So how do we account for so bad a theory, bad even by Objectivist standards, in the very bowels of the Rand's epistemology? I suspect that the badness of the theory stems from the fact that it was devised, not to actually develop an understanding of real, practical meaning, but merely to serve a very limited polemical end of "refuting" the analytical synthetic dichotomy. In Peikoff's essay, the Objectivist theory of meaning constitutes the main argument against the ASD:
It follows [from the Objectivist theory of meaning] that there are no grounds on which to distinguish "analytic" from "synthetic" propositions. Whether one states that "A man is a rational animal," or that "A man has only two eyes" -- in both cases, the predicted characteristics are true of man and are, therefore, included in the concept "man." [100]
Peikoff's argument is a non sequitar. It is based on the erroneous assumption that the purpose of the analytic-synthetic dichotomy is to drive a wedge between logic from fact. I've already discussed the purpose of the ASD here and here. The ASD does not seperate logic from fact; it merely distinguishes between propositions based on empirical research and those based on analysis of meaning. Peikoff, Rand and their followers seem to be congenitally incapable of understanding this distinction. They resent attacks on rationalistic speculation (i.e., "pure reason"), perhaps because such attacks would deprive Objectivism of its chief modus operendi.
Is there a compelling reason for distinguishing between propositions based on analysis of meaning and propositions based on empirical research? Of course there is. Any philosophy which attempts to determine matters of fact by analyzing the meaning of words is clearly guilty of adopting a pernicious approach. So why not have a tool which allows us to make this distinction?
Is it possible that the ASD is misused by some philosophers? Of course it is. What tool isn't misused? I would contend that the chief abuse of the ASD is to assume that all propositions are exclusively analytic or synthetic. It seems to me that some statements can be both, depending on their source. To the extent that a statement is an expression of empirical research and testing, it is "synthetic." To the extent that it is based on little more than an analysis of meaning (i.e., definition mongering), it is analytic. Contrary to Peikoff's assertion, analytic statements can in fact contain information about reality: they may in fact be empirically true. However, if they are based only on an analysis of meaning, they have no epistemological warrant. They can't be trusted. They may be true, but until they're tested, we can't know whether they are true or false. Only when empirical evidence has been brought forward in their favor can they be entertained as viable conjectures about the matters of fact. But in that case they're no longer solely analytical. The statement "Man is a rational animal" goes from being an analytical statement (assuming it really is one) to a synthetic statement once it becomes a testable hypothesis about the real world. If it remains merely "true by definition," then one cannot rationally assume it is true "in reality." Truth is not determined by definitions or meaning. Truth is determined by observation, experimentation, and the testing of hypotheses. Once the rudiments of truth are broached and begin to illuminate the mind, meanings are brought forward to describe that truth. Meanings are not true in and of themselves, but are merely symbols used to express and relate assertions, some of which may describe matters of fact. Rand and Peikoff, with their mania for definitions and literal truth, somehow never understood this.
As I read what you write, I can't tell where you're substantively disagreeing with peikoff. You say that purely analytic propositions are unreliable. he agrees. you say they must be tested. he agrees. that's the whole point of his argument -- that a purely analytic statement is useless, such that a distinction between analytic and synthetic statements is a false one.
ReplyDeletewhat i don't understand is why you think the analytic-synthetic dichotomy is useful, given your belief that purely analytic propositions are unreliable. why create a class of propositions (analytic) which are uniformly unreliable?
one of the most valuable aspects i've drawn from objectivism is how it bases its distinctions on _usefulness_. for instance, the standard of absolute moral perfection laid out by religionists is not a valid criterion for morality precisely because nobody can achieve it. and on that basis, they toss the criterion itself.
i think they're doing the same thing here. "no 'purely analytical proposition' is useful, valid, or reliable so why bother about a distinction?"
is there a reason to bother about the distinction, to your mind?
i think they're doing the same thing here. "no 'purely analytical proposition' is useful, valid, or reliable so why bother about a distinction?"
ReplyDeleteIsn't it useful to be able to identify statements that are empirically vacuous? Keep in mind, many analytical statements do have an aura of cognitive inevitability about them, such as the Objectivist axioms. They are not only seem true, but quite obviously true. "Existence exists," for example: who would deny that? But it is an empty tautology that is true by definition. It really doesn't tell us anything about the real world; and if this proposition is used as a premise in an argument which attempts to determine matters of fact, we need to be on our guard.
Also, it is a mistake to describe analytical propositions as not valid. They are "valid" in the same way the rules of chess are valid. But like the rules of chess, they don't necessarily tell us anything about the real world. And often when they are true, they true in a trivial sense.
You say that purely analytic propositions are unreliable. he agrees. you say they must be tested. he agrees.
Where has Peikoff ever said that analytic propositions are unreliable? That's not his argument at all. His argument is that a true analytic statement is just as reliable, certain and a true synthetic statement. Peikoff regards all true analytical statements as factual statements, no different from true synthetic statements. I say there is a difference between an analytical statements, whether true or false, and synthetic statements, whether true or false.
As for the testing issue, one of the problems with analytical statements is they can't be tested. Since they involve naming conventions, rather than facts, they are immune to empirical tests. I doubt Peikoff or Rand ever had a clue about this, because, to be entirely blunt about it, they never really gave a fig about testing their conclusions. Rand considered any kind of test or criticism of her conclusions as a personal attack, and would respond accordingly. Peikoff very recently made a big stink when one of his colleagues suggested there might be some factual inaccuracies in Harriman's physics book. Whatever statements Peikoff or Rand have ever made in favor of empirical responsibility are mere lip service, not to be taken seriously.
"Existence exists," for example: who would deny that? But it is an empty tautology that is true by definition.
ReplyDeleteI’m struggling with “existence exists” as an analytic proposition within the Kantian framework. According to Kant, an analytic a posteriori truth is a contradiction. There’s no such thing. But do we not know by experience that experience exists? Is it not then a posteriori? And if a posteriori, how can it be analytic, since such a thing would be a contradiction?
I understand that post-Kantians allow that an a priori truth can rest on the experiences which gave you the concepts necessary to hold the truth. Thus, they say, “Existence exists” is an a priori statement, even though it takes experience to know what “existence” is, and what it means to “Exist.”
But even if they go that route, I can justify the statement “Existence exists” on a posteriori grounds as well. I can point to existence. I can point to things that exist. I know existence exists on experiential, a posteriori grounds. I feel existence. I smell existence. I see existence.
In which case, the definitional, analytic/a priori proposition “existence exists” is trivial insofar as it goes, but pales in comparison to the a posteriori proposition “Existence exists” based on my lifetime experiencing it in the process of existing.
And because I know it on a posteriori grounds, it can’t be analytic according to Kant.
Unless you reject Kant’s view that an analytic a posteriori truth is a contradiction? If so, why?
Or you reject that we learn what existence is, and that it exists, by experience? If so, how do we come to know what existence is and that it exists?
Or something else? If so, what?
Isn't it useful to be able to identify statements that are empirically vacuous?”
It certainly is -- but why not identify them as "empirically vacuous" rather than "analytic?" analytic, after all, confers "truth" on a proposition. but as you point out, the "truth" of any meaningful sort of proposition is irreducibly empirical.
“Where has Peikoff ever said that analytic propositions are unreliable? That's not his argument at all. His argument is that a true analytic statement is just as reliable, certain and a true synthetic statement.”
How can this be his argument, since it presumes there is a difference between “analytic” statements and “synthetic statements” – a position he denies? How can he say one type of statement that doesn’t exist is just as true as another type of statement that doesn’t exist?
i don't think that's his position. i think his position is that any statement that was purely analytic -- that is -- purely divorced from experience -- would be useless. at least that's how i read it.
'I can justify the statement “Existence exists” on a posteriori grounds as well. I can point to existence. I can point to things that exist. I know existence exists on experiential, a posteriori grounds. I feel existence. I smell existence. I see existence.'
ReplyDeleteOkay, I admit defeat. I had resolved on no more responses to ungtss. But this one is so addled that I really have to weigh in.
Perhaps a miniature, quasi-Platonic dialogue is the best vehicle:
Ungtss (U): It exists!
Puzzled Questioner (PQ): Say wha’?
U: It exists!
PQ: Well, I think you need to get a little more specific here. What are you talking about? What thing is it that you say exists? George W. Bush? The beach at Waikiki? How about my mortgage? That exists too – unfortunately.
U: No, this is something far more important and fundamental than that!
PQ: Really? It would have to be pretty special to be more important and fundamental than my mortgage. Ask anybody who has one.
U: Pitiful. Such a range of the moment perspective. Still, it’s always interesting to see the thought processes of . . . people like you.
No, this is special. All the disasters throughout human history have come about because people try to pretend that the thing I’m talking about doesn’t exist.
PQ: Huh?
U: Check it out. Galt’s speech, page 1016.
PQ: Hey, let me in on this! I sure don’t want to see any more disasters! We’ve had too many of those already. So what are you talking about?
U: Existence!
PQ: Huh? The hell you say!
U: No, it’s true! And I know that existence exists on experiential, a posteriori grounds. I feel existence. I smell existence. I see existence. You and the rest of the human race are going to be really sorry if you pretend otherwise.
PQ: Yeah, right. Sure thing. You know, I think you really have to stop abusing that prescription for medical marijuana. . .
gordon, at least do me the courtesy of not selectively ostracizing me when it suits you. it makes it hard to take you seriously, and i do so want to take you seriously.
ReplyDeleteAs to your rant, I have three comments.
First, have you ever been exposed to actual, bona fide mysticism of the sort Ayn Rand opposed?
For instance, have you been immersed in fundamentalist religious schools? Have you lived in countries such as Saudi Arabia or Cuba?
Do you have any first-hand experience with the sorts of people she was talking about?
Or has your long-time involvement in objectivist organizations insulated you from actual people who think in exactly the way she describes, and who do so for exactly the purpose she names?
My second question is, childish mockery and assorted gibberish aside, do you really think it's impossible to know, on a posteriori grounds, that existence exists? Is this a controversial proposition?
My third comment is something more of a hypothesis. You said you spent years thigh-deep in rand-worship and objectivist ideological organizations. It occurs to me that if a significant number of people in those organizations think in the manner you do, and likely did when you were involved in these organizations, they must be horrible places in which to try and think.
But even if they go that route, I can justify the statement “Existence exists” on a posteriori grounds as well.
ReplyDeleteYes, you can say that, but that does not make it empirical in any relevant sort.
Some analytical statements can be applied to reality. Mathematical statements, for instance, can be used to describe relations in experience, or measure the movements or size of matter. But there are other analytical statements, of which "existence exists," which really can't be applied at all, simply because they are too broad, vague, trivial, inconsequential. What does it mean to say that "existence exists"? It means merely that whatever exists does in fact exist. It doesn't tell you whether something exists, or what that something is that does or might exist, or even what it means for something to exist. The phrase "existence exists" is as useless as the phrase "reality is real," or the phrase "runners run," or the phrase "blue things are blue," or any other tautology you can think up. These are not significant utterances. They do not even constitute claims of knowledge. Descriptions of empirical truth need to be more specific.
Rand seems to have thought "existence exists" makes a nice axiom for a philosophy because she imagined that there were a lot of philosophers out there denying that anything existed. But who denies any such thing? Could we please have some names? (Idealists don't deny existence; they merely deny the existence of matter.) But even if there were philosophers out there denying existence, the phrase existence exists would hardly refute them. The existence denier could simply retort, "Sure, if there is such a thing as existence, it would exist. But if there's no existence, it doesn't exist." The phrase "existence exists" is no more empirical, or applicable to empirical problems, then is the phrase "non-existence doesn't exist."
How can he [i.e., Peikoff] say one type of statement that doesn’t exist is just as true as another type of statement that doesn’t exist?
First you ascribe to Peikoff the view that analytical statements are unreliable; now you ascribe to him the view that analytical and synthetic statements don't exist. Which is it?
"What does it mean to say that "existence exists"? It means merely that whatever exists does in fact exist."
ReplyDeleteit's an interesting question, and it's one i've never really thought about before this conversation. thanks for the opportunity to ponder it. i'm not sure that a statement can really be characterized as "analytic" or "synthetic" or "a priori" or "a posteriori" without reference to be basis of the sentence.
for instance, it's possible that when you say "existence exists," your concept "existence" only incorporates "that which exists." in such a case, it would be a trivial statement.
but what if your concept of "existence" refers not simply to a naked "that which exists," but to the sum of my experiences and knowledge about existence? what if it refers to everything around me, and me?
then i'm not sure it's so trivial.
it's interesting to me that the characterization of the statement as "synthetic" or "analytic," "a priori" or "a posteriori" really depends on the meaning loaded into the constituent concepts. the same sentence can fall into any of the categories, depending on the meaning assigned to each of the words.
i agree with you that the axiom "existence exists" is fairly trivial and uncontroversial by itself. i think it gains significance, however, when combined with the other two axioms: identity and consciousness. those are more controversial. but the axiom of existence provides them with some context and meaning.
"First you ascribe to Peikoff the view that analytical statements are unreliable; now you ascribe to him the view that analytical and synthetic statements don't exist. Which is it?"
as i understand him, he's saying that "purely" analytic statements are unreliable -- that is, a statement which makes no reference to any concepts acquired from an examination of reality. he therefore cuts them off the chopping block as unworthy of consideration. of the remaining propositions, as i understand it, he sees no useful or meaningful distinction between "analytic" or "synthetic." they're all both.
i'm starting to suspect, though, that the problem runs even deeper than he saw. as i've been trying to articulate, i think the same sentence can fall into any of these categories depending on the meaning ascribed to the constituent words, and the basis for one's belief in the truth of the proposition.
i guess this is similar to what peikoff is arguing, but slightly different. he argues that the distinction is invalid. it might be more fair to say that the distinction depends on one's meaning and basis in making the statement.
ReplyDeletefor instance, "all bachelors are unmarried" could be rendered into a synthetic statement. say i live in a society in which bachelors never wear rings, and so i define "bachelor" in terms of "one without a ring." nobody's told me that bachelors aren't married. if you ask me what a bachelor is, i'll tell you it's a person without a ring.
if somebody comes to me and says "bachelors are unmarried," the predicate is not contained in the subject _to me_ -- that's not my definition of bachelor.
so the statement would be analytic to the person who defines bachelors in terms of their married status, and synthetic to a person who defines bachelors in terms of their ring wearing.
"Or has your long-time involvement in objectivist organizations insulated you from actual people who think in exactly the way she describes, and who do so for exactly the purpose she names?"
ReplyDeleteCorrection. I have never belonged to any Objectivist organization. Not ever. That's your inference, and a mistaken one. You do a lot of those.
I was enthusiastic about Ayn Rand for about 10 years after reading Atlas at the age of 13. And I went to three sets of NBI lectures. That's pretty much it.
Instead of spinning out baseless theories about the personal lives of people you don't know, I think you could usefully spend more time at self criticism and self evaluation. To judge from your hundreds of exclusively outward-looking posts, and the personality that comes through from those posts, I have to conclude that neither of these activities comes to you easily, if at all.
Perhaps you're not familiar with the meaning of the question mark. It implies a question. Not a claim.
ReplyDeleteAnd while you turned part of my question into a claim, you didn't answer the substantive part of it. Do you have any experience with the sort of authentic mysticism ayn rand talked about? Have you ever been immersed in fundamentalist or statist environs? Do you have any idea what rand was actually talking about?
I'm trying to imagine how much of rand a 13 year old could possibly understand. I'm coming up blank.
i suppose a 13 year old might read AS at about the same level as he watches a Superman flick. He gets excited about the heroic element, maybe dresses up as the hero. Having no context for the sort of mysticism ayn rand was identifying, he'd have no idea what the book was really about.
ReplyDeletei speculate this happens to a lot of 13 year olds. i do often here the meme about how "ayn rand is for misunderstood teenagers." i suspect a lot of misunderstood teenagers glom onto the heroic element in AR, and have no idea what else is going on.
I think the problem with "existence exists," at least as it is used by many Objectivists, is that it becomes an equivocation.
ReplyDeleteThe word "existence," which in this context means only "whatever it is that exists," is conflated with a related but different term, "physical reality." This is the equivocation.
The result of the equivocation is that a tautological statement of little value is transformed into an axiomatic "proof" of the existence of physical reality, which is intended to put paid to idealists and solipsists.
Moreover, some Objectivists go further and assume that if physical reality equals existence, then nothing outside of physical reality can exist. Peikoff made a related argument in some of his lecture series: there can be no such thing as the supernatural, because by definition it would be outside nature, and nature (the physical world) is all that exists. Of course this is a purely verbalistic argument and an example of question-begging. (The question of whether or not there is anything outside, beyond, or apart from "nature" is merely a restatement of the question: Does the supernatural exist?)
If Peikoff were challenged on this point, my guess is that he would fall back on "existence exists" as the axiomatic foundation of the view that "nature" equals "physical reality" equals "existence" equals "all that exists."
So Objectivism, at least in some interpretations, can get a lot of mileage out of this tautology, but only by equivocating, question-begging, and playing semantic games.
"i suspect a lot of misunderstood teenagers glom onto the heroic element in AR, and have no idea what else is going on."
ReplyDeleteThere you go again.
I have read all of Rand's non-fiction and have a graduate degree in philosophy. To repeat:
Instead of "suspecting" things about the personal lives of people you don't know, I think you could usefully spend more time at self criticism and self evaluation.
As to your other point, I reject the notion that you need to have direct experience of fundamentalist nuts to understand why "existence exists" says nothing.
Rand's claim is that people who don't agree with her - not just fanatics but the entire human race - are evading Aristotle's axiom of identity. This amounts to saying that you're bound to be an Objectivist if you keep firmly in mind that a thing is itself. When the point is stripped of its rhetoric and stated that baldly, one can see that it's not a profound philosophical insight; rather, it's a delusion.
Prescott,
ReplyDelete"The word "existence," which in this context means only "whatever it is that exists," is conflated with a related but different term, "physical reality." This is the equivocation."
To the extent people do that, I agree it's an equivocation. I haven't heard people do that, but I also haven't involved myself in Objectivist "culture" to any significant extent.
"Moreover, some Objectivists go further and assume that if physical reality equals existence, then nothing outside of physical reality can exist. Peikoff made a related argument in some of his lecture series: there can be no such thing as the supernatural, because by definition it would be outside nature, and nature (the physical world) is all that exists. Of course this is a purely verbalistic argument and an example of question-begging. (The question of whether or not there is anything outside, beyond, or apart from "nature" is merely a restatement of the question: Does the supernatural exist?) "
It's funny, I had invented that argument myself, thought i was all slick, and then read peikoff make the same one. i can't speak to his intent, but my intent in making that argument is not to exclude the existence of "non-physical reality," but simply to point out that whatever is -- be it god, spirit, whatever -- must be included in any meaningful notion of "nature." i originally used it in the context of debates about creationism. if in fact God exists, he must be part of nature. because he exists. even if he's a being of perfect spirit or consciousness or whatever. then whatever he is, is part of nature.
it's true it's a linguistic argument, but i think it's a significant one. to define nature arbitrarily as "part of what exists, but not everything," strikes me as conceptually vacuous. i have the same objection to calling a beaver dam "natural" but a human dam "unnatural." by what definition of "nature" is our activity excluded? or we sub natural? and i have the same objection to calling certain human behaviors "natural" and others "unnatural." whatever we're doing, we're doing. it's all part of nature.
my objection there is mostly to using the word "nature" to linguistically parse the universe. why is the creator of the universe outside nature? why are our constructions outside nature? why are certain dysfunctional human behaviors outside nature? i find it very conceptually useful to define "nature" as "all the exists," be it spirit, matter, energy, voodoo, whatever.
gordon, it's funny to me that you think your habit of ostracizing me is consistent with your efforts to give me advice. do you really think i care about the opinions of a person who acts like a 4 year old child, saying he's never going to speak to me again, until he can't help it 14 hours later? you have no personal credibility. you've blown it on buffoonery. i don't take your advice seriously.
ReplyDeleteas to the sustance of your comment, you're ignoring my point. your initial "quasi platonic dialog" you mocked the significance i put on the belief that "existence exists" and the possibility that there are a lot of people out there who wish it didn't and go to great lengths to rationalize its non-existence. in response, i asked you if you have any experience with mystics -- like fundamentalists -- the people to whom objectivism ascribes this point of view. you've refused to answer, so i conclude that you haven't.
let me tell you this: the reason i became drawn to objectivism was because i had been exposed to those ideas in both their religious and statist forms, had experienced the horrible effects, and found that she provided the antidote.
to the extent you haven't been exposed to and harmed by those ideas, you don't have any context for understanding what she was describing, because you haven't experienced it yourself.
to the extent you hold those ideas yourself, of course, you'd oppose her ideas because they oppose your mystical whims.
that would remain true even if you got a phd in philosophy at some later point. after all, peikoff got one of those too and it evidently didn't prevent him from being an idiot. right?
i was -- and am -- attracted to objectivism precisely because when she talks about those people and how they think, i have real world referents for comparison. she's talking about people i know. describing behaviors i've seen. and i find that her explanations are accurate.
