Rand was fond of dividing the intellectual world between the Aristotleans and the Platonists, as if everyone, fundamentally, falls into one camp or the other. This division, however, is far too narrow. It leaves out several other basic philosophical positions, such as naturalism and German transcendentalism.
Both Plato and Aristotle arose out of the Socratic philosophical tradition, which holds, in the words of Socrates himself (as transcribed by Plato) "that Reason [is] the disposer of all" and that if anyone "is interesting in finding out the cause or generation or destruction or existence of anything, he must find out what [is] best for that thing." Things are to be understood by their uses and purposes, not by their elements or antecedents. Hence we find Plato arguing that the eyes, nose, and mouth are in front of the head, because the front is the nobler side! And in somewhat the same manner, we find Aristotle coming up with the concept of final causes, which expresses this methodology at its most abstract.
Aristotle tried his best to integrate this Socratic-Platonist philosophy with common sense, which accounts for Aristotle's popularity with thinkers like Rand. But the methodology of the tradition—a methodology satirized by George Santayana when he compared it to the chorus Moliere's Le Malade Imaginaire, which sings that opium puts people to sleep because it has dormitive virtue—runs deep in Aristotle, as it does, unfortunately, in Rand herself. The whole idea of founding a metaphysics on axioms, is inspired by this dubious Socratic methodology. And the notion of reality as logical—this too, Rand owes to Aristotle and the Socratic tradition.
The naturalist tradition, on the other hand, eschews this sort of nonsense. According to naturalism, matters of fact cannot be determined by logical constructions, for the simple reason that the external world is not a logical system. It doesn't not conform to "reason," whatever that may mean! Naturalism instead asserts two very simple but, from a Socratic point of view, heretical principles: (1) "Nothing arises in the world that we may use it, but what arises brings forth its use." Here we have "that discarding of final causes on which all progress in science depends," comments Santayana. And (2) "Nature is her own standard and must be accepted on her own terms, not on ours." Or in other words, the world does not exist for the convenience of our intellects! Nature must be accepted as she is, not as how we, or our philosophical principles, wish her to be.
Now although Objectivism frequently gives lipservice to naturalistic ideas, fundamentally Objectivism is not a naturalistic philosophy. It belongs to a different philosophical tradition. Hence Peikoff's assertion that philosophy has a veto right over all other disciplines, including physics. Or consider the statement "contradictions cannot exist in reality." How do Objectivists know that? Have they run empirical tests? No, of course, not. They "deduce" it from their axioms. Well this is really no different than Plato deducing the circularity of the planets' orbits from the divininity of the circle as a form. It's the classic metaphysical gesture of determining matters of fact from logical, moral or rhetorical constructions. It is not the way scientists work in empirical disciplines like physics and chemistry, where conjectures are inferred from facts and then corroborated through extensive empirical testing. Nature is its own standard, and to find that standard we must consult nature!
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Orthodox Objectivist Questions Randian Theory of History
Since I regularly attack orthodox Objectivists for failing to demonstrate any intellectual curiosity or rigor, it's only fair to point an example of at least one (now former) orthodox Objectivist who has shown at least some capacity to think outside the Randian box. Robert Tracinski, editor of the Intellectual Activist apparently has created a bit of stir amoing the ARI faithful because of his criticism and partial rejection of Rand's theory of history. "I do not mean to deny the crucial importance of fundamental philosophical ideas," Tracinski writes, "but to suggest that the relationship between philosophical ideas and all other ideas, and the means by which ideas are propagated in a culture, is more complex than Objectivists have recognized." Most interesting is Tracinski's explanation of why he's moving away from the Randian theory. He found that when trying to do journalistic work on a daily basis, he kept running across utterly novel experiences that could not always be easily integrated with his pre-existing knowledge. In other words, experience was teaching him that not everything in the world could be explained either by Rand's philosophy or by philosophy in general, leading him to conclude that "Any valid new observation or theory in a specialized field is based on an immersion in facts and observations, and on a whole range of lesser integrations and preliminary conclusions derived from those observations," a conclusion that veers toward my own position.
The question is: now that Tracinski has taken this one step away from orthodox Objectivism, will he be inexorably led, by the logic of that one step, away from Objectivism? Some orthodox Objectivists have accused Tracinski of moving away from Objectivism in order to become a conservative. I don't see that yet. He still seems pretty orthodox on most other points of Objectivism. However, once an individual makes that first step away from strict doctrine, the first thing that happens is that other orthodox Objectivists turn on him and essentially drive him out of the fold. Now Tracinski may be able to find refuge with the TOC crowd, where he's sure to be welcomed. But rejecting Rand's theory of history is a pretty big deal. It's much more important to Objectivism than most of Rand's admirers and critics realize, because it gives the philosophy an almost quasi-religious eschatological force. It provides Rand's disciples with a secular form of salvation which promises the (nearly) inevitable triumph of Objectivist values (see Rand's Playboy interview for more info). Once you reject this theory, it's just a short step to asking what else might be wrong with Objectivism. After all, Rand's main focus in epistemology (i.e., theory of concepts, problem of universals) is clearly motivated by her theory of history; the one follows the other like the cart follows the horse. So to doubt the one is to (at least potentially) experience doubts about the other. Once, however, you begin doubting Rand's epistemology (and there's a lot of evidence compiled by cognitive scientists that give compelling reasons for such doubts), it's just a short step to doubting many other doctrines in Objectivism, particularly the Aristolean methodology embraced by Rand and her rather naive politics.
The question is: now that Tracinski has taken this one step away from orthodox Objectivism, will he be inexorably led, by the logic of that one step, away from Objectivism? Some orthodox Objectivists have accused Tracinski of moving away from Objectivism in order to become a conservative. I don't see that yet. He still seems pretty orthodox on most other points of Objectivism. However, once an individual makes that first step away from strict doctrine, the first thing that happens is that other orthodox Objectivists turn on him and essentially drive him out of the fold. Now Tracinski may be able to find refuge with the TOC crowd, where he's sure to be welcomed. But rejecting Rand's theory of history is a pretty big deal. It's much more important to Objectivism than most of Rand's admirers and critics realize, because it gives the philosophy an almost quasi-religious eschatological force. It provides Rand's disciples with a secular form of salvation which promises the (nearly) inevitable triumph of Objectivist values (see Rand's Playboy interview for more info). Once you reject this theory, it's just a short step to asking what else might be wrong with Objectivism. After all, Rand's main focus in epistemology (i.e., theory of concepts, problem of universals) is clearly motivated by her theory of history; the one follows the other like the cart follows the horse. So to doubt the one is to (at least potentially) experience doubts about the other. Once, however, you begin doubting Rand's epistemology (and there's a lot of evidence compiled by cognitive scientists that give compelling reasons for such doubts), it's just a short step to doubting many other doctrines in Objectivism, particularly the Aristolean methodology embraced by Rand and her rather naive politics.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
The Shorter ARCHN: Chapter 2, "Theory of History"
A series of handy short summaries of the main arguments of ARCHN for those unfamiliar with the book. For more detail, you can read ARCHN online by clicking on the sidebar link
A utopian view of human nature such as Rand’s will inevitably lead to a utopian theory of history. Such a theory usually posits that man is inherently good, and that any evil he might have done throughout history is the result of some external factor. For Marx it was an unjust economic system, for Rousseau modernity itself; for Rand, the effect of bad philosophical ideas. If man had only possessed a truly rational philosophy, none of the horrors of the past need have taken place.
According to Objectivism, the most important issue in human existence is how man should use his consciousness. “In the life of man,” writes Leonard Peikoff, “epistemological, metaphysical, and moral ideas – which means: philosophical ideas – are the ruling power.” (OPAR, p451) Ultimately every decision a man makes reflects his fundamental philosophical views, and this naturally this thesis expands to cover all of history. But where do these views come from? Well, Rand believed that only a small part of the population takes the trouble to define their views through conscious deliberation; these are “the intellectuals,…the guides, the trend-setters…”, who are the “transmission belts…between philosophy and culture.” Through their own incompetence in the defense of reason, the intellectuals had lost sight of reason’s prime mover, Aristotle, and had submitted to the evil of Immanuel Kant and his destructive Critique. This resulted, ultimately, in the horrors of the 20th Century such as Soviet Gulags and the Nazi death camps.
How does Rand’s theory stack up against the facts? Since it is beyond the scope of “Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature” to empirically verify the causal factors of every period in history, three specific evidentiary claims made by Rand and her followers are examined.
As to 2) we again find that this is undercut by a fundamental fallacy – that institutions such as governments are always the product of conscious moral design. In fact, we find the expansions of state power in America was largely brought about by unintended developments in the institutions of the Federal Government, especially Congress, such as ‘pork-barrelling’ and ‘log-rolling.’ These expansions of state power are arrangements that have little or nothing to do with ‘altruism’ or self-sacrifice, and everything to do with the exercise of politics for self-interest and mutual advantage.
Finally, turning to 3) we note once again that Peikoff offers no concrete evidence for this speculation. He is also simply incorrect in claiming Kant, and Hegel advocated “irrationality.” Some of their ideas may have been irrational, but this is hardly the same thing. Further, as the writings of the aforesaid are extremely vague, they are just as subject to the reverse interpretation – one could easily claim that they were responsible for the liberation of the death camps, so one be so inclined. It also appears that far from preaching abstruse doctrines of irrationalism, altruism and collectivism, much of the Nazi’s actually rather limited success came from standard demagoguery like “Freedom, Work, and Bread”, as well as capitalizing on the substantial underlying anti-Semitism that existed in Germany as it did in much of Europe. Even then this did not capture a majority for the Nazis, and Hitler’s subsequent ascent to Chancellor owed more to standard backstage political manoeuvering than the advocacy of any specific philosophical doctrines.
To conclude, it seems that the Randian historical narrative is merely an exaggerated romantic invention, which on examination turns out to be both shallow and factually inaccurate.
(Summary of "Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature" by Greg Nyquist, Chapter 2)
A utopian view of human nature such as Rand’s will inevitably lead to a utopian theory of history. Such a theory usually posits that man is inherently good, and that any evil he might have done throughout history is the result of some external factor. For Marx it was an unjust economic system, for Rousseau modernity itself; for Rand, the effect of bad philosophical ideas. If man had only possessed a truly rational philosophy, none of the horrors of the past need have taken place.
According to Objectivism, the most important issue in human existence is how man should use his consciousness. “In the life of man,” writes Leonard Peikoff, “epistemological, metaphysical, and moral ideas – which means: philosophical ideas – are the ruling power.” (OPAR, p451) Ultimately every decision a man makes reflects his fundamental philosophical views, and this naturally this thesis expands to cover all of history. But where do these views come from? Well, Rand believed that only a small part of the population takes the trouble to define their views through conscious deliberation; these are “the intellectuals,…the guides, the trend-setters…”, who are the “transmission belts…between philosophy and culture.” Through their own incompetence in the defense of reason, the intellectuals had lost sight of reason’s prime mover, Aristotle, and had submitted to the evil of Immanuel Kant and his destructive Critique. This resulted, ultimately, in the horrors of the 20th Century such as Soviet Gulags and the Nazi death camps.
How does Rand’s theory stack up against the facts? Since it is beyond the scope of “Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature” to empirically verify the causal factors of every period in history, three specific evidentiary claims made by Rand and her followers are examined.
