Consider the following example: you're walking thorugh the savannah with some of your family in search of a little breakfast. You come across a type of animal you've never seen before. It has dark brown fur with a white stripe down its spine. As you approach, it lunges at your merry band, sinking its teeth into your eldest daughter's neck and killing her. Now let's say we asked you what the probability is that the next animal with dark brown fur and a white stripe you see would be dangerous. You'd probably say 100 percent, and that's the most rational guess you could make since the single dark-furred, white-striped animal you've encountered proved to be dangerous.
Now let's say you accidentally happen upon another one of the these creatures. This time the animal sits there peacefully, even assuming the probability that the next animal with dark brown fur and a white stripe down its spine will be dangerous. Again we ask you, what is the probability that the next animal with dark brown fur and a white stripe down its spine will be dangerous. You'd probably pause. Rationally, your answer should be 50 percent, since as of this moment, one of two has proved dangerous. But your gut says something different. It's true that it is no longer reasonable to expect that all individuals of this species are dangerous, but on an intuitive level you know it's better to be safe than sorry. In your heightened emotional state, the cost of taking a longer path to avoid the brown and white critter is far less than the risk of losing another life. And in this case, your intuitive mind is right. While avoiding all animals with dark fur and white stripes would be an irrational calculation rooted in emotion (namely, fear), it is also an adaptive one.
Of course, this isn't just true in the jungle. In modern life too, listening to intuition and being more sensitive to the possibility of harm will serve you better on average than evaluating each individual situation rationally and objectively, particularly in situations that require rapid decisions for which you have incomplete information. [Out of Character, 188-189]
Showing posts with label Cognitive Science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cognitive Science. Show all posts
Friday, December 30, 2011
Ayn Rand & Human Nature 16
Emotions as adaptive. Emotions are not tools of cognition, according to Rand. If this is true, why do people have emotions at all? What role do they play in human nature? Perhaps this is a question that is best left to those scientists who have gone to the trouble of studying the relevant empirical data, rather than relying merely on Rand's own ex cathedra say-so. David Desteno and Piercarlo Valdesolo provide a brief story illustrating the adaptive nature of emotions:
Friday, November 18, 2011
Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature 13
Gratitude and trust. Although honesty (and presumably trust) are explicit Objectivist virtues, Rand did not appear eager to put any great emphasis on a virtue which often serves as a foundation for trust. In any ethical system that presumes to be "rational," this is clearly a shortcoming, since, as psychological experiments have demonstrated, gratitude seems to stem from innate sources that are clearly in the need of rational direction. As Desteno and Valedsolo have pointed out:
Although Rand may have been very concerned with how feelings of obligation might be exploited by individuals to manipulate others, her orientation is so driven by narrow ideological concerns that she misses all the important nuances of the situation. Moreover, her denial of innate propensities causes her to naively believe that most important social problems can be solved (or at least severely mitigated) by persuading individuals to accept rational premises. But since these innate propensities do in fact exist and do in fact exercise an influence on many, if not most, individuals, trying to resolve or cure them by propagating so-called "rational" premises is a waste of time. Innate propensities cannot be managed wisely if one refuses to acknowledge their existence.
...whether we are fair [to others] and pay back our debts stems more from automatic feelings than from reason. We can always justify why we don't have to pay back just yet, but we can't help feeling grateful. More important, we are wired in such a way that our gratitude can be misdirected, leading us to repay our debts to the wrong person. The danger of this, of course, is that if we're feeling grateful, we're liable to help anyone who requests it. In fact, it an be quite adaptive if it doesn't happen too often, as it encourages people to take the chance on a stranger with whom they might end up having a mutually beneficial relationship. In short, it's kind of like paying it forward, driven by emotion.
Still, this fact also makes us vulnerable to ploys of others. Think about it. When is the best time to ask someone for a favor or for money? When they're feeling grateful (even if it's to someone else). Ever wonder why sometimes those charities asking for donations stick a dollar in the envelope or give you a "gift" of stamps or stickers that you never asked for? As the results of our experiments suggest, these tactics work. So the next time you're feeling grateful and you're tempted to do someone a favor, take a minute to stop and think about whether or not the person asking you for the favor is someone who really deserves it.
That said, most of the time gratitude serves a bigger and more important function in life than just upholding quid pro quo. Gratitude doesn't only help us reap favors, acquire resources, or build wealth. It builds something that may be even more valuable over the long haul: loyalty and trust. [Out of Character, 163-164]
Although Rand may have been very concerned with how feelings of obligation might be exploited by individuals to manipulate others, her orientation is so driven by narrow ideological concerns that she misses all the important nuances of the situation. Moreover, her denial of innate propensities causes her to naively believe that most important social problems can be solved (or at least severely mitigated) by persuading individuals to accept rational premises. But since these innate propensities do in fact exist and do in fact exercise an influence on many, if not most, individuals, trying to resolve or cure them by propagating so-called "rational" premises is a waste of time. Innate propensities cannot be managed wisely if one refuses to acknowledge their existence.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Rand and Empirical Responsibility 11
“Definitions preserve ... the logical order of their hierarchical interdependence.” This touches on the Objectivist contention that knowledge is hierarchical. The concept animal is a step higher in the conceptual hierarchy than mammal, for example. Is it true, as Rand asserts, that definitions "preserve" the "logical order" of this hierarchy?
Rand derived her doctrine of definitions from Aristotle. It is not however clear what she means by "logical order," or how definitions go about preserving it. What Rand seems to have in mind (although she's none too clear about it) is the ideal of knowledge as a complete "logical" structure (logical in this sense meaning: integrated without contradiction). In this, Rand is mirroring Aristotle's ideal of knowledge as (in the words of Karl Popper) "an encyclopaedia containing the intuitive definitions of all essences, that is to say, their names together with their defining formulae."
For better or worse, there exists no compelling evidence that knowledge works this way; nor does Rand (or her disciples) provide any evidence, or seem in the least interested in the empirical side of this issue. Yet there is a great deal of evidence that formal definitions are of little importance to understanding the meaning of words. Most words are learned unconsciously, without the aid of formal definitions or dictionaries. Moreover, it can easily be observed that many people understand the meaning of words without being able to provide formal definitions for them. Just ask anyone (besides a linguist or a grammarian) to define the word the and you'll see what I mean.
Now it could be argued that Rand's theory of definitions is not confined to mere formal definitions, but applies to "tacit" or "implicit" definitions as well (whatever those might be), and that when she declares that definitions preserve the logical order of conceptual hierarchies, she is not distinguishing whether those definitions are consciously formalized or are merely implicit and tacit. Yet if this is so, Rand needs to explain (1) how she knows this to be true; and (2) provide compelling evidence for her view.
“Words without definitions are not language but inarticulate sounds.” If by definitions, Rand means consciously formalized definitions (after Aristotle methods of essentialist definitions), this is a grossly implausible position, for the reasons provided above. If Rand means merely "tacit" or "implicit" definitions, in the absence of any evidence (none of which is provided by Rand), it is not clear that this is true (or if it is true, whether it has any significance). What would make a lot more sense would be Words without meanings are not language but inarticulate sounds. This suggests that Rand has confused the concept meanings with that of definitions. Definitions are explanations of what a word means; but this does not mean that a definition is identical with the meaning. The meaning of a term can be understood without defining it, because knowledge is largely tacit and intuitive, rather than formalized and logical, as Rand seems to assume.
“The process of forming, integrating and using concepts is not an automatic, but a volitional process.” Given how important this assertion is to some of Rand's claims about history and morality, Rand's unwillingness to provide any evidence for it is most unfortunate. I suspect it never occured to her that she needed to provide evidence, because empirical responsibility was not part of her basic MO. In any case, had she tried to find evidence for it, she almost certaintly would have realized that the statement is not true. Many concepts, perhaps even most concepts, are formed unconsciusly, without anything remotely describable as volition having anything at all to do with the process. Indeed, this is an obvious fact that can be gleaned merely by observing young children learning to speak. How Rand could have ignored and/or evaded these obvious facts is difficult to comprehend.
An animal cannot perform a process of abstraction. Really? How on earth did Rand know this? For it's not clear at all that this is true. Consider the testimony of two neuroscientists, Jorge Martins de Oliveira and Julio Rocha do Amaral:
Rand derived her doctrine of definitions from Aristotle. It is not however clear what she means by "logical order," or how definitions go about preserving it. What Rand seems to have in mind (although she's none too clear about it) is the ideal of knowledge as a complete "logical" structure (logical in this sense meaning: integrated without contradiction). In this, Rand is mirroring Aristotle's ideal of knowledge as (in the words of Karl Popper) "an encyclopaedia containing the intuitive definitions of all essences, that is to say, their names together with their defining formulae."
For better or worse, there exists no compelling evidence that knowledge works this way; nor does Rand (or her disciples) provide any evidence, or seem in the least interested in the empirical side of this issue. Yet there is a great deal of evidence that formal definitions are of little importance to understanding the meaning of words. Most words are learned unconsciously, without the aid of formal definitions or dictionaries. Moreover, it can easily be observed that many people understand the meaning of words without being able to provide formal definitions for them. Just ask anyone (besides a linguist or a grammarian) to define the word the and you'll see what I mean.
Now it could be argued that Rand's theory of definitions is not confined to mere formal definitions, but applies to "tacit" or "implicit" definitions as well (whatever those might be), and that when she declares that definitions preserve the logical order of conceptual hierarchies, she is not distinguishing whether those definitions are consciously formalized or are merely implicit and tacit. Yet if this is so, Rand needs to explain (1) how she knows this to be true; and (2) provide compelling evidence for her view.
“Words without definitions are not language but inarticulate sounds.” If by definitions, Rand means consciously formalized definitions (after Aristotle methods of essentialist definitions), this is a grossly implausible position, for the reasons provided above. If Rand means merely "tacit" or "implicit" definitions, in the absence of any evidence (none of which is provided by Rand), it is not clear that this is true (or if it is true, whether it has any significance). What would make a lot more sense would be Words without meanings are not language but inarticulate sounds. This suggests that Rand has confused the concept meanings with that of definitions. Definitions are explanations of what a word means; but this does not mean that a definition is identical with the meaning. The meaning of a term can be understood without defining it, because knowledge is largely tacit and intuitive, rather than formalized and logical, as Rand seems to assume.
“The process of forming, integrating and using concepts is not an automatic, but a volitional process.” Given how important this assertion is to some of Rand's claims about history and morality, Rand's unwillingness to provide any evidence for it is most unfortunate. I suspect it never occured to her that she needed to provide evidence, because empirical responsibility was not part of her basic MO. In any case, had she tried to find evidence for it, she almost certaintly would have realized that the statement is not true. Many concepts, perhaps even most concepts, are formed unconsciusly, without anything remotely describable as volition having anything at all to do with the process. Indeed, this is an obvious fact that can be gleaned merely by observing young children learning to speak. How Rand could have ignored and/or evaded these obvious facts is difficult to comprehend.
An animal cannot perform a process of abstraction. Really? How on earth did Rand know this? For it's not clear at all that this is true. Consider the testimony of two neuroscientists, Jorge Martins de Oliveira and Julio Rocha do Amaral:
Although there is no general agreement, we believe that other species are also capable to develop abstractions. Some primates and cetaceans, without any doubt, have abstract conceptions, but these must be very tenuous and, certainly, they never develop, as humans do, to a point of giving rise to high creativity. And, even if it so happened, it would be an innocuous creativity, since they lack the physical attributes to allow them to build up something that could be considered significant and concrete. In spite of these handicaps, the exercise of conscious and abstract thoughts, among dolphins and superior simians, has been widely evidenced.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Rand and Empirical Responsibility 9
“Reason is man’s only means of grasping reality and of acquiring knowledge.” The first difficulty we must confront is trying to entangle what is meant by "reason." As far as I can make out, "reason," for Rand, means creating a logically consistent body of knowledge based on the evidence of the senses. Rand is fond of describing "reason" in terms of "integration," which seems to assume is a kind of "whole" made up of indivdual parts that have been logically conjoined together. Rand claims that "The method which reason employs in this process is logic—and logic is the art of non-contradictory identification." This description entails the additional difficulties involved in trying to figure out what on earth Rand could possibly mean by suggesting that logic is the "art of non-contradictory identification." Logic involves the study of arguments. But here Rand is suggesting that logic has a much larger range, that it involves "identification."
When examined more closely, Rand appears to have confused "classification" with "identification." Rand seems to have believed that A is A, which is a short-hand expression for logical identity, is equivalent to deciding which category a specific entity is to be placed. The integration Rand has in mind is (at least partly) conceptual. In any case, Rand's view of concepts is heavily saturated with her theory of concept-formation, which she places at or near the center of her epistemology. So having unravelled these tangles as best we can, we may safely assume that (1) reason involves creating a logically consistent body of knowledge, and (2) reason involves concept-formation. Rand's reason, for ought we know, may involve much more than what's listed here. I am merely trying to isolate two elements that can be subjected to empirical testing.
Reason, Rand claims, is man's only means of both grasping reality and acquiring knowledge. What evidence did she present for this view? Unfortunately, none at all. Worse, it would not be a very plausible assertion even on a priori grounds. Let us say (as Rand seems to say) that reason involves creating a logically consistent body of knowledge. Is having such logical consistenty necessary for grasping reality? In its absence, is knowledge impossible? No, of course not. Just imagine a man whose knowledge is divided in two parts, A and B, which contradict each other. Is this man incapable of having knowledge or grasping reality? No, not at all. All that the contradiction between A and B entails is that only one of the two parts of his knowledge can be in accord with reality. But if one part does accord with reality, that part grasps reality and can be considered as knowledge of the real world. Rand and her disciples, if they wish to be taken seriously on this point, really need explain in more detail what they mean by "reason" and provide evidence for why Randian "reason" is the "only" method that can grasp reality.
If we identify "reason" with concept-formation, we are in no better shape than before. Rand presented hardly any evidence for her theory of concept-formation; yet there exists a large body of evidence that can be placed against it, some of which I introduced in my "The Cognitive Revolution and Objectivism" series, others of which will be introduced in a future series on Rand's epistemology. Let me just note that, in the light of evidence brought to light by exponents of Wittgenstien's Family Resemblance theory of concepts and discoveries about the large role played in concept-formation by the cognitive unconscious, Rand's theory appears rather implausible. If "reason" involves forming concepts in accordance to Rand's theory, then we can safely assume that "reason" is entirely mythical faculty that has nothing to do with real cognition.
“Logic is man’s method of cognition.” (Peikoff, ITOE) If by "logic," Peikoff means Rand's bizarre mixture of logical identity with categorization, this is almost certainly wrong. If, on the other hand, Peikoff means only the ordinary logic of Aristotle and philosophy textbooks, this is almost certainly wrong as well. As Morton Hunt put it:
“The alternative to reason is some form of mysticism or skepticism.” (Peikoff, OP) Since when?