Hello Michael.
ReplyDeleteI have to say that I'm quite comfortable with the notion that physical reality is the only reality there is: I just don't think it can be proved by announcing that existence exists. Or in any other way, for that matter.
I would agree with your suggestion that Objectivism thrives on tautologies, leading to equivocating, question-begging, and playing semantic games. That’s to be expected: because in spite of its hubristic rhetoric, Objectivism is not the fact-driven system it claims to be. (Yes, Greg, I know you’ve made that point many times over.) It’s a rationalist system disguised as an empirical one.
One of my favourite examples of this disguised rationalism is the constant appeal of Objectivists to what they call “the facts of reality”. It doesn’t take too long to find out that the “facts” they’re talking about aren’t things like the freezing point of water or the location of Honolulu. No indeed: “facts of reality” turn out to be statements like: “A is A.” “Everything has a cause.” “Man’s life must be the standard of value for any valid ethical system.” Now even if you agreed with all these propositions, it wouldn’t make them facts. Calling them “facts of reality” is just a bit of verbal obfuscation to obscure the distinction between a metaphysical claim and a statement based on concrete, documentable observations.
This muddying of the distinction between factual claims and metaphysical claims is one of the more destructive aspects of Objectivism. It is, I think, the reason why Objectivists are so frequently indifferent or hostile to any attempt to empirically confirm any of Rand’s extravagant factual assertions. After all, if you are in full possessions of “the facts of reality”, why look for any of the mundane facts that might confirm such absolute truths? That would be like going around with a tape measure to verify the Pythagorean theorem.
More ominously, the rationalist, absolutist character of their arguments leaves Objectivists indifferent to factual counterexamples. After all, anything which contradicts any empirical claims logically derived from those “facts of reality” can’t possibly be true, can they? So why take contradictory evidence seriously? Thus Ayn Rand proved to her own satisfaction that statistical evidence correlating smoking and lung cancer was clearly irrational and anti-capitalistic – and we all know how well that worked out. So why not bring the same flawless reasoning to bear on issues like climate change?
Ungtss, I will disregard your increasingly hysterical personal attacks. I will only observe that I am not surprised that you would feel contempt for any suggestion that you need to do more self criticism and self evaluation. Your reaction is exactly what I would have expected.
ReplyDeleteOf course I have been exposed to religious fundamentalists as well as doctrinaire Marxists; many people have. I didn’t answer your question because I regarded exposure or non-exposure to fantatics as irrelevant to the validity of Rand’s philosophical argument. I still do. Your own close experience of statists and religious fundamentalists may explain the strength of your emotional reaction, but it adds nothing to the philosophical merits of what Rand is saying.
Let me repeat: the core of Rand’s argument is that all the evil that men do would vanish if people firmly and consistently remembered that a thing is itself. That is the argument. Period. And it is an argument which is plainly absurd.
That's not remotely the argument. Your failure to understand what she was saying is now nakedly clear. I don't blame you for thinking she's wrong. Within the context of your knowledge you're right. The problem is you have no real world context to understand what she was saying, because you haven't been in sort of places she was. Contact with fundamentalism does not equate to immersion in it. This is actually helpful to me. I'm no longer irritated with you.
ReplyDeleteYou don't understand what she was doing with Dagny Taggart do you? You don't understand that Dagny was illustrating the many aspects of discovering the nature of mysticism. That that was the whole point of the book. That one does not grasp that is a and suddenly become a perfectly moral person. That it takes a long time to understand the nature of mystics and what they are doing and why they are doing it. I don't blame you. You haven't been there.
ReplyDeleteI think the appeal of Ayn Rand to some teenagers is patently obvious - Atlas Shrugged reads like one huge lined-paper-notebook manifesto of the kind a teenager might write when they're angry at the world for not understanding them. Galt's speech (among other such points in the book) smacks strongly of teenage wish-fulfillment - being able to tell off all the people who picked on you and didn't invite you to their parties, and now you can rub their noses in it. "Society is about to collapse, bet you wish you were nicer to me NOW, eh? I could have saved the world with my engine, but now I will destroy it just to spite you, so there." It is the allure of the justified, righteous tantrum. Someone who identifies with the heroes in that book can not only feel right, but superior. Heroism, if it really enters into it, is only a subset of the larger appeal of "actually, you ARE in fact better than everyone else, your only problem is that you're too nice to people".
ReplyDeleteIt's basic to art interpretation: the audience draws out only what it can grasp. I can see a self entitled prick drawing what you describe out of that speech. On the other hand, a mature person with diverse life experiences would draw something else from it. Because he would be capable of seeing it.
ReplyDeleteWell, two things: many Objectivists ARE self-centered pricks. (Not that they'd necessarily admit it.) In fact, one could say that Rand's philosophy, with its emphasis on greed as a virtue and being judgmental, encourages that kind of personality - as a default. The philosophy justifies it. One isn't REALLY a self-centered prick, one is just valuing one's own life and rejecting the standards of the sub-human irrational beings.
ReplyDeleteSecond, if it's true that the dominant trend is for devoted Objectivists to pick up on Rand in their younger, high-school years, then it's not really the "mature person with diverse life experiences" that makes up the bulk of Objectivists.
@Gordon Burkwoski: Let me repeat: the core of Rand’s argument is that all the evil that men do would vanish if people firmly and consistently remembered that a thing is itself.
ReplyDeleteTo which ungtss replies:
That's not remotely the argument. Your failure to understand what she was saying is now nakedly clear.
Okay, ungtss. If that's not Rand's argument, why does Galt say it is? I quote:
"Are you seeking to know what is wrong with the world? All the disasters that have wrecked your world, came from your leaders’ attempt to evade the fact that A is A. All the secret evil you dread to face within you and all the pain you have ever endured, came from your own attempt to evade the fact that A is A. The purpose of those who taught you to evade it, was to make you forget that Man is Man." (Galt's speech, p.930 in the Centennial paperback).
Rand really believed that if you fully understood the Law of Identity, the entire philosophy of Objectivism would follow as an inevitable logical consequence, as valid and irrefutable as, say, modus ponens. And if people understood that, there would be an end to evil.
She was wrong about this. To hide it, she redefines philosophical terms like logic, validity, proof, certainty. But the logical structure of Objectivism is flawed.
That's not to say everything Rand said was wrong. For instance, she was not wrong about power-lusters using mysticism and/or ideology as weapons to gain and maintain control over others. I think that's been empirically demonstrated -- and I seriously doubt Rand was the first person in human history to make this observation.
And she was absolutely right about the importance of thinking for yourself and not just going along with others.
But just because some of her conclusions stand up under empirical testing (or based on someone's personal experience, which is not the same thing), that doesn't make Objectivism good philosophy.
ECE:
ReplyDelete>But just because some of her conclusions stand up under empirical testing (or based on someone's personal experience, which is not the same thing), that doesn't make Objectivism good philosophy.
It is almost impossible to have a philosophy that is completely false. Thus, Objectivism inevitably has some truth in it.
The question is what is a) good about it and b) original about it. We argue that a) and b) are basically exclusive in Randian doctrine.
For example, I've noted that many Objectivists - in fact I suspect a disproportionate amount - come from a strict religious fundamentalist background. I can see how Rand would be very useful against such oppressive belief systems (tho I sometimes joke that it is jumping out of the frying pan into another frying pan on "simmer"). And we often say here at the ARCHNblog that there is nothing wrong with using Rand and her work as a kind of vague inspiration - in fact that's probably its primary benefit. Productivity, ambition, achievement, realism, reason, individualism - we're good with all these things in a broad sense. However, the original Randian doctrines around these broad-brush goods are where it all goes horribly wrong.
"Well, two things: many Objectivists ARE self-centered pricks. (Not that they'd necessarily admit it.) In fact, one could say that Rand's philosophy, with its emphasis on greed as a virtue and being judgmental, encourages that kind of personality - as a default. "
ReplyDeleteAnd again, to the extent that's all a large group of people are able to grasp in her work, that's all they'll see. those who want a rationalization to be an a-hole will jump on the bandwagon. those who oppose being an a-hole will oppose it. but nobody will understand what's actually going on in the book, because nobody understands what she's actually saying.
this is not unique to objectivism. it happens to every philosopher or artist who speaks over the heads of his or her audience. the audience takes bits and pieces of it and runs with them ... usually directly over a cliff.
ECE,
You're treating her notion of A=A as a proposition that is sufficient for the discovery of all knowledge. That's not what she meant. She saw A=A as a proposition necessary to engage in the process of the discovery of all knowledge.
Thus knowing "A=A" doesn't give you all knowledge. But approaching the discovery of life from the position "A=A" makes it possible for you to discover more, and without that position, the discovery of more is impossible.
the rest of her argument is of course arguing for what A is. sure, evil arises from evading what A is. But what is A? She wrote many thousands of pages about what A is. And that is the rest of the argument.
She illustrates this concretely, all you have to do is look at the main characters -- Dagny and Hank. They spend almost the entire book learning what A is.
Barnes,
Perhaps people from fundamentalist backgrounds (and i'm not one of them -- i was immersed in it for a total of 5 years growing up, but my parents were not fundamentalists themselves) and people from statist backgrounds (people like me who grew up in communist china, cuba, saudi arabia, and russia) have a unique perspective on the nature of mysticism that people without those experiences don't have. perhaps those experiences allow us to see the importance of epistemology and independence and reason and the permission to think in black and white terms. perhaps those who haven't had those experiences have the luxury of taking those things for granted.
ECE, thanks for your post. As usual, it is clear from your remarks that you are speaking from the vantage point of someone who has Been There.
ReplyDeleteI think that a lot of people read quotes like the one you gave from Galt’s speech and think: “Well, all he’s saying is that we can’t duck facts. We have to be realistic.” If you told them that Rand is saying that there would be no more evil in the world if everyone firmly remembered that a thing is always itself, they would probably find it hard to believe. The hidden premise being: no one could believe something that crazy. But Rand did. It is the core of her metaphysics and is presented as such.
On page 1015 of the original hardcover edition of Atlas, Galt says: “Existence exists – and the act of grasping that statement implies two corollary axioms: that something exists which one perceives and that one exists possessing consciousness, consciousness being the faculty of perceiving that which exists.”
The point here is that this is not high rhetoric. This is the language of philosophical argument. Not a very good argument perhaps, but philosophical argument nonetheless. So when Galt moves on a page later to the quotation you gave, and attributes all human evil to an evasion of the law of identity, it’s clear that he’s saying a lot more than that people need to be realistic and face facts.
"The point here is that this is not high rhetoric. This is the language of philosophical argument. Not a very good argument perhaps, but philosophical argument nonetheless. So when Galt moves on a page later to the quotation you gave, and attributes all human evil to an evasion of the law of identity, it’s clear that he’s saying a lot more than that people need to be realistic and face facts. "
ReplyDeleteYou may notice that she's saying A=A implies two corrolary axioms ... that's an argument. which a) means that A=A doesn't contain those two corrolary axioms, but that those corollary axioms must be argued for, and b) doesn't say anything about A=A giving you knowledge beyond the corollary axioms.
To the extent you're reading something insane into her "A=A" axiom, i'm sorry, you're reading it in there, but it isn't there. A=A speaks to the process of learning. To a moral commitment. The rest of life is the process of discovering what A is. A=A can't give you that. Nobody said it could. Least of all ms "tabula rasa" herself.
an honest kid growing up in a place like saudi arabia is faced with a haunting question: "why do they do what they do?" you discover very quickly that the modern liberal explanation doesn't cut it. it's superficial, naive, ignorant. ayn rand's explanation hits it on the head. it explains their behavior consistent with everything a kid growing up in saudi arabia sees. or in china. or cuba. or russia.
ReplyDeleteit isn't a "mistake." it's deliberate. they create mystical ideologies to rationalize their basic desire -- to destroy the good.
once you understand that impulse, your childhood experiences come into focus. and once those come into focus, you start seeing gradations of that destructive impulse elsewhere. and it explains what you continue to see.
that denial of reality is really driven by a hatred of reality. and the hatred of reality inspires a desire to destroy reality.
Hi Gordon,
ReplyDeleteYou wrote,
"I'm quite comfortable with the notion that physical reality is the only reality there is: I just don't think it can be proved by announcing that existence exists. Or in any other way, for that matter."
I agree that it can't be proved, because essentially you would be proving a negative – i.e., you would be proving that no other kind of reality exists. And how could you possibly do that? On the other hand, it might be possible to prove that some other level or dimension or plane of reality does exist, which would then show that our quotidian physical reality is not the only one.
Here's a notion I like to play with. I admit it's pure speculation and it may well be wrong. I like to think that all of physical reality can be reduced to information and information processing. Subatomic particles like electrons seem to behave more like factors in an equation than like any physical objects. Since everything physical is made of subatomic particles, it might follow that our physical spacetime universe is made up of data points endlessly processed by a cosmic CPU. What we call the physical world, in this scenario, would be akin to the virtual reality environment rendered by a CPU. It would be a realistic-seeming environment, one we can navigate and explore, but ultimately reducible to ones and zeros.
This is, of course, only an analogy or a metaphor; I'm not saying our world actually exists on somebody's hard drive!
A related analogy involves holograms. We might see our world as a multidimensional and multisensory "image," akin to a three-dimensional hologram that exists as a real image in space. What underlies the hologram is the holographic plate, which consists of wave interference patterns, which are ultimately reducible to data points. In fact, the wave interference patterns are information, and the coherent light that generates the hologram is what (in a sense) processes or decrypts that information and renders it as an image.
This idea, though obviously speculative in the extreme, has actually been bandied about by some physicists, and as I understand it, there is even an attempt underway to test it. I don't claim to understand the details, but apparently there is a blurring or fuzziness found in holograms, and someone has come up with a way of testing for an equivalent blur in our universe. Even if such a blur is detected, it will not prove the holographic hypothesis, but it will at least be consistent with the hypothesis.
I'm not saying this is the way things are, because, well, who knows? But if anything like this turns out to be true, then physical reality, at least as we understand it, will be only a small part of a much larger picture – much as classical Newtonian physics, which was once thought to explain the entire world, is now seen as only a part of a larger explanation.
And then there's consciousness, which is also a reality, but not necessarily a physical reality at all ...
"an honest kid growing up in a place like saudi arabia is faced with a haunting question: "why do they do what they do?" you discover very quickly that the modern liberal explanation doesn't cut it. it's superficial, naive, ignorant. ayn rand's explanation hits it on the head. it explains their behavior consistent with everything a kid growing up in saudi arabia sees. or in china. or cuba. or russia.
ReplyDeleteit isn't a "mistake." it's deliberate. they create mystical ideologies to rationalize their basic desire -- to destroy the good."
But that itself is just as much a simplification - moreso, in fact - as any "liberal" explanation (which can't be addressed, since you don't really detail what you think that liberal viewpoint IS). It presumes no motive beyond being evil.
Does the Taliban really work to destroy the good? Not if you ask them. Did Hitler wake up each morning and say, "well, time to do some utterly despicable things and just wreck The Good for a while"? I highly doubt it. In fact, I'm willing to bet they believed that what they were/are doing served the Good - as they saw it. To claim otherwise is not to gain a more thorough understanding of another person, but to reduce them to cartoons in order to just dismiss them as evil, and nothing but.
You're right that ideologies can be used to justify what might be considered to be evil actions by some. But they don't have to be mystic. If you follow the Randzapper link on the side of this blog you can, if you nose about, find examples of Objectivists expressing thoughts that many would consider to be disturbing, if not evil themselves - such gems as atom-bombing sections of the Middle East in order to make the people turn against Islamist extremists, or that the near-extermination of the Native American peoples was justified and in fact did not go far enough. (All the more disturbing is that Rand seemed to hold the latter view as well.)
It would be very easy to claim, as you did earlier, that only a few people will "get" what Ayn Rand was trying to say with her philosophy, and smaller (sub-human?) minds can't grasp it. But I think that is, at least as far as Objectvism goes, something of a double standard. After all, one of the criticisms of Christianity and other religions is the evil that is done in its name. Fair enough as far as that goes, but if religion cannot be excused because of the actions of those who profess to act in its name, how can Objectivism be spared the same criticism when those who declare themselves Objectivists act badly?
This is why I personally consider Objectivism to be, in practice, something of a religion of its own. Not of the supernatural, but of its own unchallenged assumptions.
"But that itself is just as much a simplification - moreso, in fact - as any "liberal" explanation (which can't be addressed, since you don't really detail what you think that liberal viewpoint IS). It presumes no motive beyond being evil."
ReplyDeleteIt presumes two motives -- the desire to destroy, and the desire to rationalize it. To make sense of a destructive impulse. To morally justify it.
I don't think it's an simplification at all. I think that it's the clearest explanation for what I see. I wouldn't expect to persuade somebody over a blog:). I'd only suggest keeping your eyes open, and checking to see if it provides a good explanation for why college age kids walk into theatres and grade schools and just shoot people they don't know. then ask yourself if there might be more subtle cases of the same impulse -- better masked. just take a look.
"Does the Taliban really work to destroy the good? Not if you ask them. Did Hitler wake up each morning and say, "well, time to do some utterly despicable things and just wreck The Good for a while"? I highly doubt it."
no, you're right, they don't say it aloud. but that wasn't rand's view of them, either. rand's view was that it was a rationalization -- a story they told themselves to try and make sense of their basic desire to destroy. that's what rand was illustrating in AS. that people deliberately blind themselves to reality, in order to rationalize a wish to destroy.
i'd love to discuss it in detail, and could talk for hours about it. my only point _here_, though, is that AR was talking about a lot more than "A=A." Because other authors were earlier claiming that AR's view was that "A=A" is some sort of Ultimate Absolute Automatic Instant Solution to all Mankind's problems. Far from it. Once you commit to believing A=A, the next question is, "what is A?" and that'll take you a lifetime.
" if you nose about, find examples of Objectivists expressing thoughts that many would consider to be disturbing,"
i'm sure there are. i'm long past believing that giving yourself a label or aligning yourself with a particular author means anything about a) whether you understand what they're saying, or b) whether you're a decent human being.
"After all, one of the criticisms of Christianity and other religions is the evil that is done in its name."
That criticism is quite common. But it's specious. Ideology is an individual phenomenon. What that means is that each person creates their own ideology. So two people reading the same book will interpret it in different ways, in light of their different values, and come to different belief systems.
That's the real thing to notice about christianity. that no two christianities are the same. christianity claims both the crusaders and st francis of assisi. the label doesn't mean anything.
what matters are the ideas as absorbed, understood, and applied by individuals.
A person who reads the new testament and sees a call for holy war is going to find a call for holy war no matter what he reads. he could read the great gatsby. he'll find a call for holy war.
because ideology is inseparable from the individual.
i think rand and peikoff missed this point. their attempt to create a doctrinal movement, and their criticism of religion as a largely undifferentiated whole, show that they didn't understand the irreducibly individual nature of ideology.
it's a shame too, because it's less a criticism of their philosophy than their own failure to apply their own philosophy consistently. they recognized that thought was irreducibly individual. they just didn't apply that to this context.
i also think she had a very powerful insight as far as explaining mystical systems -- both religious and statist -- as protection rackets. these people literally create problems, create misery, create desperation -- in order to create something for themselves to fix. it's quite systematic, as in the instance of sexual and food regulations. tell a teenager that any sexual thought is sin. ev en admiring a girl. even masturbation. everything. tell him that a core part of his existence is evil.
ReplyDeletehe'll become miserable. and then you'll use is misery as proof that he needs whatever poison you're selling.
it's not an accident. it's too systematic. rand helped me understand what i'd been seeing all my life and not understanding. i'm grateful to her for that.
governments do exactly the same thing, of course. they create an economic crisis by economic policy to obviously destructive to be accidental. then when the inevitable crisis comes, they blame it on the market. and demand more power. same trick. just a different context. not an accident. rand helped me understand it.
ReplyDelete"and checking to see if it provides a good explanation for why college age kids walk into theatres and grade schools and just shoot people they don't know."
ReplyDeleteIt provides an explanation. I just don't see how it's a GOOD explanation. Presuming that someone has a wish to destroy isn't really an explanation of any worth, it's simply a snap judgement. If they want to destroy, WHY do they want to destroy? What is it that drives them? That's what needs explaining. Otherwise you really can't say you understand anything about these people, you've just dismissed them for being somehow broken.