1) Christianity is responsible for Dark Ages in EuropeOn examining 1), it turns out that as usual Rand and Peikoff provide little or no hard evidence for their contention, only a lot of vague insinuation and oratical exaggeration. It turns out that the Dark Ages are far more likely to have been the result of severe trade contraction due to the Islamic military stranglehold over Europe from 7th to the 9th centuries, combined with the Danish and Norwegian barbarians laying waste to much of the North and West, than the rise of Christian belief. Likewise, contra Peikoff’s claim that it was due to the rediscovery of Aristotle, the subsequent Renaissance can also be readily attributed to the retreat of these influences, and subsequent revival of trade and prosperity. Further, if, as Peikoff contends, the asceticism of Christianity was the decisive influence in society, we would expect to find such societies economically destitute and culturally stagnant. Yet this is quite false, as of course the Renaissance marks the apogee of Catholic Church’s dominance over Europe.
2) The growth of statism in America is the byproduct of altruistic morality
3) German philosophy is responsible for the rise of Hitler and the Nazi death camps.
As to 2) we again find that this is undercut by a fundamental fallacy – that institutions such as governments are always the product of conscious moral design. In fact, we find the expansions of state power in America was largely brought about by unintended developments in the institutions of the Federal Government, especially Congress, such as ‘pork-barrelling’ and ‘log-rolling.’ These expansions of state power are arrangements that have little or nothing to do with ‘altruism’ or self-sacrifice, and everything to do with the exercise of politics for self-interest and mutual advantage.
Finally, turning to 3) we note once again that Peikoff offers no concrete evidence for this speculation. He is also simply incorrect in claiming Kant, and Hegel advocated “irrationality.” Some of their ideas may have been irrational, but this is hardly the same thing. Further, as the writings of the aforesaid are extremely vague, they are just as subject to the reverse interpretation – one could easily claim that they were responsible for the liberation of the death camps, so one be so inclined. It also appears that far from preaching abstruse doctrines of irrationalism, altruism and collectivism, much of the Nazi’s actually rather limited success came from standard demagoguery like “Freedom, Work, and Bread”, as well as capitalizing on the substantial underlying anti-Semitism that existed in Germany as it did in much of Europe. Even then this did not capture a majority for the Nazis, and Hitler’s subsequent ascent to Chancellor owed more to standard backstage political manoeuvering than the advocacy of any specific philosophical doctrines.
To conclude, it seems that the Randian historical narrative is merely an exaggerated romantic invention, which on examination turns out to be both shallow and factually inaccurate.
(Summary of "Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature" by Greg Nyquist, Chapter 2)
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Formal Versus Practical Meaning in Objectivism
When examing any philosophy or ideological belief system that oversteps important realities, it is important to distinguish between the formal and the practical or real meaning of the doctrine in question. The formal meaning is the literal meaning. But for the very reason that the literal meaning does not correspond to reality the doctrine cannot be followed unless it is transformed into something else. So, for example, the formal meaning of the Objectivist theory of history is that social conditions are determined by which system of philosophy appears the most compelling in the minds of intellectuals. Since this doctrine is not true and will not lead to the results predicted in the theory, Objectivists don't follow it literally. While they all give lip service to it, their behavior does not follow logically from it. If Objectivists were logical, they would seek to make every effort to present their philosophy in as favorable a light to as many people as possible. They would also seek to answer all serious objections made to their doctrines. Yet we don't find orthodox Objectivists doing this. Instead, we find them intentionally limiting exposure of their doctrines (e.g., they won't talk to libertarians, for instance) and refusing to engage with their critics. Although they often seek to challenge the status quo, they do so only within venues that they can control, so they can avoid any really serious challenge. When they nevertheless are confronted with challenges from others, rank and file Objectivists often become scornful, angry, and resentful. They regard those who disagree with them with a blistering contempt. Although ever so sensitive to any critic who even mildly distorts some aspect of the Randian creed, they demonstrate no conscience at all as far as distorting the views of their ideological opponents, thus making their espousal of selfishness take on a sinister aspect in the eyes of disinterested bystanders. In brief, the behavior of Objectivists, particularly when it comes to their attempts to spread the Randian philosophy, are not terribly rational nor do they make any sense when judged in relation to Rand's philosophy of history.
So what then is the real, practical purposes of Rand's philosophy of history? If the behavior of Objectivists is anything to go by, this theory would appear to have several practical purposes having more to do with the unique psychopathology of the Objectivist faithful than with logic or rational behavior. First, Rand's philosophy of history gives Objectivists the comforting illusion of potency and self-importance by suggesting that the course of history can be changed merely by arguing about abstruse points of metaphysics and epistemology; second, it helps to justify the Objectivist's instinctive loathing and mistreatment of those who refuse to agree with him (such people are evil because their espousal of wrong ideas threatens individualism and civilization); third, it justifies not getting involved in anything as messy, difficult, and threatening to one's ego as politics (because politics doesn't really lead to social change; only arguing about philosophy accomplishes that); and fourth, it helps justify shunning any person or group perceived as a threat to Objectivism (because such people are the most evil of all, since they consciously pursue evil values, and having any contact with them only gives their ideas a moral sanction they don't deserve). Hence the real, practical, behavorial effect of Rand's philosophy of history is to justify that disagreeable mixture of arrogance and hostility on the one side and self-complacency and lack of initiative on the other that exemplifies most Objectivists when it comes to spreading their philosophy. The typical Rand follower simply wants to enjoy the comforting illusion that, eventually, everyone will agree with him and his ideas will be vindicated without ever having to do anything too strenuous or risky to make it happen.
So what then is the real, practical purposes of Rand's philosophy of history? If the behavior of Objectivists is anything to go by, this theory would appear to have several practical purposes having more to do with the unique psychopathology of the Objectivist faithful than with logic or rational behavior. First, Rand's philosophy of history gives Objectivists the comforting illusion of potency and self-importance by suggesting that the course of history can be changed merely by arguing about abstruse points of metaphysics and epistemology; second, it helps to justify the Objectivist's instinctive loathing and mistreatment of those who refuse to agree with him (such people are evil because their espousal of wrong ideas threatens individualism and civilization); third, it justifies not getting involved in anything as messy, difficult, and threatening to one's ego as politics (because politics doesn't really lead to social change; only arguing about philosophy accomplishes that); and fourth, it helps justify shunning any person or group perceived as a threat to Objectivism (because such people are the most evil of all, since they consciously pursue evil values, and having any contact with them only gives their ideas a moral sanction they don't deserve). Hence the real, practical, behavorial effect of Rand's philosophy of history is to justify that disagreeable mixture of arrogance and hostility on the one side and self-complacency and lack of initiative on the other that exemplifies most Objectivists when it comes to spreading their philosophy. The typical Rand follower simply wants to enjoy the comforting illusion that, eventually, everyone will agree with him and his ideas will be vindicated without ever having to do anything too strenuous or risky to make it happen.
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Rand's Intellectual Influences — Concluding Thoughts
In a series of posts, I have attempted to infer some of the intellectual sources of key concepts in Rand's Objectivist philosophy. The purpose of these investigations is not to question Rand's originality, or suggest she stole her best ideas from other thinkers, but to emphasize that she had to get her ideas from somewhere. Unless we adopt the supposition, haughtily dismissed by Rand herself, of innate ideas, Rand must have gotten her ideas either through direct observation and/or by contact and interaction with the ideas of others. Now ideas about history, epistemology, social change and the like cannot be made solely through direct observation. They must be formed through contact with ideas found in books and in the conversation with other people. As Rand is not known to have been a volumunious reader, it is likely that she was (perhaps unwittingly) influenced by the intellectuals she conversed with, which, in the thirties and forties, were primarily "conservative" intellectuals, such as Isabel Patterson, Leonard Read, and Henry Hazlitt. All influences, of course, were run through the Randian filter, so they were often transformed into something else by the time Rand got done with them.
Now in Objectivism we can trace two types of ideas: those ideas that are core to Rand's thought and psychopathology and that probably would've remained the same regardless of how she had been influenced; and those ideas that stem from the concepts and notions she found herself exposed to in the intellectual circles in which she travelled. An example of the first type of idea is Rand's support of selfishness, which she stubbornly adhered to despite the protestations of Nathaniel Branden. An example of the second type of idea is her contention that the failure to solve the problem of universals is the main cause of modern irrationality. This notion was, I suspect, suggested by Richard Weaver's central thesis in his book Ideas Have Consequences. Had Weaver not written and published that book, Rand may have never been exposed to the idea of regarding the issue of universals as central to the modern world. And if she had never been exposed to that idea, her theory of history must have taken on a different aspect. She would've had to come up with a different scapegoat for modern irrationality. A different scapegoat, however, would've shifted her focus in epistemology from the issue of universals and concepts to something else. In that case, IOTE would've been a very different book.
So in Objectivism we can trace substantive ideas that find their root in Rand's particular way of thinking and responding to the issues life confronts us with; and then we have ideas that are merely formal and arbitrary, that easily could've been different if Rand had travelled in different intellectual circles and been exposed to different ideas. In the theory of history, the substantive idea is the notion that abstract ideas determine the course of history. Rand's seems to have taken this as an axiomatic idea right from the start. However, the actual form this idea took, the actual abstract ideas that would, for Rand, determine history, was probably determined second or third hand from Richard Weaver, and would've been different had she never been exposed to Weaver's thesis.
Now in Objectivism we can trace two types of ideas: those ideas that are core to Rand's thought and psychopathology and that probably would've remained the same regardless of how she had been influenced; and those ideas that stem from the concepts and notions she found herself exposed to in the intellectual circles in which she travelled. An example of the first type of idea is Rand's support of selfishness, which she stubbornly adhered to despite the protestations of Nathaniel Branden. An example of the second type of idea is her contention that the failure to solve the problem of universals is the main cause of modern irrationality. This notion was, I suspect, suggested by Richard Weaver's central thesis in his book Ideas Have Consequences. Had Weaver not written and published that book, Rand may have never been exposed to the idea of regarding the issue of universals as central to the modern world. And if she had never been exposed to that idea, her theory of history must have taken on a different aspect. She would've had to come up with a different scapegoat for modern irrationality. A different scapegoat, however, would've shifted her focus in epistemology from the issue of universals and concepts to something else. In that case, IOTE would've been a very different book.
So in Objectivism we can trace substantive ideas that find their root in Rand's particular way of thinking and responding to the issues life confronts us with; and then we have ideas that are merely formal and arbitrary, that easily could've been different if Rand had travelled in different intellectual circles and been exposed to different ideas. In the theory of history, the substantive idea is the notion that abstract ideas determine the course of history. Rand's seems to have taken this as an axiomatic idea right from the start. However, the actual form this idea took, the actual abstract ideas that would, for Rand, determine history, was probably determined second or third hand from Richard Weaver, and would've been different had she never been exposed to Weaver's thesis.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Intellectual Sources of Rand's View of Universals
"Most philosophers did not intend to invalidate conceptual knowledge, but its defenders did more to destroy it than did its enemies. They were unable to to offer a solution to the problem of universals." --Ayn Rand
Where did Rand acquire this odd notion that the so-called failure to solve the problem of universals has brought about a major crisis in Western Civilization? Consider the following take on universals:
"A 'universal,' to philosophy, is our conceptual categorization of a thing. Is there, for example, such a thing as Apple? We know the things so categorized... But does Apple have a real existence? Occam said no, won the debate, and put Western Civilization into reverse gear... It is very difficult to see where [Occam] erred.... The mistake was incredibly subtle. To deny 'Apple' is, in the end, to deny the reality of human concepts. It is to deny the workings of the human mind..."
