mooching is a very loaded term. It means begging or sponging. It has connotations of impropriety and lack of necessity. It also implies groveling or obsequiousness in one's approach.
Ask is a more neutral term which does not pre-judge the propriety of the request. The question becomes under what circumstances is one obliged to to act on a request for assistance? And if it is obligatory should one respond individually or through a community organization?
The problem with asking people, "Why don't you just leave the country?" is that it presumes there's someplace to go. Every nation on earth taxes its people and/or maintains strict controls on immigration. If there were a country that imposed no taxes and allowed a free influx of immigrants, it might well make sense for Objectivists and libertarians to go there. Hell, after seeing what I owe in taxes this year, I'd be tempted to go there myself!
Sadly, the only country I can think of that doesn't tax its citizens is Monaco, and I don't think they accept many immigrants.
Regarding the "going Galt" idea, I suspect that a fair number of people are doing this, but not in any dramatic way. They're just retiring early or cutting back on work. A lot of doctors seem to be retiring, for instance - perhaps not wanting to deal with Obamacare, which has already generated 20,000 pages of new regulations. (Regs are being added at the rate of 800 per day. No end is in sight.)
There's a book called "Enjoy the Decline" on Amazon that advocates keeping your earnings under $15,000 so the government will get little or nothing from you. I don't think this is good advice (and I said so in my Amazon review), but judging by most of the reviews, a fair number of people seem to like the idea. I wouldn't underestimate the alienation and anger that's slowly building out there.
@Michael Prescott
"The problem with asking people, "Why don't you just leave the country?" is that it presumes there's someplace to go. Every nation on earth taxes its people and/or maintains strict controls on immigration."
This is true enough. But considering the other argument is offering poorly-specified "other choices" that supposedly offer an alternative to mooching and death, I think for rhetorical purposes, at least, the example holds. Why not then look to find which country has the *best* freedom/tax ratio and go there, so as to minimize the tax impact? And I think you might find, that push come to shove, Objectivists are just as inclined to personal inertia as the rest, despite rhetoric to the contrary.
I don't even demand one has to like the system in which one lives, or celebrate it even if they feel it is lacking. But the rhetorical rage against supposedly unjust and immoral systems is not, in my view, matched by an equivalent will towards action. All talk and no do, in other words.
This, in turn, casts doubt in my eyes as to the strength of such Objectivist convictions. Can it really be as outrageous a burden as they say if all they do it bitch about it on message boards? I'm not even sure Objectivists even get themselves worked up to vote, judging from some exchanges I've read elsewhere.
But I digress.
@Lloyd Flack
"The question becomes under what circumstances is one obliged to to act on a request for assistance?"
I think that would be question-drift, at least as far as the question I've been trying to drill to is concerned. My question is more like: "Assuming self-interest as the primary moral guidepost, what is it, if anything, that justifies putting aside one's own self-interest to respect the rights or wants of another?"
Rand tried to answer this, and wound up equivocating from "life as highest value" to "*proper* life as highest value" (with a baldfaced assumption about what a 'proper' life consists of). ungtss has to introduce "pride" into the equation, i.e, a moocher would feel bad about mooching - even though there's little evidence to show this is universally true. That's when we get off into debates about whether the example is even possible, because arguing about that gets around having to deal with the actual meat of the issue.
"Mooching" is indeed a loaded term, but it's fine to use it in these examples, since if you really want to reduce and simplify the issue, the question becomes something like: "Doesn't claiming selfishness as a virtue mean that it's good to do selfish things (like mooching) even when doing so takes advantage of others?"
"Do you think so? I've encountered Objectivists who do, who insist that things like taxes are "anti-life" and are direct threats to their own existence."
This is a question of degrees. when i work, i trade hours of my life for money. therefore, if you take my wages away, you take what i traded my life for -- which means as a result of your taking, i traded my life for nothing.
thus if you take 25% of my earnings, then you take 25% of my work life away from me. if i work 40 hours a week, that's 10 hours a week i worked without reward. if say 2 hours of that work was for legimate government services, but 8 were for utter BS, then the government has "stolen" 8 hours of my life a week. roughly a day per week, which would add up to a month and a half over the course of a year.
is that anti-life? of course. does it make me mad? of course. what else could i have done with that month and a half? spent it with my daughter? worked out? written the great american novel?
but has been pointed out, it's all relative. where else am i to go? despite the fact that the government steals a month and a half of my life per year and flushes it down a rathole of corruption, it's still better than any alternative. for me. for now.
that does not mean i need to accept it. on the contrary.
Lloyd,
I appreciate the thoughtful responses -- I'm learning -- thank you.
"The importance that you place on economic concerns is leading you to try to interpret others behaviour in economic terms when often they have other primary concerns. And this is a barrier to understanding them."