"governments do exactly the same thing, of course. they create an economic crisis by economic policy to obviously destructive to be accidental. then when the inevitable crisis comes, they blame it on the market. and demand more power. same trick. just a different context. not an accident. rand helped me understand it"
The thing is, without actual proof of such an intent, this is the stuff of paranoia and conspiracy theories. It is as equally plausible, for example, that George Bush, Dick Cheney and Co. let the 9/11 attacks happen on purpose in order to gin up support for the subsequent wars. No proof? But "obviously" there could not have been such a catastrophic failure of security or of the structure of the buildings - not without assistance.
Once you slide down that path, of believing things for which you have no solid factual evidence (like believing in God just because it seems sensible to you that existence could not have just appeared from nothing without some guiding hand), of taking some assertion as "obvious" without testing it, then it's not hard to believe nearly any wild theory.
Fair points. My experience, however, and the story dramatized in AS, is that these are the most difficult explanations for a decent person to accept. I spent a years looking for alternatives. Trying to give them the benefit of the doubt. I didn't want to believe it was true. But now, having wrestled with it for 15 years now, I'm convinced. Your mileage may vary.
ReplyDeleteThe point again, though, is that this is a major theme in AS. Her protagonists spent the whole book giving their opponents every benefit of the doubt. Until the truth stood naked.
And her heros did not try to argue them into it. They let her protagonists take their take figuring it out. It took me 15 years. What can I say.
"I am merely giving ou the words for the day you will need them." That's what AR was for me. When I first read her I was too young and stupid to understand more than the most superficial aspects of what she was saying. But over the years, the real world started throwing me questions that only she had good answers to. I fought her every step of the way. But she won.
ReplyDelete"The point again, though, is that this is a major theme in AS. Her protagonists spent the whole book giving their opponents every benefit of the doubt. Until the truth stood naked."
ReplyDeleteBut all truth portrayed Atlas Shrugged is a work of fiction, the complete invention of the author. Anyone can make a story where one principle or another ultimately is revealed to be true over any other.
For Rand's story to work, her villains MUST do as they do. They cannot have any moderation, no second thoughts, no redeeming qualities whatsoever, or else the literary supports fall apart. Which is fine if your purpose is to tell a gripping adventure yarn, but not so palatable if you want to say, "and in the same way these people act in my book, so too do people operate in real life."
I agree her saying it doesn't make it so. I'm just saying there's more there than a=a. Real life is the place o ask whether people can act hat way.
ReplyDeleteHi Michael.
ReplyDeleteIt’s a pleasure to respond to your last post. I’m sure that Jzero and ungtss will want to spend more time not convincing each other. But I’m also sure that most people would welcome a Taliban-free, Hitler-free speculative time out.
Whichever direction physics takes, the result is bound to be counter-intuitive: common sense intuitions don’t get you far when you’re talking about quarks. I don’t find any of this either surprising or threatening: one of my favourite quotes is that the universe is not only stranger than we imagine, but stranger than we can imagine.
Interestingly, the same can’t be said of Objectivists: just take a long at Harriman’s attempt at philosophy of science in "The Logical Leap". And note Rand’s dismissive references to “complexity worship”. My guess is that it only becomes “complexity recognition” if it is easily simplified. . .
Having said that, I do have a few points to make about world hypotheses.
My central one is that any theory, no matter how strange, ought to have a mechanism that allows it to be confirmed or (above all) disconfirmed. In practice, that means that it concerns stuff that can at least theoretically be detected and measured. I note that that’s true of all the speculative possibilities you present.
I am quite cheerfully aware that this excludes phenomena that can’t be detected or measured. My answer: I don’t care. People who are into detecting and measuring have done a lot better in the last 500 years than people who aren’t.
All of this is just another way of saying that I see no good reason whatever for believing that the universe is the way it is as a result of any exercise of will or intent. Infinitely complex? Yes. Comprehensible? Yes, at least in principle. Purposeful? No. Significantly, in spite of her atheism, Rand assumes that everyone must believe either in a “malevolent universe” or “benevolent universe”. She has a whole set of reasons for doing this, none of them very good. Actually, the universe isn’t malevolent or benevolent. It just is. Human effort can turn some of the universe’s worse places into tolerable ones. But not always.
That brings me to your concluding remark: “And then there's consciousness, which is also a reality, but not necessarily a physical reality at all ...”
I know that many philosophers consider it a truism that there’s a fundamental difference between “mental events” and “physical events”. I understand why they can say this: there are key epistemological issues at stake when one discusses the relationship between the world and one’s experience of the world. And I note with approval your “not necessarily”.
However, for me the experience of consciousness provides no plausible justification for the existence of a Cartesian “thinking substance”.
Are people only “a collection of chemicals”? Of course not. But the best way to achieve a sense of wonder about human beings is not by reifying consciousness, but by putting that sense of wonder where it belongs: in the natural world.
Every human being – every one – represents natural processes achieving a level of complexity that results in awareness - in billions of different places and in billions of different ways. It's an awesome thing. Chances are that somewhere out there natural processes have achieved a level of complexity that results in beings with a level of awareness beyond anything that we can imagine. But I don’t see any need to posit a separate realm of consciousness – or a god – in order to admit such possibilities or to maintain a sense of awe.
" Real life is the place o ask whether people can act hat way."
ReplyDeleteYes it is. But here's the thing: Rand supplies the ready-made answer to that. "Of course they can! They have no other reason than that they hate what is good and want to destroy it!" And if you accept that answer and never question it, if you assume that you know the motivation of another person without having the factual evidence to back it up (and who can really know what goes on in another person's mind?), then it's faith, not reason, that's providing the answer.
It is as if one was assembling a puzzle, and many pieces are of a very similar shape. One places a piece in a space, and it seems to fit. It seems to "work" where it is. But that the gap accommodates that piece doesn't mean it's the right piece for that space.
"And if you accept that answer and never question it, if you assume that you know the motivation of another person without having the factual evidence to back it up (and who can really know what goes on in another person's mind?), then it's faith, not reason, that's providing the answer."
ReplyDeleteI agree. That's why I fought it for so long. And to the extent some people accept it by faith, not by reason, they're not doing as rand would suggest:).
her heros never demanded that anybody accept their interpretation of the mystics' motives on faith. they left dagny and hank to discover their motives on their own. and dagny and hank of course refused to believe those were their motives until the motives became nakedly clear, based on evidence.
that's the same tack i've taken. this was the last thing i wanted to believe. but the evidence is now too crushingly overwhelming for me, personally, to ignore:).
that's why my intent is not to persuade you that this is true. i'd be a fool to try. my only purpose is to a) point out that rand was painting a picture to explain a moral phenomenon as she saw it occurring in the real world; and b) to say that having approached the real world with that image available to me in my conceptual vocabulary, i find it is the best, most reasonable, most parsimonious interpretation of the evidence.
you may not ever come to the same conclusion. or you may sooner or later. that's your business. i'm just telling you my take on it. i did not want to believe she was right. but now i'm convinced she was, and my conviction comes not from faith in a book, but real world experience.
"her heros never demanded that anybody accept their interpretation of the mystics' motives on faith. they left dagny and hank to discover their motives on their own. and dagny and hank of course refused to believe those were their motives until the motives became nakedly clear, based on evidence."
ReplyDeleteYou keep referring to this, but each time you do it makes it more difficult to take your claim seriously. Of course it can do so, in a book. But where and when can this evidence be presented in real life?
A character like Wesley Mouch is what he is because Rand made him that way. She dictates his motivations, and she reveals them by her own design.
But pick a name of any real person in the world besides yourself, and how can you really know their motives for any single thing they do?
This is the conceit of Rand's ego: that the motives she ascribes to other people who do things she dislikes are, in fact, the most plausible motives, that she can analyze another person's life - without knowing the full depth of that other person's experience - and declare what it is that moves them (and furthermore, reduce it to "they just want to destroy good").
But what is more plausible: that Rand and those who follow her philosophy are so talented at reading other people, with limited information, that they can know these motives (and claim they know them better than the very person they're analyzing) - or that this is a self-delusion, or an attempt to demonize those of a different viewpoint as being just simply evil?
"You keep referring to this, but each time you do it makes it more difficult to take your claim seriously. Of course it can do so, in a book. But where and when can this evidence be presented in real life?"
ReplyDeleteI'm referring to that not to point out that real people do that, but that that is the approach rand advocated.
1) her heroes represent _what she thought people should do_.
2) her heroes _let people think for themselves_ and did not insist that anybody accept their ideas on faith.
3) therefore _she advocated letting people think for themselves and not insisting that anybody accept her ideas on faith_.
whether that played itself out in practice is another question. having never met her, i don't know. but within the context of her _philosophy_, she does not advocate the acceptance of these ideas on faith. her book shows that in black and white.
that's why i keep referring to it.
MP:
ReplyDelete>I think the problem with "existence exists," at least as it is used by many Objectivists, is that it becomes an equivocation.
The problem with "existence exists" for Objectivism is that it doesn't what is is supposed to do, namely reply to the hordes of nameless "other philosophers", 99.9% of whom are we are supposed to believe are radical idealists and subjectivists.
This is because if you believe, like Berkeley, the world is just an illusion in your mind, then "existence exists" is perfectly acceptable as of course illusions exist qua illusions. Same goes for mystics who think everything is just a dream in the mind of God, subjectivists etc. All these folks can accept this axiom (for example, the idealist Bradley did), and the other two supposed "corollary" axioms without contradiction. It's actually one of those magic asterisk Objectivist arguments which is wielded as if it was an all-powerful, undeniable truth, especially by Junior Woodchuck Objectivists, but actually even Peikoff denies in the fine print, saying Rand doesn't prove the axioms are true, merely that they are axioms!
". .. [A}ctually even Peikoff denies in the fine print, saying Rand doesn't prove the axioms are true, merely that they are axioms!"
ReplyDeleteSorry, Daniel, you're off base on this one.
Within a given system, axioms are statements which are supposed to be self-evident, foundational truths. That being so, there's no such thing as proving an axiom. If you could, it wouldn't be an axiom. You can deny it's an axiom of course; but that's a different issue. Look up your Euclid. . . :)
Is Objectivism a religion?
ReplyDeleteIt has this in common with religion: its founder (Rand) and its adherents all believe, with certainty, that Ayn Rand had the right answers to the basic questions of philosophy: what is the nature of the world? of man? of the "good life"? of evil? what is the right way to live?
It has this difference: Rand and her adherents are convinced that they have reached these answers, with certainty, through reason and observation rather than faith. So they are equally convinced that anyone who observes reality, applies reason, and does not make errors will come to see that Ayn Rand Was Right.
As she herself put it, in the first issue of The Objectivist: "I am not primarily an advocate of capitalism, but of egoism; and I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason. If one recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it consistently, all the rest follows."
So yes, Rand says let people think for themselves. But at the same time she held that anyone who did think for himself and didn't make any mistakes must come to agree with her. She could not admit the possibility that she might be the one who is mistaken. If someone, after sufficient exposure and opportunity to grasp the truth she had discovered, demonstrably failed to do so, she would conclude that person must be an irrational evader. (Objectivists to this day do the same.)
I'm here because I eventually came to realize that many aspects of Objectivism do not live up to reality-testing. At that point, the "think for yourself" mindset that drew me to Objectivism in the first place was exactly what drove me away. If ungtss really keeps thinking for himself, maybe he'll get there too.
Gordon:
ReplyDelete>Within a given system, axioms are statements which are supposed to be self-evident, foundational truths. That being so, there's no such thing as proving an axiom.
Yes, I realise that....;-)
My point was precisely that Objectivists use them in practice as if they mean something more - that they made say, idealism, self-refuting.
Which of course they don't.
ECE,
ReplyDelete"So yes, Rand says let people think for themselves. But at the same time she held that anyone who did think for himself and didn't make any mistakes must come to agree with her. She could not admit the possibility that she might be the one who is mistaken"
This is an interesting issue in a lot of respects. The question is, what does it mean to "admit the possibility that i might be the one who's mistaken."
does that mean that i should preface every sentence by saying "i might be wrong, but ..." even for things i'm absolutely certain of, like my street address?
i don't think it does. i think admitting the possibility that you're wrong requires some sort of evidence indicating you might be wrong.
otherwise you're just admitting the possibility of something you have no reason to believe is possible. and what's the point of that?
i'm happy to admit the possibility that i'm wrong if i have some reason to believe i might be. as in my hypotheses about crimes in the news. i have a very weak and unreliable level of information about the case. plenty of reason to believe i'm wrong.
but after a few decades of watching mystics do what mystics do, and reason the way they reason, in dozens of individuals and contexts, i have a great deal of confidence in my ideas about how they behave.
to the extent i should "acknowledge the possibility that i might be wrong," i should probably have some reason to acknowledge such a possibility. which i don't.
to the extent you found objectivism failed to "match to evidence" test in certain or all respects, you're practicing a rational epistemology -- the epistemology they articulated -- which is "think for yourself, test ideas against the evidence."
to the extent rand or peikoff didn't in certain areas (and i think there are a few areas in which they didn't), it's not that they were being _too_ objectivist, but that they weren't practicing what they themselves preached.
i of course, as a growing, developing human being, discover all sorts of areas in my life where i'm inconsistent -- where i'm making mistakes -- where i have room to improve -- every day.
but in discovering that, i'm simply practicing the same ideals she articulated. to the extent she didn't practice them fully, that's her loss, not mine. i'm still alive and i still have the opportunity.
Daniel Barnes: "Productivity, ambition, achievement, realism, reason, individualism - we're good with all these things in a broad sense. However, the original Randian doctrines around these broad-brush goods are where it all goes horribly wrong."
ReplyDeleteExactly. Many people are originally attracted to Objectivism because it promotes those values and defends a small government. But the "philosophical" arguments that she presents to "prove" the validity of those values are totally worthless. The errors are so elementary that no real philosopher will take them seriously. Many of these have already been discussed here extensively, such as the fallacy of equivocation in her "derivation" from "is" to "ought", the contradictions in her theory of values or her "solution" of the problem of induction or the problem of universals.
Empty tautologies like A is A are useless as an argument, as nobody will deny them, they are implicit in any argument, they're only used as a strawman against any opposition against her ideas.
Another example: "The nature of an action is caused and determined by the nature of the entities that act; a thing cannot act in contradiction to its nature." This is also an empty statement. How do you know what the "nature" of a thing is? The only way is by observing how it behaves, what its actions are. So the statement says that a thing cannot act in contradiction to how it acts. Well duh. Objectivism has found a Deep Truth... The philosophical arguments of Objectivism are either false or meaningless platitudes.
Hi Gordon,
ReplyDeleteMany thanks for your interesting answer. I have some (predictable) disagreements here and there.
"... this excludes phenomena that can’t be detected or measured. My answer: I don’t care. People who are into detecting and measuring have done a lot better in the last 500 years than people who aren’t."
I would say they have done a great job of detecting and measuring the kinds of things that can be detected and measured by certain kinds of physical instruments. They have not done so well in other areas. I'm not sure we understand consciousness any better than we did 500 years ago; in fact, people who follow traditions such as Buddhism probably have a deeper understanding of it than we do.
We certainly do understand brain states better than we used to, but I don't think brain states are indistinguishable from mental states. My view is that the brain serves to mediate consciousness, somewhat in the way (by analogy only) that a TV set receives and decodes a signal. The show does not originate inside the TV, nor does the signal end if the TV is turned off. (This "transmission hypothesis," proposed by William James, is consistent with correlation between brain states and mental states; it simply notes that correlation is not causality. Personally I find it the most parsimonious theory, since it explains not only the correlation between brain states and mental states, but also a host of "anomalous" phenomena inexplicable in the conventional model. Of course, the conventional model simply denies that the anomalies exist.)
"I see no good reason whatever for believing that the universe is the way it is as a result of any exercise of will or intent."
For me, the astounding number of "cosmic coincidences" that had to occur in order to produce a habitable universe – a universe that could be inhabited by any conceivable lifeforms – is evidence of an intelligent plan. This is a modernized version of the argument from design. As Fred Hoyle put it, "It looks like a super-intellect has been monkeying with the laws of physics."
I'd also point to the fact that the most basic laws of physical reality can be reduced to simple formulas, like E = MC (squared). It's the kind of elegant solution you would expect from an expert programmer writing code. To quote astronomer James Jeans, "The universe begins to look less like a great Machine, and more like a great Idea."
"... for me the experience of consciousness provides no plausible justification for the existence of a Cartesian 'thinking substance'."
I don't know what kind of "substance" it might be. But I do think reality is best understood in dualistic terms.
It is possible that consciousness is an emergent property of my hypothetical information processing system, but I'm inclined to believe the system has been set up precisely in order to allow our consciousness to navigate a physical world, much as the virtual reality environment of a computer game allows the user to explore that world. The gamer is not the game, though he may be so immersed in the game that he forgets his "other" reality. As Plato suggested, we drink from the Lethe before coming here ... and our world, which seems so real, may be only shadows on the wall.
Cheers!
Michael
Dragonfly, as I've said before on this blog, I think the problem you describe lies in the standards by which a "real philosopher" would judge her arguments. these so-called "real philosophers" attempt to criticize her ideas -- and the ideas of others -- while stripping away the distinctly human context in which any human criticism of human ideas must necessarily take place.
ReplyDeleteBecause of that, I think the problem is not with the argument she makes, but with the context in which these "real philosophers" attempt to criticize it.
To criticize "is/ought" without reference to the fact that the person considering the question is a living being faced with a fundamental life/death alternative is specious. is/ought must be criticized within that framework and context. yet they drop that context, and attempt to treat the question as third parties, uninvolved in the act -- and questions -- of a living organism attempting to plan its way.
When considered within the framework of a living organism with a desire to survive, her arguments are solid. When considered outside that framework, no arguments are solid. Hers, or anybody else's.
Which she suspected -- and i've learned to suspect -- is the point. To create the illusion of fallacy by dropping the context in which the idea is expressed.
Dragonfly:
ReplyDelete>But the "philosophical" arguments that she presents to "prove" the validity of those values are totally worthless. The errors are so elementary that no real philosopher will take them seriously.
Correct. Objectivism simply does not work as advertised. It does not do what it says on the tin. Like a government department trying to reclassify ketchup as a vegetable, the Objectivist solution to this problem is not to improve its product, but to try to set its own standards of criticism - effectively marking your own homework. Rand's arguments are unsound by ordinary standards of logic? Well let's just use our own meaning of the term "logic"! Rand's arguments don't stand up using ordinary terminology? Well, let's just use a special lexicon of terms then! And so forth.
This strategic evasion of independent standards of criticism is the primrose path to cult-dom.
"This strategic evasion of independent standards of criticism is the primrose path to cult-dom."
ReplyDeleteAnd the belief that your standards of criticism are somehow "independent" of your humanity is of course, insane.
We are not robots. We are people. And to the extent we attempt to criticize human philosophy from a non-human vantage point, we're playing word games.
it's just so nakedly obvious when you think about it.
ReplyDelete"your philosophy must stand up to my 'independent criticism.'"
"and what is the basis of your criticism, but your philosophy?"
i'm afraid it's your argument that assumes its objectivity without proving it.
one of rand's other great insights, i think, is to notice that "objective" does not mean "non-human."
all of your criticism are of course from the non-human vantage point.
and of course criticizing a philosophy from that vantage point is balls-to-the-wall nuts.
ugntss:
ReplyDelete>And the belief that your standards of criticism are somehow "independent" of your humanity is of course, insane.
Not at all. On the other hand, the idea there are no standards independent of human consciousness is what's commonly known as relativism and/or subjectivism.
We are very familiar with Objectivists such as yourself coming out with such claims. This is primarily because the mechanics of Objectivist epistemology produces a relativist theory of truth regardless of what their author intended.
The reason my claim is not "insane" is simple. For it turns out that there are things that are created by human consciousness, but also exist independently of it. For example, the plan of a house or the text of a book can exist on paper long after the architect or author has died. Or, more abstractly, the mathematical system contains numbers that has numbers in it that have never existed in any human consciousness. Further, our laws, institutions, and conventions are the creation of any number of individual consciousnesses, but transcend all of those people in both time and consequence. Theories can also have consequences outside of what their creators consciously intended - for example, Objectivist epistemology has relativist consequences, despite the intentions of Ayn Rand.
Likewise, independent standards like logic and language are human creations, but also stand apart from our consciousness, like buildings.
So of course it is very far from "insane" to assert the existence of such things. In fact as far as such positions go, it seems to be far preferable to the fully subjectivist/relativist position such as you and other Objectivists - the Accidental Relativists! - unwittingly find themselves asserting...;-)
"Not at all. On the other hand, the idea there are no standards independent of human consciousness is what's commonly known as relativism and/or subjectivism."