Sounds suspiciously similar to Rand. Is this perhaps by one of her less orthodox followers? No, not at all. It's by George Roche, former President of Hillsdale College and someone who despised and probably never read Rand. So where did Roche get this notion that the ills of Western Civilization can be traced to the philosophical issue of universals? Roche's source is Richard Weaver's book Ideas Have Consequences, published in 1949. Is it possible that Rand's original inspiration for blaming the problem of universals for crisis of Western Civilization also came from the same source? But where else could it have come from? Rand is not known to have been widely read in philosophy. She only, we have been told, read synopses. She was, it is true, a history major, but she got her degree at a Soviet University, and if her philosophical writings are any indication, she does not appear to have had more than a superficial knowledge of history. So once more the question arises: where else but from Weaver could she have gotten her odd notions about the problem of universals? It is entirely conceivable that one of her conservative acquaintences brought up the Weaver's thesis during one of Rand's intellectual bull sessions; that from hence, Rand absorbed the thesis and integrated it into her own philosophy, altering it somewhat in the process but not substantially changing it; and then she introduced it to the world in her essay "For the New Intellectual," published in 1961. Weaver's thesis clearly would have appealed to Rand, because it gives importance to an issue that hardly anyone has cared about since the age of scholasticism, when the philosophy of Aristotle, Rand's master of masters, dominated the intellectual scene.
Understanding Objectivist Jargon Pt 10: "Anti-concept"
"Anti-concept" = any vague, confusing or poorly defined term. Which would include the term "anti-concept" itself. More simply, any concept Ayn Rand was anti.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Intellectual Sources of Rand's View of Kant
Where did Rand pick up the notion that Kant's philosophical aim was to destroy reason to make way for faith and mysticism? Given that Rand probably never read Kant and that what she wrote about Kant has been refuted several times by two of her admirers (Walsh and Seddon), how can we account for Rand's declaration that Kant is the "man who closed the door of philosophy to reason"?
Kant, it is true, did admit in the preface to the second edition of the Critique of Reason that "we have to deny knowledge to make room for faith." But this is hardly the equivalent of full-fledged attack on man's conceptual faculty. Where, then, did Rand get the idea that not merely Kant, but his critical philosophy, is opposed to reason?
One possibility is Chapter 4 of George Santayana's Reason in Common Sense. While it is unlikely that Rand ever read Santayana, she may have got Santayana's take on Kant second-hand through someone who had read him. Of all the major philosophers that came before Rand, Santayana's view of Kant comes closest to Rand. "Kant," writes Santayana, "had a private mysticism in reserve to raise upon the ruins of science and common-sense. Knowledge was to be removed to make way for faith." Santayana contended that there lurked a "sinister intention" in Kant's substitution of faith for knowledge. "[Kant] wished to blast as insignificant, because 'subjective,' the whole structure of human intelligence, with all the lessons of experience and all the triumphs of human skill, and to attach absolute validity instead to certain echoes of his rigoristic religious education.... Nature had been proved a figment of human imagination so that, once rid of all but a mock allegiance to her facts and laws, we might be free to invent any world we chose and believe it to be absolutely real and independent of nature. Strange prepossession, that while part of human life and mind was to be an avenue to reality and to put men in relation to external and eternal things, the whole of human life and mind should not be able to do so!" As for Kant's morality, Santayana regarded it as a "personal superstition, irrelevant to the impulse and need of the world. [Kant's] notions of the supernatural were those of his sect and generation, and did not pass to his more influential disciples; what was transmitted was simply the contempt for sense and understanding and the practice, authorized by his modest example, of building air-castles in the great clearing which the Critique was supposed to have made."
Rand would have agreed with virtually everything in Santayana's critique, particularly about Kant's motivation, except that she would have wished to translate it into her own strange philosophical terms. Kant, she argued, invalidated man's knowledge on the grounds that man's "consciousness possesses identity." This is intolerably vague. How much better is Santayana when he writes: "Conceptions rooted in the very elements of our being, in our sense, intellect, and imagination, which had shaped themselves through many generations under a constant fire of observation and disillusion, these were to be called subjective, not only in the sense in which all knowledge must obviously be so, since it is knowledge that someone possesses and has gained, but subjective in a disparaging sense, and in contrast to some better form of knowledge. But what better form of knowledge is this? If it be knowledge of things as they really are and not as they appear, we must remember that reality means what the intellect infers from the data of sense; and yet the principles of such inference, by which the distinction between appearance and reality is first instituted, are precisely the principles now to be discarded as subjective and of merely empirical validity."
We find an echo of Santayana's argument in Rand when she writes: "[T]he attack on man's consciousness and ... on his conceptual faculty has rested on the unchallenged premise that any knowledge acquired by a process of consciousness is necessarily subjective and cannot correspond to the facts of reality." But how much better is Santayana's explication of the same point! Santayana gets right down to the heart of the matter without the scholastic trappings that Rand brings to the table with her penchant for reducing all disagreements to a failure to observe the law of identity and the other Objectivist axioms. Of course, Santayana had a huge advantage over Rand: he had actually read Kant in the original German and had even studied Kant in Germany under German professors. So his criticisms, whether one agrees with them or not, at least are well-thought out and plausible. Rand's criticisms, to the extent that they're plausible at all, merely repeat those of Santayana. But in rewording them in terms of her own philosophy, she weakens them and opens herself to criticism. (Peikoff is even worse in this respect.)
And so from this, we can make a generalization which will help place Rand's achievement as a philosopher in proper perspective. You take almost any position that Rand holds, whether good, bad, or indifferent, and you'll find that position more ably supported by someone else.
Kant, it is true, did admit in the preface to the second edition of the Critique of Reason that "we have to deny knowledge to make room for faith." But this is hardly the equivalent of full-fledged attack on man's conceptual faculty. Where, then, did Rand get the idea that not merely Kant, but his critical philosophy, is opposed to reason?
One possibility is Chapter 4 of George Santayana's Reason in Common Sense. While it is unlikely that Rand ever read Santayana, she may have got Santayana's take on Kant second-hand through someone who had read him. Of all the major philosophers that came before Rand, Santayana's view of Kant comes closest to Rand. "Kant," writes Santayana, "had a private mysticism in reserve to raise upon the ruins of science and common-sense. Knowledge was to be removed to make way for faith." Santayana contended that there lurked a "sinister intention" in Kant's substitution of faith for knowledge. "[Kant] wished to blast as insignificant, because 'subjective,' the whole structure of human intelligence, with all the lessons of experience and all the triumphs of human skill, and to attach absolute validity instead to certain echoes of his rigoristic religious education.... Nature had been proved a figment of human imagination so that, once rid of all but a mock allegiance to her facts and laws, we might be free to invent any world we chose and believe it to be absolutely real and independent of nature. Strange prepossession, that while part of human life and mind was to be an avenue to reality and to put men in relation to external and eternal things, the whole of human life and mind should not be able to do so!" As for Kant's morality, Santayana regarded it as a "personal superstition, irrelevant to the impulse and need of the world. [Kant's] notions of the supernatural were those of his sect and generation, and did not pass to his more influential disciples; what was transmitted was simply the contempt for sense and understanding and the practice, authorized by his modest example, of building air-castles in the great clearing which the Critique was supposed to have made."
Rand would have agreed with virtually everything in Santayana's critique, particularly about Kant's motivation, except that she would have wished to translate it into her own strange philosophical terms. Kant, she argued, invalidated man's knowledge on the grounds that man's "consciousness possesses identity." This is intolerably vague. How much better is Santayana when he writes: "Conceptions rooted in the very elements of our being, in our sense, intellect, and imagination, which had shaped themselves through many generations under a constant fire of observation and disillusion, these were to be called subjective, not only in the sense in which all knowledge must obviously be so, since it is knowledge that someone possesses and has gained, but subjective in a disparaging sense, and in contrast to some better form of knowledge. But what better form of knowledge is this? If it be knowledge of things as they really are and not as they appear, we must remember that reality means what the intellect infers from the data of sense; and yet the principles of such inference, by which the distinction between appearance and reality is first instituted, are precisely the principles now to be discarded as subjective and of merely empirical validity."
We find an echo of Santayana's argument in Rand when she writes: "[T]he attack on man's consciousness and ... on his conceptual faculty has rested on the unchallenged premise that any knowledge acquired by a process of consciousness is necessarily subjective and cannot correspond to the facts of reality." But how much better is Santayana's explication of the same point! Santayana gets right down to the heart of the matter without the scholastic trappings that Rand brings to the table with her penchant for reducing all disagreements to a failure to observe the law of identity and the other Objectivist axioms. Of course, Santayana had a huge advantage over Rand: he had actually read Kant in the original German and had even studied Kant in Germany under German professors. So his criticisms, whether one agrees with them or not, at least are well-thought out and plausible. Rand's criticisms, to the extent that they're plausible at all, merely repeat those of Santayana. But in rewording them in terms of her own philosophy, she weakens them and opens herself to criticism. (Peikoff is even worse in this respect.)
And so from this, we can make a generalization which will help place Rand's achievement as a philosopher in proper perspective. You take almost any position that Rand holds, whether good, bad, or indifferent, and you'll find that position more ably supported by someone else.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Hoisted from Comments: Peikoff's Weird Science
Following Greg Nyquist's discussion of the roots of Leonard Peikoff's "The Ominous Parallels", regular commenter Dragonfly chimes in on Peikoff's odd views on science (p276-277):
Dragonfly: Peikoff also argues that scientific theories are influenced by bad philosophy. He mentions Heisenberg's uncertainty relation as an example. No doubt no such thing would exist in Objectivist physics! Further he writes: "Even the professional mathematicians, the onetime guardians of the citadel of certainty and of logical consistency, caught the hang of the modern spirit. In 1931, they were apprised of the latest Viennese development in the field, Kurt Gödel's incompleteness theorem, according to which logical consistency (and therefore certainty) is precisely the attribute that no systems of mathematics can ever claim to possess." Really a strange version of Gödel's theorem! No doubt Objectivists can point out the error in Gödel's proof? As in his DIMwit lectures, Peikoff uses as reference for his scientific insights the well-known scientific publication The New York Times.
The following observation is also interesting: "Decades ago, the exponents of purposefully guided, objective cognition - which is what scientists had once been - began yielding to two newer breeds: the narrow technicians and the punch-drunk theoreticians. The former are intent on amassing disconnected bits of experimental data, with no clear idea of context, wider meaning, or overall cognitive goal. [Really, Doctor Peikoff? How do you know? Where is your evidence?] The latter - trained in a Kantian skepticism by Dewey, Carnap, Heisenberg, Gödel and many others - turn out increasingly arbitrary speculations while stressing the power of physical theory; not its power to advance man's confidence or make reality intelligible, but to achieve the opposite results. Quantum mechanics, the theoreticians started to say, refutes causality, light waves refute logic [I wonder how they do that?], relativity refutes common sense [and therefore it must be wrong?], thermodynamics refutes hope [???], scientific law is old-fashioned, explanation is impossible, electrons are a myth [where did he get that notion?], mathematics is a game, the difference between physics and religion is only a matter of taste [it is at least bigger than the difference between Objectivism and religion].