The only way to make this true is to define mysticism and skepticism analytically -- i.e., as the only alternatives to "reason." But if defined this way, these words become trivial and lose their sting. Suddenly, Morton Hunt's "natural reasoning" becomes merely another form of mysticism and/or skepticism. But since this natural reasoning is precisely the method which has allowed the species to reproduce and survive for hundreds of thousands of years, then to describe it as mysticism or skepticism is to give those words a far more benign meaning than Rand originally intended.
If, however, we assume that Peikoff is not using the words analytically, but using mysticism and skepticism in the usual disparaging, Objectivist sense of the terms, then his statement is most probably false (which would explain why he provides no evidence for it). There is all kinds of evidence from cognitive science (popularized, for example, by Malcolm Gladwell in Blink ) that demonstrate the empirical paucity of Peikoff's assertion.
When examined more closely, Rand appears to have confused "classification" with "identification." Rand seems to have believed that A is A, which is a short-hand expression for logical identity, is equivalent to deciding which category a specific entity is to be placed. The integration Rand has in mind is (at least partly) conceptual. In any case, Rand's view of concepts is heavily saturated with her theory of concept-formation, which she places at or near the center of her epistemology. So having unravelled these tangles as best we can, we may safely assume that (1) reason involves creating a logically consistent body of knowledge, and (2) reason involves concept-formation. Rand's reason, for ought we know, may involve much more than what's listed here. I am merely trying to isolate two elements that can be subjected to empirical testing.
Reason, Rand claims, is man's only means of both grasping reality and acquiring knowledge. What evidence did she present for this view? Unfortunately, none at all. Worse, it would not be a very plausible assertion even on a priori grounds. Let us say (as Rand seems to say) that reason involves creating a logically consistent body of knowledge. Is having such logical consistenty necessary for grasping reality? In its absence, is knowledge impossible? No, of course not. Just imagine a man whose knowledge is divided in two parts, A and B, which contradict each other. Is this man incapable of having knowledge or grasping reality? No, not at all. All that the contradiction between A and B entails is that only one of the two parts of his knowledge can be in accord with reality. But if one part does accord with reality, that part grasps reality and can be considered as knowledge of the real world. Rand and her disciples, if they wish to be taken seriously on this point, really need explain in more detail what they mean by "reason" and provide evidence for why Randian "reason" is the "only" method that can grasp reality.
If we identify "reason" with concept-formation, we are in no better shape than before. Rand presented hardly any evidence for her theory of concept-formation; yet there exists a large body of evidence that can be placed against it, some of which I introduced in my "The Cognitive Revolution and Objectivism" series, others of which will be introduced in a future series on Rand's epistemology. Let me just note that, in the light of evidence brought to light by exponents of Wittgenstien's Family Resemblance theory of concepts and discoveries about the large role played in concept-formation by the cognitive unconscious, Rand's theory appears rather implausible. If "reason" involves forming concepts in accordance to Rand's theory, then we can safely assume that "reason" is entirely mythical faculty that has nothing to do with real cognition.
“Logic is man’s method of cognition.” (Peikoff, ITOE) If by "logic," Peikoff means Rand's bizarre mixture of logical identity with categorization, this is almost certainly wrong. If, on the other hand, Peikoff means only the ordinary logic of Aristotle and philosophy textbooks, this is almost certainly wrong as well. As Morton Hunt put it:
[F]ormal logic is not a good description of how our minds usually work. Logic tells us how we should reason when we are trying to reason logically, but it does not tell us how to think about reality as we encounter it most of the time....
Logic enables us to judge the validity of our own deductive reasoning, but much of the time we need to reason non-deductively — either inductively, or in terms of likelihoods, or of causes and effects, none of which fits within the rules of formal logic. The archetype of everyday realistic reasoning might be something like this: This object (or situation) reminds me a lot of another that I experienced before, so probably I can expect much to be true of this one that was true of that one. Such reasoning is natural and utilitarian — but logically invalid....Our natural reasoning is thus a kind of puttering around — the intellectual equivalent of what a child does when it messes around with some new toy or unfamiliar object. After a spell of mental messing around, we may put our reasoning into logical terms, but the explanation comes after the fact, the actual process took place according to some other method... [The Universe Within, p. 132-136]
“The alternative to reason is some form of mysticism or skepticism.” (Peikoff, OP) Since when?
The only way to make this true is to define mysticism and skepticism analytically -- i.e., as the only alternatives to "reason." But if defined this way, these words become trivial and lose their sting. Suddenly, Morton Hunt's "natural reasoning" becomes merely another form of mysticism and/or skepticism. But since this natural reasoning is precisely the method which has allowed the species to reproduce and survive for hundreds of thousands of years, then to describe it as mysticism or skepticism is to give those words a far more benign meaning than Rand originally intended.
If, however, we assume that Peikoff is not using the words analytically, but using mysticism and skepticism in the usual disparaging, Objectivist sense of the terms, then his statement is most probably false (which would explain why he provides no evidence for it). There is all kinds of evidence from cognitive science (popularized, for example, by Malcolm Gladwell in Blink ) that demonstrate the empirical paucity of Peikoff's assertion.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Rand and Empirical Responsibility 6
The conscious mind “programs” the subconscious mind. Rand's view is that the conscious mind serves as a kind of gate keeper for what gets into the unconscious mind. Again, we are faced with the question: How did she know this to be true? Where is her evidence? Is this merely a speculative conjecture? If so, why doesn't Rand make this clear?
In point of fact, Rand's assertion is almost certainly false. In any case, if it is a conjecture, it's been falsified by the "Iowa Gambling Task," an experiment that demonstrated the ability of the unconscious mind to make inferences on its own:
In other words, the unconscious mind figures out which decks are bad before this awareness reaches the conscious mind. These findings are consistent with a large body of experimental research (see Timothy Wilson's Strangers to Ourselves).
“If your subconscious is programmed by chance, its output will have a corresponding character.” The phrase "programmed by chance" means something along the lines of: not sufficiently focused. Remember that according to Objectivism, the ultimate choice is to focus or not. Stated in its bald form, this seems extreme. Since any conscious person is, ipso facto, focused, this doctrine has to be restated in terms of degrees. It is the degree of focus that is important. One needs an intense enough degree of focus to be aware of one's own conceptual integrations, or else one will be prone to integrating errors. Those errors, once planted into one's subconscious, will lead to irrational emotions and other disturbing psychological phenomena (such as, par example, a fondness for "malevolent" art or music).
Did Rand provide any evidence for this view? Nope. Nor did she explain why she believed it. Then what reason can any rational person have for believing it? None whatever.
As anyone who has bothered to read some of the popular expositions about the "adaptive" unconscious knows, the subconscious (or unconscious--these words mean the same thing) doesn't work this way. The conscious not only processes knowledge, but makes decisions and organizes memory. The relevant evidence (see the above mentioned Strangers to Ourselves) strongly suggests that the conscious mind neither is nor could be in control all the time. The conscious mind, far from being a gate keeper of what goes into the unconscious, can at best merely provide critical testing of what comes out.
A “ruthlessly honest commitment to introspection” yielding a “conceptual identification of your inner states” allows one to discover the sources of one’s emotions. Same problem as before: how does Rand know this? what is her evidence?
Since it's now generally believed that the conscious mind is merely the "tip of the iceberg," Rand's advice about "ruthlessly honest" introspection seems misplaced. Since most of one's "inner states" lie below the threshold of consciousness, they cannot be introspected. It matters little how ruthless honest the individual hopes to be when the impossible is his goal. The attempt to introspect what cannot be introspected will most likely lead to little else but self-aggrandizing rationalizations.
In point of fact, Rand's assertion is almost certainly false. In any case, if it is a conjecture, it's been falsified by the "Iowa Gambling Task," an experiment that demonstrated the ability of the unconscious mind to make inferences on its own:
Participants are presented with 4 virtual decks of cards on a computer screen. They are told that each time they choose a card they will win some game money. Every so often, however, choosing a card causes them to lose some money. The goal of the game is to win as much money as possible. Every card drawn will earn the participant a reward. Occasionally, a card will also have a penalty. Thus, some decks are "bad decks", and other decks are "good decks", because some will lead to losses over the long run, and others will lead to gains. The decks differ from each other in the number of trials over which the losses are distributed.
Most healthy participants sample cards from each deck, and after about 40 or 50 selections are fairly good at sticking to the good decks.... Concurrent measurement of galvanic skin response shows that healthy participants show a "stress" reaction to hovering over the bad decks after only 10 trials, long before conscious sensation that the decks are bad.
In other words, the unconscious mind figures out which decks are bad before this awareness reaches the conscious mind. These findings are consistent with a large body of experimental research (see Timothy Wilson's Strangers to Ourselves).
“If your subconscious is programmed by chance, its output will have a corresponding character.” The phrase "programmed by chance" means something along the lines of: not sufficiently focused. Remember that according to Objectivism, the ultimate choice is to focus or not. Stated in its bald form, this seems extreme. Since any conscious person is, ipso facto, focused, this doctrine has to be restated in terms of degrees. It is the degree of focus that is important. One needs an intense enough degree of focus to be aware of one's own conceptual integrations, or else one will be prone to integrating errors. Those errors, once planted into one's subconscious, will lead to irrational emotions and other disturbing psychological phenomena (such as, par example, a fondness for "malevolent" art or music).
Did Rand provide any evidence for this view? Nope. Nor did she explain why she believed it. Then what reason can any rational person have for believing it? None whatever.
As anyone who has bothered to read some of the popular expositions about the "adaptive" unconscious knows, the subconscious (or unconscious--these words mean the same thing) doesn't work this way. The conscious not only processes knowledge, but makes decisions and organizes memory. The relevant evidence (see the above mentioned Strangers to Ourselves) strongly suggests that the conscious mind neither is nor could be in control all the time. The conscious mind, far from being a gate keeper of what goes into the unconscious, can at best merely provide critical testing of what comes out.
A “ruthlessly honest commitment to introspection” yielding a “conceptual identification of your inner states” allows one to discover the sources of one’s emotions. Same problem as before: how does Rand know this? what is her evidence?
Since it's now generally believed that the conscious mind is merely the "tip of the iceberg," Rand's advice about "ruthlessly honest" introspection seems misplaced. Since most of one's "inner states" lie below the threshold of consciousness, they cannot be introspected. It matters little how ruthless honest the individual hopes to be when the impossible is his goal. The attempt to introspect what cannot be introspected will most likely lead to little else but self-aggrandizing rationalizations.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Intellectual Sources of the Latest Objectischism 2
According to Rand, the Objectivist Ethics "holds that the rational interests of men do not clash—that there is no conflict of interests among men who do not desire the unearned, who do not make sacrifices nor accept them, who deal with one another as traders, giving value for value." Now it seems likely that this principle was devised primarily (and perhaps solely) to convince herself and her followers that it is never in an individual's rational self-interest to violate the rights of another person. Rand never considered the implications of this principle in other venues, such as a voluntary organization such as ARI.
In the latest Objectischism, there exists a conflict of interests between Leonard Peikoff and John McCaskey. The fact that such a conflict exists at all indicates that one (if not both) of the parties are "irrational." Indeed, the fact that conflicts exist within orthodox Objectivism -- conflicts so intense and irresolvable that they can only be ended by one of the parties exiting the scene -- suggests something profoundly amiss. If individuals passionately devoted to Rand's philosophy of "reason" and "reality" are incapable of resolving their differences "rationally," what hope is there for the rest of us?
The philosophical problem at the base of the issue stems from Rand's conception of "reason." I have suggested in previous posts on this blog that "reason" is a mythical faculty. None of its champions have ever provided empirical evidence demonstrating it's reported efficacy. It's merely a term used by those seeking to justify contentions based on insufficient evidence. Human discourse is most efficacious when it is subjected to rigorous testing, whether scientific or practical. The best justification for an idea or theory is that it works in empirical reality. Seeking justification for a theory in "reason" is merely an invitation for rationalization, which is the bane of rational inquiry.
Now if Objectivist "reason" were everything it is cracked up to be, we would expect to find evidence of this in the lives of Objectivists. Nothing could be more to the purpose along these lines then an empirical examination of how reason works to solve disputes within an organization run by leading Objectivists. Rand believed in the existence of an objective reality that could be understood by "reason." Rand insisted that, despite man's fallibility, anyone using "reason" could arrive at true and even "certain" conclusions. As a consequence of this, rational men (i.e., men using "reason"), assuming they had access to the same information, would always arrive at the same conclusions. This, incidentally, provides a rationale for why there are no conflicts among "rational" men. Since reason inevitably leads to the same conclusion, rational men will always find themselves on the same page. Differences of opinion can be settled by "reasoned" discussion.
So how does this theory work in practice? Obviously, if ARI is our test case, it doesn't work at all. Peikoff admits, for example, that "Ultimately, someone has to decide who is qualified to hold such positions [on the ARI board] and where the line is to be drawn." Someone has to decide? Shouldn't "reason" decide? Since reality is objective and "reason" the only "valid" means of knowing reality, what need is there for an individual to decide these things at all? Shouldn't a committee of rational men do just as well? But no, of course not; even Leonard Peikoff understands that a committee of rational men would not do at all. Peikoff is right to insist that someone must decide, that hierarchical leadership is necessary even among Objectivists. This suggests that "reason" is not all it's cracked up to be. Why should this be so? What is wrong with the Objectivist conception of "reason"?
(1) Differing "context" of knowledge among men. Within the Objectivist ideology, the idea of context is used as a kind of conceptual escape hatch to explain, for instance, why a moral absolute may not apply in all instances (because moral absolutes are "contextual") or why an individual may be certain yet wrong (because certainty is "contextual"). It could also be used to explain why hierarchical leadership based on "authority" is necessary even for Objectivists. Since individuals have differing "contexts of knowledge," they will not always arrive at the same conclusions. While their conclusions, if backed by all the evidence within the "context of their knowledge," will be "certain," they won't be identical. Those with a wider context of knowledge will (presumably) achieve a higher level of "certainty." They will know more and will hence be in a better position to make rational decisions.
So far so good. But if this line of reasoning is accepted, it creates problems in other areas of Objectivism. If differing contexts of knowledge cause rational men to arrive at different conclusions, then Rand's contention about "no conflicts of interest" among rational men must be dropped. Here is yet another example of Rand and her disciples failing to consider all the implications of a specific doctrine. Since a rational man's interests must, according to Rand, be discovered through "reason," and since knowledge is contextual, the conclusions that a man reaches concerning the interests of himself and others (including organizations like ARI) will depend on the context of his knowledge. Different contexts lead to different assessments of interests, even among rational men; and differing assessment of interests will inevitably lead to conflicts.