ReplyDeleteAh, but you're dropping context:). we're not talking about "criteria independent of consciousness" in _every area_, we're talking about it specifically in the context of _philosophy_ -- which is inseparable from _human thought_.
just as criteria for a steel structure must be consistent with the nature of steel. and criteria for flight must be consistent with the nature of air and engines.
one's criteria for philosophy _must_ be consistent with the fact that we are _humans_.
standards for philosophy that do not take into account the irreducible, inescapable realities inherent in being _human_ are not valid.
for example, criticizing knowledge as falling short of a standard of certainty which is impossible for humans to achieve in any context whatever is not a valid criticism of knowledge.
in the same way, a theory of morality which is unachievable by any human being ever is not a valid theory of morality.
these standards are of course widely used, and taken seriously by "real philosophers." they're hailed as "objective" precisely because they derive from attempting to step out of one's human skin and set inhuman standards.
but precisely for that reason, they are _inapplicable_ to the questions and realities of _being human_.
"For example, the plan of a house or the text of a book can exist on paper long after the architect or author has died. Or, more abstractly, the mathematical system contains numbers that has numbers in it that have never existed in any human consciousness. Further, our laws, institutions, and conventions are the creation of any number of individual consciousnesses, but transcend all of those people in both time and consequence."
The plan of a house must be designed with reference to its materials. math must be designed with reference to human cognitive limitations. laws, institutions, and conventions must be designed with reference to the nature of the humans participating, and their purpose.
in the same way, a criterion in philosophy that does not take into account the fact that philosophy is an endeavor of the mind is a bogus criterion.
and that, my friend, is why it's insane:).
the purpose of these inhuman criteria is of course to send reason down a blind alley, leaving room for the irrational and arbitrary to rule. if "True Morality" is impossible to Man, then there is nothing left to man but the substandard. Which makes the substandard the Norm. If "True Knowledge" is impossible to Man, then there is nothing left to man but ignorance.
ReplyDeleteThat's the true nature of the "accidental subjectivist." it gets subjectivism in the back door by tying our reason up in knots.
the objective approach, rather, is always to keep the context of your project in mind.
rand did that. your "real philosophers," by and large, don't.
ungtss:
ReplyDelete>one's criteria for philosophy _must_ be consistent with the fact that we are _humans_.
Nothing I have said is inconsistent with the fact that we are humans. We produce objects, real and abstract, that are more than we are all the time. It's a very human thing to do.
Amusingly, this sort of claim is another thing that Objectivists often haven't thought through themselves. For example, they often claim that Objectivism is itself incapable of being wrong; only its practitioners can err. Yet it is supposedly also a "human" philosophy.
But then you end up with roughly:
P1) Humans can err.
P2) Objectivism is a philosophy that can't err.
C) Objectivism is not a human philosophy.
It really is bristling with booby traps for the unsuspecting...;-)
ungtss:
ReplyDelete>standards for philosophy that do not take into account the irreducible, inescapable realities inherent in being _human_ are not valid.
Um, the integer series is infinite. Neither humans, nor human consciousness, is infinite. Therefore, according to Objectivist standards, the integer series is "invalid".
You should really try to disengage for a minute from these highly emotional Randian rhetorical flights and consider these rather inconvenient facts...;-)
"in the same way, a theory of morality which is unachievable by any human being ever is not a valid theory of morality."
ReplyDeleteSome could use this argument against Objectivism itself. After all, it strives for a very high ideal, and Rand herself may not have hit that target. If not Rand, then who has? If no-one, how does one claim that the ideals of Objectivism are attainable?
"To criticize "is/ought" without reference to the fact that the person considering the question is a living being faced with a fundamental life/death alternative is specious. is/ought must be criticized within that framework and context. yet they drop that context, and attempt to treat the question as third parties, uninvolved in the act -- and questions -- of a living organism attempting to plan its way."
I think we should clear up what's being criticized here. Is it the actual is/ought conundrum, or is it Rand's so-called solution?
Because the whole point of the is/ought question is to point out that what drives us cannot be pure logic - what is generally considered "reason" as opposed to "feelings" - because it is logically impossible to say, "because of fact A, one should do B." To evade this, one has to, in effect, cheat - to say "Because A makes me feel C, I must do B."
Changing the question is not solving the question. Claiming the question is irrelevant or is not related to "being human" is not solving the question.
(I almost want to say something about stolen concepts. Did not a man think of and pose this question? How is it not, then, related to being human at least that much? But I digress.)
The question is intended to reveal that we are all driven by non-rational impulses, that while we may use reason to achieve what we want, what we want is not ultimately the product of reason or logic.
Unless, of course, you intend to redefine logic or reason - which is another kind of evasion, a way to try to have your cake and eat it too.
Jzero:
ReplyDelete>Changing the question is not solving the question.
Exactly.
This is the only way Objectivists can evade the uncomfortable fact that Rand did not defeat Hume - to try to change the question.
I have seen it so many times now. In effect, Rand appears to simply have not understood the problem in the first place. Her followers, when confronted with this reality, simply try to change problem to cover it up.
One particularly memorable example was the owner of a well known Objectivist forum trying to tell me that when Rand wrote "So much for the issue of the relation between 'is' and 'ought'", she wasn't referring to the logical relation, but to um, just...er...a...y'know...relation.
He was unable to explain what exactly the problematic relation was that Rand had supposedly solved. Of course there are any number of "relations" between "is" and "ought". For example, they are both words in the English language. They both occur in this web post. They are both mentioned by philosophers. But of course, none of these relations is a a problem!
So Rand did not solve the "is/ought" issue as proposed by Hume. Nor did she solve Hume's problem of induction, as she herself admitted. Her remarks on this also suggest she did not quite understand this issue either.
So the score is Hume 2, Rand 0. No wonder Objectivists are so bent on trying to change the rules..;-)
@Daniel Barnes: Um, the integer series is infinite. Neither humans, nor human consciousness, is infinite. Therefore, according to Objectivist standards, the integer series is "invalid".
ReplyDeleteConveniently, Rand applied her ruthless logic to this very issue. Shall we see how logical she was?
She did hold that "'Infinity' in the metaphysical sense, as something existing in reality, is another invalid concept [along with God]]." (ITOE Appendix, under the heading "Three 'Hard Cases'"; sorry, my electronic version doesn't have page numbers.)
But that doesn't mean it's not okay to use it in math. "An arithmetical sequence extends into infinity without implying that infinity actually exists; such extension means only that whatever number of units does exist, it is to be included in the same sequence." (ITOE chapter 2).
How can one form the concept of infinity if infinity doesn't actually exist? Simple! "The concept of 'infinity' has a very definite purpose in mathematical calculation, and there it is a concept of method." (from the "Three 'Hard Cases'" section).
"Concepts of method designate systematic courses of action devised by men for the purpose of achieving certain goals." They "are formed by retaining the distinguishing characteristics of the purposive course of action and of its goal, while omitting the particular measurements of both." (ITOE chapter 4.) Unfortunately, Rand did not elaborate on what would be the "purposive course of action" and "goal" of infinity that would enable one to validly form it as a concept of method. The only example she gives of forming such a concept is "logic," which at least is a method.
To sum up: Infinity is an invalid concept metaphysically, but the infinity of the integer series gets a pass -- because in math, "infinity" is a concept of method (never mind that infinity is not a "method") and has nothing to do with metaphysics.
Ruthlessly logical ... or just slinging jargon around?
Just going back to human creations that extend beyond human capabilities, there are many, many of them. A very common example are our theories. Now, a theory is the creation of a human mind. But our theories often have unintended consequences - implications that that mind never foresaw. For example, Einstein said that if he had known how his theories would create an arsenal of nuclear mass destruction, he would have become a watchmaker. Or for another example, Rand's philosophy in practice has turned out legions of Randroids, and hardly any Roarks - surely the exact opposite of what its creator's consciousness intended in developing the doctrine. Or consider perhaps a mathematical proof that contains a flaw the author overlooked, and was only noticed by another mathematician reading 100 years after the author's death. So its quite clear that these creations of our consciousness can and do extend beyond our consciousness. There is nothing mystical whatsoever in asserting this.
ReplyDeleteECE:
ReplyDelete>Ruthlessly logical ... or just slinging jargon around?
Yes it's a terrible, convoluted word salad. Ad hoc fudging at its worst.
To make the issue clear is actually quite simple.
There are numbers in the integer series which exist which however no human mind has ever thought of, nor will ever think of.
This says that while the series may be originally created by human consciousness, it extends far beyond any human consciousness, ever.
Thus it can be our creation, but nonetheless exists independently and objectively from us. There is nothing contradictory about this at all.
@ungtss:
ReplyDeleteA bit off the current topic but this was touched on in some earlier posts.
The desire to destroy is still only a means to an end. And this end is something the person wishes to create (using 'create' in a liberal sense).
Person A wants to destroy person B's happiness because person A is unhappy and person B's happiness is a reminder of this unhappiness. The desired end result is something positive or at the very least the negation of a negative. It's an addition (in the same way that adding 5 to -20 is an addition and 'positive' in that sense even though the end sum is still -15 and a negative) not a substraction.
The motivation of person A is to create a more tolerable life. He is in fact 'creating' and the destruction is merely a means to and end.
Ayn Rand presents this desire to destroy, in James Taggart for example, as the ultimate motivation, as the end in itself.
This type of hatred only exists in mythology. It's a characteristic of demons, creatures run by the supernatural force 'evil'. Human beings do not function in this way.
I'll present an analogy:
People, like all animals, have the innate desire to survive. They will seek out pleasure and avoid pain. The desire to die does not lie within the bound's of human capability. A suicidal person doesn't want to die, he wants to seize living because his/her life is too painful to bear. The suicidal person wants to avoid pain. Death is merely a means to and end, a very short-sighted solution to a problem.
Masochistic people derive pleasure from pain. It does not going against the innate instinct to avoid pain. Pain is a means to an end and the end is pleasure.
From reading Atlas Shrugged and details about her personal life it's quite clear that Ayn Rand saw a lot of things she considered evil and sought to explain why these things were happening. But as is often the case her anger and hatred 'corrupted' her thought process on this matter.
She should have adopted a neutral stand-point and set out to find why people do the
things they do, whether good or bad. Through the combination of personal insight (into yourself and others) and the knowledge of other people she could have gathered evidence and followed this to a conclusion.
Instead she had already drawn her conclusion: these people were evil and all that was left was to gather evidence that fit this conclusion. She rationalized her way there, combining facts about human nature with her own personal projections.
She analyzed people only up to a certain point. Coming to the conclusion that some people want to destroy 'good' is fine and offers some insight into that person but it's not the end. The fact that this desire may stem from a dissatisfaction with reality goes slightly deeper but it still doesn't reach the end-point. Imagine James Taggart going to a psychologist and the psychologist coming to the conclusion: "Well James, it turns out you are evil and you have a desire to destroy good". There are many points where Ayn Rand and the 'mystics' overlap and this is one of those points.
Continued in second post...
Continued from first post...
ReplyDeleteSatan wants to destroy good because his nature is evil. It's a concept that some people feel makes sense because of the way we sometimes experience life. We all
understand what someone means when they say someone has a 'black heart' but it has no value in reality. Such a demonic desire to destroy 'good' simply doesn't exist.
No one is anti-life. Any desire that may fall within the concept of someone being anti-life serves to enrichen ones own life and if one wants to enrichen their own life how can they be anti-life?
Such need for destruction can be considered a perversion in the same way that a sexual attraction to balloons is a perversion of 'normal' human behaviour. Extreme sadism is another such perversion but at its root it stems from the same desires we all have and need. Desires can have a negative impact on one's life but the end goal is always positive, no matter how perverted and misguided the means to attain it are.
Thoughts?
Barnes,
ReplyDelete"Nothing I have said is inconsistent with the fact that we are humans. We produce objects, real and abstract, that are more than we are all the time. It's a very human thing to do."
You've missed my point. Try to read more carefully before you criticize what you don't understand.
To effectively produce an object, your plans must be designed with the material in mind. just as a steel structure must be designed with respect to the fact that it is made of steel.
If you design a philosophy that is designed for _non-human minds_, it is not a proper philosophy. just as designing a steel structure as though it is made of wood. the structure will collapse. because you've designed for the wrong material.
"Um, the integer series is infinite. Neither humans, nor human consciousness, is infinite. Therefore, according to Objectivist standards, the integer series is "invalid"."
you've dropping context again. "infinity" means "without end." but all human experience is finite. therefore, to use "infinity" without regard to the fact that we are humans would be invalid. for instance, the 8 year old kid who says "i have infinity dollars." can't do it. or the theologian who demands moral perfection of humans such that a person be "infinitely just and infinitely merciful." which of course is impossible to humans.
there are of course ways to use the concept of infinity that are consistent with our humanity. for instance, calculus. within that limited context, the concept is valid.
but take it outside of that context, into a realm that conflicts with the inherently _finite_ nature of the human experience.
Your continued examples all miss my point in exactly the same way. i'm not saying a human theory can't stand apart from human consciousness. i'm saying that a human theory about _human thinking_ cannot be premised on criteria inapplicable to _human life_.
"Because the whole point of the is/ought question is to point out that what drives us cannot be pure logic - what is generally considered "reason" as opposed to "feelings" - because it is logically impossible to say, "because of fact A, one should do B." To evade this, one has to, in effect, cheat - to say "Because A makes me feel C, I must do B."
ReplyDeleteChanging the question is not solving the question. Claiming the question is irrelevant or is not related to "being human" is not solving the question.
...
The question is intended to reveal that we are all driven by non-rational impulses, that while we may use reason to achieve what we want, what we want is not ultimately the product of reason or logic."
Pointing out the question is invalid _does_ solve the question. if you ask me "what is the cheese green?" i can solve your "problem" by pointing out that your question makes no sense.
The is/ought problem is exactly that non-sensical. Human logic and human emotion are inseparable. Not only has the research proven this, but it's easily demonstrated. Your feelings are determined by your _interpretation_ of your environment. For instance, you see a dead man -- does it make you happy, sad, mad, or scared? Well, it depends on how you interpret the event. Who is the guy? How do you think he died? What do you think of the guy? What does his death represent?
Your feelings depend on your thought.
In the same way, your thought depends on your feelings. Why think? Because you _want_ to understand, on an emotional level. Why find out a way to survive? Because you _want_ to live.
In our human experience, there is no separating logic from emotion. They're inextricably linked at every point.
That's why the is/ought problem is so mind-numbingly stupid. It starts with the assumption that "true" logic is independent of emotion. which is nonsense. nothing in the human experience is independent of emotion. we're humans. we're inherently emotional creatures.
of course you can't derive one side of the coin without reference to the other side. it's stupid to try.
"Person A wants to destroy person B's happiness because person A is unhappy and person B's happiness is a reminder of this unhappiness. The desired end result is something positive or at the very least the negation of a negative. It's an addition (in the same way that adding 5 to -20 is an addition and 'positive' in that sense even though the end sum is still -15 and a negative) not a substraction.
ReplyDeleteThe motivation of person A is to create a more tolerable life. He is in fact 'creating' and the destruction is merely a means to and end."
I don't think she'd disagree with this. Nobody would argue that he's not constructing something for himself within the context of his destructive values. Of course he is. The point is that his values are destructive. The values are the issue, not the fact that he may subjectively consider another person's destruction to be constructive within the context of those values.
"No one is anti-life. Any desire that may fall within the concept of someone being anti-life serves to enrichen ones own life and if one wants to enrichen their own life how can they be anti-life?"
ReplyDeleteBecause within the context of the human experience, the destruction of someone else's life cannot serve your own life. At one level, you may believe it does. But when confronted with the results (which are inevitably destructive to your life), you're faced with the question "do i really want this?" if you continue in the face of the destruction, then it becomes increasingly clear that you're not after your own edification by destruction after all.
Hi Michael.
ReplyDeleteWell, time for today’s speculative time out. These are starting to be fun. Here are my comments on some of your responses.
1) “I'm not sure we understand consciousness any better than we did 500 years ago; in fact, people who follow traditions such as Buddhism probably have a deeper understanding of it than we do.”
I can’t comment on this in depth because I don’t know much about Buddhism. I’ve read the Dhammapada, which is commendably brief and plainly distilled from deep personal experience. I found it attractive – although I have very little sympathy with its world view.
But surely it is fair to talk about conceptual and practical fruitfulness here. The scientific method has resulted in an unbelievable expansion in technical capacity and an expansion in the size of our known universe. To an outsider like myself, Mahayana Buddhism seems less like progress to enlightenment and more like fantasy elaborations of the Dhammapada’s original concepts.
2) “My view is that the brain serves to mediate consciousness, somewhat in the way (by analogy only) that a TV set receives and decodes a signal. The show does not originate inside the TV nor does the signal end if the TV is turned off.”
You’re right to say: by analogy only. Radios and TV sets don’t change when the programs change. Brains do: the phenomenon of neuroplasticity is well known. Of course there is a difference between brain states and mental states: but it’s plain that there’s a remarkably intimate relationship here. The radio/TV analogy is actually a barrier rather than a help if we want to make progress in understanding that relationship.
I also note that implicit in this view is the notion of a soul, temporarily resident in a brain which is the control panel for a body; and capable of surviving without it. This is a comforting view: that’s why it has such a tenacious hold on people. But I simply can’t find any good reason for believing it.
3) “ The gamer is not the game, though he may be so immersed in the game that he forgets his "other" reality. As Plato suggested, we drink from the Lethe before coming here ... and our world, which seems so real, may be only shadows on the wall.”
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting? My reason for viewing this vision with scepticism can be summarized in one word: Evolution.
Humans are a late development of a process that has been going on for around 3.7 billion years. Humans have been around for just 2.4 million years of that time. In the face of numbers like that, I find it extraordinarily difficult to say of the world we live in that “the system has been set up precisely in order to allow our consciousness to navigate a physical world”. And I find it extraordinarily plausible to say “that consciousness is an emergent property of my hypothetical information processing system”. Prospero said we are the stuff that dreams are made of; but the truth is that we are the stuff that ocelots are made of; and sparrows, mosquitos, sequoias and protozoa. Our brains are clearly a more sophisticated development of processes to be found in other mammals; and of information processing systems to be found in other animals. I just don’t see a reason for making humans distinct from the evolutionary progression that got us here.
To be continued. . .
Resuming:
ReplyDelete4) “For me, the astounding number of ‘cosmic coincidences’ that had to occur in order to produce a habitable universe – a universe that could be inhabited by any conceivable lifeforms – is evidence of an intelligent plan.”
Estimates of the number of stars in the known universe run as high as 1 septillion. In the face of numbers like that, if you tell me that a habitable universe can’t be just a coincidence, my answer is: sure it can.
Consider: if there is only one chance in a trillion of sentient life evolving on a planet, there are a trillion sentient life forms out there somewhere to keep us company. . .
(5) “I'd also point to the fact that the most basic laws of physical reality can be reduced to simple formulas, like E = MC (squared). It's the kind of elegant solution you would expect from an expert programmer writing code.”
The implication here seems to be: order and structure must involve a consciousness doing the ordering and structuring. That’s a very natural thing for human to believe. But I just don’t think it’s the way things are.
This is where I think Aristotle’s axiom of identity is relevant – although certainly not in the way Ayn Rand thinks. Things do have a particular identity and that’s why events happen in predictable ways. I suppose there are any number of different ways that the physical world could operate; but this is the world we have. Chaos is the impossibility, not order.
At this point, we are of course arguing visions of the world, neither of which can be proved. But this is my own story and I’m sticking to it.
"At this point, we are of course arguing visions of the world, neither of which can be proved. But this is my own story and I’m sticking to it."
ReplyDeleteAnd there it is: Burkowski, declaring his steadfast commitment to an opinion in the admitted absence of proof.
This is Faith, not in the traditional Judeo-Christian sense, which was trustworthiness or commitment to ideas adopted by experience -- but in the sense of a fideist who believes steadfastly without proof.
A rational person does not "stick to a story" without proof. He shuts his mouth aobut what he doesn't know, and asks more interesting questions about what he might know. He doesn't pontificate on things outside of his reach. He expands his reach.
When that approach is abandonned, the result is exactly what Burkowski describes: competing visions of the world, none of which can be proved. But this is my story and I'm sticking to it.
What rand taught me is that this fallacious approach to thought is not accidental. It wasn't accidental when I spent years among mystics, trying to grasp how they could be so blatantly, obviously wrong in their approach to questions? Why did they stick to stories without proof? Why have stories at all?
ReplyDeleteI spun myself in circles trying to understand how anyone could be so utterly ridiculous.
But now i understand it. So long as "proof" can't reach your visions, you're free to be arbitrary in your visions. and then, having established your arbitrary visions as the foundation of your view of the world, you're free to twist everything you _do_ see out of recognition, in light of the arbitrary vision you've adopted without proof.
your argument -- your thought -- takes exactly the same form as the most rabid fundamentalist religionist. you adopt a story without proof, stick to it, and then view the world through that lens.
"Pointing out the question is invalid _does_ solve the question. if you ask me "what is the cheese green?" i can solve your "problem" by pointing out that your question makes no sense.