Sometimes you can hear some of the less orthodox Objectivists whisper that Peikoff now has lost his marbles, but that he has been so brilliant in the past. Well, it seems he lost his marbles already 25 years ago. Perhaps he has never had any marbles!
Dragonfly: Peikoff also argues that scientific theories are influenced by bad philosophy. He mentions Heisenberg's uncertainty relation as an example. No doubt no such thing would exist in Objectivist physics! Further he writes: "Even the professional mathematicians, the onetime guardians of the citadel of certainty and of logical consistency, caught the hang of the modern spirit. In 1931, they were apprised of the latest Viennese development in the field, Kurt Gödel's incompleteness theorem, according to which logical consistency (and therefore certainty) is precisely the attribute that no systems of mathematics can ever claim to possess." Really a strange version of Gödel's theorem! No doubt Objectivists can point out the error in Gödel's proof? As in his DIMwit lectures, Peikoff uses as reference for his scientific insights the well-known scientific publication The New York Times.
The following observation is also interesting: "Decades ago, the exponents of purposefully guided, objective cognition - which is what scientists had once been - began yielding to two newer breeds: the narrow technicians and the punch-drunk theoreticians. The former are intent on amassing disconnected bits of experimental data, with no clear idea of context, wider meaning, or overall cognitive goal. [Really, Doctor Peikoff? How do you know? Where is your evidence?] The latter - trained in a Kantian skepticism by Dewey, Carnap, Heisenberg, Gödel and many others - turn out increasingly arbitrary speculations while stressing the power of physical theory; not its power to advance man's confidence or make reality intelligible, but to achieve the opposite results. Quantum mechanics, the theoreticians started to say, refutes causality, light waves refute logic [I wonder how they do that?], relativity refutes common sense [and therefore it must be wrong?], thermodynamics refutes hope [???], scientific law is old-fashioned, explanation is impossible, electrons are a myth [where did he get that notion?], mathematics is a game, the difference between physics and religion is only a matter of taste [it is at least bigger than the difference between Objectivism and religion].
Sometimes you can hear some of the less orthodox Objectivists whisper that Peikoff now has lost his marbles, but that he has been so brilliant in the past. Well, it seems he lost his marbles already 25 years ago. Perhaps he has never had any marbles!
Monday, May 14, 2007
The Intellectual Sources of Peikoff's Ominous Parallels
As elucidated in an earlier posting, it had become fairly common during the thirties and forties to blame the rise of German statism on German philosophy. "The popularity of the opinion that German nationalism is the outcome of ideas of German philosophy is mainly due to the authority of George Santayana," wrote Ludwig von Mises in 1940. There is a problem, however, with this view of the matter. Santayana never actually claimed that German idealism logically brought about (or caused) German nationalism and Hitlerism. His claim was much more modest. He believed that German nationalism and German philosophy were both expressions of the German character, so that philosophy, far from being a cause or a logical precondition, was merely a symptom. But conservative intellectuals were eager to blame German idealism, which they despised, for German aggression; and so they assumed as Mises assumed.
Santayana's book Egotism in German Philosophy , originally published in 1915, was seen as a prophetic explanation of the rise of militarism and Nazism in Germany. Of course, it was no such thing, but once the notion had entered the intellectual culture, there was no getting it out. In 1943, Hayek published Road to Serfdom, which was the first book to popularize the idea that there existed parallels between what had happened in Germany around the turn of the century and what was happening in England and America during the thirties. Hayek's book focused almost exclusively on politics and economics; he did not try to put the finger of blame on German idealism. His friend Karl Popper, however, once more played the German Idealism card in the second volume of his The Open Society and its Enemies, which focused on the deleterious influence of Hegel.
Popper's book was published in 1945. The Anglo-American intellectual milieu had undergone a transformation in the thirties. Nazism had forced many of central Europe's most important and influential scholars and intellectuals to emigrate to England or America. Many of these expatriated scholars and intellectuals had studied Hegel under the most advanced Hegelian scholars in the world, and they simply could not accept Popper's view of Hegel as the forerunner of German totalitarianism. There was something of a critical backlash inspired by Popper's Open Society that marks the waning of the view that German idealism caused the rise of Hitler and the Nazis. By the time Peikoff, under the direct tutelage of Rand, began embalming the notion in his book The Ominous Parallels, it had become largely discredited. Extensive research in pyschology, sociology, and history all demonstrated that social change was not determined by abstract philosophy. The belief in the simple causation between philosophical doctrine on the on hand and social crisis on the other belongs to a less sophisticated intellectual milieu.
The trouble with Objectivism, particularly in its ARI manifestations, is that it seems trapped in a kind of time warp: its main notions have their source in ideas Rand was exposed to in the conservative circles she travelled in during the thirties and forties. By the fifties, Rand rarely ventured outside her own hermetically sealed circle of young Objectivist enthusiasts (the "collective"). She knew little--and evinced hardly any interest at all--in developments in cognitive science, psychiatry, neuroscience, historical scholarship, and philosophical scholarship. Peikoff's The Ominous Parallels has its roots in a very shallow, intellectually impoverished soil. It stems from misrepresentations and over-simplifications of the works of Santayana, Hayek, Popper and a few others, as filtered through the unsophisticated conservative intellectuals of the thirties and forties.
Santayana's book Egotism in German Philosophy , originally published in 1915, was seen as a prophetic explanation of the rise of militarism and Nazism in Germany. Of course, it was no such thing, but once the notion had entered the intellectual culture, there was no getting it out. In 1943, Hayek published Road to Serfdom, which was the first book to popularize the idea that there existed parallels between what had happened in Germany around the turn of the century and what was happening in England and America during the thirties. Hayek's book focused almost exclusively on politics and economics; he did not try to put the finger of blame on German idealism. His friend Karl Popper, however, once more played the German Idealism card in the second volume of his The Open Society and its Enemies, which focused on the deleterious influence of Hegel.
Popper's book was published in 1945. The Anglo-American intellectual milieu had undergone a transformation in the thirties. Nazism had forced many of central Europe's most important and influential scholars and intellectuals to emigrate to England or America. Many of these expatriated scholars and intellectuals had studied Hegel under the most advanced Hegelian scholars in the world, and they simply could not accept Popper's view of Hegel as the forerunner of German totalitarianism. There was something of a critical backlash inspired by Popper's Open Society that marks the waning of the view that German idealism caused the rise of Hitler and the Nazis. By the time Peikoff, under the direct tutelage of Rand, began embalming the notion in his book The Ominous Parallels, it had become largely discredited. Extensive research in pyschology, sociology, and history all demonstrated that social change was not determined by abstract philosophy. The belief in the simple causation between philosophical doctrine on the on hand and social crisis on the other belongs to a less sophisticated intellectual milieu.
The trouble with Objectivism, particularly in its ARI manifestations, is that it seems trapped in a kind of time warp: its main notions have their source in ideas Rand was exposed to in the conservative circles she travelled in during the thirties and forties. By the fifties, Rand rarely ventured outside her own hermetically sealed circle of young Objectivist enthusiasts (the "collective"). She knew little--and evinced hardly any interest at all--in developments in cognitive science, psychiatry, neuroscience, historical scholarship, and philosophical scholarship. Peikoff's The Ominous Parallels has its roots in a very shallow, intellectually impoverished soil. It stems from misrepresentations and over-simplifications of the works of Santayana, Hayek, Popper and a few others, as filtered through the unsophisticated conservative intellectuals of the thirties and forties.
Sunday, May 13, 2007
The Shorter ARCHN: Chapter 1, "Theory of Human Nature"
A series of handy short summaries of the main arguments of ARCHN for those unfamiliar with the book. For more detail, you can read ARCHN online here:
1) There are two basic conceptions of human nature: utopian and naturalistic. The utopian considers how man “should be”. The naturalist considers how he is. I argue that Rand’s view of human nature is utopian to the core, and her philosophy is a mere rationalization of her romantic notions about how man “should be”.
In an interview with Alvin Toffler, he asked “Do you regard philosophy as the primary purpose of your writing?” Rand replied, ”No. My primary purpose is the projection of an ideal man, of man ‘as he might be and ought to be.’ Philosophy is a necessary means to that end.”
To admit that philosophy is a means to some end other than discovering the truth is to admit that one is merely rationalizing one’s existing beliefs. This, in essence, is what Objectivism is all about. And it is in the vast gap between the Randian ideal of Howard Roark or John Galt and real human beings that the rationalistic, utopian nature of her philosophy becomes most striking.
2) Rand’s theory of human nature is based on the idea that the human mind enjoys complete sovereignty over the body and the will. “Everything we do and are proceeds from the mind,” Rand once declared. ”Our mind can be made to control everything.” Man, we are told, is given his body, his mind, and the “mechanics of consciousness.” The rest is up to him – “he must create himself.” This suggests that man begins as a sort of of empty vacuum which through some mysterious process creates a specific character ex nihilo – out of nothing!
This conviction that man creates himself is fundamental to her entire philosophy. In order for a man to be genuinely ideal in Rand’s eyes, he had to be able to take full credit for all his characteristics. He couldn’t merely have been endowed with them at birth – no, he had to create them out of nothing with his own unaided effort, like Baron Munchhausen pulling himself out of the mire by his own hair.
The most interesting part of this unlikely theory is its moral and psychological consequences – for as a result, man must be entirely responsible for what he becomes. Everything about his character, including his emotions, impulses, desires, motivations, passions is the product of his own choices. So if a man feels improper emotions or immoral desires, it is his responsibility to make the effort to change them by reprogramming his subconscious using reason. “Nothing less than perfection will do,” she declared. This personal Nirvana was what she called being “fully integrated” – where one never experiences any inner conflicts between what one thinks and what one feels, a blessed state where “mind and emotions are in harmony.”
This emphasis on ideas necessarily preceding emotions, when combined with her rejection of the existence of innate ideas, forces Rand into a number of absurd positions – for example, that people have no pre-existing emotional dispositions. One also must conclude that babies have no emotions at birth! There is also the impossible situation of how man makes any fundamental choices, seeing he has no existing motivations. This leads to the rather desperate measure regarding what Leonard Peikoff calls “primary choice” – “…the root choice, the choice on which all others depend…the choice to focus one’s consciousness.” But if man has no existing predispositions, why would he make this choice, one way or the other? Peikoff’s reply: Don’t ask! “It is invalid to ask: why did a man choose to focus? There is no such ‘why.’" This is simply a causa sui – something that causes itself, and is a typical mystical argument, used in defence of the Deity. It is, in short, a miracle; thus to defend this theory, Peikoff has had to resort to the miraculous.
Similar problems affect her version of “free will.” Since man is born completely tabula rasa there can be no innate psychological tendencies. In other words, to the neutral consciousness at birth, one choice is just as likely as another. Thus all human behaviour arises as a result of habit and accident, and therefore is completely inexplicable and unpredictable. Since no-one, including Rand, actually regards human as utterly inexplicable, this position is hard to take seriously.
