Ayn Rand as Word-Thinker and Persuader

Scott Adams, the creator of "Dilbert," has recently gained a bit of notoriety for claiming that there is a method behind all the Donald Trump madness. Trump, Adams insists, will probably win the Presidential election "in a landslide" because The Donald is a "master persuader." As bewildering and counter-intuitive as this assertion may seem at first blush, Adam's claims are, at least in part, based on a scientific understanding of human nature. That doesn't mean, of course, that Adams is right about Trump. He may be guilty of reading into Trump what isn't there. But Adams' view of human nature, nonetheless, remains largely sound. And for this reason, it might be illustrative to view Ayn Rand through the lens of Adam's own views on human nature and persuasion.

Rand & Human Nature 9

Denial of Jealousy. From a naturalist point of view, it is difficult to escape the view that man is a product of an evolutionary process, and that this process plays an important part in the development of man's character. Since a species, if it is to survive, must both reproduce and care for its offspring, it is likely that the process of evolution will favor those individuals who have a strong predisposition to reproduce and bestow care upon their progeny. Hence the near universality of both sexual desire and jealousy.

In comparing Rand's view of human nature with what we find in the study of actual human beings, the astute observer can hardly fail to notice the degree to which Rand has stripped away everything she found annoying in man. In distinguishing all those elements that separated man from the animals, Rand, in effect, implicitly suggests that man is not essentially an animal. His animalistic characteristics are mere accidents. Man's essence is his "reason" and his volition. These elements supercede the natural or animalistic characteristics. Man has no "instincts" or innate predispositions, only such acquired dispositions as he imbibes from the people around him or his own thinking. Although it is unlikely that Rand would have ever (à la William Jennings Bryan) explicitly denied that man was a mammal, her philosophy, at times, seems to blissfully evade this palpable fact. Indeed, in some ways, this evasion is worse than an outright denial. Bryan, because of his belief in the myth of original sin, could at least be brought to recognize those actual characteristics which human beings share with animals. Rand, on the other hand, saw such characteristics (provided they were not merely physical) as defects acquired through evasion and lack of focus, rather than intregal aspects of a functioning animal.

Rand & Human Nature 8

Jealousy. Although Rand did not have much to say about jealousy, apparently it was not an emotion well regarded by the founder of Objectivism. As Rand scholar Robert Campbell put it:

The Objectivist ethics does not look favorably on jealousy. The judgments that a jealous person makes of a rival are far from being models of epistemic objectivity, and jealous feelings are regarded as a sure sign of low self-esteem. In Ayn Rand’s fiction—most memorably, in Part II, Chapter IX of Atlas Shrugged—jealousy openly expressed is not just a badge of weakness but a near-guarantee of loss or rejection.

In the context of Rand's theory of emotions, jealousy must be regarded as a product of value premises, rather than an innate predisposition triggered by specific circumstances. Did Rand present any evidence that jealousy was an acquired rather than an innate predisposition? No, of course not. Does such evidence that exists on the question tend to support Rand's view? No, it does not.

Jealousy is very commonly observed, widespread emotion. It exists in all cultures and affects nearly everyone (though some people may be more prone to it than others). Experiments show that it can easily be triggered, even people who don't regard themselves as the "jealous type."

David Desteno and Piercarlo Valdesolo decided to test how easily jealousy can be triggered in individuals:

We orchestrated a complex social reaction that stimulated ... how jealousy naturally occurs in the real world: a relationship starts, it's threatened by a rival, and then it actually dissolves due to the rival.... Basically, the unknowing participant was being set up for the ultimate brush-off. Why would we put people through this? Because, harsh as it might sound, it is the most valid method of studying how jealousy works in everyday social interactions. [Out of Character, 85]

The initial experiment worked as follows. Carlo Valdesolo pretended to a be a participant in a psychological experiment which involved answering trivial questions. He pairs up with a female participant and immediately begins flirting with her. A little later, another female enters the room, allegedly to take part in the experiment. Carlo begins flirting with the new female "rival," until he suggests to her, "Why don't we pair up," leaving the other female participant, the true subject of the experiment, to stew in her own juices.

Rand & Human Nature 4

The Trolley Problem. Experimental psychologists are fond of posing the following moral problem to their subjects:

A trolley is hurtling down a track towards five people. You are on a bridge under which it will pass, and you can stop it by dropping a heavy weight in front of it. As it happens, there is a very fat man next to you - your only way to stop the trolley is to push him over the bridge and onto the track, killing him to save five. Should you proceed?

Most people resist the idea of pushing the fat man over the bridge. If, however, the problem is reworked, so that the five people can be saved (at the cost of one life) merely by flipping switch, most people accept the necessity of sacrificing one life to save five. The question experimental psychologists are eager to answer is:

...why do countless studies reveal that when confronted with the otherwise equivalent version where you have to physically knock someone off the footbridge to save five others, the vast majority ... -- a staggering 90 percent -- believe it wrong to do so? Logically, it's the same trade-off in numbers saved and killed. The answer, however, has nothing to do with logic. It's much simpler: the two situations feel different. Take a moment to think of how it would feel to wrap your hands around the flesh of another living, breathing human as he teeters perilously at the edge of a high bridge, to see the fear in that person's eyes as he struggles fruitlessly to escape your grip. Assuming you don't have psychopathic tendencies and aren't smiling right now, that pit you feel in your gut when thinking about shoving the guy, even to save five others, results from intuitive systems ... screaming: "Don't do it!" For most of us, this impulse usually wins. [Desteno & Valdesolo, Out of Character, 46-47]

Rand and Empirical Responsibility, 8

“Man’s values control his subconscious emotional mechanism that functions like a computer adding up his desires, his experiences, his fulfillments and frustrations.” Again we are faced with the question: How does Rand know that this is true? Rand, per usual, provides no evidence for her contention. How then is a rational person supposed to evaluate it?

If we go by the evidence collated from common experience (i.e., so-called "common sense"), it is far more likely that man's "values" are an expression of his emotions, rather than vice versa. Rand is here guilty of assuming that man's values are (or ought to be) the product of non-emotional cogitation. But since cognitive science has discovered that non-emotional cogitation is probably a fantasy, we have every reason to believe that emotions must play at least a part in the forming of values. Indeed, it is difficult to understand how it could not be so. Ask any individual why he values something, and it will be found that some emotion or desire or sentiment is at the bottom of the whole thing. If a man values a certain type of music, it is because listening to it causes him pleasure; if he values meditation, it is because it improves his well-being (i.e., it makes him feel better); if he values self-flagellation, it is because he believes it will improve his well-being in the hereafter. Some values, of course, are rather contrived and even mad, such as values attached to ideological and religious systems; but there's still some sentiment or desire that is at the bottom of it, however twisted or narcissitic it might be. The individual who values mercy to child molesters might be guilty of entertaining a perverse and artificial value, disconnected from any natural need or sentiment, but that value has its root, not in "reason" or logic, but in some kind of pathological humanitarian affectation.

This point was fleshed out by Hume more than 250 years ago, as follows:

It appears evident, that the ultimate ends [i.e., values] of human actions can never, in any case, be accounted for by reason, but recommend themselves entirely to the sentiments and affections of mankind, without any dependance on the intellectual faculties. Ask a man, why he uses exercise; he will answer, because he desires to keep his health. If you then enquire, why he desires health, he will readily reply, because sickness is painful. If you push your enquiries farther, and desire a reason, why he hates pain, it is impossible he can ever give any. This is an ultimate end, and is never referred to any other object.