ReplyDeleteThe is/ought problem is exactly that non-sensical. Human logic and human emotion are inseparable."
Well, one, using the example of a non-sequitur question does not somehow make Hume's question nonsensical.
Two, you haven't solved the problem at all, you've just declared it unsolvable or immaterial. That's changing the definition of "solved". That's wanting to claim a solution without actually providing a solution.
Why would you want to claim this? I can guess...
The is/ought question is not "nonsensical" - it's very sensical, so to speak. You say that human logic and emotion are inseparable - so does Hume! The is/ought question PROVES it! The only difference is that Hume's question puts emotions first, as the root cause of any action, while Rand would have one believe that one's emotions are the result of logical consideration of things. That's what makes the is/ought question so annoying to many Objectivists - there is no way to contradict it and thus demonstrate that logic drives emotion, not the other way around. And thus, a great deal of Rand's speculations on the relation between emotions and logic (or "thought" as she puts it) fall apart - unless, of course, you can either discredit the question as meaningless or otherwise brush it aside by "solving" it with things that aren't really solutions.
"Two, you haven't solved the problem at all, you've just declared it unsolvable or immaterial. That's changing the definition of "solved". That's wanting to claim a solution without actually providing a solution."
ReplyDeleteIt's pointing out that the apparent problem is nothing more than an artifact of a bogus question.
And then I explain why it's a bogus question.
It's a bogus question because you are trying to derive "ought" from logic divorced from emotion -- when within the human context, there is no such _thing_ as logic divorced from emotion.
Hume sees this as a problem only because he considers emotions to be inadmissible as components of the answer. But it is _that refusal to admit emotion as a component of logic_ that creates the "problem."
Once you recognize that there is no such thing as logic without reference to emotion, then you recognize that trying to derive an "ought" by logic stripped of emotion is like trying to throw a baseball with a body stripped of an arm, or trying to think with a body stripped of a brain.
You can't derive is from ought by emotionless logic because there's no such _thing_ as emotionless logic within the human experience.
"The only difference is that Hume's question puts emotions first, as the root cause of any action, while Rand would have one believe that one's emotions are the result of logical consideration of things"
I don't think that's Rand's point of view. I think she understood that logic and emotion were inherently intertwined, such that neither precedes neither in any absolute sense. I haven't run across an explicit statement to this effect in her non-fiction, but it runs implicit throughout all of her fiction.
I wouldn't consider myself as having an "eye problem" if you covered my eyes and pointed out that i couldn't see.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't consider myself as having an "ear problem" if you plugged my ears and pointed out that i couldn't hear.
That's what's bogus about the question here. There's no "problem" in deriving "ought" from "is" once emotion takes is rightful place alongside logic.
the only "problem" is created by the fact in asking the question in the way you do, you take away a critical component for solving the problem.
"You can't derive is from ought by emotionless logic because there's no such _thing_ as emotionless logic within the human experience."
ReplyDeleteOf course there is.
What is math, if not emotionless logic? You don't say (to borrow your own trick), "2 times happy equals bemusement". And logic - refined and applied by humans to achieve goals - can be quite divorced from emotion in its use. It's just that it cannot be used alone to justify an action as being right or appropriate. That any action you take must have an emotional root.
This is only a problem if you want to claim that your actions are, in fact, logic-driven, as many have over the years. If you present yourself as a creature of reason, the is/ought problem stands as a reminder that the base cause of any action you take is a feeling, an emotional - non-logical - impetus. Irrational, in the sense that reason is not really part of it. (Which is not to say it's somehow crazy, just that it is not logic or reason.) You may THEN proceed with logic and reason FROM that emotion, but you simply cannot do it the other way around.
This is contra Rand:
"An emotion is an automatic response, an automatic effect of man’s value premises. An effect, not a cause."
"This relationship cannot be reversed, however. If a man takes his emotions as the cause and his mind as their passive effect, if he is guided by his emotions and uses his mind only to rationalize or justify them somehow—then he is acting immorally, he is condemning himself to misery, failure, defeat, and he will achieve nothing but destruction—his own and that of others."
"There can be no causeless love or any sort of causeless emotion. An emotion is a response to a fact of reality, an estimate dictated by your standards."
"Emotions are not tools of cognition . . . one must differentiate between one’s thoughts and one’s emotions with full clarity and precision."
"But while the standard of value operating the physical pleasure-pain mechanism of man’s body is automatic and innate, determined by the nature of his body—the standard of value operating his emotional mechanism, is not. Since man has no automatic knowledge, he can have no automatic values; since he has no innate ideas, he can have no innate value judgments.
Man is born with an emotional mechanism, just as he is born with a cognitive mechanism; but, at birth, both are “tabula rasa.” It is man’s cognitive faculty, his mind, that determines the content of both. Man’s emotional mechanism is like an electronic computer, which his mind has to program—and the programming consists of the values his mind chooses."
All from the Ayn Rand lexicon.
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/emotions.html
From these quotes, we can infer that, according to Rand:
1) Emotions are not innate, but learned (a newborn child would seem to disprove this);
2) They derive from the values man chooses (though without any pre-existing emotional connection, why does a man choose ANY values? Rand does not explain this as far as I know);
3) Emotions are a distinct thing from logic, or "thought", as she says. Linked, perhaps, but not somehow so intertwined as to be inseparable.
"What is math, if not emotionless logic? You don't say (to borrow your own trick), "2 times happy equals bemusement"."
ReplyDeleteThat's not the sort of intertwining i'm talking about. that's dropping context, treating emotions as elements of arithmetic.
The sort of intertwining i'm talking about is in the context of whether all actions have an "emotional root." yes, they do. and all emotions have a perceptual and logical root.
It's that sort of intertwining we're talking about, not interchangeability.
"That any action you take must have an emotional root."
and that emotion must have a logical root. and that logic must have an emotional root. around and around and around.
Why should i put 2x2=4 on the engineering diagram calculation instead of 2x2=5? Because i prefer (emotionally) right answers to wrong answers. Why do i prefer right answers to wrong answers on an emotional level? Because (logically) if i do my calculations wrong in my engineering diagram, my building will fall over. Why do i care if my building falls over? Because (emotionally) i don't want to waste time and resources and risk lives, on an emotional level. Why don't i want to waste time and resources and risk lives on an emotional level? because logically that would not accomplish my goals. Why do i want to accomplish my goals? Because i (emotionally) want to achieve them.
Etc. etc. etc.
No matter where you go, there's a logical root to all emotion, and an emotional root to all logic.
as to your quotes from rand's non-fiction, as i said, she didn't put it explicitly in her non-fiction, but it is implicit in her fiction.
her non-fiction was addressing a particular fallacy -- the idea that emotions may unilaterally drive thought. she was pointing out the other side of the coin.
but this is a different question we're dealing with here. here we're dealing with whether that logic in turn depends on emotional judgments, which in turn depends on rational judgments.
that's not what she was talking about in those quotes.
that's why you have to look to her non-fiction to see where she saw the role of emotions. and at root, her books are emotional stories about emotional people seeking emotional goals. they're about a man who _likes_ designing buildings, and a girl who _wants_ to be free to be herself, and a man who _wants_ to be free from torture for his virtues.
There's no separating their goals, logic, or emotions in any of the stories. all are integrated.
which is, i think, exactly the point.
you can certainly say that logic is distinct from emotion _outside_ the context of being human. for instance, an arithmetic problem _by itself_ is unrelated to an emotion _by itself_.
ReplyDeletebut as humans, these things never exist by themselves _to us_. we do math for emotional purposes. we develop our emotions with reference to our logical evaluation of our environment. We evaluate our environment out of a desire to understand it.
Etc etc etc.
That's what i mean by philosophy outside the context of being human. As humans, in practice, emotion and logic are inextricably intertwined. Ignoring that leads to nothing but bogus answers, all the way down the line.
it might be better said this way:
ReplyDelete1) within the context of human action, emotion and logical thought are intertwined. we act for feeling-reasons, and we act according to logical parameters, our feelings arise from our logical thoughts, and our logical thoughts are intended to serve our feelings.
2) the "is/ought" dichotomy arises in the context of human action. Specifically, it is the question of whether an "ought" in human action can be derived from the logical/perceptual/factual "is."
3) Because the question arises in the context of human action, and because logic and emotion are intertwined in the context of human action, the "is/ought" dichotomy must deal with logic and emotion as they exist in the context of action -- that is, as intertwined.
4) since logic and emotion do not exist in separate, unrelated states in the context of human action, it would be foolish to attempt to derive "ought" based on a notion of logic divorced from emotion, because in the context of human action, there is no such thing.
5) the premise solving the is/ought dichotomy is that the "is" (i.e. us) is both emotional and logical, and that the emotion and logic cannot be untangled without dismantling both.
6) the solution to the is/ought dichotomy is that "ought" can and must be derived with reference to both logic and emotion. this is not the problem. this is the solution.
What a nonsense, logic has nothing to do with emotions. 2 + 2 = 4, independent of any human emotion and so is the statement "2+2=5 is a false statement" correct, independent of any emotion or "context" (a favorite mantra to ward off criticism, already more than 40 occurrences on this page). And so is the logical refutation of Rand's "proof" that you can derive an "ought" from an "is" independent of any human emotion and doesn't depend on any "context". An essential characteristic of logic is that it is divorced from emotion.
ReplyDeletei'm afraid that's where you're wrong, dragonfly:).
ReplyDeleteremember, we are talking within the context of human action, not logical propositions in the abstract, detached from human action.
in acting, why should i prefer to believe a correct answer, rather than an incorrect one? what makes me want to be right instead of wrong?
logic alone can't tell me which is preferable. it can only tell me which is right and which is wrong.
but why shouldn't i just go about my business, happily believing the wrong?
because i _prefer_ the right.
in selecting "right," and rejecting "wrong," i am making an emotional judgment. I _prefer_ right to wrong.
this is also strongly supported by the scientific evidence, as illustrated in the excellent book, Descartes' Error. Logic is badly impaired when one's emotional functioning is damages -- at a biological, physiological level.
that impairment is further confirmation that _within the context of human action_, you can't separate logic from emotion.
as to "context," you show me a person who's using "context" to ward off criticism, and i'll show you a person who's trying to criticize apples for their failure to be oranges.
ReplyDeleteOK, let's summarise.
ReplyDeleteIt seems that ungtss rejects standard logic as a means of criticising philosophical arguments, calling such criteria "inhuman". Furthermore, he claims that such logical criticism is the act of evil-doers with a malign purpose in mind. For example, he believes "the purpose of these inhuman criteria is of course to send reason down a blind alley, leaving room for the irrational and arbitrary to rule."
Along with other Objectivists, he also rejects many of the common meanings of language, insisting that they are corrupted by "improperly formed concepts" tainted by incorrect prior premises such as altruism, also spread by evildoers.
In effect he argues that if the doctrines of Objectivism turn out to be false by the criteria of standard logic and language, it is because logic and language are wrong, not Objectivism.
The implication is that the only way to judge whether Objectivism is correct is by applying Objectivist standards (what these are is far from clear). In other words, in order to judge Objectivism, you must already have accepted it.
The problem is clearly then: if this is the case how are non-Objectivists able to usefully discuss Objectivism at all?
"The problem is clearly then: if this is the case how are non-Objectivists able to usefully discuss Objectivism at all?"
ReplyDeleteStart by justifying your criteria.
If you want to claim that "ought" cannot be derived by "is" because logic stripped of emotion alone cannot get you there, then explain why logic stripped of emotion is a meaningful and valid criterion for the derivation of "ought" in the context of human action, which always involves both logic and emotion simultaneously.
Explain why your criticism is a meaningful one. Explain why one's inability to do something when stripped of an essential element of doing it is meaningful in any way.
alternatively, explain how human action does -- or can -- occur without reference to emotion.
ReplyDeleteif you established that, then your challenge to derive "ought" from "is" on purely logical terms would be valid in some context of human behavior:).
"No matter where you go, there's a logical root to all emotion, and an emotional root to all logic."
ReplyDeleteI don't think you've established this as fact, though.
The fact that you can round-robin through logical and emotional motives for a while does not mean you have actually traced things to the base root (where emotion lies). You don't reach the root of a tree by circling around in its branches and then throwing your hands up and saying "etc!"
"Why do i want to accomplish my goals? Because i (emotionally) want to achieve them."
But why do you want to achieve them?
ungtss,
ReplyDeleteOK, well, I accept that the only way you can defend your Randian beliefs is to reject the universal standards of argument such as logic and language.
This is exactly what I've said you and other Objectivists are forced to do all along, as by such critical standards Objectivist doctrine is an obvious failure.
But I thank you for at least providing such a clearcut statement of this very important rejection.
Jzero,
ReplyDelete"'Why do i want to accomplish my goals? Because i (emotionally) want to achieve them.'
But why do you want to achieve them?"
because, on an emotional level, i want the emotional rewards they will bring; and on a logical level, i know that those emotions cannot be faked, and must be acquired by accomplishing the goals.
my argument is of course that the "circling around the branches" is all that's possible -- that is there is no "final root" that is exclusively emotional or logical.
i've illustrated that with a few examples to show what i'm talking about.
i'd say burden's on you to show a goal that's reducible to a solely emotional root, where the emotional root does not depend on any sort of logical/factual/perceptual evaluation of my situation.
Barnes,
You've completely evaded the point I made. Jzero is not evading it, but is actually addressing it. Observe the difference in the quality of our conversations.
Hello Daniel.
ReplyDeleteYou state in your last post to ungtss that "the only way you can defend your Randian beliefs is to reject the universal standards of argument such as logic and language."
What Randian beliefs? This guy has lost them somewhere along the way.
The position of "is/ought" propounded by ungtss has nothing to do with Objectivism. He has essentially sneaked into Objectivism the idea that value judgments rely on emotion. This is an idea that would have outraged Ayn Rand.
Thus ungtss says: "I don't think that's Rand's point of view. I think she understood that logic and emotion were inherently intertwined, such that neither precedes neither in any absolute sense."
This is ridiculous, of course.
For Rand, all emotions are both logically and temporally subordinate to thoughts. John Galt: "An emotion is a response to a fact of reality, an estimate dictated by your standards." If those estimates are wrong or confused, the emotions will be too. I think this analysis of emotion is radically flawed - but there's no doubt that it's what she says.
Amusingly, ungtss seems to have drifted into an essentially Humean position. The whole of Objectivist ethics and psychology falls to the ground if one believes that logic and emotion are "inherently intertwined, such that neither precedes neither in any absolute sense."
So ungtss has ended by implicitly rejecting the Objectivist analysis. But he's done so without understanding either Ayn Rand or David Hume.
if you'd read the rest of the posts, you'd realize that i don't disagree with that point of rand's, but i don't think that's the whole of the story.
ReplyDeletebut i guess "real philosophers" don't bother to understand the ideas they're criticizing?
the point you're evading is this: when you get to those thoughts making up the emotion, what do you have? "pure logic," divorced from any emotion or values? i don't think rand would have agreed with that. because in adopting those lower thoughts, you've done so for emotional reasons -- and those emotional reasons stem from other thoughts.
this is quite easily demonstrated, whether satisfactorilly "randian" or not. as i've done. and as i've said, i think it's implicit throughout her fiction, although not explicit in her non-fiction -- because her non-fiction was not addressing this specific issue.
the real irony, though, is that if in fact it isn't randian, then i'm thinking for myself. and i thought objectivists were supposed to be incapable of that. aren't we?
or do we get criticized when we agree with rand, and criticized when we think for ourselves because we're not randian enough?
isn't the common theme that we get criticized no matter what we do?
and isn't that absurd?
it's also funny to me that you say i've "drifted" into a humean position, when hume held emotions to be at the root, and i don't. i've drifted into his position by disagreeing with him?
ReplyDeleteand i don't think objectivist ethics falls to the ground when one recognizes that emotions and thought are so intertwined that they can't be separated in the context of human action. on the contrary, you can't separate emotions from thought even in the context of rand's non-fiction, where she says that emotions are "lightning calculators" of thought. if emotions are composed of thoughts, then they certainly can't be separated for purposes of is/ought.
i think that the objectivist position is strengthened by recognizing that each thought can be traced to emotion and each emotion to thought. in particular, i think it strengthens her attack on is/ought. because it shows how absurd it is to try and trace "ought" to thoughts devoid of emotion, when there is no such thing.
Hi Gordon,
ReplyDeleteThanks for another interesting response. I agree that the "scientific method has resulted in an unbelievable expansion in technical capacity and an expansion in the size of our known universe." But I'm talking about an understanding of consciousness as such.
Not only has materialism fallen short in its efforts to understand consciousness, but today there are materialists who claim there is no such thing as consciousness at all! I think this shows that, whatever its advantages in other lines of inquiry, materialism has not been fruitful in the study of our inner life.
"Radios and TV sets don’t change when the programs change. Brains do."
If I'd been trying to present this idea more precisely, I would have analogized the brain to a transceiver, not receiver. A better analogy is the Mars Rover (the brain) and Mission Control (the mind). The Rover can take certain actions on its own, but relies on Mission Control for most instructions; moreover, feedback provided by the Rover influences decisions made by Mission Control. No analogy is perfect, but this one gets us closer. (I owe it to The Biology of Belief, by Bruce Lipton.)
"Implicit in this view is the notion of a soul, temporarily resident in a brain which is the control panel for a body; and capable of surviving without it."
After having studied these things for 15 years, I've concluded that this is probably the case. I don't base this conclusion on religious faith, but on empirical evidence that's convincing to me. If you're interested, the academic volume Irreducible Mind, by Kelly et al., provides 800 pages of data on "anomalous" phenomena suggestive of dualism. Most of this material comes from peer-reviewed journals, including "mainstream" sources.
"Our brains are clearly a more sophisticated development of processes to be found in other mammals."
True. But there also seems to be a qualitative, as well as quantitative, difference between human consciousness and the consciousness of lower animals. We are the only introspectively conscious beings on Earth, as far as we know, and the only ones to deal with complex abstractions.
"Estimates of the number of stars in the known universe run as high as 1 septillion. In the face of numbers like that, if you tell me that a habitable universe can’t be just a coincidence, my answer is: sure it can."
With respect, this answer misses my point. I'm not talking about the habitability of a particular planet. I'm talking about the fact that the universe itself is a stable, complex environment capable of supporting organic life. For this to happen, the fundamental constants that determine the nature of our spacetime cosmos had to be defined within exceedingly narrow parameters at the moment of the Big Bang.
To explain this, physicists posit a virtually infinite number of universes, all with different fundamental constants; by chance alone, one of those universes would support life. But there's no evidence for the existence of other universes. If we start with the more parsimonious assumption that our universe is the only one, we're left with the question of how the fundamental constants worked out "just right" by chance alone.
Wikipedia:
'Physicist Paul Davies has asserted that "There is now broad agreement among physicists and cosmologists that the Universe is in several respects ‘fine-tuned' for life". However, he continues, "the conclusion is not so much that the Universe is fine-tuned for life; rather it is fine-tuned for the building blocks and environments that life requires." '
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-tuned_Universe
"At this point, we are of course arguing visions of the world, neither of which can be proved."
Yes, I agree that worldviews are almost impossible to debate productively, since they are the foundation for all our other views. It can still be fun, though!
:-)
"i'd say burden's on you to show a goal that's reducible to a solely emotional root, where the emotional root does not depend on any sort of logical/factual/perceptual evaluation of my situation."
ReplyDeleteOkay.
Why do you want to LIVE?
While you're thinking about that, I would submit that this:
"because, on an emotional level, i want the emotional rewards they will bring; and on a logical level, i know that those emotions cannot be faked, and must be acquired by accomplishing the goals."
--is not an entirely accurate trace of motive. And I say this because when you reverse the trail, only part of it makes sense.
The first part seems plausible enough. If you say, "I want to achieve my goals because it gives me emotional satisfaction," then you can turn that around and say, "in order to achieve emotional satisfaction, I should achieve my goals." Both statements make sense.
But if you're saying "I want to achieve my goals because these emotions can't be faked," or "in order to achieve real emotion, these goals must be met," you're running into a situation where the statement doesn't make sense, or is not actually a motivation to achieve your goals.
Of course, if your goal satisfies you emotionally, it is that goal you work toward, and not some goal that does not satisfy you. But that is not WHY you achieve your goal, only HOW you intend to gain that emotional satisfaction. The "logical level" is not any part of the cause of action, it is instead the means.
I suspect that if you examine motivations more closely, and avoid confusing "how" and "why", you would find that there are roots, and they are indeed emotional.
ungtss, have you even read Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature? Your representation of his argument bears no resemblance to what he actually argued. http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/f_hume.html
ReplyDelete"ungtss, have you even read Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature? Your representation of his argument bears no resemblance to what he actually argued. http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/f_hume.html"
ReplyDeleteYeah, I noticed that too. But then, his views on Ayn Rand frequently bear no resemblance to what she actually argued either. . .