3) A theory stands or falls on whether it can be corroborated by empirical reality. So we must ask: what is the evidence for Rand’s theories of human nature? We will look at three issues:
(Summary of "Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature" by Greg Nyquist, Chapter 1)
1) There are two basic conceptions of human nature: utopian and naturalistic. The utopian considers how man “should be”. The naturalist considers how he is. I argue that Rand’s view of human nature is utopian to the core, and her philosophy is a mere rationalization of her romantic notions about how man “should be”.
In an interview with Alvin Toffler, he asked “Do you regard philosophy as the primary purpose of your writing?” Rand replied, ”No. My primary purpose is the projection of an ideal man, of man ‘as he might be and ought to be.’ Philosophy is a necessary means to that end.”
To admit that philosophy is a means to some end other than discovering the truth is to admit that one is merely rationalizing one’s existing beliefs. This, in essence, is what Objectivism is all about. And it is in the vast gap between the Randian ideal of Howard Roark or John Galt and real human beings that the rationalistic, utopian nature of her philosophy becomes most striking.
2) Rand’s theory of human nature is based on the idea that the human mind enjoys complete sovereignty over the body and the will. “Everything we do and are proceeds from the mind,” Rand once declared. ”Our mind can be made to control everything.” Man, we are told, is given his body, his mind, and the “mechanics of consciousness.” The rest is up to him – “he must create himself.” This suggests that man begins as a sort of of empty vacuum which through some mysterious process creates a specific character ex nihilo – out of nothing!
This conviction that man creates himself is fundamental to her entire philosophy. In order for a man to be genuinely ideal in Rand’s eyes, he had to be able to take full credit for all his characteristics. He couldn’t merely have been endowed with them at birth – no, he had to create them out of nothing with his own unaided effort, like Baron Munchhausen pulling himself out of the mire by his own hair.
The most interesting part of this unlikely theory is its moral and psychological consequences – for as a result, man must be entirely responsible for what he becomes. Everything about his character, including his emotions, impulses, desires, motivations, passions is the product of his own choices. So if a man feels improper emotions or immoral desires, it is his responsibility to make the effort to change them by reprogramming his subconscious using reason. “Nothing less than perfection will do,” she declared. This personal Nirvana was what she called being “fully integrated” – where one never experiences any inner conflicts between what one thinks and what one feels, a blessed state where “mind and emotions are in harmony.”
This emphasis on ideas necessarily preceding emotions, when combined with her rejection of the existence of innate ideas, forces Rand into a number of absurd positions – for example, that people have no pre-existing emotional dispositions. One also must conclude that babies have no emotions at birth! There is also the impossible situation of how man makes any fundamental choices, seeing he has no existing motivations. This leads to the rather desperate measure regarding what Leonard Peikoff calls “primary choice” – “…the root choice, the choice on which all others depend…the choice to focus one’s consciousness.” But if man has no existing predispositions, why would he make this choice, one way or the other? Peikoff’s reply: Don’t ask! “It is invalid to ask: why did a man choose to focus? There is no such ‘why.’" This is simply a causa sui – something that causes itself, and is a typical mystical argument, used in defence of the Deity. It is, in short, a miracle; thus to defend this theory, Peikoff has had to resort to the miraculous.
Similar problems affect her version of “free will.” Since man is born completely tabula rasa there can be no innate psychological tendencies. In other words, to the neutral consciousness at birth, one choice is just as likely as another. Thus all human behaviour arises as a result of habit and accident, and therefore is completely inexplicable and unpredictable. Since no-one, including Rand, actually regards human as utterly inexplicable, this position is hard to take seriously.
3) A theory stands or falls on whether it can be corroborated by empirical reality. So we must ask: what is the evidence for Rand’s theories of human nature? We will look at three issues:
- Do innate predispositions exist? All scientific evidence to date suggests it does. There are general emotional predispositions, such as aversions to incest, general cognitive predispositions, such as the tendency to learn language, and individual predispositions, such as handedness. ARCHN contains a lengthy summary drawn from scientists such as E.O. Wilson and Steven Pinker. In contrast, what evidence does Rand bring in support of her theories? Nothing whatsoever.
- Are emotions purely the products of thinking? While this view may contain an element of truth, it is wildly exaggerated. Not only that, it entirely ignores physiological effects - such as hormones - on human emotions. There is also the fact that newborn babies experience emotions, yet clearly have little in the way of ideas. She even claims man’s thinking “determines his desires” – as if the desire for food was the product of rational cogitation. Once again, we look for her evidence in support of this theory and find nothing.
- Finally, is it possible for men to subject every aspect of their lives to the dominion of reason? Rand is simply confused. She advocates the “supremacy of reason”, whilst at the same time regarding it as a “tool” of knowledge. But no man can live for the sake of a hammer or a broom. She has muddled means and ends. Reason, being a mere tool, can never originate the desires it serves. At best it allows some method of adjudicating between our competing desires.
(Summary of "Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature" by Greg Nyquist, Chapter 1)
The Shorter ARCHN: Introduction
A series of handy short summaries of the main arguments of ARCHN for those unfamiliar with the book. For more detail, you can read ARCHN online here:
Introduction:
Despite Ayn Rand’s obvious importance both as a controversial polemicist and as an American cultural figure, her philosophy of Objectivism has largely escaped the scrutiny of a genuinely intelligent and penetrating criticism. While Objectivists ascribe this to the soundness and irrefutability of Rand’s ideas, in fact Rand was a surprisingly sloppy and maladroit thinker, some of whose most important doctrines are based on little more than a play on words. Even when her conclusions are correct, she is often right for the wrong reasons.
As a result, there is quite a bit of truth to Objectivism, but it is so inextricably mixed with falsehoods and errors that it is in many respects a compendium of half-truths. Nonetheless, despite her non sequiturs, over-generalisations, incompetent formulations, pseudo-empirical references, and other bunglings, she should still be regarded as an important, and even great thinker. Many far more famous philosophers made equally egregious errors.
Rand was a brilliant polemicist and ingenious sophist; hence while her takes on issues from the problem of abortion to the problem of universals often sounded persuasive, they often concealed numerous logical and empirical shortcomings. I believe that Rand is either wrong or confused about many of the central issues of philosophy. She is wrong about the nature of man, the role of philosophy in history, about the validity of induction, about the absolute objectivity of values, about the feasibility of laissez-faire capitalism, and about the nature of romanticism; and she is confused about philosophical idealism, consciousness, the relation between ideas and things, the psychology of altruism.
ARCHN sets out to criticize Rand from both an empirical and a logical point of view. While Objectivism officially adopts the view that all knowledge comes from experience, I will argue that in fact it operates in a highly rationalistic fashion, deliberately avoiding empirical reality and seeking to reduce the universe to a handful of rhetorical constructions.
(Summary of "Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature" by Greg Nyquist, Introduction)
Introduction:
Despite Ayn Rand’s obvious importance both as a controversial polemicist and as an American cultural figure, her philosophy of Objectivism has largely escaped the scrutiny of a genuinely intelligent and penetrating criticism. While Objectivists ascribe this to the soundness and irrefutability of Rand’s ideas, in fact Rand was a surprisingly sloppy and maladroit thinker, some of whose most important doctrines are based on little more than a play on words. Even when her conclusions are correct, she is often right for the wrong reasons.
As a result, there is quite a bit of truth to Objectivism, but it is so inextricably mixed with falsehoods and errors that it is in many respects a compendium of half-truths. Nonetheless, despite her non sequiturs, over-generalisations, incompetent formulations, pseudo-empirical references, and other bunglings, she should still be regarded as an important, and even great thinker. Many far more famous philosophers made equally egregious errors.
Rand was a brilliant polemicist and ingenious sophist; hence while her takes on issues from the problem of abortion to the problem of universals often sounded persuasive, they often concealed numerous logical and empirical shortcomings. I believe that Rand is either wrong or confused about many of the central issues of philosophy. She is wrong about the nature of man, the role of philosophy in history, about the validity of induction, about the absolute objectivity of values, about the feasibility of laissez-faire capitalism, and about the nature of romanticism; and she is confused about philosophical idealism, consciousness, the relation between ideas and things, the psychology of altruism.
ARCHN sets out to criticize Rand from both an empirical and a logical point of view. While Objectivism officially adopts the view that all knowledge comes from experience, I will argue that in fact it operates in a highly rationalistic fashion, deliberately avoiding empirical reality and seeking to reduce the universe to a handful of rhetorical constructions.
(Summary of "Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature" by Greg Nyquist, Introduction)
Saturday, May 12, 2007
ARCHN Quote of the Week 13/5/07
"For the most part, (Rand's) theory of essence is merely a justification for arbitrarily ignoring any characteristics found in reality that contradicted Rand's theories."
- Greg Nyquist, ARCHN p164
- Greg Nyquist, ARCHN p164
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Understanding Objectivist Jargon Pt 9: "Conceptual Common Denominator"
"Conceptual Common Denominator" = a similarity
The "Conceptual Common Denominator" or "CCD" is surely one of the wooliest terms in the vast sheep station of Objectivist jargon, and is central to Rand's much hyped theory of Concept Formation. However, shorn of its typical verbiage, it merely means something one object has in common with another, or a similarity.
The problem is, of course, that Rand's theory is supposed to solve the age-old problem of universals, or why different things are similar. Her answer appears to be because they have one or more "Conceptual Common Denominators" ie: similarities. So, in classic Randian style, her astonishing answer to the problem of why different things are similar, is...because they have similarities!
William Thomas of The Objectivist Centre is a brave man. Towards the end of this short summary of Rand's theory, he makes a rare effort to actually give some specific examples of Rand's "CCDs." I will leave it to readers to judge the level of profundity the application of Rand's insight to reality reveals.
Thomas:
"Appendix A:
The is a partial listing of some of the Conceptual Common Denominators Rand proposes (many of these are implicit in her presentations of definitions or distinguishing characteristics. Where I could not clearly determine to my satisfaction what the CCD might be, I have included the distinguishing characteristics Rand mentions." (sic)
(The page references are from the "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology")
The "Conceptual Common Denominator" or "CCD" is surely one of the wooliest terms in the vast sheep station of Objectivist jargon, and is central to Rand's much hyped theory of Concept Formation. However, shorn of its typical verbiage, it merely means something one object has in common with another, or a similarity.
The problem is, of course, that Rand's theory is supposed to solve the age-old problem of universals, or why different things are similar. Her answer appears to be because they have one or more "Conceptual Common Denominators" ie: similarities. So, in classic Randian style, her astonishing answer to the problem of why different things are similar, is...because they have similarities!
William Thomas of The Objectivist Centre is a brave man. Towards the end of this short summary of Rand's theory, he makes a rare effort to actually give some specific examples of Rand's "CCDs." I will leave it to readers to judge the level of profundity the application of Rand's insight to reality reveals.
Thomas:
"Appendix A:
The is a partial listing of some of the Conceptual Common Denominators Rand proposes (many of these are implicit in her presentations of definitions or distinguishing characteristics. Where I could not clearly determine to my satisfaction what the CCD might be, I have included the distinguishing characteristics Rand mentions." (sic)
(The page references are from the "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology")
Sunday, May 06, 2007
Conservatism's Role in Rand's Intellectual Development
Chris Sciabarra has tried to dredge up the Russian influence on Rand, but little has been done to illuminate the conservative influence. Although Rand was never a conservative, she was clearly influenced by certain notions about history, philosophy, and the role of ideas in society that were commonplace among conservatives in the thirties and forties.