2. Interests are fundamentally non-rational. Rand's conviction that there exists such a thing as "rational" interests, discoverable by "reason," is incoherent and poorly thought out. Neither Rand nor any of her disciples have ever provided us with a detailed description of how to distinguish a rational interest from a non-rational interest. If we go by Objectivist writings, a "rational" interest is merely any interest that Rand and her disciples approve of, while a non-rational (or "irrational") interest is an any interest they disapprove of.
The problem here is insoluable on Objectivist premises. That's because interests are fundamentally emotive in nature. While emotions are not the sole arbiters of an individual's interest, they do provide data essential for developing an intelligent appreciation of what these interests might be. An interest must be rooted in some natural need or desire if it is to be an interest at all. An interest that satisfied no need or desire, but was entirely independent of the affective system, would be an imposition rather than an interest. To pursue interests that satisfy no natural need is to act contrary to nature.
Now it just so happens that human nature is not homogeneous. The natural needs of men differ from one individual to another. Worse, some needs (such as the need for status) cannot be harmonized within a social system (i.e., Paul's need for status cannot be completely harmonized with Peter's need for status). Conflict of interests are therefore a built-in feature of the human condition. To deny this is to live in fairy-tale world.
What perhaps shocked rank-and-file Objectivists more than anything else in Peikoff's now infamous email is where he wrote, "I hope you still know who I am and what my intellectual status is in Objectivism." Objectivists are not supposed to be concerned with status. It is a product of that horror or horrors, social metaphysics. It reeks of authoritarianism and the appeal to faith. Yet status can no more be exorcised from man's "emotional mechanism" than sex or hunger can. To deny or evade it merely serves to make it more poisonous, since what is repressed cannot be forthrightly combatted or rechanneled.
Rivalries of status and pre-eminence do exist within the Objectivist community. Of course, no self-respecting Objectivist could ever admit this; so the fact itself must be repressed, which in turn leads to rationalization on an immense scale. When intellectuals rationalize their desires, a duality of meaning develops within their thought. Everything they think or say has a "formal" and a "real" meaning. The "formal" meaning is the literal, conscious meaning; it's the rationalized meaning, meant to persuade and deceive both the rationalizer and his audience. The "real" meaning accords with the unconscious motives that are prompting the whole business.
So if an aspiring Objectivist came out and said, "I'm supporting Peikoff because I think it will further my career as an Objectivist spokeman," he would ruin any chances of achieving the object of his ambition. Hence the need of concealing one's real motives. The trouble here is that human beings are pretty good at detecting this sort of insincerity. It's not enough to conceal one's motives; one must also believe in the "truth" of one's deception. In short, one must accept one's own lies and become, if you will, a sincere hypocrit.
Once this dynamic is in full play, any claims about "reason," logic, or reasoned discourse must be treated with the utmost suspicion. When people are forced to repress and conceal their true motives under a veneer of logic, rationalization becomes the order of the day. Hence the fanaticism and irrationality one detects in so many orthodox Objectivists. Hence their inability to engage in reasoned discourse with those who disagree with them. Hence their inability to even understand, let alone refute, their critics. Hence their inability to use "reason" to resolve differences among themselves.
3. Rand provided no "technology" for "reason." In Nathaniel Branden's essay "The Benefits and Hazards of Ayn Rand," we run across the following observation: "So here in Ayn Rand’s work is an ethical philosophy with a great vision of human possibilities, but no technology to help people get there..." This absence of a "technology" doesn't only afflict Rand's ethics; it is a problem with Rand's epistemology, particularly in relation to her much ballyhooed "reason." Rand actually never bothers to explain, in a clear, detailed, empirically testable fashion, how one goes about using "reason." About as detailed as she gets is the following:
I will provide a more detailed explanation of what is wrong with this when I get around to doing my "Objectivism and Epistemology" series. For our present purposes, I will merely note that Rand's inclusion of concept-formation in her conception of reason is deeply problematical. Concept-formation is an extremely complex process involving unconscious process that cannot be directed by the conscious mind. For this reason, no articulable, formalized technique can ever be devised to control or direct, let alone even describe, the process of concept-formation. But without an articulable, formalized technique, reason cannot be "followed." Unconscious processes can at best be "evoked" by the conscious mind; they can't be controlled or directed, since the individual cannot control what is beyond the range of sentience. Rand's "reason" is therefore mythical. No such technique exists or is possible. What is possible, instead, is rational and empirical criticism. While we cannot direct the process by which conclusions are formed, we can test such conclusions, once they become availabe to the conscious mind. Empirical testing and rational criticism therefore constitute the chief ingredients of rationality, not concept-formation or "reason."
"Reason" being mythical, any attempt to resolve differences among men (whether they are "rational" or not) via "reason" must come to grief. Hence the necessity within the Objectivist movement of an authority based on "status" who can settle the conflicts which, in the absence of an objective arbiter, will inevitably arise among Objectivists. If Leonard Peikoff did not exist, Objectivists would be forced to invent him. Without a central authority, Objectivism would splinter into hundreds of fragments, each claiming to follow "reason" and crying anathema on all other fragments. The Objectivist movement, precisely because it follows "reason," which is entirely mythical faculty, must be authoritarian at its core. It cannot exist on any other basis.
In the latest Objectischism, there exists a conflict of interests between Leonard Peikoff and John McCaskey. The fact that such a conflict exists at all indicates that one (if not both) of the parties are "irrational." Indeed, the fact that conflicts exist within orthodox Objectivism -- conflicts so intense and irresolvable that they can only be ended by one of the parties exiting the scene -- suggests something profoundly amiss. If individuals passionately devoted to Rand's philosophy of "reason" and "reality" are incapable of resolving their differences "rationally," what hope is there for the rest of us?
The philosophical problem at the base of the issue stems from Rand's conception of "reason." I have suggested in previous posts on this blog that "reason" is a mythical faculty. None of its champions have ever provided empirical evidence demonstrating it's reported efficacy. It's merely a term used by those seeking to justify contentions based on insufficient evidence. Human discourse is most efficacious when it is subjected to rigorous testing, whether scientific or practical. The best justification for an idea or theory is that it works in empirical reality. Seeking justification for a theory in "reason" is merely an invitation for rationalization, which is the bane of rational inquiry.
Now if Objectivist "reason" were everything it is cracked up to be, we would expect to find evidence of this in the lives of Objectivists. Nothing could be more to the purpose along these lines then an empirical examination of how reason works to solve disputes within an organization run by leading Objectivists. Rand believed in the existence of an objective reality that could be understood by "reason." Rand insisted that, despite man's fallibility, anyone using "reason" could arrive at true and even "certain" conclusions. As a consequence of this, rational men (i.e., men using "reason"), assuming they had access to the same information, would always arrive at the same conclusions. This, incidentally, provides a rationale for why there are no conflicts among "rational" men. Since reason inevitably leads to the same conclusion, rational men will always find themselves on the same page. Differences of opinion can be settled by "reasoned" discussion.
So how does this theory work in practice? Obviously, if ARI is our test case, it doesn't work at all. Peikoff admits, for example, that "Ultimately, someone has to decide who is qualified to hold such positions [on the ARI board] and where the line is to be drawn." Someone has to decide? Shouldn't "reason" decide? Since reality is objective and "reason" the only "valid" means of knowing reality, what need is there for an individual to decide these things at all? Shouldn't a committee of rational men do just as well? But no, of course not; even Leonard Peikoff understands that a committee of rational men would not do at all. Peikoff is right to insist that someone must decide, that hierarchical leadership is necessary even among Objectivists. This suggests that "reason" is not all it's cracked up to be. Why should this be so? What is wrong with the Objectivist conception of "reason"?
(1) Differing "context" of knowledge among men. Within the Objectivist ideology, the idea of context is used as a kind of conceptual escape hatch to explain, for instance, why a moral absolute may not apply in all instances (because moral absolutes are "contextual") or why an individual may be certain yet wrong (because certainty is "contextual"). It could also be used to explain why hierarchical leadership based on "authority" is necessary even for Objectivists. Since individuals have differing "contexts of knowledge," they will not always arrive at the same conclusions. While their conclusions, if backed by all the evidence within the "context of their knowledge," will be "certain," they won't be identical. Those with a wider context of knowledge will (presumably) achieve a higher level of "certainty." They will know more and will hence be in a better position to make rational decisions.
So far so good. But if this line of reasoning is accepted, it creates problems in other areas of Objectivism. If differing contexts of knowledge cause rational men to arrive at different conclusions, then Rand's contention about "no conflicts of interest" among rational men must be dropped. Here is yet another example of Rand and her disciples failing to consider all the implications of a specific doctrine. Since a rational man's interests must, according to Rand, be discovered through "reason," and since knowledge is contextual, the conclusions that a man reaches concerning the interests of himself and others (including organizations like ARI) will depend on the context of his knowledge. Different contexts lead to different assessments of interests, even among rational men; and differing assessment of interests will inevitably lead to conflicts.
2. Interests are fundamentally non-rational. Rand's conviction that there exists such a thing as "rational" interests, discoverable by "reason," is incoherent and poorly thought out. Neither Rand nor any of her disciples have ever provided us with a detailed description of how to distinguish a rational interest from a non-rational interest. If we go by Objectivist writings, a "rational" interest is merely any interest that Rand and her disciples approve of, while a non-rational (or "irrational") interest is an any interest they disapprove of.
The problem here is insoluable on Objectivist premises. That's because interests are fundamentally emotive in nature. While emotions are not the sole arbiters of an individual's interest, they do provide data essential for developing an intelligent appreciation of what these interests might be. An interest must be rooted in some natural need or desire if it is to be an interest at all. An interest that satisfied no need or desire, but was entirely independent of the affective system, would be an imposition rather than an interest. To pursue interests that satisfy no natural need is to act contrary to nature.
Now it just so happens that human nature is not homogeneous. The natural needs of men differ from one individual to another. Worse, some needs (such as the need for status) cannot be harmonized within a social system (i.e., Paul's need for status cannot be completely harmonized with Peter's need for status). Conflict of interests are therefore a built-in feature of the human condition. To deny this is to live in fairy-tale world.
What perhaps shocked rank-and-file Objectivists more than anything else in Peikoff's now infamous email is where he wrote, "I hope you still know who I am and what my intellectual status is in Objectivism." Objectivists are not supposed to be concerned with status. It is a product of that horror or horrors, social metaphysics. It reeks of authoritarianism and the appeal to faith. Yet status can no more be exorcised from man's "emotional mechanism" than sex or hunger can. To deny or evade it merely serves to make it more poisonous, since what is repressed cannot be forthrightly combatted or rechanneled.
Rivalries of status and pre-eminence do exist within the Objectivist community. Of course, no self-respecting Objectivist could ever admit this; so the fact itself must be repressed, which in turn leads to rationalization on an immense scale. When intellectuals rationalize their desires, a duality of meaning develops within their thought. Everything they think or say has a "formal" and a "real" meaning. The "formal" meaning is the literal, conscious meaning; it's the rationalized meaning, meant to persuade and deceive both the rationalizer and his audience. The "real" meaning accords with the unconscious motives that are prompting the whole business.
So if an aspiring Objectivist came out and said, "I'm supporting Peikoff because I think it will further my career as an Objectivist spokeman," he would ruin any chances of achieving the object of his ambition. Hence the need of concealing one's real motives. The trouble here is that human beings are pretty good at detecting this sort of insincerity. It's not enough to conceal one's motives; one must also believe in the "truth" of one's deception. In short, one must accept one's own lies and become, if you will, a sincere hypocrit.
Once this dynamic is in full play, any claims about "reason," logic, or reasoned discourse must be treated with the utmost suspicion. When people are forced to repress and conceal their true motives under a veneer of logic, rationalization becomes the order of the day. Hence the fanaticism and irrationality one detects in so many orthodox Objectivists. Hence their inability to engage in reasoned discourse with those who disagree with them. Hence their inability to even understand, let alone refute, their critics. Hence their inability to use "reason" to resolve differences among themselves.
3. Rand provided no "technology" for "reason." In Nathaniel Branden's essay "The Benefits and Hazards of Ayn Rand," we run across the following observation: "So here in Ayn Rand’s work is an ethical philosophy with a great vision of human possibilities, but no technology to help people get there..." This absence of a "technology" doesn't only afflict Rand's ethics; it is a problem with Rand's epistemology, particularly in relation to her much ballyhooed "reason." Rand actually never bothers to explain, in a clear, detailed, empirically testable fashion, how one goes about using "reason." About as detailed as she gets is the following:
In essence, “follow reason” means: base knowledge on observation; form concepts according to the actual (measurable) relationships among concretes; use concepts according to the rules of logic (ultimately, the Law of Identity). Since each of these elements is based on the facts of reality, the conclusions reached by a process of reason are objective.
I will provide a more detailed explanation of what is wrong with this when I get around to doing my "Objectivism and Epistemology" series. For our present purposes, I will merely note that Rand's inclusion of concept-formation in her conception of reason is deeply problematical. Concept-formation is an extremely complex process involving unconscious process that cannot be directed by the conscious mind. For this reason, no articulable, formalized technique can ever be devised to control or direct, let alone even describe, the process of concept-formation. But without an articulable, formalized technique, reason cannot be "followed." Unconscious processes can at best be "evoked" by the conscious mind; they can't be controlled or directed, since the individual cannot control what is beyond the range of sentience. Rand's "reason" is therefore mythical. No such technique exists or is possible. What is possible, instead, is rational and empirical criticism. While we cannot direct the process by which conclusions are formed, we can test such conclusions, once they become availabe to the conscious mind. Empirical testing and rational criticism therefore constitute the chief ingredients of rationality, not concept-formation or "reason."
"Reason" being mythical, any attempt to resolve differences among men (whether they are "rational" or not) via "reason" must come to grief. Hence the necessity within the Objectivist movement of an authority based on "status" who can settle the conflicts which, in the absence of an objective arbiter, will inevitably arise among Objectivists. If Leonard Peikoff did not exist, Objectivists would be forced to invent him. Without a central authority, Objectivism would splinter into hundreds of fragments, each claiming to follow "reason" and crying anathema on all other fragments. The Objectivist movement, precisely because it follows "reason," which is entirely mythical faculty, must be authoritarian at its core. It cannot exist on any other basis.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Objectivism & Politics, Part 43
Individual Rights 2: Rand’s theory examined. Rand introduces her theory of individual rights as follows:
Rand gets off to rather poor start in her argument. She claims that the source of rights is “the law of identity.” “A is A—and Man is Man.” She might as well have just said The source of rights is the way things are, for that’s what all this pretentious talk about rights stemming from the law of identity amounts to in the end. Rand here commits the error of begging the question. What we need is compelling evidence that man’s rights do in fact stem from the way things are, not merely the assertion that this is so!