"Why do you want to LIVE?"
ReplyDeleteEmotionally, because living feels nice.
Logically, because life is a prerequisite for many other goals I have.
Take away the logical component, and you're left with a naked emotion, devoid of any content. Why does living feel good? Well i can't mention that life permits me to play with my daughter, because that's a logical prerequisite, and logic has been chopped out of the question.
Why do I want to achieve those other goals? For similar reasons -- both logical and emotional.
"Of course, if your goal satisfies you emotionally, it is that goal you work toward, and not some goal that does not satisfy you. But that is not WHY you achieve your goal, only HOW you intend to gain that emotional satisfaction. The "logical level" is not any part of the cause of action, it is instead the means."
The question of "how" is inseparable from the question of "why," because the "how" establishes the logical link between the means and the end.
For instance, why do i eat? because i want to live. how do i maintain my life? by eating, among other things.
the "why" is impossible to determine without reference to the "how." the how determines the why.
"Yeah, I noticed that too. But then, his views on Ayn Rand frequently bear no resemblance to what she actually argued either. . . "
ReplyDeleteAnd who better to objectively determine what somebody "really meant" than a hostile ex-disciple? surely you have a monopoly on understanding her. no one who appreciates her could have anything to contribute.
in any event, to the extent you claim a "misunderstand hume," how on earth could i have adopted a humean perspective, as you claimed earlier?
clean up your own thinking, man. it's a mess.
ReplyDelete"in any event, to the extent you claim a "misunderstand hume," how on earth could i have adopted a humean perspective, as you claimed earlier?
clean up your own thinking, man. it's a mess."
Note the last sentence of my post: "So ungtss has ended by implicitly rejecting the Objectivist analysis. But he's done so without understanding either Ayn Rand or David Hume."
Physician, heal thyself.
""Why do you want to LIVE?"
ReplyDeleteEmotionally, because living feels nice.
Logically, because life is a prerequisite for many other goals I have."
But those other goals are rooted in emotional causes. That you must live in order to attain those goals is the how, not the why.
"The question of "how" is inseparable from the question of "why," because the "how" establishes the logical link between the means and the end."
Yes and no. It's true that "how" is the link between means and end, but that does not make the question inseparable from that of "why". It means that in life, you can't get to what you want without "how", but that has no bearing on WHY you ultimately do what you do.
It evades the basic point of the is/ought question, which is concerned with why and only why. And if one is examining motive and reasons, "why" is what one explores, and "how" is but a sideline or distraction.
If you declare that only considering "why" is somehow invalid, fine - but you can't then claim you have solved the is/ought question, you've only brushed it aside. Nor can you claim you're truly searching for a cause, if you blur the lines on what a cause is.
"Yes and no. It's true that "how" is the link between means and end, but that does not make the question inseparable from that of "why". It means that in life, you can't get to what you want without "how", but that has no bearing on WHY you ultimately do what you do."
ReplyDeleteCan you illustrate this with a concrete example? i do not see how "how" has no bearing on "why," since a consideration of "how" is required to link the action with the motive.
for example, why do i work? because i like to have purchasing power, and work is how i get purchasing power.
if you cut out the "how," then there's no link between "i work" and "i want purchasing power." "how" is what tells you that your actions will lead you to your goals. it's what tells you that if you want B, then A is the action you must take to accomplish it.
of course, not everybody thinks this way. some people do not ask "how" in their determinations of "why."
for instance, they may pray for the healing of a loved one, believing the prayer will accomplish the healing. They don't ask how. They simply ask why, and believe it will work "somehow."
while this way of thinking is common, it's also demonstrably dysfunctional.
as another illustration of the importance of considering "how" in the context of "why:"
ReplyDelete"why do you beat your wife?"
"because i want her to love me."
"how will it make her love you?"
"because women love men who beat them."
take away that last clause, and there's no link between the beating and the desire for love. but the last clause is a logical, factual/perceptual claim about reality.
in nearly all cases, that claim is wrong. his course of action will not lead to his goal, because it is premised on a "how" that is incorrect.
nevertheless, that last premise is still a claim about reality which is factual and logical in nature, rather than emotional.
were he to correct that last premise, and decide that beatings do not make women love you, or at the very least do not make psychologically healthy women love you, then he would see that his action does not serve his motive.
were he rational, he would then abandon the action is _ineffective_ toward his emotional goal -- love.
of course, in reality, men who beat their wives do not honestly believe that the beating will make their wife love them. they simply tell themselves that to rationalize and justify to themselves a desire to harm someone else. but this fact about wife-beaters can only be learned from experience:).
ungtss:
ReplyDelete>You've completely evaded the point I made. Jzero is not evading it, but is actually addressing it. Observe the difference in the quality of our conversations.
Well if Jzero wants to argue with someone who explicitly rejects the usual standards of argument, and replaces them with his own, he is quite welcome to.
They are also likely to have their own standards of judging conversation quality too...;-)
"the usual standards of argument." you mean the ones that are never defined or justified, but simply assumed to be whatever serves your purpose:)? those ones:)?
ReplyDeleteGordon:
ReplyDelete>What Randian beliefs? This guy has lost them somewhere along the way.
Well, he seems to think he is a Randian. I agree that he seems quite confused about many aspects of Rand's philosophy, as veterans like you and ECE regularly point out. It's difficult to know if he's being independent-minded, confused, or just both.
>The position of "is/ought" propounded by ungtss has nothing to do with Objectivism. He has essentially sneaked into Objectivism the idea that value judgments rely on emotion. This is an idea that would have outraged Ayn Rand.
Yes, he's saying that emotion and reason are "intertwined" etc. Actually this has nothing to do with Randian doctrine, as you say. In Objectivism, emotions are only logical decisions integrated into the subconscious and automatised for speed and efficiency. Your values are logically derived. This is why the "is/ought" problem is an ugly fact that Objectivists don't want to face - because it means you actually can't make such logical derivations in the first place.
That's why their only way of saving Rand's claim is to change the meaning of the word "logic".
"Yes, he's saying that emotion and reason are "intertwined" etc. Actually this has nothing to do with Randian doctrine, as you say. In Objectivism, emotions are only logical decisions integrated into the subconscious and automatised for speed and efficiency."
ReplyDeleteThe fact that it has nothing to do with the randian doctrine is why it doesn't contradict her doctrine:).
there is nothing contradictory between the recognition that emotions are integrated logical decisions and the recognition that the logical decisions are themselves motivated by other emotions which are themselves logical decisions.
and in light of this fact about our decision making process -- which is supported by a boatload of research btw -- the is/ought dichotomy can be shown to be an artifact of trying to solve a puzzle with half the puzzle pieces taken away.
'Yes, he's saying that emotion and reason are "intertwined" etc. Actually this has nothing to do with Randian doctrine, as you say.'
ReplyDeleteAs I read untgss, he is saying that the choice to live or not to live is fundamental and can't be dictated by logic. One simply chooses to live, or not.
I believe this is consistent with Rand's position. She did not think that the value of life can be proven, except in the sense that all other values depend on it. If a person wishes to reject life and values, that is his choice.
She went on to say that if one chooses to live, then it follows that certain character traits and behaviors are necessary to further one's life. It's an if-then relationship. The "if" part cannot be decided by logic, but (she thought) the "then" part can be.
Now, I disagree with Rand, because I think it's perfectly possible to live a long, happy life without practicing many of the virtues that she advocates. It is possible for a given individual to be prosperous and happy without being productive or having integrity or being honest, etc. I'm not saying that's a lifestyle that I would want, but some people do live that way. Criminals and dictators do so, and for many millennia the looting tribes of nomadic peoples lived like that also, parasitically subsisting on the labors of the villagers they raided.
Rand would reply that criminals, dictators, and looters either a) are not really happy or b) are not quite human (they are subhuman, because they don't live what she defines as a properly human life). I don't find either of these answers very compelling, but that's what she said.
She would also argue that an essentially parasitic lifestyle is not a good long-term choice for the community or the human race. This is true, but it may be irrelevant; from a strictly individualistic standpoint, why should any given person give a fig about the long-term consequences for the group? As Keynes put it, "In the long run we are all dead."
Rand also tied happiness into her system, while attempting to avoid making happiness her standard of value, which would be hedonism. She argued that the particular values and virtues she advocated, while not predicated on happiness, would inextricably lead to happiness, and that contrary practices and beliefs would lead to grief. Again, I am not at all sure that this is true, but this is how she "intertwined" logic and emotion in her arguments.
"would inextricably lead to happiness" ...
ReplyDelete... should be "would inexorably lead to happiness."
The perils of dictating to your computer!
"[Rand] did not think that the value of life can be proven, except in the sense that all other values depend on it. If a person wishes to reject life and values, that is his choice."
ReplyDeleteActually, Michael, I think that what you're describing in these words would count in Rand's eyes as a proof. If I remember the argument, she's saying that the concept of value - what one acts to gain or keep - presupposes a living thing doing the valuing. Therefore, she would argue, anyone who adopts any fundamental standard of value other than life is guilty of a logical contradiction.
So Rand, I think, would argue that emotion only comes into the issue secondarily. Life is the only logical choice that a rational being can make; and AFTER he makes that choice, he will have emotions in favour of things that advance his life; and emotions against things that don't.
Prescott, accurately describing the lay of the land with grace and aplomb, as always.
ReplyDeletethere's an ambiguity in language between strictly biological "life" and the value-laden notion of "life" she advanced. and i don't think that ambiguity can be crossed on strictly logical terms without reference to emotions.
i just think this is a trivial criticism, because one's inability to justify action on logical terms stripped of emotion is meaningless, given that no human decision with regard to action can be stripped of emotions. the criticism is trivial because it is based on a criterion no human decision to act can satisfy, due to our biological and cognitive nature.
just as one chooses to live on both logical and emotional grounds, and chooses to eat healthy or unhealthy food on both logical and emotional grounds, one chooses to be honorable and self-sufficient -- or not -- on both logical and emotional grounds.
as prescott points out, this intertwining of logic and emotion is implicit in many aspects of her writing, but not explicit. i wish she'd made it explicit, because i think it greatly strengthens her argument.
still, as with all my criticisms of rand, it's not that she went too far in applying her basic concepts, but that she didn't go far enough.
i hope they say that about me when i die, because it means you were headed in the right direction.
"Therefore, she would argue, anyone who adopts any fundamental standard of value other than life is guilty of a logical contradiction."
ReplyDeleteGordon, that's flat wrong. She recognized that under certain circumstances, suicide may be the rational choice -- as when the conditions of life offer nothing of value.
if suicide may be a rational choice, then death is not a self-contradictory option.
Rand would argue that a rational person choosing suicide still has life as his fundamental standard of value: he is making the judgment that he is in a situation where life as a rational being is no longer possible - and he's not prepared to continue his life on any other terms. See Galt's remarks to Dagny, AS 1091 hardcover ed.
ReplyDelete"the usual standards of argument." you mean the ones that are never defined or justified, but simply assumed to be whatever serves your purpose:)? those ones:)?
ReplyDeleteIf Objectivists raced cars, they would require their opponents to reinvent the wheel, but only after they defined "wheel" and demonstrated the validity of the concept to Objectivists' satisfaction -- then Objectivists might deign to discuss the proper epidemiological bases for "axle," "tire," and "engine." Also of this is getting ahead of itself, of course, because we haven't even begun to settle the issue racing qua racing.
Life is the only logical choice that a rational being can make...
Don't forget her famous equivocation. It wasn't that life was the only logical choice, but life qua life, and smuggled into that qua is "whatever serves [Rand's] purpose."
"Rand would argue that a rational person choosing suicide still has life as his fundamental standard of value: he is making the judgment that he is in a situation where life as a rational being is no longer possible - and he's not prepared to continue his life on any other terms."
ReplyDeleteyou're critically misrepresenting what he said:). in his comments to dagny, he says not that "life as a rational being is no longer possible," but "life no longer offers any values to pursue."
he says "i do not care to live on their terms. i do not care to obey them and i do not care to see you endure a long, drawn-out murder."
this has nothing to do with whether "life as a rational being is possible," but rather whether a rational being would "care" to live under those circumstances.
it's a statement of desire. of emotion.
always.
"If Objectivists raced cars, they would require their opponents to reinvent the wheel, but only after they defined "wheel" and demonstrated the validity of the concept to Objectivists' satisfaction -- then Objectivists might deign to discuss the proper epidemiological bases for "axle," "tire," and "engine." Also of this is getting ahead of itself, of course, because we haven't even begun to settle the issue racing qua racing."
ReplyDeleteThis is a blatant misrepresentation of the situation:). nobody's requiring you to redefine the steering wheel. you use whatever wheel you want to use. but if you come into my car, and tell me my steering wheel is not a real steering wheel, you better be able to explain yourself.
in the same way, i'm free to look at your car, and tell you that i don't think your car has a steering wheel, and i don't think you're going to be able to steer it.
none of this involves "forcing" you to do anything at all. reality is the final arbiter.
rand's insight was the great anxiety people without steering wheels feel when others point out that they don't have any. they feel as though they're being "forced" somehow. but they're not. they just feel that way, because they don't have a steering wheel, and it freaks them out when people point it out to them.
AS1091: " 'I will kill myself and stop them right there.' He said it without emphasis, in the same impersonal tone of practical calculation as the rest."
ReplyDeleteEmotion huh?
because if you're not dramatic in expressing a feeling, it isn't a feeling? is that what you think?
ReplyDeletehe says he doesn't "care" to live under those circumstances. that's a statement of feeling. whether he blubbers about it is something else.
but perhaps to you, emotion expressed in a matter of fact way is not emotion?
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ReplyDeleteand that's the sort of maturity and coherence of argument that will get you a phd in "real" philosophy.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteThere is no philosophical system that requires one to go on listening to a bore.
there is a philosophical system that demonstrates in excruciating detail that social intimidation tactics are a coward's substitute for Reason.
ReplyDelete@Daniel Barnes: Gordon:
ReplyDelete>What Randian beliefs? This guy has lost them somewhere along the way.
Well, he seems to think he is a Randian. I agree that he seems quite confused about many aspects of Rand's philosophy, as veterans like you and ECE regularly point out. It's difficult to know if he's being independent-minded, confused, or just both.
Yes. I'm pretty sure that (like many words), "Objectivist" means something different to ungtss than it does to the rest of us.
For my part, I'd have more respect for ungtss if he'd take his stand as an independent thinker and argue for his own views as his own, giving Rand credit for influence and/or inspiration as he sees fit, instead of calling himself an Objectivist and contorting or dismissing what Rand actually wrote and said in favor of whatever he wishes she'd written and said. Worse, where he admits to disagreeing with Rand, he seems to think that his position, not Rand's, is somehow the truly "Objectivist" one ... which, by Rand's own definiton, is impossible. If he disagrees with Rand, he should own it.
Case in point: emotion and reason. Rand clearly believed reason was the root of emotion, and I cannot understand how anyone who has read and understood her could miss that. Apart from her many explicit statements to that effect (some of which have been quoted here), she wrote it into her fiction as well. Notice that her heroes are capable of one set of emotions, and her villains are capable of a different set of emotions. They literally do not feel the same things. I don't have Atlas Shrugged in front of me, but there's a paragraph in the Dagny/Francisco-childhood flashback where she describes the difference between Jim's and Francisco's laughter. Francisco laughed as if he saw something greater, while Jim laughed as if he wanted to destroy all greatness. Likewise, at some point Jim tells Dagny it's easy for her because she doesn't feel anything, and Dagny -- after thinking of the things she has felt -- agrees with him. The point is that Dagny realizes she can't feel the emotions Jim feels ... and he can't feel the emotions she has. (It's part and parcel of Jim not being truly human, by Rand's standards.)
That is Rand's view; it's not "emotion and logic are inexplicably intertwined" but "emotion is a consequence of logic." One-way dependency. Period.
If ungtss has a different view, he's welcome to it (it could hardly be more wrong than Rand's!), but he needs to stop pretending Rand would agree.
"That is Rand's view; it's not "emotion and logic are inexplicably intertwined" but "emotion is a consequence of logic." One-way dependency. Period."
ReplyDeleteI disagree, and I don't think your evidence supports your conclusion. The fact that two sets of characters experience fundamentally different emotions does not mean that their judgments can be understood when stripped of any reference to their emotions.
And that's the issue here.
"For my part, I'd have more respect for ungtss if he'd take his stand as an independent thinker and argue for his own views as his own, giving Rand credit for influence and/or inspiration as he sees fit, instead of calling himself an Objectivist and contorting or dismissing what Rand actually wrote and said in favor of whatever he wishes she'd written and said."
ReplyDeleteBingo. Perhaps an example will illustrate why I find this approach so repellent.
There are lots of people out there who see no problem with holding the Bible in one hand and Atlas Shrugged in the other. But I've yet to see one of them who maintains that Ayn Rand believes in God. They just say that it's an area where they don't agree with her.
But how would you feel if someone said that Ayn Rand actually believes in God? Hopton Stoddard said Roark was a profoundly religious man, right? Dagny can use words like sacrilege, right? And Hugh Akston can refer to prayer although he wrongly calls it a misguided attempt, right? The facts are all there - if you have the kind of brilliant and subtle mind that can detect them.
Or maybe we'll admit that Rand doesn't believe in God, but maintain that we need to put that part in to remedy the deficiencies in her system. No problem, right?
This is not an idle example. Rand believes that emotions follow, logically and temporally, after evaluations which at some time or other were conscious. It is as fundamental an issue for her as her atheism. "Emotions are not tools of cognition." Modifying this statement in any way wrecks her epistemology and psychology.
There is a saying out there: at first I was disgusted, now I'm amused. In the case of u, my reactions are becoming very much the opposite.
The laws of logic have approximately the same relationship to Rand's ethical theories that the laws of physics do to John Galt's perpetual motion machine....;-)
ReplyDeleterand's views on religion provides a useful analogy here. one person might say "rand was against religion" and quote a myriad of statements supporting that conclusion.
ReplyDeleteanother might say "rand was against one type of religion, but in favor of another." he could then point to a myriad of quotes supporting that conclusion.
if the person holding the first view were to say to the person holding the second "no, you're wrong!" he would be either an idiot, or gordon, or perhaps both.
the reason such a person would be an idiot is that those "anti-religion" statements are made within the context of a particular issue -- traditional theistic and mystical religions. in that context, she is anti-religion.
but her position as "anti-religion" in the context of those religions does not mean she is "anti-religious" in the context of a broader notion of religious-type feeling. which is the context of the second set of quotes.
an agile mind can separate these two contexts, and recognize that both sets of quotes refer to different notions of religion. that both are true within their respective contexts.
by contrast, a rigid, sorry-sack mind is unable to keep the respective contexts separate. he is so committed to one view that he must interpret the quotes applying to that view to all contexts -- even contexts in which those quotes do not -- and could not apply.
these are the same mentalities as bible-thumpers, who take quotes out of context to prove things even the authors did not intend.
so it is here, with mr. "forget that your direct quoting of galt shows i'm wrong, i'm bored" burkowski.
you are quoting rand's comments from one context of inquiry, and applying them in a context in which they do not apply. because you are unable or unwilling to recognize the significance of context to the interpretation of a person's views, you are completely convinced that you are right.
at this point, an honest person inquires as to whether context may play some significant role. a dishonest person shuts his mind to the possibility.
your choice.
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ReplyDeleteQED.
ReplyDeleteungtss:
ReplyDelete>there is nothing contradictory between the recognition that emotions are integrated logical decisions and the recognition that the logical decisions are themselves motivated by other emotions which are themselves logical decisions.
It's turtles all the way down!
Daniel, I have to believe that your favourite bible character must be Job. . .
ReplyDeleteMichael P:
ReplyDelete>As I read untgss, he is saying that the choice to live or not to live is fundamental and can't be dictated by logic. One simply chooses to live, or not. I believe this is consistent with Rand's position.
Yes. And all this means is that Rand has already conceded either sotto voce or likely without realising it that she cannot have a comprehensively rational moral system. She has effectively put a non-rational decision at its root.
There is an analogous epistemological problem that is quite well known: that is, what is the rational justification for adopting the rules of reason? This is why a "comprehensive rationalism" is impossible, for obviously a decision to abide by the rules of reason is a decision, and cannot be logically derived other than from a prior decision. Karl Popper's solution to this problem is similar to Rand's above in ethics, only more honestly (or knowingly) stated. He said that the fundamental decision to adopt the rules of reason must be freely made; he called this making "the minimum concession to irrationalism". As a result he called his philosophy "critical rationalism", as clearly a comprehensive rationalism couldn't be actually achieved.