In 1940, Rand campaigned for Wendel Wilkie. This episode in her career influenced what would later become her philosophy of history. Her frustration at trying to convince people to vote for Wilkie rather than Roosevelt convinced her of the futility of trying to reason with people. But rather than assuming that ideas and reason are impotent, Rand concluded that only political ideas were impotent, because such ideas depended on a metaphysical and epistemological foundation.
This theory that political ideas and receptivity to "reason" depended on the higher branches philosophy was fairly common among conservative thinkers in the 30s and 40s. The theory was largely inspired by a misreading of George Santayana, the most important and respected conservative philosopher of the 20th century. Santayana did not care much for modern philosophy, which he regarded as dismally subjectivist. The two main strands of modern philosophy, German Idealism and British Empiricism, both regarded consciousness (or the experience of consciousness) as the starting point and main focus of philosophical investigation—the only thing "given" in man's knowledge. Santayana considered this view not only mistaken, but foolish and conceited. He had studied philosophy at Harvard, Oxford, and in Germany in the closing decades of the 19th century, when German Idealism dominated Anglo-America and German philosophy. Santayana consequently devoted much of his philosophy to criticizing and ridiculing, with his usual detached irony, all manifestions and forms of German idealism. During World War I he published an essay entitled "German Freedom," which helped popularize the thesis that Hegel's political philosophy is essentially totalitarian at its core. "For liberal freedom, for individualism, [Hegel and his followers] have a great contempt," Santayana wrote. "They say a man is nothing but the sum of his relations to other things... And they further say that a dutiful soul is right in feeling that the world it accepts and cooperates with its own work; for, according to their metaphysics, the world is only his idea which each man makes after his own image, and even as you are, so is the world you imagine you live in. Only a foolish recalcitrant person, who does not recognize the handiwork of his own spirit about him, rebels against it, and thereby cancels his natural freedom; for everywhere he finds contradictions and closed doors and irksome necessities, being divided against himself and constantly bidding his left hand undo what his right is doing. So that, paradoxical as it may seem, it is only when you conform that you are free, while if you rebel and secede you become a slave. Your spiritual servitude in such a case would only be manifesting itself in phenomenal form if the government should put you in prison."
Conservatives during the 30s and 40s were not particularly sophisticated in their thinking, and so they interpreted Santayana's subtle and ironical essay on German freedom in simple cause and effect terms, as if Santayana were declaring that statism is caused by German metaphysics. Hence we find Albert Jay Nock, considered one of the leading conservative intellectuals of the thirties, declaring that Hitlerism, Bolshevism, and Fascism "are all essentially ... branches off the same tree planted by the German idealist philosophers." It is likely Rand was exposed to such notions during her involvement in the conservative movement during the forties. This idea that higher philosophy (namely, "German metaphysics") is the root cause of statism thus became embedded in her mind during her formative years. Later, she would twist this notion for her own purposes, until at last we find it springing forth in the title essay of For the New Intellectual.
In 1940, Rand campaigned for Wendel Wilkie. This episode in her career influenced what would later become her philosophy of history. Her frustration at trying to convince people to vote for Wilkie rather than Roosevelt convinced her of the futility of trying to reason with people. But rather than assuming that ideas and reason are impotent, Rand concluded that only political ideas were impotent, because such ideas depended on a metaphysical and epistemological foundation.
This theory that political ideas and receptivity to "reason" depended on the higher branches philosophy was fairly common among conservative thinkers in the 30s and 40s. The theory was largely inspired by a misreading of George Santayana, the most important and respected conservative philosopher of the 20th century. Santayana did not care much for modern philosophy, which he regarded as dismally subjectivist. The two main strands of modern philosophy, German Idealism and British Empiricism, both regarded consciousness (or the experience of consciousness) as the starting point and main focus of philosophical investigation—the only thing "given" in man's knowledge. Santayana considered this view not only mistaken, but foolish and conceited. He had studied philosophy at Harvard, Oxford, and in Germany in the closing decades of the 19th century, when German Idealism dominated Anglo-America and German philosophy. Santayana consequently devoted much of his philosophy to criticizing and ridiculing, with his usual detached irony, all manifestions and forms of German idealism. During World War I he published an essay entitled "German Freedom," which helped popularize the thesis that Hegel's political philosophy is essentially totalitarian at its core. "For liberal freedom, for individualism, [Hegel and his followers] have a great contempt," Santayana wrote. "They say a man is nothing but the sum of his relations to other things... And they further say that a dutiful soul is right in feeling that the world it accepts and cooperates with its own work; for, according to their metaphysics, the world is only his idea which each man makes after his own image, and even as you are, so is the world you imagine you live in. Only a foolish recalcitrant person, who does not recognize the handiwork of his own spirit about him, rebels against it, and thereby cancels his natural freedom; for everywhere he finds contradictions and closed doors and irksome necessities, being divided against himself and constantly bidding his left hand undo what his right is doing. So that, paradoxical as it may seem, it is only when you conform that you are free, while if you rebel and secede you become a slave. Your spiritual servitude in such a case would only be manifesting itself in phenomenal form if the government should put you in prison."
Conservatives during the 30s and 40s were not particularly sophisticated in their thinking, and so they interpreted Santayana's subtle and ironical essay on German freedom in simple cause and effect terms, as if Santayana were declaring that statism is caused by German metaphysics. Hence we find Albert Jay Nock, considered one of the leading conservative intellectuals of the thirties, declaring that Hitlerism, Bolshevism, and Fascism "are all essentially ... branches off the same tree planted by the German idealist philosophers." It is likely Rand was exposed to such notions during her involvement in the conservative movement during the forties. This idea that higher philosophy (namely, "German metaphysics") is the root cause of statism thus became embedded in her mind during her formative years. Later, she would twist this notion for her own purposes, until at last we find it springing forth in the title essay of For the New Intellectual.
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Aristotle's "Secret Revolt" Against Reason
"...every discipline, as long as it used the Aristotelian method of definition, has remained arrested in a state of empty verbiage and barren scholasticism...." - Karl Popper
In her effort to rebuild philosophy anew, free from the influence of the modern post Kantian philosophy she despised, Ayn Rand chose to rehabilitate Aristotle's original methodology as the basic OS on which she was to run her shiny new Objectivism software. Aristotle, with his fundamental role in formalising logic, plus his interest in the natural world, must have seemed like the ideal partner for her ambition of healing the breach between empiricism and rationalism which had first been opened by the skeptical enquiry of David Hume.
Unfortunately, Rand's decision turned out to be what I conjecture to be her most profound mistake. Rand did not realise how deeply Aristotle's method was already a part of her hated modern philosophy; how, with its emphasis on definitions and "true" meanings(what Rand called "checking your premises"), it diverted debates over real problems into fruitless arguments over mere words; arguments, as it turns out, that cannot be logically resolved. It matters not a whit whether Rand applied Aristotle's essentialism at the "epistemological" level rather than the "metaphysical" level - the logical issues are the same.
The result is that her philosophy has followed the same path as those who also adopted the Aristotelian method lock stock and barrel; into unproductive scholasticism, full of sterile schisms and, despite unprecedented levels of publicity for a philosopher, a startling lack of intellectual, aesthetic, or political progression. In true scholastic fashion, this lack of progress stands in inverse proportion to the huge amount of sheer verbiage Objectivism generates. It can produce any number of works allegedly defining art - "What Art Is" - yet despite all this huffing and puffing over preliminaries, can't seem to produce much in the way of actual art. It will spend countless hours discoursing on the vital importance of epistemology to the survival of the human race; but, in 40 years, has not gone any further in developing it than Ayn Rand's "Introduction." As Karl Popper puts it, it leads to "always sharpening one's pencil, and never writing anything." Such are the hidden consequences of the Aristotelian method.
The inescapable logical problems with Aristotle's definition-based methodology, and its subtly deleterious influence, are not widely discussed in general philosophical circles, and are almost completely unknown in Objectivism. Given what I view as its importance, to philosophy in general and Objectivism in particular, I present the most simple and thorough criticism of this silently destructive methodology that I know of: Karl Popper's "Two Kinds of Definition" (adapted from Chapter 11 of his brilliant "The Open Society and Its Enemies"). Enjoy.
(Warning: Long post. And don't let its length let you miss Greg's recent interesting discussion of the basic differences between Rand and Nietzsche below)
TWO KINDS OF DEFINITION
By Karl Popper
"The chief danger to our philosophy, apart from laziness and woolliness, is scholasticism, . . . which is treating what is vague as if it were precise...." - F. P. Ramsey
The problem of definitions and of the 'meaning of terms' is the most important source of Aristotle's regrettably still prevailing intellectual influence, of all that verbal and empty scholasticism that haunts not only the Middle Ages, but our own contemporary philosophy; for even a philosophy as recent as that of L. Wittgenstein suffers, as we shall see, from this influence. The development of thought since Aristotle could, I think, be summed up by saying that every discipline, as long as it used the Aristotelian method of definition, has remained arrested in a state of empty verbiage and barren scholasticism, and that the degree to which the various sciences have been able to make any progress depended on the degree to which they have been able to get rid of this essentialist method. (This is why so much of our 'social science' still belongs to the Middle Ages.) The discussion of this method will have to be a little abstract, owing to the fact that the problem has been so thoroughly muddled by Plato and Aristotle, whose influence has given rise to such deep-rooted prejudices that the prospect of dispelling them does not seem very bright. In spite of all that, it is perhaps not without interest to analyse the source of so much confusion and verbiage.
Aristotle followed Plato in distinguishing between knowledge and opinion. Knowledge, or science, according to Aristotle, may be of two kinds - either demonstrative or intuitive. Demonstrative knowledge is also a knowledge of 'causes'. It consists of statements that can be demonstrated - the conclusions - together with their syllogistic demonstrations (which exhibit the 'causes' in their 'middle terms'). Intuitive knowledge consists in grasping the 'indivisible form' or essence or essential nature of a thing (if it is 'immediate', i.e. if its 'cause' is identical with its essential nature); it is the originative source of all science since it grasps the original basic premisses of all demonstrations.
Undoubtedly, Aristotle was right when he insisted that we must not attempt to prove or demonstrate all our knowledge. Every proof must proceed from premisses; the proof as such, that is to say, the derivation from the premisses, can therefore never finally settle the truth of any conclusion, but only show that the conclusion must be true provided the premisses are true . If we were to demand that the premisses should be proved in their turn, the question of truth would only be shifted back by another step to a new set of premisses, and so on, to infinity. It was in order to avoid such an infinite regress (as the logicians say) that Aristotle taught that we must assume that there are premisses which are indubitably true, and which do not need any proof; and these he called 'basic premisses'. If we take for granted the methods by which we derive conclusions from these basic premisses, then we could say that, according to Aristotle, the whole of scientific knowledge is contained in the basic premisses, and that it would all be ours if only we could obtain an encyclopaedic list of the basic premisses. But how to obtain these basic premisses? Like Plato, Aristotle believed that we obtain all knowledge ultimately by an intuitive grasp of the essences of things. 'We can know a thing only by knowing its essence', Aristotle writes, and 'to know a thing is to know its essence'. A 'basic premiss' is, according to him, nothing but a statement describing the essence of a thing. But such a statement is just what he calls a definition. Thus all 'basic premisses of proofs' are definitions.