Next we are confronted with an even more mystifying assertion: “Rights are conditions of existence required by man’s nature for his proper survival.” Now what could Rand possibly mean by this? She comes perilously close to suggesting that rights are requisites of man’s survival, but she evades this palpably absurd conclusion by specifying merely that rights are necessary for a “proper” survival. Now what is this “proper” survival, and how is it distinguished from an improper survival? She intentionally says nothing about this, leaving plenty of wiggle room so that she can easily use the ambiguity to equivocate to any conclusion she pleases.
In the next sentence, Rand merely repeats what she said before, except now she has placed it in a conditional: if man is to live on earth, then, she claims, it is right for him to use his mind, act on his free judgment, work for his values, and keep the product of his work. Yet again, this is not an argument, it’s a merely a vague assertion. Even worse, Rand is once again implying the absurd conclusion that rights are necessary to life.
She offers a second conditional which again implies an absurdity: “if life is man’s purpose,” she argues, “he has a right to live as rational being.” The argument, among other things, seems (perhaps unwittingly) to suggest that a purpose bestows a right. It is not clear at all how this can be so. The fact that I have a purpose in no way grants me a right. Not in the least; I only have those rights which have arisen in the society I live in, regardless of what I might wish or purpose. Most individuals, taken on their own resources alone, have no control over the legal structures that exist where they are born. If you are born in North Korea, you have no rights, regardless of what purposes you might have.
Although Rand’s rhetoric is confusing, what she seems to be attempting to argue is something along the following lines: (1) that in order to live, men must be “rational”; (2) that rights are necessary in order to be rational; (3) that, therefore, rights are necessary in order to live.
If by rationality we mean deliberate, conscious thinking guided by “logic,” premise (1) is almost certainly false. Human beings, as cognitive science has shown, are governed to a considerable extent by the cognitive unconscious, which can hardly be described as “rational.” Premise (2) is deeply problematic. The rationale behind it is the idea that, unless an individual is free, he cannot follow the dictates of his mind. But this assumes that the political alternatives facing mankind are either a complete and total subjugation of the individual on the one side or a complete freedom on the other side. In the real world, it doesn’t work like that. Even a slave has some room for initiative and rationality, and a citizen in a welfare state has a great deal more. So Rand’s argument breaks down completely, which is just as well, because the conclusion is, as I have already noted, absurd. Sorry, but rights are not necessary for life. If men could not survive without rights, the human race would have disappeared long ago.
We next find Rand repeating her oft-stated maxim that “nature forbids [man] the irrational.” What does Rand mean by the “irrational.” Can any Objectivist describe what she means without begging the question? For it clearly won’t do to say: “the irrational is anything contrary reason,” because that just leaves us with the difficulty of describing what “reason” is. To the extent that any empirical meaning can be drawn from this statement at all, it appears to be, at the very best, an exaggeration. If by “irrational” we include “non-logical conduct,” the statement is clearly false, as human beings have been practicing non-logical conduct for centuries without Dame Nature once stepping in to forbid it. Indeed, it would be impossible to bring every aspect of human existence under the exclusive domain of logical conduct, since logic breaks down whenever faced with any great complexity or uncertainty. In a pinch, intuition or trial and error or following an established usage may prove more useful than “reason.”
Rand concludes by asserting, again without offering a shred of evidence or proof, that any group that denies man’s rights “is wrong, which means: is evil, which means: is anti-life.” Once more, we are confronted with a frustrating vagueness in which Rand seems to equivocate between saying something that is clearly contrary to the facts or that is banal. Does she really want us to believe that a denial of “man’s rights” leads to death? Throughout most of human history, most human beings have had virtually no rights at all. Many have been little better than slaves or peasants. Yet somehow the human race has managed to survive, in the very teeth of Rand’s anathema. So what does Rand mean by claiming that a denial of rights is anti-life? She means only this: that she doesn’t like it! Sorry, but that’s not a good argument. Even if you could (per impossible) change society through argumentation, you would never get anywhere with arguments as bad as these!
The source of man’s rights is not divine law or congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A—and Man is Man. Rights are conditions of existence required by man’s nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product of his work. If life on earth is his purpose, he has a right to live as a rational being: nature forbids him the irrational. Any group, any gang, any nation that attempts to negate man’s rights, is wrong, which means: is evil, which means: is anti-life.
Rand gets off to rather poor start in her argument. She claims that the source of rights is “the law of identity.” “A is A—and Man is Man.” She might as well have just said The source of rights is the way things are, for that’s what all this pretentious talk about rights stemming from the law of identity amounts to in the end. Rand here commits the error of begging the question. What we need is compelling evidence that man’s rights do in fact stem from the way things are, not merely the assertion that this is so!
Next we are confronted with an even more mystifying assertion: “Rights are conditions of existence required by man’s nature for his proper survival.” Now what could Rand possibly mean by this? She comes perilously close to suggesting that rights are requisites of man’s survival, but she evades this palpably absurd conclusion by specifying merely that rights are necessary for a “proper” survival. Now what is this “proper” survival, and how is it distinguished from an improper survival? She intentionally says nothing about this, leaving plenty of wiggle room so that she can easily use the ambiguity to equivocate to any conclusion she pleases.
In the next sentence, Rand merely repeats what she said before, except now she has placed it in a conditional: if man is to live on earth, then, she claims, it is right for him to use his mind, act on his free judgment, work for his values, and keep the product of his work. Yet again, this is not an argument, it’s a merely a vague assertion. Even worse, Rand is once again implying the absurd conclusion that rights are necessary to life.
She offers a second conditional which again implies an absurdity: “if life is man’s purpose,” she argues, “he has a right to live as rational being.” The argument, among other things, seems (perhaps unwittingly) to suggest that a purpose bestows a right. It is not clear at all how this can be so. The fact that I have a purpose in no way grants me a right. Not in the least; I only have those rights which have arisen in the society I live in, regardless of what I might wish or purpose. Most individuals, taken on their own resources alone, have no control over the legal structures that exist where they are born. If you are born in North Korea, you have no rights, regardless of what purposes you might have.
Although Rand’s rhetoric is confusing, what she seems to be attempting to argue is something along the following lines: (1) that in order to live, men must be “rational”; (2) that rights are necessary in order to be rational; (3) that, therefore, rights are necessary in order to live.
If by rationality we mean deliberate, conscious thinking guided by “logic,” premise (1) is almost certainly false. Human beings, as cognitive science has shown, are governed to a considerable extent by the cognitive unconscious, which can hardly be described as “rational.” Premise (2) is deeply problematic. The rationale behind it is the idea that, unless an individual is free, he cannot follow the dictates of his mind. But this assumes that the political alternatives facing mankind are either a complete and total subjugation of the individual on the one side or a complete freedom on the other side. In the real world, it doesn’t work like that. Even a slave has some room for initiative and rationality, and a citizen in a welfare state has a great deal more. So Rand’s argument breaks down completely, which is just as well, because the conclusion is, as I have already noted, absurd. Sorry, but rights are not necessary for life. If men could not survive without rights, the human race would have disappeared long ago.
We next find Rand repeating her oft-stated maxim that “nature forbids [man] the irrational.” What does Rand mean by the “irrational.” Can any Objectivist describe what she means without begging the question? For it clearly won’t do to say: “the irrational is anything contrary reason,” because that just leaves us with the difficulty of describing what “reason” is. To the extent that any empirical meaning can be drawn from this statement at all, it appears to be, at the very best, an exaggeration. If by “irrational” we include “non-logical conduct,” the statement is clearly false, as human beings have been practicing non-logical conduct for centuries without Dame Nature once stepping in to forbid it. Indeed, it would be impossible to bring every aspect of human existence under the exclusive domain of logical conduct, since logic breaks down whenever faced with any great complexity or uncertainty. In a pinch, intuition or trial and error or following an established usage may prove more useful than “reason.”
Rand concludes by asserting, again without offering a shred of evidence or proof, that any group that denies man’s rights “is wrong, which means: is evil, which means: is anti-life.” Once more, we are confronted with a frustrating vagueness in which Rand seems to equivocate between saying something that is clearly contrary to the facts or that is banal. Does she really want us to believe that a denial of “man’s rights” leads to death? Throughout most of human history, most human beings have had virtually no rights at all. Many have been little better than slaves or peasants. Yet somehow the human race has managed to survive, in the very teeth of Rand’s anathema. So what does Rand mean by claiming that a denial of rights is anti-life? She means only this: that she doesn’t like it! Sorry, but that’s not a good argument. Even if you could (per impossible) change society through argumentation, you would never get anywhere with arguments as bad as these!
Friday, January 22, 2010
Objectivism & Politics, Part 39
Moral argument for capitalism. In The Mind and Society, Pareto makes the following observation:
What Pareto says about “natural law” applies, by analogy, to Rand’s “moral argument for capitalism,” which is merely a series of loose assertions expressing Rand’s political preferences. It proves nothing beyond Rand’s emotional attachment to certain political convictions. It is rationalization through and through, with the vagueness of lofty abstractions used to carry forth what fact and logic could never have supplied.
Let us take a look at Rand’s argument:
Rand begins with the usual vague truisms: human life, she insists rather sententiously, "depends" on the mind. Very well. She belabors the obvious, but that's okay. It's preferable to what she does next, when she declares, without clarifying what on earth she is talking about, that “production is the application of reason to the problem of survival.” Uncritical people fall for this kind of rhetoric; they fail to notice the egregious vagueness of the term reason. What, after all, is this “reason” that Rand and her disciples pontificate about ad nauseum? How does one distinguish between an individual allegedly using Rand’s “reason” and an individual using some other cognitive method, such as intuition or the scientific method? Objectivists still haven’t gotten around to providing a detailed, empirically testable description of this obscure faculty. Instead, the most they provide is vague descriptions in which reason is defined in terms of other indistinct words, such as their claim that reason “integrates man’s perceptions by means of forming abstractions or conceptions” and “the method ... reason employs ... is logic.” None of these descriptions tell us how reason integrates perceptions, or what Rand means by “logic”; nor do they allow us how to empirically test Rand’s assertions about “reason.” They are little more than a series of arbitrary claims, their dubiety masked by their inexactness.
Yet the difficulties embedded in Rand’s vague concept of reason pale in comparison to the much worse difficulties that confront us when we examine the next step in her argument, where she argues that “freedom is the fundamental requirement of man’s mind.” Here, again, we run into the problem of vagueness. What does Rand mean by the term “freedom”? Her disciples would probably say: “She means laissez-faire capitalism.” Very well. Why didn’t she just say so right from the start? The answer, again, is fairly simple: she used the more generic (and vague) term freedom because if she claimed that laissez-faire is “a fundamental requirement of man’s mind,” her argument would clearly go against obvious facts known by nearly everyone. As Rand and her followers are the first to admit, pure “laissez-faire” capitalism has never existed; yet this has not prevented all kinds of amazing scientific and technological advances, all of which can be vaguely attributed to the human mind (though not necessarily to “reason,” as we shall see). So it turns out that laissez-faire is not a “fundamental” requirement of man’s mind”: any sort of free enterprise, even one as “heavily” regulated as the American version, will do.
Rand’s argument has yet another glaring weakness. If we identify Rand’s “reason” with some type of formalized thinking (and after all, Rand invites us to make such identification with her claim that “logic” is the “method employed by reason”), then we have to reject Rand’s claim that “production is the application of reason to the problem of survival.” In point of fact, processes of production require a great deal more cognitive skills than can be encompassed by merely formalized thinking. Indeed, it is debatable whether formalized thinking plays much of a role in in most of the decisions involved in directing the processes of production—i.e., decisions involved in allocation of capital, where entrepreneurship comes into play. Business decisions require facing uncertainties that cannot be resolved by formal “reason.” As economist Frank Knight pointed out in Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit: “The powers and attributes of [economic] leadership form the most mysterious as well as the most vital endowment which fits the human species for civilized or organized life, transcending even that power of perceiving and associating qualities and relations which is the true nature of what we call reasoning.” The uncertainties and complexities facing the entrepreneur are so daunting that logic and reason break down: the entrepreneur must rely on his “intuition.” Market processes are therefore not merely “an application of reason to the problem of survival”; they also rely heavily on “intuition” and “trial and error.” As Knight explained:
To sum up: Rand’s “moral” argument for capitalism, to the extent that we can decipher any kind of distinct empirical content in at all, oversteps obvious facts. Rand in her argument appears to be guilty of conflating “freedom” with laissez-faire capitalism; in any case, her implication that survival requires freedom from “interference” (i.e., laissez-faire) is obviously contradicted by facts known to everyone (i.e, by the fact that, despite the absence of laissez-faire, we’re still alive). Nor is Rand’s assertions about “reason” empirically sound; for, in practical matters, men rely far more on “intuition”; nor is it clear, given the uncertainties and complexities faced in ordinary business, that it could be otherwise, since formalized systems of thought can’t handle great complexity and uncertainty.
Theories of “natural law” and the “law of nations” are another excellent example of discussions destitute of all exactness. Many thinkers have more or less vaguely expressed their sentiments under those terms, and have then exerted themselves to link their sentiments with practical ends that they desired to attain. As usual, they have derived great advantage in such efforts from using indefinite words that correspond not to things, but only to sentiments… “Natural law” is simply that law of which the person using the phrase approves; but the cards cannot be so ingenuously laid on the table in any such terms; it is wiser to put the thing a little less bluntly, supplement it by more or less argument. [§401]
What Pareto says about “natural law” applies, by analogy, to Rand’s “moral argument for capitalism,” which is merely a series of loose assertions expressing Rand’s political preferences. It proves nothing beyond Rand’s emotional attachment to certain political convictions. It is rationalization through and through, with the vagueness of lofty abstractions used to carry forth what fact and logic could never have supplied.
Let us take a look at Rand’s argument:
The action required to sustain human life is primarily intellectual: everything man needs has to be discovered by his mind and produced by his effort. Production is the application of reason to the problem of survival . . . .
Since knowledge, thinking, and rational action are properties of the individual, since the choice to exercise his rational faculty or not depends on the individual, man’s survival requires that those who think be free of the interference of those who don’t. Since men are neither omniscient nor infallible, they must be free to agree or disagree, to cooperate or to pursue their own independent course, each according to his own rational judgment. Freedom is the fundamental requirement of man’s mind.