Now as virtue is an end, and is desirable on its own account, without fee or reward, merely, for the immediate satisfaction which it conveys; it is requisite that there should be some sentiment, which it touches; some internal taste or feeling, or whatever you please to call it, which distinguishes moral good and evil, and which embraces the one and rejects the other... Reason, being cool and disengaged, is no motive to action, and directs only the impulse received from appetite or inclination, by showing us the means of attaining happiness or avoiding misery.

Not only did Rand fail to provide evidence for her curious contention, she made no attempt to grapple with contrary arguments. Hume's position, as stated above, appears nearly irrefragible. In any case, if Rand wishes her contention to be taken seriously, at the very least she should have given us compelling reasons to reject Hume's argument. How, if not on the basis of some sentiment or affection, does man come by any values at all? If Rand had been a serious thinker dedicated the discovery and elucidation of truth, she would have attempted to provide a serious, detailed, fact-based answer to this question.

[This being the last post of 2010, I'd like to take the opportunity to wish all the good readers of ARCHNBlog a happy New Year. And to our bad readers, also, a happy New Year.]

Rand and Empirical Responsibility 7

“An emotion that clashes with your reason is only the carcass of that stale thinking which you forbade your mind to revise.” How on earth did Rand know this? Without providing even a jot of evidence, it becomes impossible for a rational person to judge this assertion.

Let us conduct a little thought experiment to see if we can figure out how Rand came to this extraordinary judgment. Let us begin by inquiring as to where Rand could have ever come by such knowledge. I can think of only three possible ways:

1. Very sophisticated cognitive science experiments
2. Through introspection
3. By reading other people's minds
   

Right from the start we can dismiss the third possibility. No Objectivist, no matter how besotten with Rand, would ever claim she had ESP powers. Could she have conducted cognitive science experiments? Very unlikely. In any case, there is no evidence that she ever did conduct such experiments. (If she did so, such experiments need to be released so that other cognitive scientists can determine if they can reduplicate Rand's findings.) So this leaves us with only one possibility: Rand discovered it through introspection.

From the start, this is deeply problematic. Since consciousness is only "the tip of the iceberg," it would appear unlikely that Rand could have introspected her way to the discovery that clashes between "reason" and "emotion" are caused by "stale" thinking which the mind was forbidden to revise. But let us, in the interest of our thought experiment, waive this objection. After all, Rand was (as her apologists never cease reminding us) such an amazing person that perhaps it is possible that she made this stupendous discover about "stale" thinking through introspection. What we want to know is: How did this introspection work? What did Rand in fact introspect?

There seems only one possible way Rand could have introspected her insight about the relation between "reason," emotion, and "stale thinking." Rand herself must have had an experience involving stale thinking leading to reason-emotion clashes. At some point, Rand must have introspected herself involved in a bout of "stale thinking" (whatever that might be); she must have further introspected her mind engaged in the process of forbidding any revision of this "stale" cogitation; and, finally, she must have introspected the resulting clash between "reason" and emotion. Moreover, since Rand could not have made her grand conclusion from one experience alone (since it might have been a coincidence that "stale thinking" led to the reason-emotion clash in the first instance), we must assume that Rand introspected multiple experiences of this process. That was rather brave of her, don't you think?

Now there is just one other problem we have to address. Since, on the assumptions of our thought experiment, Rand's knowledge is based solely on her own private experiences as perceived via introspection, we cannot be sure that her claim applies to other people. Human beings are notoriously different; and one cannot assume a priori that what is true of one individual is true of every individual. Therefore, the most we can acknowledge in regards to Rand's assertion about stale thinking is that it might have been true about Rand: perhaps her "stale thinking," when once her mind refused to revise it, led to clashes between her reason and her emotion. Whether "stale thinking" leads to such reason-emotion clashes in other people remains an open question.

To be sure, if we allow science to be the guide to this issue, rather than merely suppositions about what Rand might have discovered via introspection, we reach a very different conclusion. According to cognitive science, it is a misnomer to talk about a clash between "reason" and emotion. Since "reason" must always operate with the assistance of emotion (i.e., Damasio's Somatic Marker Hypothesis), it is pointless to gripe about a clash between "reason" and emotion. A clash between "reason" and emotion is really a clash between two emotions, one of which is in league with "reason." Spinoza may have been right all along when he claimed: "An emotion can only be controlled or destroyed by another emotion contrary thereto, and with more power for controlling emotion."

Rand and Empirical Responsibility 5

“Emotions are not tools of cognition.” Rand elaborates as follows:

An emotion as such tells you nothing about reality, beyond the fact that something makes you feel something. Without a ruthlessly honest commitment to introspection—to the conceptual identification of your inner states—you will not discover what you feel, what arouses the feeling, and whether your feeling is an appropriate response to the facts of reality, or a mistaken response, or a vicious illusion produced by years of self-deception....

Where is Rand's evidence for this view? Again, we have nothing -- merely her own say-so. In Objectivism, emotions are equated with mere "whims"; to allow one's judgment to be affected by emotions is tantamount to committing the horrible crime of "whim worshipping." This, of course, is an argument ad hominem with no scientific standing whatsoever.

Cognitive science has discovered that emotions play an important role in decision making:

Recent research suggests that emotions are just as influential as cognitive processes when it comes to decision making. This is interesting because emotions are often considered irrational occurrences that may distort reasoning. According to Sayegh, the conventional way of thinking about decision making is to banish emotion from its decisions entirely. According to them, the decision makers should act using a “cool head” where decisions should come only from rational and cognitive processes to obtain the best results. The implications of emotions during decision making processes have only recently been discussed in some detail. With the growing body of knowledge on emotions in decision making, researchers have proposed various theories to help further our understanding of what influences the decisions that we make.

One of the most important theories illustrating the role that emotions play in decision making is the Somatic Marker Hypothesis:

The somatic marker hypothesis is a very relevant theory when discussing emotions in decision making. It states that bioregulatory signals such as feelings and emotions provide the principal guide for decisions where individuals, when dealing with a judgement, will assess the severity of the outcomes, their probability of occurrence and their emotional quality to provide their decision. According to Dunn,“the somatic marker hypothesis proposes that ‘somatic marker’ biasing signals from the body are represented and regulated in the emotion circuitry of the brain, particularly the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC), to help regulate decision-making in situations of complexity and uncertainty”. Therefore, in situations of complexity and uncertainty, the marker signals allow the brain to recognise the situation and respond quickly.

As mentioned earlier, there is an intimate connection between emotion and cognition in practical decision making. Damasio used somatic marker hypothesis to explain how emotions are biologically indispensable to decisions. He suggested that when choosing between options that differ in relative risk, a somatic marker (for example, a “gut feeling”) feeds back to the brain and influences cognitive appraisal. Thus emotions often unwittingly form the basis of many of our decisions and the conventional belief that cognitive processes alone run our decision making processes has been disregarded. It is in fact an interplay between emotions and cognition that helps us during decision making processes.

Now whether right or wrong, at least the Somatic Marker Hypothesis has a body solid evidence that can be placed in it's favor. For example, it is found that people who, through brain damage to the VMPFC, suffer from impaired emotional faculties are incapable of making the simplest decisions. One patient was unable to choose an appointment time with his neurologist because he gave countless arguments for every time that was proposed.

If Objectivists wish their view of the role of emotions in cognition to be taken seriously, they need to (1) provide scientific evidence on behalf of their view, and (2) explain why the evidence supporting the Somatic Marker Hypothesis is not inconsistent with Rand's assertions about emotion.