I wouldn't say the cause is so much "concern with economic affairs" as the circumstances created by an economic system. Economic systems have profound psychological effects on people. The literally change how people think. In particular, an economic system which inspires great anxiety in people will increase the degree of anxiety in the populace ... and anxiety increases one's "group" or "tribal" consciousness.
that's why racism is so prominent among those who suffer from economic hardship. why racism thrived in the impoverished old south, but withered away much more quickly in the prominent north. it's why in africa, where economic anxiety is much more pronounced than it is here, racism exists between tribes of people who would be racially indistinguishable to the average outsider (hutu vs. tutsi, for instance), but to whom racial affiliation is extremely significant, precisely because of the economic anxiety. it's why in the ghettos of american inner city, tribal consciousness becomes focues around gangs, such as "bloods" and "crips."
it's why racism and fascism are gaining prominent right now in greece, as a result of the economic collapse there. and why racism is growing stronger in france and switzerland in particular, where the french legislature is so racist as to _ban_ the burqa.
that racism doesn't come out of nowhere. it comes out of fear. and economic uncertainty and dependence create fear. and statist economic policies create economic uncertainty and dependence.
Lest I be accused of making up the link between anxiety and increased group identity, here's some research:
https://dspace.uta.edu/bitstream/handle/10106/958/umi-uta-2049.pdf?sequence=1
And here's what's going on in Greece:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/18/opinion/sunday/europes-new-fascists.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
"This is a question of degrees. when i work, i trade hours of my life for money. therefore, if you take my wages away, you take what i traded my life for -- which means as a result of your taking, i traded my life for nothing."
Except ostensibly, you did not trade that portion of your life for *nothing*. You traded it for keeping the government running, for the social support system, and whatever else taxes are used for. Perhaps you did not desire what you traded it for. Perhaps it wasn't used as efficiently as possible. But the money and what it buys doesn't just vanish because you don't like where it goes.
So you can call that "anti-life" if you like, but it's another example of special definitions that muddy the issue rather than clarify it.
"Except ostensibly, you did not trade that portion of your life for *nothing*. You traded it for keeping the government running, for the social support system, and whatever else taxes are used for. Perhaps you did not desire what you traded it for. Perhaps it wasn't used as efficiently as possible. But the money and what it buys doesn't just vanish because you don't like where it goes."
That's why I specified that perhaps 20% of the government functions provided for with the taxes were legitimate. The remainder was not. And this comes from years spent working in government. The amount of corruption and waste is unfathomable.
But as is typical with concrete-bound-minds, the focus of the left is always on an undifferentiated whole, rather than examining the _actual spending_ going on. social support _to whom?_ _under what circumstances_? military actions _against whom_? and _with what degree of lawfulness?_
the left doesn't ask those questions. they tell us we're just supposed to dump it all in the "government" pile of money, without regard to what's actually being done with it.
that's what you see in the political debate right now. the only question is "more money to military?" or "more money to social programs?" nobody ever asks what exactly is being done. they can't afford to. if they did, people would discover the truth.
and the truth is that it's not a question of money not being used as ungtss would like, but money being used for _utterly useless_ and _affirmatively evil_ purposes.
nobel peace prize laureates shooting people without trial in countries with whom we are not at war. government caps on medical residencies which create a doctor shortage and drive up medical costs. government subsidies to people who refuse to take care the slightest bit of care for themselves.
but no. we won't ask those questions. we'll reframe the argument in a way that ignores what the government is actually doing, and instead focuses on superficial labels like "social programs," without regard to what the social programs are actually doing.
this is actually a good way of looking at it, then i never had before. the left is willing to argue about where the tax money should be used _by government_, but they don't consider the possibility that the money could be better used by the people who have a moral right to it because they earned it. they may point to misuse of funds, but only to argue that the funds should be used somewhere else by the government. not that they shouldn't have been taken in the first place.
fascinating.
"But as is typical with concrete-bound-minds, the focus of the left is always on an undifferentiated whole, rather than examining the _actual spending_ going on. social support _to whom?_ _under what circumstances_? military actions _against whom_? and _with what degree of lawfulness?_"
I think this is kind of a stupid statement on your part. If you actually delve into discussions on the left, and not just assume what they do, or pick arguments over terminology, you'd find that many of these questions are being asked. Granted, the conclusions they come to may be far removed from what YOU think are the "right" answers, but it's not like these topics never come up.
And what's with your focus on "the left", anyway? Piekoff and Rand both have been pretty explicit about not favoring the Republican party, and the right has had its share of questionable military actions and secret disappearings with the only justification being "we say we can". Are you holding a double standard here?
"And what's with your focus on "the left", anyway?"