Rand begins with the usual vague truisms: human life, she insists rather sententiously, "depends" on the mind. Very well. She belabors the obvious, but that's okay. It's preferable to what she does next, when she declares, without clarifying what on earth she is talking about, that “production is the application of reason to the problem of survival.” Uncritical people fall for this kind of rhetoric; they fail to notice the egregious vagueness of the term reason. What, after all, is this “reason” that Rand and her disciples pontificate about ad nauseum? How does one distinguish between an individual allegedly using Rand’s “reason” and an individual using some other cognitive method, such as intuition or the scientific method? Objectivists still haven’t gotten around to providing a detailed, empirically testable description of this obscure faculty. Instead, the most they provide is vague descriptions in which reason is defined in terms of other indistinct words, such as their claim that reason “integrates man’s perceptions by means of forming abstractions or conceptions” and “the method ... reason employs ... is logic.” None of these descriptions tell us how reason integrates perceptions, or what Rand means by “logic”; nor do they allow us how to empirically test Rand’s assertions about “reason.” They are little more than a series of arbitrary claims, their dubiety masked by their inexactness.
Yet the difficulties embedded in Rand’s vague concept of reason pale in comparison to the much worse difficulties that confront us when we examine the next step in her argument, where she argues that “freedom is the fundamental requirement of man’s mind.” Here, again, we run into the problem of vagueness. What does Rand mean by the term “freedom”? Her disciples would probably say: “She means laissez-faire capitalism.” Very well. Why didn’t she just say so right from the start? The answer, again, is fairly simple: she used the more generic (and vague) term freedom because if she claimed that laissez-faire is “a fundamental requirement of man’s mind,” her argument would clearly go against obvious facts known by nearly everyone. As Rand and her followers are the first to admit, pure “laissez-faire” capitalism has never existed; yet this has not prevented all kinds of amazing scientific and technological advances, all of which can be vaguely attributed to the human mind (though not necessarily to “reason,” as we shall see). So it turns out that laissez-faire is not a “fundamental” requirement of man’s mind”: any sort of free enterprise, even one as “heavily” regulated as the American version, will do.
Rand’s argument has yet another glaring weakness. If we identify Rand’s “reason” with some type of formalized thinking (and after all, Rand invites us to make such identification with her claim that “logic” is the “method employed by reason”), then we have to reject Rand’s claim that “production is the application of reason to the problem of survival.” In point of fact, processes of production require a great deal more cognitive skills than can be encompassed by merely formalized thinking. Indeed, it is debatable whether formalized thinking plays much of a role in in most of the decisions involved in directing the processes of production—i.e., decisions involved in allocation of capital, where entrepreneurship comes into play. Business decisions require facing uncertainties that cannot be resolved by formal “reason.” As economist Frank Knight pointed out in Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit: “The powers and attributes of [economic] leadership form the most mysterious as well as the most vital endowment which fits the human species for civilized or organized life, transcending even that power of perceiving and associating qualities and relations which is the true nature of what we call reasoning.” The uncertainties and complexities facing the entrepreneur are so daunting that logic and reason break down: the entrepreneur must rely on his “intuition.” Market processes are therefore not merely “an application of reason to the problem of survival”; they also rely heavily on “intuition” and “trial and error.” As Knight explained:
...when we try to decide what to expect in a certain situation, and how to behave ourselves accordingly, we are likely to do a lot of irrelevant mental rambling, and the first thing we know we find that we have made up our minds, that our course of action is settled. There seems to be very little meaning in what has gone on in our minds, and certainly little kinship with the formal processes of logic which the scientist uses in an investigation. We contrast the two processes by recognizing that the former is not reasoned knowledge, but "judgment," "common sense," or "intuition." There is doubtless some analysis of a crude type involved, but in the main it seems that we "infer" largely from our experience of the past as a whole, somewhat in the same way that we deal with intrinsically simple (unanalyzable) problems like estimating distances, weights, or other physical magnitudes, when measuring instruments are not at hand.
To sum up: Rand’s “moral” argument for capitalism, to the extent that we can decipher any kind of distinct empirical content in at all, oversteps obvious facts. Rand in her argument appears to be guilty of conflating “freedom” with laissez-faire capitalism; in any case, her implication that survival requires freedom from “interference” (i.e., laissez-faire) is obviously contradicted by facts known to everyone (i.e, by the fact that, despite the absence of laissez-faire, we’re still alive). Nor is Rand’s assertions about “reason” empirically sound; for, in practical matters, men rely far more on “intuition”; nor is it clear, given the uncertainties and complexities faced in ordinary business, that it could be otherwise, since formalized systems of thought can’t handle great complexity and uncertainty.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Objectivism & Politics, Part 16
Politics of Human Nature 1: human rationality. The achievement of Objectivism’s political goals rest on the assumption that most human beings are at least potentially “rational.” Nor is it enough for them to be rational merely about the means they wish to achieve; they must also be rational about the ends as well. Rand and her followers are somewhat confused on this point. Rand never explains precisely how one arrives at a rational end and even suggests that her ultimate end is (or is based on) a conditional! However, all of that is of little importance for the issue at hand. For the fact remains that, whether her followers recognize it or not, a substantive rationality (i.e., a rationality of ends) is necessary in order for her politics to work. In order to implement the Objectivist politics, it’s not enough that individuals become rational about the means by which they attain their goals: they must also be able resolve problems that arise from conflicting ends; and if there exists no such thing as a rational end, then there exists no rational means of resolving conflict, because rationality about ends is psychologically impossible. Faction becomes unavoidable and laissez-faire unattainable.
So is there such a thing as a rational end? We have covered this issue elsewhere; but since it is so important, it bears repeating. Can human beings pursue rational ends? Or is it, as Hume asserted, psychologically impossible for reason to generate rational ends?
The philosopher Arthur Lovejoy explored the issue in his excellent Reflections on Human Nature, where he comments on Hume’s discovery:
Now the importance of this insight into human nature is that it emphasizes the role that motivation plays in human conduct. All human conduct is motivated by non-rational sources—that is, by desires, sentiments, emotions, call them what you will. In Objectivism, there exists a tendency to make light of motives. The issue, for the denizen of Rand, is not what motivates the individual, but why a person should choose one motive rather than another. Objectivism goes so far as to deny that man’s most basic choices can be explained at all. “Why he chooses one or another [motive]… cannot be further explained,” contends Peikoff. “That is what it means to say that man has choice and is not determined. A volitional choice is a fundamental beneath which you cannot get.” [“Philosophy and Psychology in History”]
This extreme view of volition is tantamount to a denial of human nature. For it challenges the view, shared by all those who have a “constrained” vision of the human condition, that most human beings are strongly influenced by innate tendencies and that if you understand the pathology of those innate tendencies, you can make educated guesses as to the likelihood of various types of social conduct and the probability (or impossibility) of various social and political ideals.
I have discussed the issue of innate tendencies in previous posts (such as here). Outside of Ayn Rand and left-wing social science, nearly everyone believes in their existence. In the last half century, behavioral science has further strengthened the case for these tendencies. Indeed, to deny them is to be guilty of a kind of scientific illiteracy, not very different from denying the theory of relativity or the experimental success of quantum mechanics.
Once we have established the reality of innate tendencies, the next step is to investigate what those tendencies are and how they effect the social and political order. That will be the subject of the next half dozen or so “Objectivism and Politics” posts.
So is there such a thing as a rational end? We have covered this issue elsewhere; but since it is so important, it bears repeating. Can human beings pursue rational ends? Or is it, as Hume asserted, psychologically impossible for reason to generate rational ends?
The philosopher Arthur Lovejoy explored the issue in his excellent Reflections on Human Nature, where he comments on Hume’s discovery:
Hume’s fundamental thesis must have shocked some of his contemporaries… For while they had declared that the Reason seldom if ever does in fact control the passions, they had still assumed, in accord with the long dominant tradition, that it should do so, that control was the function for which it was intended… But Hume challenged the great tradition of moral philosophy, and asserted that it is a psychological impossibility for the Reason to influence volition…. Hume does not … mean by this to deny that the understanding has an instrumental use in the determination of conduct. Given a desire for some end, a reasoned knowledge of the relations of cause and effect may show how to satisfy it by adopting the means without which the end cannot be attained. What he is asserting is that “reason,” the knowledge of any kind of truth, is not a passion or desire, is not the same psychological phenomenon as liking or wanting something; and that a thing can become an end only by being desired. The role of reason consists in judging of propositions as true or false, as in “agreement or disagreement” with the matters of fact to which they refer. “Whatever is not susceptible of this agreement or disagreement, is incapable of being true or false, and can never be an object of our reason.” But “our passions, volitions and acts” are “original facts and realities, compleat in themselves… ‘Tis impossible, therefore, that they can be either true or false, and be either contrary or conformable to reason.” And since reason neither is nor can produce a desire, it cannot even tell us what we should desire, it cannot even evaluate desires; or if it professes to do so, it will only the more clearly reveal its irrelevance and impotence. You either have a desire or you do not; unless you have one, you will never act at all; and a desire can be combatted or overcome, not by reason, but only by another desire. [181-183]
Now the importance of this insight into human nature is that it emphasizes the role that motivation plays in human conduct. All human conduct is motivated by non-rational sources—that is, by desires, sentiments, emotions, call them what you will. In Objectivism, there exists a tendency to make light of motives. The issue, for the denizen of Rand, is not what motivates the individual, but why a person should choose one motive rather than another. Objectivism goes so far as to deny that man’s most basic choices can be explained at all. “Why he chooses one or another [motive]… cannot be further explained,” contends Peikoff. “That is what it means to say that man has choice and is not determined. A volitional choice is a fundamental beneath which you cannot get.” [“Philosophy and Psychology in History”]
This extreme view of volition is tantamount to a denial of human nature. For it challenges the view, shared by all those who have a “constrained” vision of the human condition, that most human beings are strongly influenced by innate tendencies and that if you understand the pathology of those innate tendencies, you can make educated guesses as to the likelihood of various types of social conduct and the probability (or impossibility) of various social and political ideals.
I have discussed the issue of innate tendencies in previous posts (such as here). Outside of Ayn Rand and left-wing social science, nearly everyone believes in their existence. In the last half century, behavioral science has further strengthened the case for these tendencies. Indeed, to deny them is to be guilty of a kind of scientific illiteracy, not very different from denying the theory of relativity or the experimental success of quantum mechanics.
Once we have established the reality of innate tendencies, the next step is to investigate what those tendencies are and how they effect the social and political order. That will be the subject of the next half dozen or so “Objectivism and Politics” posts.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Objectivism & Politics, Part 12
Influence of sentiment on thinking In the last several “Objectivism and Politics” posts, compelling reasons have been provided for regarding most philosophical theories as mere derivations from sentiments. In this post, we are going to examine some of the scientific evidence supporting Pareto’s contention that it is not theories (i.e., derivations) but sentiments (i.e., residues) that are the primary determinant of ethical and political beliefs.
According to research in cognitive science,
What cognitive science has discovered in research accords with the experience of everyday life. Anyone who attempts to change people’s minds on any issue that is important to them will quickly find how difficult it is. The reason for this is quite simple: most people make up their minds based on their sentiments, and so they are impervious to logic. It is Pareto’s “residues” that are critical in determining belief and conduct, not the theories of philosophers and social thinkers, which are mere “derivations.” As Pareto himself puts it:
According to research in cognitive science,
most human beings earn a failing grade in elementary logic. But we’re not just frequently incompetent, we’re also willfully and skillfully illogical. When a piece of deductive reasoning leads to a conclusion we don’t like, we often rebut it with irrelevancies and sophistries of which, instead of being ashamed, we act proud. Recently, a new mortality study … reported that … the death rate among smokers was twice as high as that among nonsmokers. That night on television … a reporter was shown asking various smokers what they thought of the findings: one man sarcastically replied, “So nonsmokers don’t die, right?”—and looked immensely pleased with himself; a young woman, with equal self-satisfaction, said, “Nobody lives forever, anyway.” Such rebuttals are not at all unusual; many psychological studies have shown that smokers tend to reject logical inferences about smoking by means of various distortions and rationalizations. They may assert that the evidence is incomplete or biased, or cite the case of someone they knew who smoked heavily and lived to be ninety, or, like the man and woman on television, rebut conclusions other than the one that was actually drawn.
Similarly, most people are little influenced by the reasoning, however cogent, of campaigners, organizers, and other public persuaders. Jeanne B. Herman of the Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University has studied the reactions of people subjected to company and union arguments prior to voting on some issue, and found that few of them change their attitudes as a result of such exposure. By a variety of nonlogical cognitive techniques they “insulate” themselves from the reasoning they are exposed to unless it confirms their preexisting attitudes. To be sure, some part of every voting population changes its views in the course of a campaign, but the cause of shifts are factors such as personalities of the campaigners, changing economic conditions, threats or promises, and so on; the noble ideal of persuasion by means of the clash of ideas in the marketplace has little to do with it.
Even within the ranks of foreign-policy decision makers, rationality is the ideal but rarely the reality. The classic theory of high-level decision making views it as a process in which the theoretical rational man weighs costs against benefits and inexorably comes to the optimal decision, but many recent studies find that this is rarely the case. Political scientists Ole R. Holsti of Duke University and Alexander George of Stanford University have analyzed various examples of such decision making and found that only when a problem is trivial do foreign-policy decision makers behave rationally; far more often, such factors as stress, the complexity of the problem, and their own conflicting motives cause them to make decisions by irrational processes...
If we need any final piece of evidence that even fine minds are not so much let by logic as prone to bend logic to their own conclusions, look at the output of the United States Supreme Court…. The justices interpret the language of the Constitution in their own ways, so as to derive from it justification for their own social values. As [former] Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes said to William O. Douglas, when Douglas was new to the Supreme Court, “You must remember one thing. At the constitutional level where we work, ninety percent of any decision is emotional. The rational part of us supplies the reasons for supporting our predilections.”
Thus there is yet another paradox about the human ability to reason deductively: those who are best at logical reasoning often use it—as the rest of us use illogic—to get where they want to go, rather than where reason would naturally lead them. [Morton Hunt, The Universe Within, 128-130]
What cognitive science has discovered in research accords with the experience of everyday life. Anyone who attempts to change people’s minds on any issue that is important to them will quickly find how difficult it is. The reason for this is quite simple: most people make up their minds based on their sentiments, and so they are impervious to logic. It is Pareto’s “residues” that are critical in determining belief and conduct, not the theories of philosophers and social thinkers, which are mere “derivations.” As Pareto himself puts it:
Theologians, metaphysicists, philosophers, theorists of politics, law, and ethics, do not ordinarily accept the order indicated [of residues being more important than derivations]. They are inclined to assign first place to derivations. What we call residues are in their eyes axioms or dogmas, and the purpose is just the conclusion of logical reasoning. But since they are not as a rule in any agreement on the derivation, they argue about it till they are blue in the face and think that they can change social conditions by proving a derivation fallacious. That is an illusion on their part. They fail to realize that their hagglings never reach the majority of men, who could not make head or tail to them anyhow, and who in fact disregard them save as articles of faith to which they assent in deference to certain residues. [Mind and Society, §1415]
Tuesday, May 05, 2009
The Limits of Logic
Let’s examine those syllogisms I presented in the last post and find out which are valid and which are not:
Syllogism A:
Many people struggle with this syllogism, even though its logical structure is quite simple. The difficulty arises from the confusing, unfamiliar, even silly subjects of the syllogism. If presented in terms of more familiar objects, it becomes so easy that even a child can figure it out. Take, for example, the following syllogism, which has the same structure:
Obviously, both syllogisms are valid. But as Morton Hunt notes, “if we were truly logical thinkers, we would find the first [syllogism] just as easy to evaluate as the second one.”