Rand and Empirical Responsibility 4

Emotions are automatized value judgments. "Emotions are the result of your value judgments," Rand declared in her Playboy Interview; "they are caused by your basic premises, which you may hold consciously or subconsciously, which may be right or wrong." How did Rand know this? Where is her evidence for this extraordinary assertion? Surely a theory so bold, so unconventional, so contrary to obvious facts commonly known should be supported with evidence strong enough to shift the balance of plausibility in its favor!

Rand, alas, never provided any evidence for this assertion. Her chief disciple, Leonard Peikoff, did provide the following:

...When, as a college teacher, I would reach the topic of emotions in class, my standard procedure was to open the desk, take out a stack of examination booklets, and, without any explanations, start distributing them. Consternation invariably broke loose, with cries such as "You never said we were having a test today!" and "It isn't fair!" Whereupon I would take back the booklets and ask: "How many can explain the emotion that just swept over you? Is it an inexplicable primary, a quirk of your glands, a message from God or the id?" The answer was obvious. The booklets, to most of them, meant failure on an exam, a lower grade in the course, a blot on their transcript, i.e., bad news. On this one example, even the dullest students grasped with alacrity that emotions do have causes and that their causes are the things men think. (The auditors in the room, who do not write exams, remained calm during this experiment. To them, the surprise involved no negative value-judgment.)...

There are at least two problems with this: first, it's merely an anecdote and as such cannot be regarded as decisive on this issue; but even more critically, the anecdote doesn't establish what it claims. Even if "the dullest students grasped with alacrity that emotions" are caused by "the things men think," the reactions to the surprise exam don't establish this. Peikoff's anecdote begs the question. For the real question is not whether emotions are inexplicable or whether thinking may influence emotions, it's whether emotions are entirely the product of thinking. The Objectivist claim is that the value judgment comes first in the form of a conscious thought, and the emotion comes afterwards. But it's quite possible (and, indeed, far more consistent with the obvious evidence) that the causation is, at least in some instances, reversed: that is, that value judgment could not have taken place without a prior emotion.

Evidence for the emotion-must-comes-first view can be gleaned from many sources. Indeed, it would appear to be a fairly obvious inference from facts commonly known. Consider the following from the Aristotelian scholar Neera K. Badhwar:

The idea that the emotions have to be programmed by the intellect, whereas the intellect can choose values independently of any help from the emotions, suggests a hierarchical relationship between intellect and emotion, and a unidirectional picture of moral and psychological development. First the intellect, functioning independently of the emotional faculty, collects the data and makes value-judgments; then it programs the emotional faculty. On this picture, the preprogrammed emotional faculty is inert, unable to make any value responses, and unable to play a fundamental role in forming or aiding the intellect. [Note: Badhwar provides evidence for this view in her footnotes.]

However, if infants and young children (not to mention animals) have emotions in a pre-conceptual form -- as they surely do -- then emotions cannot be entirely dependent on the intellect. We feel fear, anger, contentment, empathy, and pleasure in a pre-conceptual form long before we acquire the capacity tomake value-judgements. Insofar as these are responses to that which we sense as somehow good or bad for us, valuable or disvaluable, it follows that we are able to make value responses long before we are able to make value-judgements. Indeed, it is only because we have this pre-conceptual ability for responding to value that we can acquire the capacity for making value-judgments. Thus, preconceptual emotions are necessary for having any more than the most primitive values in the first place, and, thereby, for making value-judgments. Adult emotions build on these pre-conceptual emotions and the value-judgments they make possible. For example, adult fear typically contains not only the components of feeling and physiological response that a child's fear does, but also the value-judgment of the feared object as dangerous or threatening. Which objects are seen as fearful depends not on the judgments of an untouched intellect, but an intellect already shaped to some extent by our preconceptual emotions, and continually influenced by, even as it in turn influences, our adult emotions.

Some Objectivists have claimed that evidence on behalf of Rand's theory of emotions has been compiled on behalf of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT). The assumption is that CBT=Objectivist theory of emotion. There is no reason to believe this. One of the originators and most influential advocates of CBT, Albert Ellis, wrote the first critical book on Objectivism (Is Objectivism a Religion?), and he made it quite clear that Rand's theory of emotions was simplistic and inadequate:

The virtually perfect, one-to-one relationship between our thought and emotions that Rand and Branden posit is practically nonexistent. Consequently, if they wish to remain unchallenged, their position had better be modified. An emotion tends to arise from a value response. It usually is something of an automatic psychological result of our value judgments. It has, however, other important causative factors connected with human sensing, perceiving, and acting.

Objectivism & Politics, Part 58

Ayn Rand contra Libertarianism 3. In my last two posts, I have detailed the inadequacy of Rand’s arguments against Libertarianism. Rand’s arguments are so bad that it raises questions as to her real motives in the whole business. If she had a clear, rational case against Libertarianism, wouldn’t she have presented such a case and left it at that? But she does no such thing. Instead, her arguments appear drenched in malice and petty resentment. Libertarians, she inveighs, are a “monstrous, disgusting bunch of people” who stole all their ideas from Objectivism and yet have the gall to consort with anarchists and (horror of horrors!) religious conservatives. Now if Libertarianism really is as bad as Rand would have us believe, why did Rand have to resort to name calling and illogical guilt-by-association arguments? I have several conjectures on this score, as listed below.


Conjecture 1: Logical deduction from Rand’s basic premises. Rand’s admirers would have us believe that her views of Libertarianism are merely deductions from the principles of Objectivism. From Rand’s views of history and psychology, she concluded that bad arguments do more harm than outright opposition. This being the case, Libertarians really are “worse” than Marxists and communists, because their bad arguments cause more harm to freedom and capitalism than outright opposition.

While it may be true that Rand’s hostility toward Libertarians was, in part at least, motivated by this factor, it still doesn’t explain why Rand made so many bad arguments against Libertarians. Indeed, it seems altogether anomalous. If bad arguments are worse than outright opposition, then Rand, if she were consistent, would not compound the fault by issuing bad arguments against Libertarianism. If she opposed Libertarianism because its apologists refused to provide good arguments for capitalism and freedom, she hardly did her own cause any favors by issuing even worse arguments against Libertarianism.

Conjecture 2: Vanity motive. Rand had a very high opinion of her ability to persuade people. She regarded her conviction that capitalism requires a “moral base” (i.e., that capitalism should be defended with moral arguments) as a special insight which would allow her political ideals to triumph. However, Rand struggled to find other prominent supporters of capitalism and freedom who shared this view. When Rand’s essay “Textbook of Americanism” was passed around among the donors and staff members of FEE, the first libertarian think tank, few were impressed with Rand’s arguments. One reader complained of Rand’s “illogical jargon,” while another complained that the “line of logic” which Rand used in the essay was “very weak.” [Burns, Goddess of the Market, 119] In short, even those who sympathized with Rand’s political ideals found her arguments unpersuasive. Imagine how galling that must have been to Rand that even people who shared her political convictions found her arguments unconvincing!

Perhaps, then, it was merely disappointed vanity that set Rand against libertarians. Since they refused to bow down and let her be their intellectual leader, following and agreeing with her every pronouncement, she concluded they had to be her worst enemies.