So in effect Rand has already given up the game - she has made a fully subjective choice fundamental to her system. All that is left for Objectivists to do is, as I have said regularly, fudge the meanings of terms like "reason", "rational", "logic" etc to maintain the facade.
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ReplyDelete"Yes. And all this means is that Rand has already conceded either sotto voce or likely without realising it that she cannot have a comprehensively rational moral system. She has effectively put a non-rational decision at its root."
ReplyDeleteThis assumes that emotions are nonrational and arbitrary. And that's the assumption she opposed in all the quotes people have been throwing around.
The fight she was focused on was to establish that just because something is emotional does not make it irrational. On the contrary, emotions may be rational or irrational, depending on the logical judgments of which they are composed.
What she didn't say, but which has been imputed to her, is that these logical judgments are fully independent of any other emotions. That's the basis of this "is/ought" nonsense, and it's not at all what she said.
That is why this concept of "emotion as intertwined with logic" is so critical to refuting the argument you're making -- that emotion is inherently non-rational. because it is tied up with logic, it is not. on the contrary, emotion is _impossible_ to humans without some sort of logical/perceptual/factual framework to give us a _reason to feel_ a particular way.
so much insanity derives from the notion that emotions are non-rational. i suppose that's why so many people are so committed to it.
ungtss:
ReplyDelete>...emotions may be rational or irrational, depending on the logical judgments of which they are composed...What she didn't say, but which has been imputed to her, is that these logical judgments are fully independent of any other emotions.
Turtles all the way down!..;-)
Hello Michael.
ReplyDeleteHere I am back at Speculation Central. And thanks for expanding on your remarks.
1) Re the existence of a soul: “After having studied these things for 15 years, I've concluded that this is probably the case. I don't base this conclusion on religious faith, but on empirical evidence that's convincing to me. If you're interested, the academic volume Irreducible Mind, by Kelly et al., provides 800 pages of data on "anomalous" phenomena suggestive of dualism. Most of this material comes from peer-reviewed journals, including ‘mainstream’ sources.”
I’m not familiar with the book, but thank you for the reference.
2) “[There seems to be] a qualitative, as well as quantitative, difference between human consciousness and the consciousness of lower animals. We are the only introspectively conscious beings on Earth, as far as we know, and the only ones to deal with complex abstractions.”
No doubt about it. But if you buy into that qualitative difference, you have to solve what I call the Adam & Eve Problem.
The Catholic position on this is instructive. They accept the truth of evolution (they’re not about to make the mistake they made 400 years ago!). But they stipulate, as an article of faith, the existence of an Adam and an Eve – by which they mean: persons with a consciousness, a conscience and an ability to know God.
What we’re talking about here is the advent of what the anthropologists and archaeologists term “behavioural modernity”. This includes behaviours like art, game playing, trade systems, religious rites, burial rites – and above all, the use of language.
You don’t base your conclusion on religious faith, but you’re faced with the same problem as the Catholics. If you explain behavioural modernity by a qualitative difference between human consciousness and the consciousness of lower animals, when did it happen? How and why? Why, after three billion years of evolutionary development, does something happen which is supposed to be Just Plain Different?
I find it very easy to believe that all the manifestations of behavioural modernity could have evolved naturally. They have pretty good survival value, after all: that’s why there are 7 billion of us.
By contrast, if you don’t accept either a religious or an evolutionary explanation for the rise of behavioural modernity, I don’t see what your solution is to be. An Arthur C. Clarke monolith move, maybe? I don’t know. And I don’t know why the explanation, whatever it is, is even necessary.
3) “With respect, [your] answer misses my point. I'm not talking about the habitability of a particular planet. I'm talking about the fact that the universe itself is a stable, complex environment capable of supporting organic life. For this to happen, the fundamental constants that determine the nature of our spacetime cosmos had to be defined within exceedingly narrow parameters at the moment of the Big Bang.”
Fair enough - but so what? I’m trying not to be flippant, but surely it’s possible to simply say: yes, that’s how things are. If they weren’t this way, we wouldn’t be here. But we are.
I have to come back to the basic point – which is the assumption that order and structure must involve a consciousness doing the ordering and structuring. If you’re not treating this as a matter of religious faith, I have a real problem figuring out what the programming you’re talking about can even mean.
By the way, I was aware that I was talking past your point when I talked about the one septillion stars. But I think the point is still relevant as an explanation of how some very fragile chemical reactions could lead to life even if the odds of such a thing happening were infinitesimally small.
4) “Yes, I agree that worldviews are almost impossible to debate productively, since they are the foundation for all our other views. It can still be fun, though!”
Right on.
"It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever."
ReplyDeleteFor some reason that quote is running through my head.
"'It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever.'
ReplyDeleteFor some reason that quote is running through my head."
Yeah. Me too.
see, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehumanization
ReplyDeletein particular, you may be interested in examining the mechanistic form of dehumanization, in which one convinces oneself (by dysfunctional psychological processes) that another human being lacks agency, human feeling, or warmth.
ReplyDeletehttp://general.utpb.edu/FAC/hughes_j/Haslam%20on%20dehumanization.pdf?hosts=
ReplyDeleteSee: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pain_in_the_ass
a title i'll carry with pride in this context.
ReplyDeleteungtss:
ReplyDelete>in particular, you may be interested in examining the mechanistic form of dehumanization, in which one convinces oneself (by dysfunctional psychological processes) that another human being lacks agency, human feeling, or warmth.
Yes, and after all Randians are so warm, caring, and sympathetic to the feelings of others, especially all those parasites, lice, subhumans, second-handers and social metaphysicians who disagree with them...;-)
Well, on this board, it's the opponents of rand who have started to refer to their opponent as "it" and relegated him to subhuman, robotic status. Perhaps that was the dehumanization rand was identifying, that caused her to become cold to those who choose to dehumanize the human.
ReplyDeleteOr should I remain warm to those who treat me as subhuman? I don't think so. Neither did rand. That was her point.
ReplyDeleteBut if you're so worried about the minor level of criticism you received on this board that you call it "dehumanising", where is your criticism of Rand, Peikoff et all and Objectivists in general's vast outpourings of dehumanising rhetoric about their opponents?
ReplyDeleteActually, when this is pointed out to you, you don't criticise it but instead suddenly find excuses for it!.
This is another typical example of what I've dubbed The Objectivist Double Standard. It seems to be endemic.
I'm not concerned about criticism -- it doesn't bother me at all. I'm simply showing that there dehumanizing going on here. I'm not aware of rand or peikoff ever denying agency to their enemies or referring to them as "it.". To the extent they criticized people, it was for their choices -- and specifically for their choice to dehumanize!
ReplyDeleteLooks like the subject has changed while I was away.
ReplyDeleteIt would be hard to read Atlas Shrugged and NOT conclude that Rand intended to de-humanize each and every enemy, every single person that did not live up to her standards. Throughout the book, just about anyone who acted in an objectionable way or had unapproved thoughts was described to be in some way physically unappealing (while of course her protagonists were for the most part sharply-chiseled Aryan titans). It's like reading about H.G. Wells' Eloi and Morlocks at times.
Rand's comments about the Native Americans being savages that deserved to have their lands taken away because they weren't doing anything "worthwhile" with them are known; so too is her early infatuation with a serial killer, admiring how he set himself as apart from (and superior to) "common" man.
This de-humanizing trend has been carried on by many of her followers; it is, in fact, what led me to discover this blog in the first place.
@Jzero: It would be hard to read Atlas Shrugged and NOT conclude that Rand intended to de-humanize each and every enemy, every single person that did not live up to her standards. Throughout the book, just about anyone who acted in an objectionable way or had unapproved thoughts was described to be in some way physically unappealing ...
ReplyDeleteIt's much more blatant than that. Here's the moment when Dagny finally understands that the strikers were right all along:
"The horror she felt was only a brief stab, like the wrench of a switching perspective: she grasped that the objects she had thought to be human were not. She was left with a sense of clarity, of a final answer, and of the need to act. He was in danger; there was no time and no room in her consciousness to waste emotion on the actions of the subhuman." (AS, p.103 in centennial paperback).
Doesn't get much more dehumanizing than that.
And again, a) making a person unattractive is not referring to him as "it," incapable of reason, lacking agency, which is happening right here, right now, and b) dagny's comment was in the context -- yes context -- of a few individuals torturing Galt, not in the broader context -- yes context -- of "everybody who disagrees with her.". On the contrary, Dagny disagrees with Galt throughout, and he loves her anyway.
ReplyDeleteYour application of a limited characterization of people who are torturing -- yes torturing -- another human being -- to the broader context of "everybody who disagrees with her" is quite mistaken:).
Meanwhile, nobody seems to notice that real dehumanization is happening right here, right now, without any torture. And the people doing it are opposed to AR.
The more often context comes up, the more I realize that that it really is the main problem in understanding AS. Not because anybody here is an "it" who lacks agency or humanity or is ugly, but because interpreting things within their context is probably one of the most mentally draining aspect of philosophy and literature.
Wrt her comments about the native tribes, I agree those were out of place -- but as with all her errors, they were out of place because they failed to apply her philosophy comprehensively. She spoke of them in broad, generalized, tribal terms, instead of in terms of individuals. A tribalist collectivist error. As long as your critics attack you for being like themselves, you're on the right track.
ReplyDelete"And again, a) making a person unattractive is not referring to him as "it," incapable of reason, lacking agency, which is happening right here, right now,"
ReplyDeleteI didn't say it was. And whether you feel something like that is happening to you now has little to do with my analysis of Atlas Shrugged, which would be the same regardless of whatever treatment you are or are not protesting.
But it is de-humanizing - or perhaps "sub-humanizing"? - to always describe those who disagree with one's viewpoint as repulsive. Remember the racist caricatures of the Japanese during WWII? Part and parcel of de-humanizing the enemy. And for that matter, Rand also often described people in her books as not having reason or agency. Isn't that much of what makes them bad? Plus, in her non-fiction, people who don't subscribe to her point of view are described as acting as beasts or parasites or other terms denoting some non-human form of existence.
Even if we give her a pass on part of a story where people are engaged in active torture, the rest of Rand's oeuvre is hardly clear of de-humanization of the enemy.
"Even if we give her a pass on part of a story where people are engaged in active torture, the rest of Rand's oeuvre is hardly clear of de-humanization of the enemy."
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely true of Atlas Shrugged. Less so of The Fountainhead - except for Toohey, who is unfortunately the harbinger of many future caricatures. And even less so of We the Living.
In Rand's novels, the philosophical perspective gets wider and wider - and the capacity for even minimum empathy becomes so narrow that it's almost pathological. By emulating this approach, Ayn Rand devotees do great damage to themselves - and to anyone in their vicinity who pays them any mind.
By the way, thanks for your quotes from The Objectivist Lexicon on the subject of emotion. Not that they seem to have done much good. . .
it's interesting ... to the extent she did dehumanize "the enemy" (and it's clear she did), the question is, who is the enemy? it wasn't everybody who disagreed with her, as is made clear by the dagny and reardon characters. it wasn't the poor, as made clear by the hobo character. it wasn't the rich, as made clear by d'anconia. it wasn't men or women or any particular race ...
ReplyDeletewho did she dehumanize?
she appears to have dehumanized the dehumanizers. in other words, to treat as subhuman those who treat either themselves or others as subhuman.
is this legitimate? i'm not exactly sure yet, but it's interesting to think about.
the purpose of dehumanization is of course to create emotional distance to allow humans to treat each other with force. that's why our propagandists dehumanize our enemies in a war, as with your example with the japanese.
so given a limited scope of dehumanization -- to dehumanizing the dehumanizers -- is that wrong?
i'm not exactly sure it is. in fact, in thinking about it, that's one of the key aspects i drew out of AS that i never really identified until now. the ability to draw emotional distance between myself and those who systematically exploit and abuse me. to not afford them the rights and privileges of human beings, precisely because they do not afford me those same rights and privileges.
is that wrong? i don't think it is. i think it's a critical aspect of survival which is countered by every mystical dogma in the world which teaches me to do exactly the opposite -- to humanize the non-human, whether it be ascribing spirits to rocks or sacrificing children to a priest or sacrificing the fruits of my labor to a crackhead wifebeater.
to the extent her dehumanizing extended beyond dehumanizers, of course, i think she made some costly errors -- as in the case of the native americans, where she was clearly dehumanizing along tribal -- rather than moral -- lines.
but ought we not dehumanize the dehumanizers? the more i think about it, the more i think that's exactly what she had in mind.
greatly appreciate your insights and perspective, as always.
Gordon,
ReplyDelete"In Rand's novels, the philosophical perspective gets wider and wider - and the capacity for even minimum empathy becomes so narrow that it's almost pathological. By emulating this approach, Ayn Rand devotees do great damage to themselves - and to anyone in their vicinity who pays them any mind."
Is that where you learned to think of people in terms of "its," without reason or agency, to be dealt only with social intimidation? or did you pick up your lack of "minimal empathy" on your own?
QED
ReplyDeleteWow. Let's just stop and try and unpack a paragraph like this:
ReplyDeleteungtss:
>Wrt her comments about the native tribes, I agree those were out of place -- but as with all her errors, they were out of place because they failed to apply her philosophy comprehensively. She spoke of them in broad, generalized, tribal terms, instead of in terms of individuals. A tribalist collectivist error. As long as your critics attack you for being like themselves, you're on the right track.
So: Rand's comments about native tribes were "out of place" because she didn't apply her philosophy correctly, resulting in her making a "tribalist collectivist error". But - and this is truly awesome - when people criticise her for this error, it is because they are tribalist collectivists themselves...and therefore Rand's "error" is actually "on the right track".
Shorter ungtss: When Rand's critics are right...they're wrong. And when Rand is wrong...she's right.
That's pretty awesome. But let's now turn to this other para, which I believe is possibly even more awesome still:
>The more often context comes up, the more I realize that that it really is the main problem in understanding AS. Not because anybody here is an "it" who lacks agency or humanity or is ugly, but because interpreting things within their context is probably one of the most mentally draining aspect of philosophy and literature.
So: ungtss believes the main problem people at the ARCHNblog have in understanding Atlas Shrugged is not that they lack agency, humanity, or are ugly, but their "context" - that is, they are not Objectivists. Not being Objectivists, interpreting philosophy and literature is extremely "mentally draining" for them. Hence understanding Atlas Shrugged, the pinnacle of philosophy and literature, is simply beyond them, no matter what handsome, warmly human free agents the ARCHNbloggers are. On the other hand, ungtss' context fortunately is Objectivism, so he does not find interpreting complex philosophy and literature mentally draining at all; thus he can climb the intellectual heights of Atlas Shrugged with ease as we stare on in blank incomprehension.
You gotta hand it to the guy: it takes a lot of fancy footwork to call people a bunch of idiots whilst at the same time pretending not to.
"So: Rand's comments about native tribes were "out of place" because she didn't apply her philosophy correctly, resulting in her making a "tribalist collectivist error". But - and this is truly awesome - when people criticise her for this error, it is because they are tribalist collectivists themselves...and therefore Rand's "error" is actually "on the right track"."
ReplyDeleteThat's a pretty powerful misstatement, calculated to completely misinterpret what i wrote. You seem to have some practice at misstating.
My point is not that her error was on the right track, but that she was on the right track, because her errors arose from her failure to apply her own philosophy of individualism.
"So: ungtss believes the main problem people at the ARCHNblog have in understanding Atlas Shrugged is not that they lack agency, humanity, or are ugly, but their "context" - that is, they are not Objectivists."
And again, no. One does not need to be an objectivist to understand the context in which a person is making particular statements, and interptet the statements in light of the context.
But i think you know both of these things.
"You gotta hand it to the guy: it takes a lot of fancy footwork to call people a bunch of idiots whilst at the same time pretending not to."
ReplyDeleteFor some, it's not that hard. All it takes is zero capacity for self-criticism or self-awareness.
ungtss:
ReplyDelete>That's a pretty powerful misstatement, calculated to completely misinterpret what i wrote....My point is not that her error was on the right track, but that she was on the right track, because her errors arose from her failure to apply her own philosophy of individualism.
But if that's what you meant, then you have to give her critics credit for criticising her. But this is exactly what you don't do.
Instead you make a point of insulting them, indeed attributing to them the very error Rand makes. It seems Rand can make any error she likes without drawing your ire. But woe betide anyone who criticises Rand, even correctly.
ungtss:
>One does not need to be an objectivist to understand the context in which a person is making particular statements, and interptet the statements in light of the context.
Oh really? Then why don't you actually specify the particular "context" that makes it too "mentally draining" to for people here to interpret philosophy and literature correctly? Otherwise these are just more weasel words.
"But if that's what you meant, then you have to give her critics credit for criticising her. But this is exactly what you don't do."
ReplyDeleteWhy do i need to give them credit? Can't I simply agree with them? And point out that in attacking her individualism and her slam on the native americans in the same breath is attacking both the error and the cure?
"Oh really? Then why don't you actually specify the particular "context" that makes it too "mentally draining" to for people here to interpret philosophy and literature correctly? "
I did. One is the context of people torturing a human being, and the other is the context of honest intellectual disagreement.
Dehumanizing the former is a far cry from dehumanizing the latter.
Hi Gordon!
ReplyDeleteThanks again for your comments. You wrote,
"... if you don’t accept either a religious or an evolutionary explanation for the rise of behavioural modernity, I don’t see what your solution is to be."
I may not have made myself clear. I meant that I try to come at these questions from an empiricist perspective, and I didn't start out with any religious beliefs.
I have, however, ended up with a kind of "religious" position, though I dislike the word religion because I find that religions are mostly mythologized, ritualized, politicized, and bureaucratized adulterations of their founders' insights. Those insights are what Aldous Huxley called "the perennial philosophy," a reasonably consistent set of core beliefs that underlie most, perhaps all, major religious systems.
In some of his comments, untgss has inveighed against the practices he saw in Saudi Arabia et al. He blames mysticism. I would blame organized religion, especially in its most aberrant forms. The overtly mystical branches of religious movements, such as Gnosticism and Sufi, generally are not guilty of oppressive tendencies. As religious movements get further away from the original (mystical) understanding of their founders, they tend to become more controlling and dangerous.
Anyway, my solution to the Adam & Eve Problem would be roughly the same as (I suppose) the Catholic solution - namely, that when the nervous system of proto-humans became complex enough to mediate what we might call a soul, then souls began influencing human behavior. Why is it necessary to propound such an idea? It wouldn't be, if there were no empirical evidence for the activity of the mind independent of the body (ESP) or the survival of the mind after death. But I think there is good evidence for both ...
"... surely it’s possible to simply say: yes, that’s how things are. If they weren’t this way, we wouldn’t be here. But we are."
Well, consider this analogy (not original with me). A man is marched before a firing squad, and the order is given to fire. All twelve marksmen miss. Now, the man could say, "I don't need to wonder why I'm still alive. There's no mystery about it. After all, if they hadn't missed, I wouldn't be here to think about it."
But this is unsatisfactory. There is a mystery: how could all the marksmen miss, when the odds of this happening by chance are so remote? If the man looks into it, he may find there was an agreement among the marksmen to miss, or someone tampered with their rifles, etc.
In other words, rather than chance, the explanation would be intelligent planning behind the scenes.
"I have to come back to the basic point – which is the assumption that order and structure must involve a consciousness doing the ordering and structuring. If you’re not treating this as a matter of religious faith, I have a real problem figuring out what the programming you’re talking about can even mean."
Again, my starting point is not religious, but where I've ended up is rather mystical or "religious." When I talk about a cosmic CPU, I am talking about God, but not an anthropomorphic God. More like God in the sense of a Universal Mind.
As for order and structure, it depends. There are different kinds of order. The repetitive order of atoms in a snowflake doesn't require a mind; the nonrepetitive yet nonrandom order of alphabet letters that make up an encyclopedia does require a mind. When I look at the fundamental constants of the universe, the nonrepetitive but nonrandom order of DNA, or the apparently close connection between certain kinds of quantum phenomena and an observer's mind (e.g., the delayed choice quantum eraser experiment), I see ample reason to believe that mind, or Mind, is a fundamental property of existence, and not an add-on.
Your mileage may vary! :-)
ungtss:
ReplyDelete>One is the context of people torturing a human being, and the other is the context of honest intellectual disagreement.
Right. So we here at the ARCHNblog cannot interpret Atlas Shrugged because we are too "mentally drained" by torturing human beings.
And here I was thinking it was us ARCHNbloggers who were being regularly tortured by Objectivists with bizarre claims and terrible arguments!...;-)
Dan, I think you're just baiting untgss now. As I read him, he's not saying the things you accuse him of.
ReplyDelete" it wasn't the poor, as made clear by the hobo character. it wasn't the rich, as made clear by d'anconia. it wasn't men or women or any particular race ...
ReplyDeletewho did she dehumanize?
she appears to have dehumanized the dehumanizers. in other words, to treat as subhuman those who treat either themselves or others as subhuman."