Syllogism B:
Many people assume this syllogism is valid because the premises and conclusion all seem to be true. How, then, can it not be valid? Well, consider the following syllogism, which features the same structure:
Obviously, we confronting an invalid syllogism. The reason so many people are fooled is because they don’t use logic when they evaluate the syllogism, they use there own experience and knowledge. This is one of the critical findings of cognitive science. People don’t think logically, they think experientially, in terms of what they know.
Syllogism C:
Here we are confronted by a syllogism, the premises of which appear, at least superficially, as true, yet which has a conclusion that seems false. Yet the syllogism itself is valid. What gives on this one?
People tend to think this syllogism is invalid because the conclusion is wrong. They often don’t notice that the first premise is dubious, because it seems reasonable enough at first glance. What this syllogism demonstrates is the tendency for human beings to judge arguments based solely on whether they agree (or disagree) with the conclusion. Again, logic is ignored.
Syllogism D:
This is another syllogism that gives people great difficulty. Why? Because it exhibits a natural form of reasoning that is useful in ordinary life—so they are inclined to regard it as valid. But it isn’t valid—not logically. Even if the streets are wet, this doesn’t necessarily mean it must be raining. The streets may be wet for some other reason, such as a broken water main or a street-washing machine. To be sure, in real life, these alternative explanations aren’t very likely and can usually be ignored. That is why such reasoning, though logically invalid, often leads to correct conclusions and is used with great effectiveness in the real world.
Syllogism E:
This is not a syllogism that was used to test logical ability in cognitive science experiments. On the contrary, it is the form of reasoning routinely used by doctors when analyzing patients. Logically, it is an invalid form of reasoning. But, as Morton Hunt notes, “it is a highly plausible way to begin a diagnosis.”
Syllogism F:
This is the most difficult to get right (and you don’t have a 50% chance of guessing, like you do with the others). If we make the terms a little more sensible and familiar, it’s easy at least to evaluate as to its validity:
So what does all this prove (or at least suggest)? Namely this: that individuals rely far more on experiential and/or plausible reasoning when they judge the validity of arguments than they do on logic. And why is experiential/plausible reasoning more important than logic? Because, as Morton Hunt puts it,
Syllogism A:
No Gox box when in purple socks.
Jocks is a Gox wearing purple socks.
Therefore Jocks does not now box.
Many people struggle with this syllogism, even though its logical structure is quite simple. The difficulty arises from the confusing, unfamiliar, even silly subjects of the syllogism. If presented in terms of more familiar objects, it becomes so easy that even a child can figure it out. Take, for example, the following syllogism, which has the same structure:
No cars run when they’re out of fuel.
My car is out of fuel.
Therefore my car does not now run.
Obviously, both syllogisms are valid. But as Morton Hunt notes, “if we were truly logical thinkers, we would find the first [syllogism] just as easy to evaluate as the second one.”
Syllogism B:
Those who believe in democracy believe in free speech.
Fascists do not believe in democracy.
Therefore Fascists do not believe in free speech.
Many people assume this syllogism is valid because the premises and conclusion all seem to be true. How, then, can it not be valid? Well, consider the following syllogism, which features the same structure:
Robins have feathers.
Chickens are not robins.
Therefore chickens do not have feathers.
Obviously, we confronting an invalid syllogism. The reason so many people are fooled is because they don’t use logic when they evaluate the syllogism, they use there own experience and knowledge. This is one of the critical findings of cognitive science. People don’t think logically, they think experientially, in terms of what they know.
Syllogism C:
Whatever makes for full employment is socially beneficial.
Being in a state of war tends to make for full employment.
Therefore war is socially beneficial.
Here we are confronted by a syllogism, the premises of which appear, at least superficially, as true, yet which has a conclusion that seems false. Yet the syllogism itself is valid. What gives on this one?
People tend to think this syllogism is invalid because the conclusion is wrong. They often don’t notice that the first premise is dubious, because it seems reasonable enough at first glance. What this syllogism demonstrates is the tendency for human beings to judge arguments based solely on whether they agree (or disagree) with the conclusion. Again, logic is ignored.
Syllogism D:
If it’s raining, the streets are wet.
The streets are wet.
Therefore it’s raining.
This is another syllogism that gives people great difficulty. Why? Because it exhibits a natural form of reasoning that is useful in ordinary life—so they are inclined to regard it as valid. But it isn’t valid—not logically. Even if the streets are wet, this doesn’t necessarily mean it must be raining. The streets may be wet for some other reason, such as a broken water main or a street-washing machine. To be sure, in real life, these alternative explanations aren’t very likely and can usually be ignored. That is why such reasoning, though logically invalid, often leads to correct conclusions and is used with great effectiveness in the real world.
Syllogism E:
Disease X is known to produce various symptoms, including A, B, and C.
This patient has symptoms A, B, and C.
Therefore this patient has disease X.
This is not a syllogism that was used to test logical ability in cognitive science experiments. On the contrary, it is the form of reasoning routinely used by doctors when analyzing patients. Logically, it is an invalid form of reasoning. But, as Morton Hunt notes, “it is a highly plausible way to begin a diagnosis.”
Syllogism F:
Some of the beekeepers are artists.
None of the chemists are beekeepers.
Therefore… some of the artists are not chemists.
This is the most difficult to get right (and you don’t have a 50% chance of guessing, like you do with the others). If we make the terms a little more sensible and familiar, it’s easy at least to evaluate as to its validity:
Some birds can swim.
No fish are birds.
Therefore some animals that can swim are not fish.
So what does all this prove (or at least suggest)? Namely this: that individuals rely far more on experiential and/or plausible reasoning when they judge the validity of arguments than they do on logic. And why is experiential/plausible reasoning more important than logic? Because, as Morton Hunt puts it,
logical reasoning is in large part abnormal, unnatural, and not generally applicable to everyday experience and to the problems of survival. [Logic] consists of a set of artificial rules that we can learn and can apply—indeed, must apply—in order to solve certain kinds of problems, but it is not a means by which our minds can effectively interpret the larger part of the reality around us; our natural way of reasoning, however, is just such a means…
Logic enables us to judge the validity of our own deductive reasoning, but much of the time we need to reason nondeductively—either inductively, or in terms of likelihoods, or of causes and effects, none of which fits within the rules of formal logic. The archetype of everyday realistic [i.e., experiential] reasoning might be something like this: This object (or situation) reminds me a lot of another that I experienced before, so probably I can expect much to be true of this one that was true of that one. Such reasoning is natural and utilitarian—but logically invalid.
Saturday, May 02, 2009
Testing One's Ability to Think Logically
In The Objectivist [Feb, 1971] we find Leonard Peikoff making the following assertion about logic:
This is representative of the typical idolatry with which logic is viewed by orthodox Objectivists. Before I can proceed in my attempt to prove that most political ideals are (and likely will be) based on non-rational and non-logical sources, I must once again clear up the myths about logic that flourish like so many weeds within the Objectivist garden.
On the back of Morton Hunt’s excellent account of the discoveries of cognitive science can be found the following provocative blurb:
That, in any case, is what cognitive scientists have discovered in their researches. Since this is obviously a touchy subject for Objectivists, it might be useful to take a glimpse at how cognitive science reached its astonishing conclusion about the limits of logic.
Cognitive scientists used some of the following syllogisms to test how well people think logically. Try them yourself and see if you can figure them out:
Syllogism A:
Syllogism B:
Syllogism C:
Syllogism D:
Syllogism E:
Finally, we conclude with an incomplete syllogism. See if you can figure out what logically proceeds from the following two premises:
The point of these examples is to demonstrate how difficult it is to think logically. Logical reasoning is not a skill that comes easy. The human mind takes it up only with great difficulty.
If you have any doubts on this score, try to figure out the syllogisms presented above. Unless you are very well versed in logic, you will likely find it hard going. I will provide the answers in my next post and explain what can be inferred from it as to the nature and function of logic in human life.
Logic is man’s method of reaching conclusions objectively by deriving them without contradiction from the facts of reality—ultimately, from the evidence provided by man’s senses. If men reject logic, then the tie between their mental processes and reality is severed; all cognitive standards are repudiated, and anything goes.
On the back of Morton Hunt’s excellent account of the discoveries of cognitive science can be found the following provocative blurb:
How logical are we? Not very. How much does it matter? Less than you think. The human mind ordinarily reasons by natural processes that are illogical—but that generally lead to correct conclusions.
That, in any case, is what cognitive scientists have discovered in their researches. Since this is obviously a touchy subject for Objectivists, it might be useful to take a glimpse at how cognitive science reached its astonishing conclusion about the limits of logic.
Cognitive scientists used some of the following syllogisms to test how well people think logically. Try them yourself and see if you can figure them out:
Syllogism A:
No Gox box when in purple socks.
Jocks is a Gox wearing purple socks.
Therefore Jocks does not now box.
Syllogism B:
Those who believe in democracy believe in free speech.
Fascists do not believe in democracy.
Therefore Fascists do not believe in free speech.
Syllogism C:
Whatever makes for full employment is socially beneficial.
Being in a state of war tends to make for full employment.
Therefore war is socially beneficial.
Syllogism D:
If it’s raining, the streets are wet.
The streets are wet.
Therefore it's raining.
Syllogism E:
Disease X is known to produce various symptoms, including A, B, and C.
This patient has symptoms A, B, and C.
Therefore this patient has disease X.
Finally, we conclude with an incomplete syllogism. See if you can figure out what logically proceeds from the following two premises:
Syllogism F:
Some of the beekeepers are artists.
None of the chemists are beekeepers.
Therefore…
The point of these examples is to demonstrate how difficult it is to think logically. Logical reasoning is not a skill that comes easy. The human mind takes it up only with great difficulty.
If you have any doubts on this score, try to figure out the syllogisms presented above. Unless you are very well versed in logic, you will likely find it hard going. I will provide the answers in my next post and explain what can be inferred from it as to the nature and function of logic in human life.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Objectivism & Politics, Part 4
"Reason" in Politics. Ayn Rand once described “rationality” as “a commitment to the fullest perception of reality within one’s power and to the constant, active expansion of one’s perception.” Using Rand’s description as a standard of rationality, how should the following assertions be judged? Which statements are “rational” and which are not?
1. Fear of flying as irrational. While it is true that many more people die in car crashes (40,000 per year) than in plane crashes (less than 1,000), it does not therefore follow that flying is safer than driving. The per hour death rate of driving versus flying is about equal. So neither form of travel is any riskier, in terms of mortality, than the other.
3. Giuliani’s broken window crime strategy. According to statistical analysis, it is not likely that Giuliani’s policing strategy had all that much to do with the drop of crime in New York. Economist Steven Levitt has found that New York’s drop in crime was largely due to four factors: more police officers, more criminals in prison, the waning of the crack of epidemic, and the passage of Roe vs. Wade.
4. Reason the only means of knowledge. Before this claim can be validated, we have to tease out the meaning of the word “reason.” Defining reason as “the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses” simply will not do, because there may be other alleged “means of knowledge” that do the same thing, like intuition or (allegedly) “mystical” experiences. So how are we supposed to distinguish the kinds of identification/integration that takes place under reason from the kinds of identification/integration that take place under other mental processes? We will assume, from various hints dropped throughout the Objectivist literature, that Rand means, by reason, basically deductive logic, “induction”, probability reason (although Rand never mentions it), scientific method, and conscious-directed concept-formation. We’ll assume that reason does not include, as Rand herself put it, any “non-rational, non-definable, non-identifable means of knowledge, such as 'instinct,' 'intuition,' 'revelation,' or any form of 'just knowing.'" With this description of reason in hand, does it follow that “reason” is the only means of knowledge? No, not if we abide by the evidence. Cognitive science has found plenty of evidence for intuitive forms of knowledge that don’t rely on conscious inferences. As the experimental psychologist Guy Claxton notes:
Claxton's views are fairly well supported by experiments in cognitive science. Unconscious cognition (more commonly known as intuition) is well documented in the literature. It turns out, then, that Rand was wrong on this issue and that reason is not the only means of knowledge.
Looking back on our list, what do all four errors have in common? Well, in the first place, they are all plausible assertions—that much we can admit on their behalf. Any intelligent individual would likely consider each one a reasonable position to hold and might even be surprised that anyone would challenge all of them. The source of the error in all four cases involves an over-reliance on general information, which is used as the basis of premises from which common sense inferences that seem both reasonable and “true” are drawn. If many more people are killed in automobile accidents than on airplanes, doesn’t it make sense to conclude that traveling by airplane is safer than traveling by car? If we equate “reason” with science, logic, and clear thinking and we equate “unreason” with arbitrary assertions relating to altogether fantastic things, blistering contradictions, mystical revelations and other palpable absurdities, doesn’t it make sense to assume, with Rand, that “reason” is the only means to knowledge? But in relying merely on reasonable inferences based on general knowledge, we are failing to demonstrate a “complete commitment to the fullest perception of reality,” that is, we are not being rational in the Randian sense!
Much reasoning done about politics by laymen is precisely of the reasonable-inferences-from-general-knowledge variety. It may seem true to a reasonable person. Yet this very quality of “reasonableness”—based, as it is, on incomplete and partial information—merely serves to conceal ignorance of important details and facts. Rand, even at her most reasonable, never got beyond this general knowledge stage. Her political reasonings, as we shall see, are therefore empirically unreliable.
- Fear of flying is irrational because many more people die in automobile accidents.
- A house with guns represents a greater danger to your child than a house with a pool.
- Rudolph Giuliani drastically cut crime in New York with his innovate “broken window” policing strategy.
- “Reason is man’s only means of grasping reality and of acquiring knowledge.”
1. Fear of flying as irrational. While it is true that many more people die in car crashes (40,000 per year) than in plane crashes (less than 1,000), it does not therefore follow that flying is safer than driving. The per hour death rate of driving versus flying is about equal. So neither form of travel is any riskier, in terms of mortality, than the other.
2. Guns more dangerous than swimming pools. Not according to the evidence. In the United States, about 550 children every year die in swimming pools, while 175 children a year die from playing with guns.
3. Giuliani’s broken window crime strategy. According to statistical analysis, it is not likely that Giuliani’s policing strategy had all that much to do with the drop of crime in New York. Economist Steven Levitt has found that New York’s drop in crime was largely due to four factors: more police officers, more criminals in prison, the waning of the crack of epidemic, and the passage of Roe vs. Wade.