Conjecture 2: Jealousy. Perhaps Rand simply resented that some defenders of freedom and capitalism had more success or were taken more seriously than she was. In the forties, the most successful book defending freedom was Hayek’s Road to Serfdom. Rand hostility toward Hayek was immediate and vitriolic. She regarded Hayek as “pure poison” and “an example of our most pernicious enemy.” “The man is an ass,” she wrote, “[The Road to Serfdom] had no base, no moral base. This is why my book is needed.” [ibid, 104-105] This final boast suggests that Rand regarded Hayek as a rival, and that jealousy may have played a role in her overwrought denunciations of his book.

Perhaps Rand’s hatred of Libertarians was fueled, at least in part, by jealously of other intellectuals such as Rothbard, Hospers, and Nozick. Perhaps this explains her bitter contention that Libertarians were merely cheap publicity seekers. Maybe she resented that they were getting more attention than she was, or less negative attention, as the case might be.

Or perhaps Rand merely resented that Libertarians were be given credit for ideas that Rand thought she herself was responsible for. Maybe she was jealous that she wasn’t being given all or most of the credit for these ideas.

Conjecture 4: Resentment against excommunicated Objectivists. Many Libertarians were former Objectivists; a few were even close disciples of Rand. Perhaps Rand resented that Libertarian these former Objectivist apostates a safe haven.

Now which, if any, of these conjectures is true (or at least true in parts) I will leave to the reader to decide. Apologists for Rand might insist that conjectures two through four must be wrong, because Rand was incapable of vanity, jealousy, and resentment. This, however, is a rather implausible assertion difficult to find creditable. Vanity, jealousy, and resentment are emotions deep within the warp and woof of human nature. Denying these emotions on the ground that this human nature doesn't exist only encourages thinkers like Rand to ignore and repress what they really do feel, rather than confronting these troublesome emotions and taking effective psychological counter-measures against them. It is precisely those who deny human nature that are most vulnerable to its less pleasant manifestations. Rand’s claim that she didn’t have these disagreeable emotions because, after all, she was a woman of self-made soul, is no more creditable than someone denying that his or her organism produces disagreeable body odors. Ironically, it’s precisely the individual who makes such a claim who winds up stinking. The rest of us, recognizing that are bodies, if left to their own devices, will inevitably produce unpleasant odors, resort to such effective counter-measures as bathing and deodorant.

Note: this will be the last post in the current "Objectivism and Politics" series. Although there exists a great deal more territory that could be covered relating to politics, I think we have touched most of the major issues and can proceed to other areas of Rand's philosophy.

Objectivism & Politics, Part 33

Politics of Human Nature 17: Vanity and “social metaphysics.” Closely related to the obsession with preeminence and status is vanity. The pervasiveness of this emotion in human nature was satirized to good effect in a bit of amusing doggerel by an unnamed poet as follows:

I am hungry for praise:
I would to God it were not so—
That I must live through all my days
Yearning for what I’ll never know.
I even hope that when I’m dead
The worms won’t find me wholly vicious,
But as they masticate my head
Will smack their lips and cry “delicious!”

The view that vanity is a dominant motive in human nature was fairly common among writers and poets in the 17th and 18th centuries. Pascal is representative in this respect:



Vanity is so anchored in man’s heart that a soldier, a camp-follower, a cook, a porter, boast and wish to have admirers; and the philosophers wish the same; and those who write against the desire for glory, glory in having written well; and those who read it, desire to have glory for having read it; and I who write this have perhaps the same desire; and also those who will read what I write.

While Rand did not address vanity per se, her disciple Nathaniel Branden formulated a concept that dealt with one of the manifestations of vanity, “social metaphysics.” Rand describes social metaphysics as follows:

A social metaphysician is one who regards the consciousness of other men as superior to his own and to the facts of reality. It is to a social metaphysician that the moral appraisal of himself by others is a primary concern which supersedes truth, facts, reason, logic. The disapproval of others is so shatteringly terrifying to him that nothing can withstand its impact within his consciousness; thus he would deny the evidence of his own eyes and invalidate his own consciousness for the sake of any stray charlatan's moral sanction. It is only a social metaphysician who could conceive of such absurdity as hoping to win an intellectual argument by hinting: "But people won't like you!"

Now while some people may be overly concerned with the opinion of others, it is not clear that this concern involves regarding “the consciousness of other men as superior … to the facts of reality.” That is a caricature. Many human beings wish to be admired by others. This may cause them, for example, to try to say things they don’t really believe or pretend to admire things they don’t like. It may even cause them to defer to another persons judgment on particular issues, like Objectivists frequently defer to Rand’s or Peikoff’s judgment. But this merely means the individual trusts another person’s judgment more than his own—a view not at all inconsistent with being an Objectivist, as the facts attest. To describe this trust as invalidating one’s own consciousness or denying the evidence of one’s own eyes is clearly to engage in gross hyperbole.

Yet the exaggerations in the doctrine are not what’s most critical for the current discussion. Even more important is the implication that “social metaphysics”—and indeed any of the manifestations of vanity—are merely the consequences some stray premise that has been integrated in the individual’s subconscious. There is nothing innate about it. The fact that vanity has been a preponderant motive throughout human history is a sheer coincidence. Why so many human beings throughout the ages have held this premise is not explained but is evaded. Apparently, Rand wished to believed that things could be different, that social metaphysics, vanity, the desire for status—that all these troublesome emotions could be abolished; that human beings did not have to be dominated by them. The desire to be rid of these emotions is understandable, particularly for a philosopher advocating laissez-faire capitalism: because these emotions serve as an important obstacle to the implementation of that system.

John Adams, the most psychologically astute of the Founding Fathers, described vanity (which he called the “passion for distinction”) as “the great leading passion of the soul”:

This propensity, in all its branches, is a principal source of the virtues and vices, the happiness and misery of human life; and … the history of mankind is little more than a simple narration of its operation and effects… The desire of esteem is as real a want of nature as hunger; and the neglect and contempt of the world as severe a pain as gout and stone. It sooner and oftener produces despair and detestation of existence… Every personal quality, every blessing of fortune, is cherished in proportion to its capacity of gratifying this universal affection for the esteem, the sympathy, the admiration and congratulations of the public. [Life and Works of John Adams, 232ff]

Now it is often argued by advocates of laissez-faire that one of the chief merits of that system is that it is not a zero-sum game. Peter can get rich without harming Paul. In Objectivism, this characteristic of laissez-faire is exemplified in Rand’s contention that “there are no conflicts of interests between rational men.” But if Pascal, Adams, and most other observers of human nature through history are right about the psychological importance and predominance of vanity, then the obvious retort to Rand’s contention is that most men simply are not rational in the sense meant by Rand. Conflicts of interest between men are ingrained in the very nature of things, because men compete for esteem, status, approbation, fame, etc, and this competition will inevitably breed conflict between various human beings.

Furthermore, these conflicts, as well as the emotions that inspire them, will continue to predispose individuals against laissez-faire. Every form of society tends to favor some abilities at the expense of others. A capitalist society favors those well-endowed with commercial virtues; a military society favors those well-endowed with martial virtues; a monarchal society favors those well-endowed with the gifts of the courtier. Even if it is true, as is not implausible, that individuals short in commercial virtues and the talents necessary to thrive under free market competition will nevertheless be better off, in terms of economic well-being, under a free market system, it doesn’t follow that they can be persuaded to favor that system. For at the end of the day, many individuals will prefer distinction to wealth, and will hence prefer the system in which they expect to gain the most distinction. As Steven Pinker notes, “ People go hungry, risk their lives, and exhaust their wealth in pursuit of bits of ribbon and metal [i.e., for vanity].” Despite attempts to denigrate and caricature these emotions as “social metaphysics,” they nevertheless exist and cannot be changed or eliminated merely by refuting Kant and Plato and preaching Rand.