What does a definition look like? An example of a definition would be: 'A puppy is a young dog.' The subject of such a definition sentence, the term 'puppy', is called the term to be defined (or defined term); the words 'young dog' are called the defining formula. As a rule, the defining formula is longer and more complicated than the defined term, and sometimes very much so. Aristotle considers the term to be defined as a name of the essence Of a thing, and the defining formula as the description of that essence. And he insists that the defining formula must give an exhaustive description of the essence or the essential properties of the thing in question; thus a statement like 'A puppy has four legs', although true, is not a satisfactory definition, since it does not exhaust what may be called the essence of puppiness, but holds true of a horse also; and similarly the statement 'A puppy is brown', although it may be true of some, is not true of all puppies; and it describes what is not an essential but merely an accidental property of the defined term.
But the most difficult question is how we can get hold of definitions or basic premisses, and make sure that they are correct - that we have not erred, not grasped the wrong essence. Although Aristotle is not very clear on this point, there can be little doubt that, in the main, he again follows Plato. Plato taught that we can grasp the Ideas with the help of some kind of unerring intellectual intuition; that is to say, we visualise or look at them with our 'mental eye', a process which he conceived as analogous to seeing, but dependent purely upon our intellect, and excluding any element that depends upon our senses. Aristotle's view is less radical and less inspired than Plato's, but in the end it amounts to the same. For although he teaches that we arrive at the definition only after we have made many observations, he admits that sense experience does not in itself grasp the universal essence, and that it cannot, therefore, fully determine a definition. Eventually he simply postulates that we possess an intellectual intuition, a mental or intellectual faculty which enables us unerringly to grasp the essences of things, and to know them. And he further assumes that if we know an essence intuitively, we must be capable of describing it and therefore of defining it. (His arguments in the Posterior Analytics in favour of this theory are surprisingly weak. They consist merely in pointing out that our knowledge of the basic premisses cannot be demonstrative, since this would lead to an infinite regress, and that the basic premisses must be at least as true and as certain as the conclusions based upon them. 'It follows from this', he writes, 'that there cannot be demonstrative knowledge of the primary premisses; and since nothing but intellectual intuition can be more true than demonstrative knowledge, it follows that it must be intellectual intuition that grasps the basic premisses.' In the De Anima, and in the theological part of the Metaphysics, we find more of an argument; for here we have a theory of intellectual intuition - that it comes into contact with its object, the essence, and that it even becomes one with its object. 'Actual knowledge is identical with its object.')
Summing up this brief analysis, we can give, I believe, a fair description of the Aristotelian ideal of perfect and complete knowledge if we say that he saw the ultimate aim of all inquiry in the compilation of an encyclopaedia containing the intuitive definitions of all essences, that is to say, their names together with their defining formulae; and that he considered the progress of knowledge as consisting in the gradual accumulation of such an encyclopaedia, in expanding it as well as in filling up the gaps in it and, of course, in the syllogistic derivation from it of 'the whole body of facts' which constitute demonstrative knowledge.
Now there can be little doubt that all these essentialist views stand in the strongest possible contrast to the methods of modern science. (I have the empirical sciences in mind, not perhaps pure mathematics.) First, although in science we do our best to find the truth, we are conscious of the fact that we can never be sure whether we have got it. We have learnt in the past, from many disappointments, that we must not expect finality. And we have learnt not to be disappointed any longer if our scientific theories are overthrown; for we can, in most cases, determine with great confidence which of any two theories is the better one. We can therefore know that we are making progress; and it is this knowledge that to most of us atones for the loss of the illusion of finality and certainty. In other words, we know that our scientific theories must always remain hypotheses, but that, in many important cases, we can find out whether or not a new hypothesis is superior to an old one. For if they are different, then they will lead to different predictions, which can often be tested experimentally; and on the basis of such a crucial experiment, we can sometimes find out that the new theory leads to satisfactory results where the old one breaks down. Thus we can say that in our search for truth, we have replaced scientific certainty by scientific progress. And this view of scientific method is corroborated by the development of science. For science does not develop by a gradual encyclopaedic accumulation of essential information, as Aristotle thought) but by a much more revolutionary method; it progresses by bold ideas, by the advancement of new and very strange theories (such as the theory that the earth is not flat, or that 'metrical space' is not flat), and by the overthrow of the old ones.
But this view of scientific method means that in science there is no 'knowledge', in the sense in which Plato and Aristotle understood the word, in the sense which implies finality; in science, we never have sufficient reason for the belief that we have attained the truth. What we usually call 'scientific knowledge' is, as a rule, not knowledge in this sense, but rather information regarding the various competing hypotheses and the way in which they have stood up to various tests; it is, using the language of Plato and Aristotle, information concerning the latest, and the best tested, scientific 'opinion'. This view means, furthermore, that we have no proofs in science (excepting, of course, pure mathematics and logic). In the empirical sciences, which alone can furnish us with information about the world we live in, proofs do not occur, if we mean by 'proof' an argument which establishes once and for ever the truth of a theory. (What may occur, however, are refutations of scientific theories.) On the other hand, pure mathematics and logic, which permit of proofs, give us no information about the world, but only develop the means of describing it. Thus we could say (as I have pointed out elsewhere ): 'In so far as a scientific statement speaks about reality, it must be falsifiable; and in so far as it is not falsifiable, it does not speak about reality.' But although proof does not play any part in the empirical sciences, argument still does; indeed, its part is at least as important as that played by observation and experiment.
The role of definitions in science, especially, is also very different from what Aristotle had in mind. Aristotle taught that in a definition we have first pointed to the essence - perhaps by naming it - and that we then describe it with the help of the defining formula; just as in an ordinary sentence like 'This puppy is brown', we first point to a certain thing by saying 'this puppy', and then describe it as 'brown'. And he taught that by thus describing the essence to which the term points which is to be defined, we determine or explain the meaning of the term also.
Accordingly, the definition may at one time answer two very closely related questions. The one is 'What is it?', for example 'What is a puppy?'; it asks what the essence is which is denoted by the defined term. The other is 'What does it mean?', for example, 'What does "puppy" mean?'; it asks for the meaning of a term (namely, of the term that denotes the essence). In the present context, it is not necessary to distinguish between these two questions; rather, it is important to see what they have in common; and I wish, especially, to draw attention to the fact that both questions are raised by the term that stands, in the definition, on the left side and answered by the defining formula which stands on the right side. This fact characterizes the essentialist view, from which the scientific method of definition radically differs.
While we may say that the essentialist interpretation reads a definition 'normally', that is to say, from the left to the right, we can say that a definition, as it is normally used in modern science, must be read back to front, or from the right to the left; for it starts with the defining formula, and asks for a short label for it. Thus the scientific view of the definition 'A puppy is a young dog' would be that it is an answer to the question 'What shall we call a young dog?' rather than an answer to the question 'What is a puppy?' (Questions like 'What is life?' or 'What is gravity?' do not play any role in science.) The scientific use of definitions, characterized by the approach 'from the right to the left', may be called its nominalist interpretation, as opposed to its Aristotelian or essentialist interpretation. In modern science, only nominalist definitions occur, that is to say, shorthand symbols or labels are introduced in order to cut a long story short. And we can at once see from this that definitions do not play any very important part in science. For shorthand symbols can always, of course, be replaced by the longer expressions, the defining formulae, for which they stand. In some cases this would make our scientific language very cumbersome; we should waste time and paper. But we should never lose the slightest piece of factual information. Our 'scientific knowledge', in the sense in which this term may be properly used, remains entirely unaffected if we eliminate all definitions; the only effect is upon our language, which would lose, not precision, but merely brevity. (This must not be taken to mean that in science there cannot be an urgent practical need for introducing definitions, for brevity's sake.) There could hardly be a greater contrast than that between this view of the part played by definitions, and Aristotle's view. For Aristotle's essentialist definitions are the principles from which all our knowledge is derived; they thus contain all our knowledge; and they serve to substitute a long formula for a short one. As opposed to this, the scientific or nominalist definitions do not contain any knowledge whatever, not even any 'opinion'; they do nothing but introduce new arbitrary shorthand labels; they cut a long story short.
In practice, these labels are of the greatest usefulness. In order to see this, we only need to consider the extreme difficulties that would arise if a bacteriologist, whenever he spoke of a certain strain of bacteria, had to repeat its whole description (including the methods of dyeing, etc., by which it is distinguished from a number of similar species). And we may also understand, by a similar consideration, why it has so often been forgotten, even by scientists, that scientific definitions must be read 'from the right to the left', as explained above. For most people, when first studying a science, say bacteriology, must try to find out the meanings of all these new technical terms with which they are faced. In this way, they really learn the definition 'from the left to the right', substituting, as if it were an essentialist definition, a very long story for a very short one. But this is merely a psychological accident, and a teacher or writer of a textbook may indeed proceed quite differently; that is to say, he may introduce a technical term only after the need for it has arisen.
So far I have tried to show that the scientific or nominalist use of definitions is entirely different from Aristotle's essentialist method of definitions. But it can also be shown that the essentialist view of definitions is simply untenable in itself. In order not to prolong this discussion unduly, I shall criticize two only of the essentialist doctrines; two doctrines which are of significance because some influential modern schools are still based upon them. One is the esoteric doctrine of intellectual intuition, and the other the very popular doctrine that 'we must define our terms', if we wish to be precise.
Aristotle held with Plato that we possess a faculty, intellectual intuition) by which we can visualize essences and find out which definition is the correct one, and many modern essentialists have repeated this doctrine. Other philosophers, following Kant, maintain that we do not possess anything of the sort. My opinion is that we can readily admit that we possess something which may be described as 'intellectual intuition'; or more precisely, that certain of our intellectual experiences may be thus described Everybody who 'understands' an idea, or a point of view, or an arithmetical method, for instance, multiplication, in the sense that he has 'got the feel of it', might be said to understand that thing intuitively; and there are countless intellectual experiences of that kind. But I would insist, on the other hand, that these experiences, important as they may be for our scientific endeavours, can never serve to establish the truth of any idea or theory, however strongly somebody may feel, intuitively, that it must be true, or that it is 'self-evident'." Such intuitions cannot even serve as an argument, although they may encourage us to look for arguments. For somebody else may have just as strong an intuition that the same theory is false. The way of science is paved with discarded theories which were once declared self-evident; Francis Bacon, for example, sneered at those who denied the self-evident truth that the sun and the stars rotated round the earth, which was obviously at rest. Intuition undoubtedly plays a great part in the life of a scientist, just as it does in the life of a poet. It leads him to his discoveries. But it may also lead him to his failures. And it always remains his private affair, as it were. Science does not ask how he has got his ideas, it is only interested in arguments that can be tested by everybody. The great mathematician, Gauss, described this situation very neatly once when he exclaimed: 'I have got my result; but I do not know yet how to get it.' All this applies, of course, to Aristotle's doctrine of intellectual intuition of so-called essences, which was propagated by Hegel and in our own time by E. Husserl and his numerous pupils; and it indicates that the 'intellectual intuition of essences' or 'pure phenomenology', as Husserl calls it, is a method of neither science nor philosophy . (The much debated question whether it is a new invention, as the pure phenomenologists think, or perhaps a version of Cartesianism or Hegelianism, can be easily decided; it is a version of Aristotelianism.)