4. Reason the only means of knowledge. Before this claim can be validated, we have to tease out the meaning of the word “reason.” Defining reason as “the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses” simply will not do, because there may be other alleged “means of knowledge” that do the same thing, like intuition or (allegedly) “mystical” experiences. So how are we supposed to distinguish the kinds of identification/integration that takes place under reason from the kinds of identification/integration that take place under other mental processes? We will assume, from various hints dropped throughout the Objectivist literature, that Rand means, by reason, basically deductive logic, “induction”, probability reason (although Rand never mentions it), scientific method, and conscious-directed concept-formation. We’ll assume that reason does not include, as Rand herself put it, any “non-rational, non-definable, non-identifable means of knowledge, such as 'instinct,' 'intuition,' 'revelation,' or any form of 'just knowing.'" With this description of reason in hand, does it follow that “reason” is the only means of knowledge? No, not if we abide by the evidence. Cognitive science has found plenty of evidence for intuitive forms of knowledge that don’t rely on conscious inferences. As the experimental psychologist Guy Claxton notes:
The greater part of the useful understanding we acquire throughout life is not explicit knowledge, but implicit know-how [i.e., Rand’s “just knowing”]. Our fundamental priority is not to be able to talk about what we are doing, but to do it—competently, effortlessly, and largely unconsciously and unreflectingly. And the corresponding need for the kind of learning that delivers know-how ... is not one that we outgrow. The brain-mind's ability to detect subtle regularities in experience, and to use them as a guide to the development and deployment of effective action, is our biological birthright.... Yet we ignore or disparage ... [unconscious intelligence] at our peril, for it turns out that there are things we can learn through this gradual, tacit process which d-mode [i.e., conscious reasoning] cannot master; and also that d-mode, if used over-enthusiastically, can actively interfere with this way of knowing.
Claxton's views are fairly well supported by experiments in cognitive science. Unconscious cognition (more commonly known as intuition) is well documented in the literature. It turns out, then, that Rand was wrong on this issue and that reason is not the only means of knowledge.
Looking back on our list, what do all four errors have in common? Well, in the first place, they are all plausible assertions—that much we can admit on their behalf. Any intelligent individual would likely consider each one a reasonable position to hold and might even be surprised that anyone would challenge all of them. The source of the error in all four cases involves an over-reliance on general information, which is used as the basis of premises from which common sense inferences that seem both reasonable and “true” are drawn. If many more people are killed in automobile accidents than on airplanes, doesn’t it make sense to conclude that traveling by airplane is safer than traveling by car? If we equate “reason” with science, logic, and clear thinking and we equate “unreason” with arbitrary assertions relating to altogether fantastic things, blistering contradictions, mystical revelations and other palpable absurdities, doesn’t it make sense to assume, with Rand, that “reason” is the only means to knowledge? But in relying merely on reasonable inferences based on general knowledge, we are failing to demonstrate a “complete commitment to the fullest perception of reality,” that is, we are not being rational in the Randian sense!
Much reasoning done about politics by laymen is precisely of the reasonable-inferences-from-general-knowledge variety. It may seem true to a reasonable person. Yet this very quality of “reasonableness”—based, as it is, on incomplete and partial information—merely serves to conceal ignorance of important details and facts. Rand, even at her most reasonable, never got beyond this general knowledge stage. Her political reasonings, as we shall see, are therefore empirically unreliable.
Sunday, March 01, 2009
Objectivism & Economics, Part 21
Uncertainty. Central to the Objectivist philosophy is the notion that certainy is possible. Rand went so far as to suggest that the denial of certainty “means that no knowledge of any kind is possible to man, i.e., that man is not conscious.” It is also generally believed among the Objectivist faithful uncertainty, or “skepticism,” is a morally deplorable philosophical position, an epistemology that paves the way for dictatorship and tyranny.
Despite these rather eccentric views of uncertainty, Objectivists nevertheless recognize that not all knowledge claims are certain. They tend to assume that most knowledge claims made by Rand or by the denizens of ARI are “certain” and therefore can’t be wrong. But Peikoff does admit the existence of a class of claims that are merely “probable” or “possible.”
How does one distinguish between a claim that can be regarded as certain and one that is probable or possible? Peikoff explains:
The businessman is also afflicted by this kind of uncertainty, as the economist Frank Knight has shown:
Now Rand believed that innate tendencies don’t exist. If she were right about this, it would be impossible to make any kind of rational estimate about human behavior, and social science would be a futile exercise. Fortunately, Rand was wrong on this issue: human beings do have innate tendencies, and from these innate tendencies one can fashion estimates or guesses as to what is likely to happen under a specific set of conditions. But these estimates are only guesses. Even when such estimates enjoy a high degree of “probability,” it would be gratuitous to regard them as certain. So when Objectivists declare that the current crisis was caused solely by government interference, they are at best making only a guess. They can’t know such a thing for certain. Nor would such a claim constitute a particularly good or even probable guess, since some of the worst financial dysfunction occurred in the least regulated markets.
Despite these rather eccentric views of uncertainty, Objectivists nevertheless recognize that not all knowledge claims are certain. They tend to assume that most knowledge claims made by Rand or by the denizens of ARI are “certain” and therefore can’t be wrong. But Peikoff does admit the existence of a class of claims that are merely “probable” or “possible.”
How does one distinguish between a claim that can be regarded as certain and one that is probable or possible? Peikoff explains:
Idea X is “certain” if, in a given context of knowledge, the evidence for X is conclusive. In such a context, all the evidence supports X and there is no evidence to support any alternative.The problem with this “solution” to the issue of certainty is that it evades the “hidden data” problem. When Peikoff talks about “all the evidence,” what does he mean? All the evidence available to one person? to group of people? to all mankind? The most likely interpretation is that he means the single individual. But individuals are limited in the amount of knowledge they know. Worse, they are not aware of what they don’t know, which means they have no way of knowing whether they are in command of all the evidence or not. As Thomas Gilovich points out in How We Know What Isn’t So:
It should be clear that the problem of hidden or absent data ... affects the kinds of inferences we draw and the beliefs we have about everyday life. Oftentimes, the lifestyles we lead, the roles we play, and the positions we occupy in a social network deny us access to important classes of information and thus distort our view of the world.Another source of hidden data relates to all estimates dealing with the possible outcomes that arise from choices made by human beings. Since human beings exercise volition, it is impossible to know for certain how they are going to behave. Action within a social context magnifies this uncertainty. How, for example, will Obama’s “stimulus” package affect the economy? Since our estimate depends on attempting to figure out how the stimulus will affect thousands of people whom we don’t even know, to regard any such estimate as “certain,” even in the odd Objectivist sense of the word, would be ludicrous. Yet nearly all non-trivial judgments about economics and business are tainted with this uncertainty, since they all involve guessing how people will behave in general situations that are assumed to arise from a given policy.
The businessman is also afflicted by this kind of uncertainty, as the economist Frank Knight has shown:
Take as an illustration any typical business decision. A manufacturer is considering the advisability of making a large commitment in increasing the capacity of his works. He "figures" more or less on the proposition, taking account as well as possible of the various factors more or less susceptible of measurement, but the final result is an "estimate" of the probable outcome of any proposed course of action. What is the "probability" of error (strictly, of any assigned degree of error) in the judgment? It is manifestly meaningless to speak of either calculating such a probability a priori or of determining it empirically by studying a large number of instances. The essential and outstanding fact is that the "instance" in question is so entirely unique that there are no others or not a sufficient number to make it possible to tabulate enough like it to form a basis for any inference of value about any real probability in the case we are interested in. The same obviously applies to the most of conduct and not to business decisions alone.Knight’s point about the uniqueness of a given situation is an important insight: each instance is unique because (1) of the inordinate complexity of any given social situation and (2) because the outcome of a given decision or policy must depend on how a great many individuals react to it, and it is impossible to have certain foreknowledge about those reactions, because people have volition.
Now Rand believed that innate tendencies don’t exist. If she were right about this, it would be impossible to make any kind of rational estimate about human behavior, and social science would be a futile exercise. Fortunately, Rand was wrong on this issue: human beings do have innate tendencies, and from these innate tendencies one can fashion estimates or guesses as to what is likely to happen under a specific set of conditions. But these estimates are only guesses. Even when such estimates enjoy a high degree of “probability,” it would be gratuitous to regard them as certain. So when Objectivists declare that the current crisis was caused solely by government interference, they are at best making only a guess. They can’t know such a thing for certain. Nor would such a claim constitute a particularly good or even probable guess, since some of the worst financial dysfunction occurred in the least regulated markets.
To sum up: even if certainty were possible, it would hardly matter, because most of things people argue about in economics and pubic policy are not capable of meeting even Objectivism's standard of certainty. Most of the things people argue about can never be known with certainty. If certainty could be attained, there would exist a consensus among the intelligent and the rational. Where no such consensus exists (as on most issues relating to social and economic policy), certainty is also, in all likelihood, impossible.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Objectivism & History, Part 9
The force of logic Sometimes the most curious doctrines in Objectivism are not those that are explicitly formulated but rather those that are merely hinted at or presupposed by explicit convictions. One such presupposition is the very odd view that neither people nor societies can long hold contradictory beliefs. Consider this passage from Rand’s “For the New Intellectual”:
Rand believed that people cannot long hold beliefs that contradict their fundamental premises. Such contradictions will eventually be resolved in favor of the more “fundamental” belief. So if an individual believes in altruism and capitalism, his belief in altruism will undermine his belief in capitalism because (1) altruism and capitalism contradict each other and (2) altruism is more “fundamental” than capitalism.
Here we find Rand once again misrepresenting human nature. There is no evidence that the majority of human beings have any great concern for whether they hold contradictory beliefs. As human experience repeatedly testifies, most human beings have a weak grasp of logic and are blissfully ignorant of the many contradictions floating about in their brains. The sociologist Vilfredo Pareto dedicated a 250,000 word volume to analyzing what he called “non-logical” action, which is to say, action based on contradictory or non-logical notions. “Pareto not only shows that non-logical conduct is predominant,” noted James Burnham; “his crucial point is that the conduct which has a bearing on social and political structure, on what he calls the ‘social equilibrium,’ is above all non-logical. What happens to society, whether it progresses or decays, is free or despotic, happy or miserable, poor or prosperous, is only to the slightest degree influenced by the deliberate, rational purposes held by human beings.” Pareto, therefore, comes to almost the exact opposite conclusion from Rand. Human beings, he notes, are frequently destitute of logic. And he gives hundreds of examples of non-logical actions in his treatise Mind and Society.
But even if Pareto turned out to be wrong on this issue, Rand and her disciples would still not be in the clear; for they would still have to reckon with the evidence of cognitive science, which pretty much settles the issue. Cognitive scientists have conducted a great many experiments examining the degree to which human beings are logical, and they have found that nearly all human beings not only lack any natural facility for logic, but that, in the normal business of life, they make frequent use of illogical inferences to get things done. As Morton Hunt puts it:
If there still remain doubts on this score, simply attend more closely to the beliefs of other human beings. If one observes the human animal, one will find an astonishing mixture of contradictory notions and clashing ideas. I have recently been listening David McCullough’s The Great Bridge, in which one finds a biographical portrait John Augustus Roebling, the engineer who designed and built the Brooklyn Bridge. Although Roebling was a man of science and a great engineer, this did not prevent him from wallowing in non-logical and empirically dubious activities. In his youth, he studied philosophy under the exquisitely preposterous Hegel. In later years, he dabbled in spiritualism and hydropathy. Hegel’s arch-enemy, the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer advocated quietism and asceticism, but he didn’t practice what he preached. He declared he was incapable of practicing his philosophy, even though he insisted that his philosophy was right. I’ve talked to several Obama supporters in the last few months who don’t seem to agree with many of Obama’s positions. Yet when this is pointed out to them, they are unphazed. They simply don’t care whether a contradiction exists between the policies the favor and the candidate they support.
Examples of this sort could be multiplied many many times. Some people—perhaps even most people—don’t really care too much about either logic or consistency, particularly about matters that are remote to their particular sphere of practical action. Rand and her disciples seem to admit of this non-logical aspect of human belief when they talk of people with “mixed” premises. But they don’t seem to realize that the very fact that people can hold mixed premises contradicts Rand’s conviction that capitalism and altruism cannot exist the same person because the two are contradictory.
Yet this is not the only contradiction involved in insisting that contradictions in the human psyche will tend to be resolved in favor of the more “fundamental” belief. Rand and Peikoff both contend that epistemological ideas are more fundamental than ethical and political ideas. This, however, is a problematic position. What if an individual were to embrace epistemological convictions that deny the importance or “validity” of logic? If an individual doesn’t believe in logic, wouldn’t this mean that there would exist no force or tendency in his mind to resolve contradictions between his ethical and political beliefs? After all, why should such contradictions matter to someone who doesn’t give a fig for logic? Moreover, since Rand did not belief that people had innate tendencies, she can hardly presuppose the existence of an innate tendency to resolve contradictions in favor of the more fundamental view. Since people have free will, they should be able to hold as many contradictory beliefs as they damn please? The Objectivist supposition that contradictory beliefs tend toward a resolution in favor of the more fundamental premise can therefore be dismissed as a mere prejudice, without basis in either logic or fact.
From her start, America was torn by the clash of her political system with the altruist morality. Capitalism and altruism are incompatible; they are philosophical opposites; they cannot co-exist in the same man or in the same society.
Rand believed that people cannot long hold beliefs that contradict their fundamental premises. Such contradictions will eventually be resolved in favor of the more “fundamental” belief. So if an individual believes in altruism and capitalism, his belief in altruism will undermine his belief in capitalism because (1) altruism and capitalism contradict each other and (2) altruism is more “fundamental” than capitalism.
Here we find Rand once again misrepresenting human nature. There is no evidence that the majority of human beings have any great concern for whether they hold contradictory beliefs. As human experience repeatedly testifies, most human beings have a weak grasp of logic and are blissfully ignorant of the many contradictions floating about in their brains. The sociologist Vilfredo Pareto dedicated a 250,000 word volume to analyzing what he called “non-logical” action, which is to say, action based on contradictory or non-logical notions. “Pareto not only shows that non-logical conduct is predominant,” noted James Burnham; “his crucial point is that the conduct which has a bearing on social and political structure, on what he calls the ‘social equilibrium,’ is above all non-logical. What happens to society, whether it progresses or decays, is free or despotic, happy or miserable, poor or prosperous, is only to the slightest degree influenced by the deliberate, rational purposes held by human beings.” Pareto, therefore, comes to almost the exact opposite conclusion from Rand. Human beings, he notes, are frequently destitute of logic. And he gives hundreds of examples of non-logical actions in his treatise Mind and Society.