Objectivism & Politics, Part 9

Residues and Derivatives “Philosophy shapes a nation’s political system,” insisted Leonard Peikoff. This view assumes that ideas, theories, ideologies—call them what you will—determine the political structure of society. While the view that politics is determined by ideas is clearly an exaggeration (since, among other reasons, it ignores the important effects of unintended consequences), it is undeniable that ideas play a role in the political farce. But what precise part do they play? Clearly, they cannot be the sole or even the primary determinants of the political order. After all, ideas are not powers: they cannot act of their own accord, but require human agency to implement them. So how does this all work? How and to what extent do ideas affect the social and political order?

This is a question that Italian sociologist Vilfredo Pareto spent years researching and studying. Unlike Rand and her disciples, Pareto did not attempt to reach conclusions on this matter based on feeble rationalizations grounded in over-generalized knowledge of the relevant facts. Instead, after sifting through thousands of actual theories, he came to several startling conclusions. As he explained in The Mind and Society:

Our detailed examination of one theory or another has … led to our perceiving that theories in the concrete may be divided into at least two elements, one of which is much more stable than the other. We say, accordingly, that in concrete theories, which we shall designate c, there are, besides factual data, principal elements (or parts), a substantial element (part), which we shall designate as a, and a contingent element (part), on the whole fairly variable, which we shall designate as b.

The element a directly corresponds to non-logical conduct; it is the expression of certain sentiments. The element b is the manifestation of the need of logic that the human being feels. It also partially corresponds to sentiments, to non-logical conduct, but it clothes them with logical or pseudo-logical reasonings. The element a is the principle existing in the mind of the human being; the element b is the explanation … of that principle, the inference … that he draws from it.

There is, for example, a principle, or if you prefer, a sentiment, in virtue of which certain numbers are deemed worthy of veneration: it is the chief element, a … But the human being is not satisfied with merely associating sentiments of veneration with numbers; he also wants to “explain” how that comes about, to “demonstrate” that in doing what he does he is prompted by force of logic. So the element b enters in, and we get various “explanations,” various “demonstrations,” as to why certain numbers are sacred. There is in the human being a sentiment that restrains him from discarding old beliefs all at once. That is the element a … But he feels called upon to justify, explain, demonstrate his attitude, and an element b enters in, which in one way or another saves the letter of his beliefs while altering them in substance.

The principle element in the situation, the element a, is evidently the one to which the human being is most strongly attached and which he exerts himself to justify. That element therefore is the more important to us in our quest for the social equilibrium.

But the element b, though secondary, also has its effect upon [society]. Sometimes the effect may be so insignificant as to be accounted equivalent to zero—as when the perfection of the number 6 is ascribed to its being the sum of its aliquots. But the effect may also be very considerable, as when the Inquisition burned people guilty of some slip in their theological calculations. [§798–§801]

The element a Pareto calls “residues”; the element b he calls “derivations.” The “residues” are the constant element in beliefs. Pareto, during his years of intensive research, noticed patterns in beliefs and theories that held over time. For example, he noticed that various culture-systems believed that water (and blood for that matter) could be used for “purification” from sins and other transgressions. Christians have “baptism,” pagans have “lustral water,” and many sects indulge in various purification rites involving liquids. It appears that many human beings have a vague feeling that water (or blood) somehow cleanses moral as well as material pollutants. This is the constant element, the underlying residue of purification rites involving liquids. The variable element consists of the theories (such as baptism) used to “explain” or rationalize the residue. These theories are the derivations.

Pareto’s theory of residues and derivations only applies to non-scientific or “extra-empirical” theories: that is, to theories that are non-empirical and/or non-rational.

Now let’s bring this back to the previous "Objectivism and Politics" post where I discussed some reasons Rand gave on behalf of her theory of rights. I identified in that post two types of non-logico-experimental theories (that is, theories not based on experience and experiment): the theological and the metaphysical. All such theories are derivations: they are rationalizations of sentiments, of underlying residues. As Rand’s theory of rights is clearly metaphysical (in Pareto's sense of the word), this would mean it must be classified as a derivation. Indeed, most of Rand’s philosophy is a mere derivation from various sentiments. This very fact explains some of the anomalies that the critic finds in studying Objectivism. It explains, for example, why someone like Rand, who initiates a philosophical movement which makes so much virtuous noise on behalf of logic, “reason,” rationality and reality should offer arguments for her doctrines that are so lacking in any of these elements. It is not its accord with logic or fact that makes Rand’s philosophy seem so brilliant and irrefragible to its exponents, but its accord with their sentiments. Of course, Objectivists aren’t consciously aware of this. They unwittingly mistake this accord of sentiment for an accord of logic and fact. In making this mistake, they are hardly unique, as the history of scholastic and Cartesian philosophy clearly demonstrates. In my next post, we will see how advocates of another famous ethical philosophy unwittingly suffer from the same ideological syndrome.

Objectivism & Economics, Part 15

Schumpeter’s challenge. The economist Joseph Schumpeter created quite a stir in the forties when he warned that “the capitalist order tends to destroy itself.” Schumpeter issued this warning despite his belief in what he described as “the impressive economic and the still more impressive cultural achievement of the capitalist order and at the immense promise held out by both.” Capitalism would destroy itself because it would undermine its own “protecting strata” and “institutional framework.” One of the reasons he gave for this pessimistic assessment seems rather prescient in relation to the current economic crisis:

Capitalist activity, being essentially “rational,” tends to spread rational habits of mind and to destroy those loyalties and those habits of super- and subordination that are nevertheless essential for the efficient working of the institutionalized leadership of the producing plant: no social system can work which is based exclusively upon a network of free contracts between (legally) equal contracting parties and in which everyone is supposed to be guided by nothing except his own (short-run) utilitarian ends.

In one sentence Schumpeter has put his finger on the greatest flaw of capitalist order. Contrary to what Rand and her followers believe, “rational” self-interest is not an entirely benign psychological force. Rand’s faith in self-interest (and it is only a faith) is not warranted by the facts. In the first place, it is absurd to regard human desires and sentiments as rational. A desire or sentiment can only be criticized in reference to an opposing desire or sentiment. As Spinoza famously put it: “an emotion cannot be destroyed nor controlled except by a contrary and stronger emotion.” Consequently, rationality, as an ideal, can only apply to the means by which desires and sentiments are satisfied. Yet this is not all. Even if there were (per impossible) such a thing as a “rational end,” it is very doubtful that very many human beings would be interested in pursuing it. If we make history and experience our guide in such matters—and whatever guide could possibly lead us to the truth besides history and experience?—then we are forced to conclude that the majority of human beings are largely non-rational in their conduct and are probably not even capable of being rational about any issue in the least complex (as rational methods of analysis tend to break down when applied to complex situations). When Schumpeter talks about “rational” habits of mind, he is not writing in the Randian sense of the word. He means something more along the lines of rationalism—i.e., the belief that no doctrine is true unless it can be proved “verbally,” through clever patter and other exercises of blatant sophistry. As a consequence of this sort of perfervid rationalism, individuals no longer believe in “higher” values or “lofty” moral ideas. Short-term self-interest and “immediate gratification” become the main desideratum, with sophistry being brought in to give the whole thing a window dressing of moral justification.