I included the bit about the hobo in the above quote, because what else happens around that time? The train is "frozen", abandoned. Dagny walks the train, looking at passengers who remain in their seats and berths, nobody bothering to investigate (without agency). None of them are beautiful; when they finally do emerge outside, Dagny sees them as shapeless and undifferentiated in the moonlight. Specific people are further described as unpleasant to look at, their questions and statements nearly nonsensical (without reason). Dagny treats them with barely-disguised contempt.
It is not explicitly said that these are not humans, but it's clear they are being portrayed as inferior and worthless, and claiming this is not a form of de-humanization would be splitting hairs. Are they "the de-humanizers", themselves? They do not seem to regard Dagny as not human. Rand shows them looking to her as an authority figure. To the extent that anyone criticizes her there, it's a bleat of impotent frustration. This de-humanization seems to go but one way.
And that does not even touch on the train wreck itself, where, for the crime of having different philosophies and different politics, a train full of people (including at least two children) is sentenced to death. Lest you doubt, Rand makes a point of detailing the crimes of mind of the passengers (which prompted Whittaker Chambers to say that the message of this passage was the command: "to a gas chamber - go!"). Instead of a tragedy where innocent life is destroyed, it's justice, where people who vote as Rand does not like meet death, and she cheers it on.
There's more, but I don't think it necessary to continue.
I cannot read these things differently. There is no alternate interpretation I can find where I do not taste in Rand's words the hatred she holds for other human beings who do not think as she does. Claiming that she de-humanizes the de-humanizers, well, you'd have to believe that simply believing that capitalism ought not to be unregulated and accepting the use of income tax is sufficient for one person to de-humanize another.
Fair points Jzero, and my goal is obviously not to persuade but to sharpen my own understanding.
ReplyDeleteI agree she portrays those characters in a "less-than-ideally-human light" ... i suppose the question is, is she portraying them in that light because of their disagreement with rand, or is she expressing disgust with people of that type -- people who just sit mindlessly on a train and do nothing. cowards. people who exploit others. people who are cruel.
in other words, are they portrayed that way to make them seem subhuman, or are they portrayed that way to show that "that way" itself is reprensible.
here i wouldn't claim to know. but it's interesting to see how i've read this in a different way than you have.
Cheers.
And Prescott, thanks for understanding -- if ever there was evidence that being a good guy transcends ideology, you're it:).
"I agree she portrays those characters in a "less-than-ideally-human light" ... i suppose the question is, is she portraying them in that light because of their disagreement with rand, or is she expressing disgust with people of that type -- people who just sit mindlessly on a train and do nothing. cowards. people who exploit others. people who are cruel.
ReplyDeletein other words, are they portrayed that way to make them seem subhuman, or are they portrayed that way to show that "that way" itself is reprensible."
Is there really that much difference? If your disgust with a person's views leads you to think it is just to see them exterminated, are you inclined to be at all fair and portray some of them as having any positive qualities of note?
Obviously in real life, things are not so binary. Beautiful people can be cruel and hurtful. Geniuses can be physically twisted and wheelchair-bound. Beauty and fame often subvert the rule of law. Not every inventor of worth is a hard-charging, rugged supporter of laissez-faire capitalism.
Not so in Rand. I can't remember a single character in Atlas Shrugged who is visually appealing (by her terms) who is not also one of the good guys in the end. And I can't think of one villain, one person who Rand portrays as having a personality flaw, who is not also described as being in some way unpleasant to look at, or slouched, or bent, or flabby, or otherwise possessing a negative visual trait. (It is almost like having The Mark of Cain, or perhaps the Beast.)
(Incidentally, one could draw many parallels between Atlas Shrugged and Bible stories. But that's a whole different topic.)
I don't think there's any "or" to it - Rand despises people with certain views, considers them sub-human, and portrays them as unattractive both because it offends her aesthetics to grant them even a fair appearance, and because she wants to drive it into the reader that these people are to be disliked, viewed as inferior, ugly bugs telling admirable gods what to do.
Michael, thanks for your response. Right now, it's as welcome as a breath of fresh air. . .
ReplyDelete1) I'm aware of Huxley's book The Perennial Philosophy and I liked it--but I prefer the way Rumi says the same thing.
I should note, however, that events over the last 500 years have made much of the Perennial Philosophy into an interesting vision, but only that. The metaphysical argument remains the same, but the growth of technology has deprived it of its roots in everyday experience.
When Buddha first propounded his insights, they were a quite understandable response to the everyday world around him. Is that true today? I don’t think so. I can’t help noting that you base many of your views on essentially paranormal phenomena, rather than on today’s everyday world. I find this significant.
I'll make an exception for the practical side of Yoga and Zen. A lot of that works anywhere, anytime.
Buddhism offers an answer to the problem of suffering. There's still plenty of suffering left around - but how much would there be if everyone's approach was to rise above it rather than do something about it? I owe a lot more of my present happiness to MRI scans than I do to the Buddha.
These are two world systems that can talk to each other only in the most tangential ways. Huxley once described action in aid of a better future as a false, aberrant and heretical doctrine. Well, it's quite possible to regard technology as sansara wearing seven-league boots. But how many would opt for that as an actual guide for their lives in today’s world?
2) “Anyway, my solution to the Adam & Eve Problem would be . . . that when the nervous system of proto-humans became complex enough to mediate what we might call a soul, then souls began influencing human behaviour.”
I have two responses here – one general, the other specific.
My general observation is that sometimes the proposed solution has a lot more difficulties than the original problem. Much depends on how the mind is thought to survive after death; but regardless what option you choose, there’s a lot of explaining to do. As just one, example: if disembodied souls are in contact with each other, how do they tell (in the absence of a body) whether that contact is real rather than imagined? Believe me, the possible answers just land one in a deeper hole.
My specific observation is on ESP. This is one area where I in fact have done some reading and you’d have to climb a high hill to convince me that it exists. Clearly, we’ve been looking at different evidence.
3) Re the firing squad example: there is a Monty Python skit based on this exact situation. Man in front of firing squad, the guns fire. Then you see the CO say: “How could you miss??” And one of the soldiers offers: “He moved!”
In fact, I don’t think the example is a fair one. We know all the variables in the firing squad situation. We really don’t know any in the post Big Bang situation. Certainly not enough to speak meaningfully about probabilities.
And sorry, but I’m just not letting the main point go. I absolutely don’t see why a Universal Mind is easier to believe than a remarkable confluence of favourable material circumstances.
4) By the way, DNA isn't a puzzle. Natural selection is a remarkably powerful explanatory vehicle. Richard Dawkins’ book The Blind Watchmaker is a good place to start.
5) Finally, I certainly don’t regard mind as some kind of add-on. As I have said, every human being represents natural processes achieving a level of complexity that results in awareness - in billions of different places and ways.
That’s how I see it. It’s the reason why I find Vedanta so attractive. I just don’t make the jump from those billions of minds to a World Mind.
It’s been a fun discussion. I have the hope – a faint hope – that its civility may serve as a role model for other discussions on ARCHN – although it’s likely that this is an example of the triumph of hope over experience. . . ;)
"If your disgust with a person's views leads you to think it is just to see them exterminated, are you inclined to be at all fair and portray some of them as having any positive qualities of note?"
ReplyDeleteThat's what i'm wondering about -- is it "disgust with their views," or with their character and behavior more generally?
I don't think it can be simply the views -- because as dagny and hank illustrate, there can be "good guys" who are dead wrong, and even "the guiltiest person in the room," etc. nevertheless they are good guys.
so what is it?
i tend to think it's their character she's referring to. of course their views are tied up in their character, but don't define their character sufficiently, as illustrated by the fact that some good guys have wrong views.
of course i might be reading my own ideas in there. but i don't think i am. dagny and hank are dramatic examples of good guys with wrong ideas. i don't know how one can get from them to "everyone who disagrees with me is evil."
to the extent she engages in a fairly cheap plot device by making all her good guys beautiful and all her bad guys ugly, i agree, it's a fairly cheap device. i think the book would have been strengthened if he hadn't been so heavy handed in that regard. but then again i consider the appearance of characters to be a fairly insignificant attribute, so i can't say i really even noticed:). still, since you've drawn attention to it, i agree with you.
"I don't think it can be simply the views -- because as dagny and hank illustrate, there can be "good guys" who are dead wrong, and even "the guiltiest person in the room," etc. nevertheless they are good guys."
ReplyDeleteWell, they are foils for Rand's thesis. Note that they are never TOO far away from the "right" way to think - and that in the end, they are convinced and come over to the side of the good and just, as it were.
In writing terms, this is the "character arc" - the movement of change and discovery over the course of a character's appearance. But their arc isn't so much about values - they always worship at the altar of progress and capitalism, and from the beginning they are repelled by the moochers and leeches, and by the end not much has changed, they just accept Galt's reasoning for not enduring the current system any further.
To the extent that Rand sees them as having wrong ideas, she also takes great pains to give them mostly admirable traits - blond, attractive, industrious, smart if not brilliant. All the men are in love with Dagny! They can't be in perfect sync otherwise there would be little conflict or mystery to wrap thirteen hundred pages of story around, but the differences are actually fairly minor and are overcome, leaving them on a par with the rest of Galt's bunch.
But if you're a flabby watery-eyed troglodyte on a train, there's no saving you.
Michael P
ReplyDelete>Dan, I think you're just baiting untgss now. As I read him, he's not saying the things you accuse him of.
I don't think I'm "baiting" him. Rather, his response seemed absurd. I'm not sure if there is any other way to take it? He says, when asked about what specific "context" prevents folks here from understanding Atlas Shrugged:
>One is the context of people torturing a human being, and the other is the context of honest intellectual disagreement.
I admit it is none too clear as a statement, and I could have misunderstood it. How do you read it?
"In writing terms, this is the "character arc" - the movement of change and discovery over the course of a character's appearance. But their arc isn't so much about values - they always worship at the altar of progress and capitalism, and from the beginning they are repelled by the moochers and leeches, and by the end not much has changed, they just accept Galt's reasoning for not enduring the current system any further."
ReplyDeleteI read it slightly differently -- less about reasoning, and more about overcoming a subjugation of the self to others.
the most interesting subplot to me is hank/lillian, probably because it is completely divorced from economics and capitalism. it's about human relationships, love, and sex.
and in that subplot, hank has it not just a little wrong, but completely backwards. he believes that sex is evil, and that he owes lillian his life despite her manifest hatred of him. he excuses her abuse, and because of that belief, he is extraordinarily abusive to dagny. calls her a whore! stays in an adulterous relationship, abusing both himself and the woman he loves all the time.
this is not a "minor difference" from galt. it's a fundamental difference in values. he subjugates himself to a moral system that destroys him. he is so committed to it that he harms those he loves!
that to me is by far the most interesting of the subplots, because, in my experience, it's very true to life.
AS has been spun as a tale of capitalism, and that is certainly the most conspicuous of the plot structures. but rand herself said the theme of the book was "the role of the mind in man's existence." and when one considers the many subplots, it's clear she's talking about a lot more than capitalism.
capitalism, to me, has always been the only moral choice. it didn't take AR to show me that:). living in socialist countries shoed me that:).
AS provided me with a moral framework that is not only consistent with the morality of capitalism, but also with many other aspects of life -- including love.
and it's the fact that hank and dagny were so desperately desperately wrong in those values in those subplots that leads me to believe that while their changes are certainly a character arc, the arc is anything but trivial:).
ungtss:
ReplyDelete>dagny and hank are dramatic examples of good guys with wrong ideas. i don't know how one can get from them to "everyone who disagrees with me is evil."
Because they are characters in a morality play who start out with the wrong ideas and are unhappy, come to agree with the right ideas and then live happily ever after, cheerfully surviving the apocalypse that takes out vast numbers of people who disagree with the right ideas.
Further, we have the people who die in the Winston Tunnel. A wide variety of ordinary people, all who have ideas that conflict with Rand's philosophy. They all go to a fiery doom.
That's how you get there. It is not very mysterious. It is a perfectly sound interpretation with plenty of available evidence.
Midas Mulligan is sort of frumpy looking, as I recall. And Dagny isn't blond. She's supposed to look like Katharine Hepburn, not everybody's idea of a great beauty.
ReplyDeleteBut in general, Rand's heroes are obviously all of a type, as she admitted. Here husband was of the same physical type. She was reportedly unhappy with her own looks and admired women who were tall and graceful.
She seems to have had an intensely visceral reaction to people's appearances, and to be actually disgusted by anything she saw as cheap and commonplace.
Here is a 1928 journal entry in which she describes the jury in a murder case:
"Average, everyday, rather stupid looking citizens. Shabbily dressed, dried, worn looking little men. Fat, overdressed, very average, 'dignified' housewives. How can they decide the fate of that boy? Or anyone's fate?"
Her aversion to facial hair is also well known. She hated beards and mustaches. OTOH, she does not seem to have objected to long hair on men. I knew a guy in LA who met her once, a musician with hair down to his shoulders, and when she saw him she beamed and said he looked just like D'Artagnan.
I think her extreme reactions to people's appearances had their root in her traumatic formative years in Russia, when she was forced to live in close proximity to unwashed, shabby people (and was probably revolted by her own unavoidable shabbiness at times). A child so private and sensitive would naturally be offended, even appalled, when having to thread her way through a raucous crowd of people dressed like beggars, or to share living quarters with other impoverished families. These painful early experiences left their mark in many ways, most notably in the bitterness that cropped up throughout her writings.
"He says, when asked about what specific "context" prevents folks here from understanding Atlas Shrugged:
ReplyDelete>One is the context of people torturing a human being, and the other is the context of honest intellectual disagreement.
I admit it is none too clear as a statement, and I could have misunderstood it. How do you read it?"
---
He was talking about the scene where Galt is being tortured.This subject came up earlier in the thread. The idea was: the context in which Dagny perceives the villains as subhuman is that she has just learned that Galt has been tortured.
You replied, "Right. So we here at the ARCHNblog cannot interpret Atlas Shrugged because we are too "mentally drained" by torturing human beings."
Untgss wasn't saying he was being tortured by the ARCHN commenters. He was talking about what he sees as the failure of ARCHN commenters to distinguish between Dagny's context (her ideal man has been tortured) and the more normal context of everyday life.
I also thought you were misreading him when you replied to his comments on American Indians. He was saying that Rand, in this instance, was thinking like a collectivist, and therefore had fallen into the trap of thinking like her intellectual enemies, but that, given her philosophy as a whole, she was on the right track. (Not on the right track in her opinion of the Indians, but on the right track in general.)
Interesting points, Michael -- anecdotally, i also remember a video of her speaking in her later years, looking overweight bloated as sadly is typical in later life, and becoming extremely _extremely_ angry at people who were taking pictures. "I TOLD YOU NOT TO TAKE PICTURES!" very dramatic. this is consistent with your observations. perhaps all together this puts some context around her preoccuption with physical appearance in the book.
ReplyDeleteMichael P:
ReplyDelete>Untgss wasn't saying he was being tortured by the ARCHN commenters. He was talking about what he sees as the failure of ARCHN commenters to distinguish between Dagny's context (her ideal man has been tortured) and the more normal context of everyday life.
Oh, ok. I wasn't in that part of the discussion. But I see where I've made the mistake:
>The more often context comes up, the more I realize that that it really is the main problem in understanding AS. Not because anybody here is an "it" who lacks agency or humanity or is ugly, but because interpreting things within their context is probably one of the most mentally draining aspect of philosophy and literature.
Oh, I've got it. You're right, I've misunderstood what "their" was referring to. It can be easily be read as though it's referring to the "context" of the people here, and that's how I took it. That's the root of the error. My mistake, and I apologise.
>I also thought you were misreading him when you replied to his comments on American Indians. He was saying that Rand, in this instance, was thinking like a collectivist, and therefore had fallen into the trap of thinking like her intellectual enemies, but that, given her philosophy as a whole, she was on the right track. (Not on the right track in her opinion of the Indians, but on the right track in general.)
I don't this this is quite as clear cut. While ungtss' wording is convoluted, the main problem is that ungtss attempts to absolve Rand's error by claiming those who criticised Rand for such comments regarding Indians were just as bad as she was. Let's roll the tape.
>Wrt her comments about the native tribes, I agree those were out of place -- but as with all her errors, they were out of place because they failed to apply her philosophy comprehensively. She spoke of them in broad, generalized, tribal terms, instead of in terms of individuals. A tribalist collectivist error. As long as your critics attack you for being like themselves, you're on the right track.
This doesn't really make a lot of sense even in a charitable interpretation. Why are people who criticise Rand's comments necessarily tribal collectivists themselves, as ungtss tries to make out? If they generally agreed with Rand's tribal collectivist errors themselves, why would they criticise them? Aren't Rand's critics allowed to be individualists too? Also, if statements like "Any white person who brings the element of civilization has the right to take over this continent" are wrong, what should Rand have really said on the subject if she was applying Objectivist doctrine correctly?
"Also, if statements like "Any white person who brings the element of civilization has the right to take over this continent" are wrong, what should Rand have really said on the subject if she was applying Objectivist doctrine correctly?"
ReplyDeleteWell, there's an inherent ambiguity there with respect to "Objectivism." Does it mean "what she said whatever she said?" or does it specifically refer to individualism as a fundamental philosophical truth.
But if one were to apply _individualism_ consistently, one would say that many whites acted as collectivist tribalists without respect for the individual, and many indians acted as collectivist tribalists with no respect for individual. Not all on either side, but many. And the horrors that were inflicted at that time (on both sides by both sides) were the result of this tribalist/collectivist approach to existence."
This is tangentially related to another error she made -- idealizing both the american 19th century and ancient greece as paragons of reason and individualism. which is utter nonsense, historically.
this is another error which is the result of failing to apply her fundamental principles comprehensively. individualism is not compatible with characterizing an entire century or an entire civilization as one way or the other. historically, both were mixed. as all civilizations are always mixed, because they're composed of individuals.
her argument would have been much stronger if she had used those time periods to illustrate the horrors that were inflicted by collectivist/tribalists. white racism. indian wars. greek slavery. etc. those time periods are chock full of evidence to support her thesis, but she failed to access that evidence because she wanted to idealize those periods. and she idealized them at the expense of reality.
i mean seriously. the greek civilization she idealized instituted ostracism as a legally sanctioned procedure, whereby the collective could arbitrarily banish any individual from the city. how collectivist could you possibly get?
ReplyDeleteMichael: "But in general, Rand's heroes are obviously all of a type, as she admitted. Here husband was of the same physical type. She was reportedly unhappy with her own looks and admired women who were tall and graceful."
ReplyDeleteYes. It's a mistake to view Rand's descriptions of her heroes as ideologically driven. It's a deeply private matter. Her heroes are her own personal "wishful thinking." Note the Francisco d'Anconia/Frank O'Connor name connection. She's writing in part to realize her own dreams - and making her heroes anything other than physically ideal would disturb that dream.
She's quite okay with minor characters who are homely: Quentin Daniels, Mike the Welder in The Fountainhead. But for her, the heroes are sacred.
I'm reminded of 1930's Hollywood flicks, where the the heroine is always photographed from the best angle and never has a hair out of place - even if she's in a hurricane. . .
Thanks for clearing that up, Daniel.
ReplyDeleteAs far as the American Indian comment is concerned, I think Rand's mistake was that she tried to justify the European settlement of North America in "logical" and moral" terms. The way I look at it, logic and morality are not really the issue here. Stronger, more advanced societies simply will move in and take over wherever abundant natural resources are lightly protected. It's not a question of right or wrong; it's the march of history.
"I'm reminded of 1930's Hollywood flicks, where the the heroine is always photographed from the best angle and never has a hair out of place - even if she's in a hurricane. . ."
Claudette Colbert insisted on being photographed only from one side (her left, I think). She believed that this was her best side, though no one else could tell the difference.
In the 1950 version of "King Solomon's Mines," the heroine (Deborah Kerr) grabs a pair of scissors and hacks off her long hair on a whim. In the next scene she is shown sunning herself with a perfectly coifed short 'do!
I'm curious about this "march of history" point of view. Does it not encompass everything that happens, such that nothing is ultimately a "logical" or "moral" issue? Whether it be countries invading each other or mothers smothering their babies is trash bags, hasn't the "march of history" decreed both?
ReplyDeleteI can't say I've really thought it through, but it seems to me that throughout history the stronger and more technologically advanced civilization has always moved in and taken what it wanted, regardless of what less advanced societies may have wished. This just seems to be the way of the world. Not everything can be justified in logical and moral terms. As the saying goes, the race may not be to the swift, but that's the way to bet.
ReplyDeleteI don't disagree ... I guess to me morality comes in not in the speed of the runners, but in their compliance with the rules. Beating your opponent fair and square is one thing. Scalping him or sending him on a death march across the continent is something else:).
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