But even if Pareto turned out to be wrong on this issue, Rand and her disciples would still not be in the clear; for they would still have to reckon with the evidence of cognitive science, which pretty much settles the issue. Cognitive scientists have conducted a great many experiments examining the degree to which human beings are logical, and they have found that nearly all human beings not only lack any natural facility for logic, but that, in the normal business of life, they make frequent use of illogical inferences to get things done. As Morton Hunt puts it:
[F]ormal logic is not a good description of how our minds usually work. Logic tells us how we should reason when we are trying to reason logically, but it does not tell us how to think about reality as we encounter it most of the time.…
Logic enables us to judge the validity of our own deductive reasoning, but much of the time we need to reason non-deductively — either inductively, or in terms of likelihoods, or of causes and effects, none of which fits within the rules of formal logic. The archetype of everyday realistic reasoning might be something like this: This object (or situation) reminds me a lot of another that I experienced before, so probably I can expect much to be true of this one that was true of that one. Such reasoning is natural and utilitarian — but logically invalid....
If there still remain doubts on this score, simply attend more closely to the beliefs of other human beings. If one observes the human animal, one will find an astonishing mixture of contradictory notions and clashing ideas. I have recently been listening David McCullough’s The Great Bridge, in which one finds a biographical portrait John Augustus Roebling, the engineer who designed and built the Brooklyn Bridge. Although Roebling was a man of science and a great engineer, this did not prevent him from wallowing in non-logical and empirically dubious activities. In his youth, he studied philosophy under the exquisitely preposterous Hegel. In later years, he dabbled in spiritualism and hydropathy. Hegel’s arch-enemy, the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer advocated quietism and asceticism, but he didn’t practice what he preached. He declared he was incapable of practicing his philosophy, even though he insisted that his philosophy was right. I’ve talked to several Obama supporters in the last few months who don’t seem to agree with many of Obama’s positions. Yet when this is pointed out to them, they are unphazed. They simply don’t care whether a contradiction exists between the policies the favor and the candidate they support.
Examples of this sort could be multiplied many many times. Some people—perhaps even most people—don’t really care too much about either logic or consistency, particularly about matters that are remote to their particular sphere of practical action. Rand and her disciples seem to admit of this non-logical aspect of human belief when they talk of people with “mixed” premises. But they don’t seem to realize that the very fact that people can hold mixed premises contradicts Rand’s conviction that capitalism and altruism cannot exist the same person because the two are contradictory.
Yet this is not the only contradiction involved in insisting that contradictions in the human psyche will tend to be resolved in favor of the more “fundamental” belief. Rand and Peikoff both contend that epistemological ideas are more fundamental than ethical and political ideas. This, however, is a problematic position. What if an individual were to embrace epistemological convictions that deny the importance or “validity” of logic? If an individual doesn’t believe in logic, wouldn’t this mean that there would exist no force or tendency in his mind to resolve contradictions between his ethical and political beliefs? After all, why should such contradictions matter to someone who doesn’t give a fig for logic? Moreover, since Rand did not belief that people had innate tendencies, she can hardly presuppose the existence of an innate tendency to resolve contradictions in favor of the more fundamental view. Since people have free will, they should be able to hold as many contradictory beliefs as they damn please? The Objectivist supposition that contradictory beliefs tend toward a resolution in favor of the more fundamental premise can therefore be dismissed as a mere prejudice, without basis in either logic or fact.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Book Review: Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind
In the last ten years or so, a number of books have come out examining the role of intuition (i.e., unconscious thinking) in human cognition. These include Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell, Intuition: It's Powers and Perils, by David Myers, Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconsious, by Timothy Wilson. Guy Claxton's Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind may very well be the best of the lot, mixing, as it does, shrewd analysis with detailed evidence.
The general picture of unconscious thinking that emerges from Claxton's book is devastating to some of Rand's most critical epistemological and psychological pretensions. Orthodox Objectivism insists that the unconscious (or "subconscious") cannot originate any thoughts or motives on its own. "There is nothing in the subconscious besides what you acquired by conscious means." This view, in light of evidence provided by Claxton, is wildly implausible.
In Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind, Claxton distinguishes between two main modes of thought: what he calls "d-mode" (i.e., deliberation mode) and "unconscious intelligence." Claxton's d-mode is conscious, deliberate, purposeful thinking—in other words, the sort of rational thinking favored by Rand. Unconscious intelligence, on the other hand, goes very much against the grain of Rand's cognitive ideals. It lacks many, if not all, the characteristics of d-mode. It is much closer to Michael Oakeshott's practical knowledge, discussed in an earlier post.
Rand, in her philosophy, over-emphasized the importance of d-mode and badly misrepresented unconscious thinking. She insisted that man "must discover how to use his rational faculty, how to validate his conclusions, how to distinguish truth from falsehood, how to set the criteria of what he may accept as knowledge. Two questions are involved in his every conclusion, conviction, decision, choice or claim: What do I know?—and: How do I know it?" [IOTE, 78-79] All of this makes sense, if it makes sense at all, under d-mode. But it would not work with unconscious modes of thinking. Such modes of thinking are, as Claxton puts it, "those that lack any or all of the characteristics of d-mode... They do not rush into conceptualization, but are content to explore more fully the situation before deciding what to make of it. They like to stay close to the particular. They are tolerant of information that is faint, fleeting, ephemeral, marginal or ambiguous... They see ignorance and confusion as the ground from which understanding may spring.... They are happy to relinquish the sense of control over directions that the mind spontaneously takes." Compare this with what Rand says about the "methods" of knowledge: "The methods which [man] has to employ require the most rigorous mathematical precision, the most rigorous compliance with objective rules and facts—if the end product is to be knowledge." Rand also emphasized the importance of being in a state of constant focus. "Thinking requires a state of full, focused awareness," she insisted. "When man unfocuses his mind, he may be said to be conscious in a subhuman sense of the word, since he experiences sensations and perceptions. But in the sense of the word applicable to man—in the sense of a consciousness which is aware of reality and able to deal with it, a consciousness able to direct the actions and provide for the survival of a human being—an unfocused mind is not conscious." [VOS, 20]
Rand detested intuitive ways of knowing, equating them with "mysticism," which she defined as "the claim to some non-sensory, non-rational, non-definable, non-identifable means of knowledge, such as 'instinct,' 'intuition,' 'revelation,' or any form of 'just knowing.'" [PWNI, 75] Now while intuition (unconscious thinking) is not non-sensory, (nor is it a form of revelation), it is non-rational and non-definable and, in the anti-foundationalist sense of the term, non-identifiable as well (because it is non-verbal). Rand's dislike of any cognitive conclusions that did not pass through the conscious mind is further emphasized in Peikoff's insistence that the unconscious "is simply a repository for past information or conclusions that you were once conscious of in some form, but that are now stored beneath the threshold of consciousness." Peikoff's statement, made in Rand's presence during his lectures on Objectivism, is tantamount to a denial of unconscious intelligence.
"If we see d-mode as the only form of intelligence," warns Claxton, "we must suppose, when it fails, that we are not 'bright' enough, or did not think 'hard' enough, [or 'focus' hard enough, as Objectivist might declare,] or have not got enough 'data.' The lesson we learn from such failures is that we must develop better models, collect more data, and ponder more carefully. What we do not learn is that we may have been thinking in the wrong way. "
Drawing on extensive experiments in human cognition, Claxton suggests that we should take steps to rehabilitate unconscious intelligence, which involves, not denigrating d-mode intelligence, but supplementing it with "sources of knowledge that are less articulate, less conscious and less predictable... The crucial step in this recovery is not the acquisition of a new psychological technology, but a revised understanding of the human mind, and a willingness to move into, and to enjoy, the life of the mind as it is lived in the shadowlands rather than under the bright lights of consciousness.... The key to [unconscious intelligence] is not an overlay of technique but radical reconceptualization. When the mind slows and relaxes, other ways of knowing automatically appear."
Claxton's view is nearly the opposite of Rand's. Where Rand emphasizes focus and precision, Claxton argues (and supports with scientific evidence) the need for mental relaxation and tolerance for " information that is faint, fleeting, ephemeral, marginal or ambiguous." And unlike Rand, who denigrates unconscious forms of knowing, Claxton does not denigrate d-mode. He only points out that it has both strengths and weaknesses, and that if the individual wants to make full use of his intellectual capacities, he must draw on intuitive forms of knowing as well. "D-mode works well when tackling problems which can be treated as an assemblage of nameable parts," points out Claxton. "But when the mind turns its attention to situations that are ... too intricate to be decomposed in this way without serious misrepresentation, the limitations of d-mode's linguistic, analytical approach are quickly reached."
There is no book that does a more convincing job of going to the very heart of what's wrong with Rand's view of cognition. Rand's contention that "Reason is man's only means of grasping reality and acquiring knowledge" is a libel against the mind. Claxton, making use of some of the most fascinating experiments in cognitive sciences, shows us why intuition is necessary compliment to d-mode reasoning.
The general picture of unconscious thinking that emerges from Claxton's book is devastating to some of Rand's most critical epistemological and psychological pretensions. Orthodox Objectivism insists that the unconscious (or "subconscious") cannot originate any thoughts or motives on its own. "There is nothing in the subconscious besides what you acquired by conscious means." This view, in light of evidence provided by Claxton, is wildly implausible.
In Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind, Claxton distinguishes between two main modes of thought: what he calls "d-mode" (i.e., deliberation mode) and "unconscious intelligence." Claxton's d-mode is conscious, deliberate, purposeful thinking—in other words, the sort of rational thinking favored by Rand. Unconscious intelligence, on the other hand, goes very much against the grain of Rand's cognitive ideals. It lacks many, if not all, the characteristics of d-mode. It is much closer to Michael Oakeshott's practical knowledge, discussed in an earlier post.
The greater part of the useful understanding we acquire throughout life is not explicit knowledge, but implicit know-how [writes Claxton]. Our fundamental priority is not to be able to talk about what we are doing, but to do it—competently, effortlessly, and largely unconsciously and unreflectingly. And the corresponding need for the kind of learning that delivers know-how—which I shall call learning by osmosis—is not one that we outgrow. The brain-mind's ability to detect subtle regularities in experience, and to use them as a guide to the development and deployment of effective action, is our biological birthright.... Yet we ignore or disparage ... [unconscious intelligence] at our peril, for it turns out that there are things we can learn through this gradual, tacit process which d-mode cannot master; and also that d-mode, if used over-enthusiastically, can actively interfere with this way of knowing.
Rand, in her philosophy, over-emphasized the importance of d-mode and badly misrepresented unconscious thinking. She insisted that man "must discover how to use his rational faculty, how to validate his conclusions, how to distinguish truth from falsehood, how to set the criteria of what he may accept as knowledge. Two questions are involved in his every conclusion, conviction, decision, choice or claim: What do I know?—and: How do I know it?" [IOTE, 78-79] All of this makes sense, if it makes sense at all, under d-mode. But it would not work with unconscious modes of thinking. Such modes of thinking are, as Claxton puts it, "those that lack any or all of the characteristics of d-mode... They do not rush into conceptualization, but are content to explore more fully the situation before deciding what to make of it. They like to stay close to the particular. They are tolerant of information that is faint, fleeting, ephemeral, marginal or ambiguous... They see ignorance and confusion as the ground from which understanding may spring.... They are happy to relinquish the sense of control over directions that the mind spontaneously takes." Compare this with what Rand says about the "methods" of knowledge: "The methods which [man] has to employ require the most rigorous mathematical precision, the most rigorous compliance with objective rules and facts—if the end product is to be knowledge." Rand also emphasized the importance of being in a state of constant focus. "Thinking requires a state of full, focused awareness," she insisted. "When man unfocuses his mind, he may be said to be conscious in a subhuman sense of the word, since he experiences sensations and perceptions. But in the sense of the word applicable to man—in the sense of a consciousness which is aware of reality and able to deal with it, a consciousness able to direct the actions and provide for the survival of a human being—an unfocused mind is not conscious." [VOS, 20]
Rand detested intuitive ways of knowing, equating them with "mysticism," which she defined as "the claim to some non-sensory, non-rational, non-definable, non-identifable means of knowledge, such as 'instinct,' 'intuition,' 'revelation,' or any form of 'just knowing.'" [PWNI, 75] Now while intuition (unconscious thinking) is not non-sensory, (nor is it a form of revelation), it is non-rational and non-definable and, in the anti-foundationalist sense of the term, non-identifiable as well (because it is non-verbal). Rand's dislike of any cognitive conclusions that did not pass through the conscious mind is further emphasized in Peikoff's insistence that the unconscious "is simply a repository for past information or conclusions that you were once conscious of in some form, but that are now stored beneath the threshold of consciousness." Peikoff's statement, made in Rand's presence during his lectures on Objectivism, is tantamount to a denial of unconscious intelligence.
"If we see d-mode as the only form of intelligence," warns Claxton, "we must suppose, when it fails, that we are not 'bright' enough, or did not think 'hard' enough, [or 'focus' hard enough, as Objectivist might declare,] or have not got enough 'data.' The lesson we learn from such failures is that we must develop better models, collect more data, and ponder more carefully. What we do not learn is that we may have been thinking in the wrong way. "
Drawing on extensive experiments in human cognition, Claxton suggests that we should take steps to rehabilitate unconscious intelligence, which involves, not denigrating d-mode intelligence, but supplementing it with "sources of knowledge that are less articulate, less conscious and less predictable... The crucial step in this recovery is not the acquisition of a new psychological technology, but a revised understanding of the human mind, and a willingness to move into, and to enjoy, the life of the mind as it is lived in the shadowlands rather than under the bright lights of consciousness.... The key to [unconscious intelligence] is not an overlay of technique but radical reconceptualization. When the mind slows and relaxes, other ways of knowing automatically appear."
Claxton's view is nearly the opposite of Rand's. Where Rand emphasizes focus and precision, Claxton argues (and supports with scientific evidence) the need for mental relaxation and tolerance for " information that is faint, fleeting, ephemeral, marginal or ambiguous." And unlike Rand, who denigrates unconscious forms of knowing, Claxton does not denigrate d-mode. He only points out that it has both strengths and weaknesses, and that if the individual wants to make full use of his intellectual capacities, he must draw on intuitive forms of knowing as well. "D-mode works well when tackling problems which can be treated as an assemblage of nameable parts," points out Claxton. "But when the mind turns its attention to situations that are ... too intricate to be decomposed in this way without serious misrepresentation, the limitations of d-mode's linguistic, analytical approach are quickly reached."
There is no book that does a more convincing job of going to the very heart of what's wrong with Rand's view of cognition. Rand's contention that "Reason is man's only means of grasping reality and acquiring knowledge" is a libel against the mind. Claxton, making use of some of the most fascinating experiments in cognitive sciences, shows us why intuition is necessary compliment to d-mode reasoning.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)