We see this played out in the financial sector. The birth of complex financial instruments based on computer generated formulas has allowed finance capitalism to mask what ultimately amounts to a vast ponzi scheme which yields huge profits in the short-run but ends in bankruptcy and dishonor. This sort of finance capitalism fits into what is known as the “Minsky cycle”:

Firms participating in the early stages of the cycle typically are not leveraged; Minsky called them hedged firms because their cash receipts cover their cash outlays. The success of the first movers draws in additional players. Speculative firms then engage in leverage to the point where they must borrow to meet some of their interest payments—usually borrowing in short-term markets to finance higher-yielding long-term positions. None of this is irrational behavior; market players are chasing short-term gains, and some of them are getting very rich.

The final stages of the Minsky cycle arrive with a proliferation of Ponzi firms, which must borrow to meet all their interest payments, so their debt burden continuously increases. At some point, a disruptive event occurs, … and markets abruptly reprice—the further along in the cycle, the more violent the repricing. [Charles Morris, The Trillion Dollar Meltdown, p. 133-4]

In other words, what we find in the world of high finance is a system which, by giving individuals the hope of huge rewards in the short-run, encourages them to behave in a ways that are destructive in the long-run. It takes strength of character to resist such huge short-run gains. Unfortunately, the very success of capitalism tends to create a prosperous society that weakens the moral fibre of individuals. Add to this situation the tendency of individuals—particularly intelligent individuals—to cloak their real motives under a thick shroud of ingenious rationalizations (e.g., “portfolio theory,” the “efficient market hypothesis,” “laissez-faire” ideology, etc.), and we have all the elements required to create market failure leading to widespread and socially harmful externalities, as can be readily corroborated by examining the 2008-2009 financial crisis.

Objectivism & History, Part 4

Philosophy versus psychology. If we examine the theoretic rationalization constructed around the Objectivist philosophy of history, one thing immediately becomes apparent: the Objectivist theory of history is merely an extension of Rand’s theory of human nature. “Ayn Rand’s theory of man leads to a distinctive interpretation of history,” notes Peikoff [OPAR, 451] In his lecture on "Philosophy and Psychology in History," Peikoff begins by trying to make the best case he can for the "psychological interpretaion" of history. "It is obvious that most people have no articulate. coherent philosophy," he admits. "It is even questionable, some observers claim, whether most people have a philosophy at all. But it is obvious that everyone does have a psychology.

So does this mean that psychology determines history? No, not at all. The “psychological interpretation” of history, Peikoff insists, is a plausible but mistaken theory. What is wrong with it? Let us examine the reasons Peikoff gives for rejecting the psychological interpretation:

The first thing to ask is: what is the source of psychological factors? Where do they come from? What is their cause? … Let me give you the answer… All the psychological factors … reduce to one element, however complex the terminology. They reduce to emotions… And the source of emotions is: ideas…

This is the basic answer to the psychological interpretation of history. That theory comes down to the view that emotions are the key factor in history. But emotions on a scale that shapes a culture are a consequence of philosophy.

In other words, the Objectivist philosophy of history is the application of Rand’s theory of emotions to history. If Rand’s theory of emotions is wrong, then her theory of history must be wrong as well. So this leads to the obvious question: Is Rand’s theory of emotions right? Well, it just so happens that ARCHNBlog has already answered this question. That post concluded as follows:

[The Objectivist] view of emotions … has been refuted by research done in cognitive science, neuroscience, and evolutionary psychology. These sciences have discovered that animals (including human beings) have "primary emotions," which are "innate" and "preorganized" and which depend on limbic system circuitry in the brain. They have discovered that emotions are critical in thinking, so that the notion that "man can live exclusively by reason," when accompanied by the additional notion that "emotions are not tools of cognition," misrepresents what actually happens in cognition. Human beings are not blank slates. Their emotions are not programmed into their “subconscious” by their conscious minds. That view is no more credible than would be an astrological view of emotions. On naturalistic assumptions, emotions are and must be the product of evolution. They are tools of survival, forged in the evolutionary furnace.

Rand's Ethics, Part 6

Rational Ethics. Rand is not the only philosopher to attempt the formulation of a rational ethics. Starting with Socrates, many philosophers have attempted to square this particular circle, with varying degrees of success and failure. Perhaps the most successful attempt at a rational ethics was sketched by the Spanish born American philosopher George Santayana in his five volume Life of Reason. Santayana exhibited greater breadth of intellect, sounder judgment, and a significantly higher degree of philosophical literacy in his ethics than Rand did in hers. It is therefore instructive to compare his conception of a rational ethics, as outlined in Reason and Science, with Rand’s.

Santayana begins by admitting that a truly rational morality never has existed and never can exist. But this does not mean, he argues, that it isn’t an ideal to be pursued:

A truly rational morality, or social regimen, has never existed in the world and is hardly to be looked for. What guides men and nations in their practice is always some partial interest or some partial disillusion. A rational morality would imply perfect self-knowledge, so that no congenial good should be needlessly missed--least of all practical reason or justice itself; so that no good congenial to other creatures would be needlessly taken from them. The total value which everything had from the agent's point of view would need to be determined and felt efficaciously; and, among other things, the total value which this point of view, with the conduct it justified, would have for every foreign interest which it affected. Such knowledge, such definition of purpose, and such perfection of sympathy are clearly beyond man's reach. All that can be hoped for is that the advance of science and commerce, by fostering peace and a rational development of character, may bring some part of mankind nearer to that goal; but the goal lies, as every ultimate ideal should, at the limit of what is possible, and must serve rather to measure achievements than to prophesy them.

When Santayana claims that the knowledge necessary to achieve a fully rational ethics is “beyond man’s reach,” he is factually correct, as psychological studies have proven. Rational ethics, then, must be a goal to be aimed at rather than a goal to be achieved. This contrasts with Rand’s conviction that a rational ethics is not only possible, but necessary. Santayana continues:

In lieu of a rational morality, however, we have rational ethics; and this mere idea of a rational morality is something valuable... As founded by Socrates, glorified by Plato, and sobered and solidified by Aristotle, it sets forth the method of judgment and estimation which a rational morality would apply universally and express in practice. The method, being very simple, can be discovered and largely illustrated in advance, while the complete self-knowledge and sympathy are still wanting which might avail to embody that method in the concrete and to discover unequivocally where absolute duty and ultimate happiness may lie.

This method, the Socratic method, consists in accepting any estimation which any man may sincerely make, and in applying dialectic to it, so as to let the man see what he really esteems. What he really esteems is what ought to guide his conduct; for to suggest that a rational being ought to do what he feels to be wrong, or ought to pursue what he genuinely thinks is worthless, would be to impugn that man's rationality and to discredit one's own. With what face could any man or god say to another: Your duty is to do what you cannot know you ought to do; your function is to suffer what you cannot recognise to be worth suffering? Such an attitude amounts to imposture and excludes society; it is the attitude of a detestable tyrant, and any one who mistakes it for moral authority has not yet felt the first heart-throb of philosophy.

Santayana here equates rational ethics with the Socratic method, which means: with applying a searching, questioning, critical self-examination of our own wants or needs. There are both strengths and weaknesses in this position. The best that can be said of it is that it truly is the only fully rational method for achieving ethical science. Unfortunately, it may not be a very fruitful method. Despite Santayana’s caveats about the difficulties of realizing a rational ethic, they may turn out worse than he expected. Psychological experiments are beginning to demonstrate that conscious deliberate reasoning cannot tell us what we really want. If that turns out to be true, than Santayana’s Socratic method simply will not do.