As I said immediately following, the question here is about taxes, not government spending. the republicans will at least consider the possibility that money being poorly spent by the government should be returned to the people by reducing taxes. the left will not consider it. i've never heard it. the government's entitlement to the money is taken for granted. the only issue is how it ought to be used.
for all their many flaws, at least the republicans recognize the _possibility_ that the money shouldn't be taken in the first place.
"the republicans will at least consider the possibility that money being poorly spent by the government should be returned to the people by reducing taxes. the left will not consider it. i've never heard it. the government's entitlement to the money is taken for granted. the only issue is how it ought to be used."
I would submit to you that you are dead wrong on your assessment of the Republicans. Sure, lowering taxes is a big campaign talking point and a political bargaining tool, but only the wingiest of wing-nuts in the party float anything close to the idea that government is not entitled to draw taxes - especially for things that Republicans WANT to fund, like, say, the military. It is, as you say for "the left", just an issue of how the money is to be spent. The last Republican president created new Medicare entitlements AND slid us into a war under false pretenses and jacked up our debt to other countries in the process, so while you might think he wasn't raising taxes and therefore "better", in the end, he created the need to raise taxes, by deferring payment for his little adventures. And now, hypocritically, Republicans are howling about deficits that their own man created and blaming them on "the left".
Actions over words - after years of being irresponsible with the country's debt, why think that the Republicans, were they to assume control once more, would NOW suddenly do anything other than spend beyond the country's means? Is that a question one seriously hears from the right? Is that a question they're seriously entertaining over at CPAC right now? Would that it were.
as i said, the republicans have many flaws. but they are at least willing to consider the possibility of taking less money from people. they may not mean it, they may not do it, they may not do it right. but at least they acknowledge it's not their money.
the left doesn't even get there. they don't even acknowledge it's not their money. because they think it should be. and that it is.
then they point fingers at the people who at least acknowledge the principle while failing to follow through effectively.
so nobody notices how much worse they are.
" but they are at least willing to consider the possibility of taking less money from people. they may not mean it, they may not do it, they may not do it right. but at least they acknowledge it's not their money.
the left doesn't even get there. they don't even acknowledge it's not their money. because they think it should be. and that it is. "
Ugh. Imagine me rolling my eyes about now.
1) I think "willing to consider" and "not meaning it" are mutually exclusive in this context. If they don't mean it, they aren't REALLY considering it, they're just delivering the lip service.
2) And by declaring what you think the thoughts of the left are, and presenting that as your operating assumption, you show that you're doing battle not with the left, but with your own imaginary idea of what the left is.
But, whatever. Somehow I doubt that you've ever had any kind of real non-argument discussion with anyone from the left, so I shouldn't be surprised you're chock full of this kind of caricature.
i learned something else valuable today. conspicuously misunderstanding people and changing the subject is the psychological phenomenon of "denial" in the context of debate. denial of course being one of the unconscious coping mechanisms for anxiety.
this will help me understand it, rather than let it anger me. thanks very much, as i've been struggling to understand this for years, and i just grasped it as a result of our conversation.
my next challenge is to figure out the source of the anxiety. does it arise from a threat to one's ideas, or a threat to one's social posture as the smartest person in the room, both, neither, or something else?
but i'm unlikely to succeed at that goal in this forum. so with that, i bid you adieu.
Ungtss,
It wasn't feeling threatened. It was exasperation. People here saw you as rationalizing, as looking for reasons to continue believing what you wanted to believe. They've seen too many arguments from objectivists before.
@Lloyd,
I politely asked ungtss on several occasions if he could briefly summarise the arguments he was attempting to propound here in this forum, particularly any ones he considered interesting or original, so we could all take a look at them - it being rather hard to extract them from the sheer volume of his rather rambling posts.
ungtss conspicuously failed to do so. From this I surmise he does not really have any. All I have been able to glean from his outpourings is that he is:
1) Conducting some sort of jejune psychological experiment that, amazingly, is confirming his preconceptions about non-Randians.
2) Discovering that he is "talking past" the other forum members.
Regarding 1), well we are happy to be of some sort of service to our readers, I suppose. Regarding 2), what's surprising is that ungtss might expect any other outcome. After all, Objectivism is designed precisely to "talk past" people who use everyday language and meanings. If you rely on a specially customised lexicon to communicate, what else would you possibly expect? The customised Objectivist lexicon is the main means by which the belief system is protected from criticism, which in turn reinforces the true believers' sense that they are "misunderstood" and creates the echo chamber that our resident escapee knows all about.
Rather than use arguments - as these evaporate once exposed to common usages - Objectivists usually attempt to blame the psychology of their opponents for the inevitable failure to communicate. In this, ungtss once again is following the standard template. But the problem is, ironically, quite objective.
just checked back here. i wasn't referring to you at all, lloyd. your comments have been very insightful, and have taught me quite a bit.
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