Would Rand have regarded the Socratic method as the cornerstone of a rational ethics? Not in the sense advocated by Santayana. Rand’s and Santayana’s ethics aim at somewhat different things. Rand holds life as the ultimate value. Santayana, on the other hand, holds that values can only be determined by consulting what a man really and truly esteems. These Santayana takes as givens. They are based on natural dispositions. Rand could not have accepted a morality based merely on natural dispositions, because she wanted her morality based solely on reason. However, by rejecting natural dispositions, Rand runs right smack into Hume’s is-ought fallacy. By taking natural disposition as moral givens, Santayana triumphantly surmounts the logical problem of reasoning from is to ought. Here’s why.

Consider the following syllogisms.

One ought not to eat human beings.
Socrates is a human being.
One ought not to eat Socrates.

Eating human beings is not in a person’s self-interest.
Socrates is a human being.
Therefore, One ought not to eat Socrates.

Hume’s argument against arguing from is to ought only applies to the second syllogism; the first syllogism is entirely valid. In other words, it is logically valid to argue from one ought premise to an ought conclusion; what is invalid is to argue from is premises to an ought conclusion.

As Patrick O’Neil has argued, Rand’s ethics can be summed up in the following syllogism:

The adoption of value system x is necessary for the survival of any human being.
You are a human being.
Therefore, you should adopt value system x.

This is an invalid syllogism. Rand’s ethical argument, therefore, at its very foundation, is logically invalid. Her ethics, for this reason, can hardly be regarded as rational.

Another area of divergence between Rand and Santayana involves the whole notion of moralizing. By adopting the individual’s natural dispositions as the source of value in ethics, Santayana has embraced a relativist morality in which the unit of ethics is the individual person. This relativism is what allows Santayana to avoid Hume’s is-ought problem. It enjoys the further advantage of placing Santayana squarely against all forms of moralizing. As Santayana explains:

In moral reprobation there is often a fanatical element, I mean that hatred which an animal may sometimes feel for other animals on account of their strange aspect, or because their habits put him to serious inconvenience, or because these habits, if he himself adopted them, might be vicious in him. Such aversion, however, is not a rational sentiment...

Ethics, if it is to be a science and not a piece of arbitrary legislation, cannot pronounce it sinful in a serpent to be a serpent; it cannot even accuse a barbarian of loving a wrong life, except in so far as the barbarian is supposed capable of accusing himself of barbarism. If he is a perfect barbarian he will be inwardly, and therefore morally, justified. The notion of a barbarian will then be accepted by him as that of a true man, and will form the basis of whatever rational judgments or policy he attains. It may still seem dreadful to him to be a serpent, as to be a barbarian might seem dreadful to a man imbued with liberal interests. But the degree to which moral science, or the dialectic of will, can condemn any type of life depends on the amount of disruptive contradiction which, at any reflective moment, that life brings under the unity of apperception. The discordant impulses therein confronted will challenge and condemn one another; and the court of reason in which their quarrel is ventilated will have authority to pronounce between them.

Reprobation, or Randian moralizing, is not based, Santayana tells us, on a rational sentiment. In any truly rational system of ethics, values must be based on natural dispositions. Otherwise, any attempt to rationalize morality in the Randian fashion will inevitably lead to Hume’s is-ought fallacy.

There is another critical point in this passage that also raises problems for the Objectivist Ethics. Santayana writes about “the amount of disruptive contradiction” that life brings before human sentience. What he means is that people have contrary impulses, and in order for them to achieve the maximum of satisfaction (i.e., happiness), they must seek to satisfy only those impulses that are consistent with each other, thus creating a kind of harmony between the dispositions of the psyche. Now Rand also sought a harmony of sorts——a psychological concord where “no inner conflicts” disturb the soul, where the emotions are “integrated” and “consciousness is in perfect harmony.” But Rand believed that this could be established outside of the human emotional system, in the absence of motives, feelings, or any sort of emotive foundation. Feelings could be programmed into man’s emotional mechanism by an emotionless, rational mind in such a way that they never conflicted.

Rand’s ideal of the perfectly integrated man is based on a false psychology. Man’s affective system is a product of evolution; it is not, as Rand gratuitously assumed, a product of man’s conclusions. Emotions are not only prior to thinking, they are a prerequisite of thought. So any harmony of emotions that takes place in the psyche can only be imposed on impulses already clamoring for satisfaction. For Santayana, the role of reason is to select those impulses which can attain a consistent satisfaction and discard those that imperil not merely the organism’s life, but the satisfaction of the rest of the organism’s impulses. As Santayana puts it:

The direct aim of reason is harmony; yet harmony, when made to rule in life, gives reason a noble satisfaction which we call happiness. Happiness is impossible and even inconceivable to a mind without scope and without pause, a mind driven by craving, pleasure, and fear. The moralists who speak disparagingly of happiness are less sublime than they think. In truth their philosophy is too lightly ballasted, too much fed on prejudice and quibbles, for happiness to fall within its range. Happiness implies resource and security; it can be achieved only by discipline. Your intuitive moralist rejects discipline, at least discipline of the conscience; and he is punished by having no lien on wisdom. He trusts to the clash of blind forces in collision, being one of them himself. He demands that virtue should be partisan and unjust; and he dreams of crushing the adversary in some physical cataclysm.

Such groping enthusiasm is often innocent and romantic; it captivates us with its youthful spell. But it has no structure with which to resist the shocks of fortune, which it goes out so jauntily to meet. It turns only too often into vulgarity and worldliness... Happiness is hidden from a free and casual will; it belongs rather to one chastened by a long education and unfolded in an atmosphere of sacred and perfected institutions. It is discipline that renders men rational and capable of happiness, by suppressing without hatred what needs to be suppressed to attain a beautiful naturalness. Discipline discredits the random pleasures of illusion, hope, and triumph, and substitutes those which are self-reproductive, perennial, and serene, because they express an equilibrium maintained with reality. So long as the result of endeavour is partly unforeseen and unintentional, so long as the will is partly blind, the Life of Reason is still swaddled in ignominy and the animal barks in the midst of human discourse. Wisdom and happiness consist in having recast natural energies in the furnace of experience. Nor is this experience merely a repressive force. It enshrines the successful expressions of spirit as well as the shocks and vetoes of circumstance; it enables a man to know himself in knowing the world and to discover his ideal by the very ring, true or false, of fortune's coin.

The moral ideals implied in this passage are not fully consistent with Randian ideals. The major difference stems from different view of rationality. For Rand, the rational is a disembodied force (disembodied because free from emotion) that is directed solely toward determining the facts of reailty, which she believes (in defiance of Hume) includes moral precepts. For Santayana, reason and emotion are intertwined from the start. Indeed, reason is merely an impulse for harmony allied with intelligence, a fusion of emotion and reflection, of instinct and ideation. This conception of reason anticipates the discoveries of Antonio Damasio and other denizens of the Cognitive Revolution who have found that emotion is necessary to rational thought. Santayana’s rational ethics, whatever its shortcomings in terms of vagueness and lack of a detailed “technology,” at least can claim that in its broad outlines it does not clash with cognitive science. Rand’s attempt at a rational ethics, on the other hand, on the account of its false psychology and its philosophical illiteracy, stumbles headlong into error and contradiction. Rand reasons from is to ought in defiance of Hume and divorces reason from emotion in defiance of cognitive science.

Naturalist Theory of Emotions

A naturalist view of emotions is one that accords with the best scientific evidence and harmonizes with the view that human beings are largely (or entirely) the products of natural selection. Here's Steven Pinker's account of a naturalistic, scientifically-based theory of emotions:

The brain strives to put its owner in circumstances like those that caused its ancestors to reproduce. (The brain's goal is not reproduction itself; animals don't know the facts of life, and people who do know them are happy to subvert them, such as when they use contraception.) The goals installed [by natural selection] in Homo sapiens, that problem-solving, social species, are not just the four Fs [i.e., fight, flee, feed, mate]. High on the list are understanding the environment and securing the cooperation of others.

And here is the key to why we have emotions. An animal cannot pursue all its goals at once. If an animal is both hungry and thirsty, it should not stand halfway between a berry bush and a lake, as in the fable about the indecisive ass who starved between two haystacks. Nor should it nibble a berry, walk over and take a sip from the lake, walk back to nibble another berry, and so on. The animal must commit its body to one goal at a time, and the goals have to be matched with the best moments for achieving them.... Different goals are appropriate when a lion has you in its sights, when your child shows up in tears, or when a rival calls you an idiot in public.

The emotions are mechanisms that set the brain's highest-level goals. Once triggered by a propitious moment, an emotion triggers the cascade of subgoals and sub-subgoals that we call thinking and acting. Because the goals and means are woven into a multiple nested control structure of subgoals within subgoals within subgoals, no sharp line divides thinking from feeling, nor does thinking inevitably precede feeling or vice versa (notwithstanding the century of debate within psychology over which comes first). For example, fear is triggered by a signal of impending harm like a predator, a clifftop, or a spoken threat. It lights up the short-term goal of fleeing, subduing, or deflecting danger, and gives the goal high priority, which we experience as a sense of urgency....

Each human emotion mobilizes the mind and body to meet one of the challenges of living and reproducing in the cognitive niche. Some challenges are posed by physical things, and the emotions that deal with them, like disgust, fear, and appreciation of natural beauty, work in straightforward ways. Others are posed by people. The problem in dealing with people is that people can deal back. The emotions that evolved in response to other people's emotions, like anger, gratitude, shame, and romantic love, are played on a complicated chessboard, and they spawn the passion and intrigue that misleads the Romantic.

This view is, in many important respects, different from Rand's. In particular, it challenges Rand's conviction that a "rational man ... has no inner conflicts, his mind and his emotions are integrated, his consciousness is in perfect harmony." This view is difficult to square with the view that emotions are products of natural selection; it is even more difficult to square with the modular view of the mind emerging from the sciences of human nature.

Rand's Theory of Emotions Examined

The most critical part of Rand's view of man is her theory of emotion. Upon its validity rests not merely her vision of the "ideal" man, but also her philosophy of history with its rather implausible eschatological implications. The plausibility of Rand's moral and political theories also rests heavily on her view of emotion — perhaps more so than is generally recognized. So important a theory, yet Rand provided no systematic exposition of it, only a few ex cathedra statements, intolerably vague to the understanding. The closest we can find to a systematic presentation of it is in Peikoff's OPAR, which offers the theory that emotions are automatized "value-judgments." But where do value judgments come from?

Value-judgments are formed ultimately on the basis of a philosophic view of man and life — of oneself, of others, of the universe; such a view, therefore, conditions all one's emotions. If, for example, a man's basic mental set amounts to the idea that he is a helpless incompetent caught in an unknowable jungle, his will affect his value-judgments in every department of life.... By contrast, if a man holds that his mind is efficacious and the universe intelligible, he will form radically different values and, as a result, experience radically different wants, likes, and dislikes [Emphasis added.].

Note the emphasized words. In Objectivism, the ambiguity of words is sometimes used to present two versions of a theory: a strong version and a weak version. The strong version is grossly improbable and cannot to be taken seriously. The weak version, on the other hand, at least enjoys an aura of plausibility. In regard to the Objectivist theory of emotions, the weak theory is the view that one's philosophical views "condition" or "affect" one's value-judgments (and hence, by implication, one's resulting emotions as well). The strong theory, on the other hand, asserts that value-judgments (and the emotions they produce) are entirely (or almost entirely) the product of philosophical views. Which view does Peikoff uphold? Well, in the passage quote above, he seems to lean toward the weaker version, saying that philosophical views only "condition" or "affect," one's value judgments; they don't, presumably then, determine them. But when later we reach the grand conclusion of Peikoff's presentation we are startled to find that following assertion: "Ayn Rand ... holds that man can live exclusively by reason. He can do it because emotions are consequences generated by his conclusions."

Now this assertion depends on the strong version of the theory, and loses whatever logical force it may have without it. For if one's conclusions only "condition" or "affect" one's value-judgments, then, presumably, that would still leave room for other causes, such as innate causes or causes relating to physiological desires. Such causes could affect how one reasons, thereby compromising the claim that "man can live exclusively by reason."

There is yet another problem, and this one appears to be conclusive. It is this: How do individuals go about choosing the philosophical views that determine their value-judgments and their emotions? We know Rand's answer: "Your conscious mind." And if you "default," if your conscious mind doesn't make a concerted effort to form “proper” philosophical views from which rational value-judgments can be deduced, then "you deliver yourself into the power of ideas you do not know you have accepted."

This view of emotions, reason, and consciousness has been refuted by research done in cognitive science, neuroscience, and evolutionary psychology. These sciences have discovered that animals (including human beings) have "primary emotions," which are "innate" and "preorganized" and which depend on limbic system circuitry in the brain. They have discovered that emotions are critical in thinking, so that the notion that "man can live exclusively by reason," when accompanied by the additional notion that "emotions are not tools of cognition," misrepresents what actually happens in cognition. Human beings are not blank slates. Their emotions are not programmed into their “subconscious” by their conscious minds. That view is no more credible than would be an astrological view of emotions. On naturalistic assumptions, emotions are and must be the product of evolution. They are tools of survival, forged in the evolutionary furnace.

JARS: "Demystifying Emotion"

The Fall 2006 Journal of Ayn Rand Studies commences with an article entitled "Demystifying Emotion: Introducing the Affect Theory of Silvan Tomkins to Objectivists" by Steven Shmurak. The article begins by acknowledging that Rand's view of emotions "fails to make sense o fthe totality of our emotional lives." Shmurak then introduces Tomkins' theory as possible alternative. Although he doesn't say so outright, Shmurak appears to be suggesting that if we were to "update" Rand's theory of emotions by replacing it with Tomkins' that would serve to strengthen the Objectivist position. But this suggestion assumes that the primary aim of Rand's theory is to provide a realistic explanation of human emotions. What if this assumption is false? What if the primary aim of Rand's theory is simply to prove that emotions can be entirely subjected to "reason"? After all, Rand's political, social, and psychological ideals would all be seriously jeopardized if emotions could not be entirely controlled by "reason." Hence my suspicion that Rand's theory of emotion is a little more than a formalized rationalization of a much deeper pathology in Rand--namely, her desire to subject every aspect of human existence to conscious "reasoned" thought, so that nothing is ever left to chance and the human being can be regarded as responsible for everything about himself.

This viewpoint, which Rand clung to with passionate obstinacy, is the fountainhead of nearly everything that is wrong with Rand's philosophy. It amounts to a kind of idealism. Just as ordinary idealists believe that their minds create and populate the natural world, so Rand, in effect, believes that the mind creates the psychological world--man's very self--out of its own ideas (or "basic premises").