The second doctrine to be criticized has even more important connections with modern views; and it bears especially upon the problem of verbalism. Since Aristotle, it has become widely known that one cannot prove all statements, and that an attempt to do so would break down because it would lead only to an infinite regression of proofs. But neither he nor, apparently, a great many modern writers seems to realize that the analogous attempt to define the meaning of all our terms must, in the same way, lead to an infinite regression of definitions. The following passage from Crossman's Plato To-day is characteristic of a view which by implication is held by many contemporary philosophers of repute, for example, by Wittgenstein: '. . . if we do not know precisely the meaning of the words we use, we cannot discuss anything profitably. Most of the futile arguments on which we all waste time are largely due to the fact that we each have our own vague meaning for the words we use and assume that our opponents are using them in the same sense. If we defined our terms to start with, we could have far more profitable discussions. Again, we have only to read the daily papers to observe that propaganda (the modern counterpart of rhetoric) depends largely for its success on confusing the meaning of the terms. If politicians were compelled by law to define any term they wished to use, they would lose most of their popular appeal, their speeches would be shorter, and many of their disagreements would be found to be purely verbal.' This passage is very characteristic of one of the prejudices which we owe to Aristotle, of the prejudice that language can be made more precise by the use of definitions. Let us consider whether this can really be done.
First, we can see clearly that if 'politicians' (or anybody else) 'were compelled by law to define any term they wished to use', their speeches would not be shorter, but infinitely long. For a definition cannot establish the meaning of a term any more than a logical derivation can establish the truth of a statement; both can only shift this problem back. The derivation shifts the problem of truth back to the premises, the definition shifts the problem of meaning back to the defining terms (i.e., the terms that make up the defining formula). 14 But these, for many reasons, are likely to be just as vague and confusing as the terms we started with; and in any case, we should have to go on to define them in turn; which leads to new terms which too must be defined. And so on, to infinity. One sees that the demand that all our terms should be defined is just as untenable as the demand that all our statements should be proved.
At first sight this criticism may seem unfair. It may be said that what people have in mind, if they demand definitions, is the elimination of the ambiguities so often connected with words such as 'democracy', 'liberty', 'duty', 'religion', etc.; that it is clearly impossible to define all our terms, but possible to define some of these more dangerous terms and to leave it at that; and that the defining terms have just to be accepted, i.e., that we must stop after a step or two in order to avoid an infinite regression. This defence, however, is untenable. Admittedly, the terms mentioned are much misused. But I deny that the attempt to define them can improve matters. It can only make matters worse. That by 'defining their terms' even once, and leaving the defining terms undefined, the politicians would not be able to make their speeches shorter, is clear; for any essentialist definition, i.e. one that 'defines our terms' (as opposed to the nominalist one which introduces new technical terms), means the substitution of a long story for a short one, as we have seen. Besides, the attempt to define terms would only increase the vagueness and confusion. For since we cannot demand that all the defining terms should be defined in their turn, a clever politician or philosopher could easily satisfy the demand for definitions. If asked what he means by 'democracy', for example, he could say 'the rule of the general will' or 'the rule of the spirit of the people'; and since he has now given a definition, and so satisfied the highest standards of precision, nobody will dare to criticize him any longer. And, indeed, how could he be criticized, since the demand that 'rule' or 'people' or 'will' or 'spirit' should be defined in their turn, puts us well on the way to an infinite regression so that everybody would hesitate to raise it? But should it be raised in spite of all that, then it can be equally easily satisfied. On the other hand, a quarrel about the question whether the definition was correct, or true, can only lead to an empty controversy about words.
Thus the essentialist view of definition breaks down, even if it does not, with Aristotle, attempt to establish the 'principles' of our knowledge, but only makes the apparently more modest demand that we should 'define the meaning of our terms'.
But undoubtedly, the demand that we speak clearly and without ambiguity is very important, and must be satisfied. Can the nominalist view satisfy it? And can nominalism escape the infinite regression?
It can. For the nominalist position there is no difficulty which corresponds to the infinite regression. As we have seen, science does not use definitions in order to determine the meaning of its terms, but only in order to introduce handy shorthand labels. And it does not depend on definitions; all definitions can be omitted without loss to the information imparted. It follows from this that in science, all the terms that are really needed must be undefined terms. How then do the sciences make sure of the meanings of their terms? Various replies to this question have been suggested, but I do not think that any of them is satisfactory. The situation seems to be this. Aristotelianism and related philosophies have told us for such a long time how important it is to get a precise knowledge of the meaning of our terms that we are all inclined to believe it. And we continue to cling to this creed in spite of the unquestionable fact that philosophy, which for twenty centuries has worried about the meaning of its terms, is not only full of verbalism but also appallingly vague and ambiguous, while a science like physics which worries hardly at all about terms and their meaning, but about facts instead, has achieved great precision. This, surely, should be taken as indicating that, under Aristotelian influence, the importance of the meaning of terms has been grossly exaggerated. But I think that it indicates even more. For not only does this concentration on the problem of meaning fail to establish precision; it is itself the main source of vagueness, ambiguity, and confusion.
In science, we take care that the statements we make should never depend upon the meaning of our terms. Even where the terms are defined, we never try to derive any information from the definition, or to base any argument upon it. This is why our terms make so little trouble. We do not overburden them. We try to attach to them as little weight as possible. We do not take their 'meaning' too seriously. We are always conscious that our terms are a little vague (since we have learnt to use them only in practical applications) and we reach precision not by reducing their penumbra of vagueness, but rather by keeping well within it, by carefully phrasing our sentences in such a way that the possible shades of meaning of our terms do not matter. This is how we avoid quarrelling about words.
The view that the precision of science and of scientific language depends upon the precision of its terms is certainly very plausible, but it is none the less, I believe, a mere prejudice. The precision of a language depends, rather, just upon the fact that it takes care not to burden its terms with the task of being precise. A term like 'sand-dune' or 'wind' is certainly very vague. (How many inches high must a little sand-hill be in order to be called 'sand-dune'? How quickly must the air move in order to be called 'wind'?) However, for many of the geologist's purposes, these terms are quite sufficiently precise; and for other purposes, when a higher degree of differentiation is needed, he can always say 'dunes between 4 and 30 feet high' or 'wind of a velocity of between 20 and 40 miles an hour'. And the position in the more exact sciences is analogous. In physical measurements, for instance, we always take care to consider the range within which there may be an error; and precision does not consist in trying to reduce this range to nothing, or in pretending that there is no such range, but rather in its explicit recognition.
Even where a term has made trouble, as for instance the term 'simultaneity' in physics, it was not because its meaning was imprecise or ambiguous, but rather because of some intuitive theory which induced us to burden the term with too much meaning, or with too 'precise' a meaning, rather than with too little. What Einstein found in his analysis of simultaneity was that, when speaking of simultaneous events, physicists made a false assumption which would have been unchallengeable were there signals of infinite velocity. The fault was not that they did not mean anything, or that their meaning was ambiguous, or the term not precise enough; what Einstein found was, rather, that the elimination of a theoretical assumption, unnoticed so far because of its intuitive self-evidence, was able to remove a difficulty which had arisen in science. Accordingly, he was not really concerned with a question of the meaning of a term, but rather with the truth of a theory. It is very unlikely that it would have led to much if someone had started, apart from a definite physical problem, to improve the concept of simultaneity by analysing its 'essential] meaning', or even by analysing what physicists 'really mean' when they speak of simultaneity.
I think we can learn from this example that we should not attempt to cross our bridges before we come to them. And I also think that the preoccupation with questions concerning the meaning of terms, such as their vagueness or their ambiguity, can certainly not be justified by an appeal to Einstein's example. Such a preoccupation rests, rather, on the assumption that much depends upon the meaning of our terms, and that we operate with this meaning; and therefore it must lead to verbalism and scholasticism. From this point of view, we may criticize a doctrine like that of Wittgenstein, who holds that while science investigates matters of fact, it is the business of philosophy to clarify the meaning of terms, thereby purging our language, and eliminating linguistic puzzles. It is characteristic of the views of this school that they do not lead to any chain of argument that could be rationally criticized; the school therefore addresses its subtle analyses exclusively to the small esoteric circle of the initiated. This seems to suggest that any preoccupation with meaning tends to lead to that result which is so typical of Aristotelianism: scholasticism and mysticism.
Let us consider briefly how these two typical results of Aristotelianism have arisen. Aristotle insisted that demonstration or proof, and definition, are the two fundamental methods of obtaining knowledge. Considering the doctrine of proof first, it cannot be denied that it has led to countless attempts to prove more than can be proved; medieval philosophy is full of this scholasticism and the same tendency can be observed, on the Continent, down to Kant. It was Kant's criticism of all attempts to prove the existence of God which led to the romantic reaction of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. The new tendency is to discard proofs, and with them, any kind of rational argument. With the romantics, a new kind of dogmatism becomes fashionable, in philosophy as well as in the social sciences. It confronts us with its dictum. And we can take it or leave it. This romantic period of an oracular philosophy, called by Schopenhauer the 'age of dishonesty', is described by him as follows: 'The character of honesty that spirit of undertaking an inquiry together with the reader, which permeates the works of all Previous philosophers, disappears here completely. Every page witnesses that these so-called philosophers do not attempt to teach, but to bewitch the reader.'
A similar result was produced by Aristotle's doctrine of definition. First it led to a good deal of hairsplitting. But later, philosophers began to feel that one cannot argue about definitions. In this way, essentialism not only encouraged verbalism, but it also led to the disillusionment with argument, that is, with reason. Scholasticism and mysticism and despair in reason, these are the unavoidable results of the essentialism of Plato and Aristotle. And Plato's open revolt against freedom becomes, with Aristotle, a secret revolt against reason.
As we know from Aristotle himself, essentialism and the theory of definition met with strong opposition when they were first proposed, especially from Socrates's old companion Antisthenes, whose criticism seems to have been most sensible. But this opposition was unfortunately defeated. The consequences of this defeat for the intellectual development of mankind can hardly be overrated.
- Karl Popper, 1945
In her effort to rebuild philosophy anew, free from the influence of the modern post Kantian philosophy she despised, Ayn Rand chose to rehabilitate Aristotle's original methodology as the basic OS on which she was to run her shiny new Objectivism software. Aristotle, with his fundamental role in formalising logic, plus his interest in the natural world, must have seemed like the ideal partner for her ambition of healing the breach between empiricism and rationalism which had first been opened by the skeptical enquiry of David Hume.
Unfortunately, Rand's decision turned out to be what I conjecture to be her most profound mistake. Rand did not realise how deeply Aristotle's method was already a part of her hated modern philosophy; how, with its emphasis on definitions and "true" meanings(what Rand called "checking your premises"), it diverted debates over real problems into fruitless arguments over mere words; arguments, as it turns out, that cannot be logically resolved. It matters not a whit whether Rand applied Aristotle's essentialism at the "epistemological" level rather than the "metaphysical" level - the logical issues are the same.
The result is that her philosophy has followed the same path as those who also adopted the Aristotelian method lock stock and barrel; into unproductive scholasticism, full of sterile schisms and, despite unprecedented levels of publicity for a philosopher, a startling lack of intellectual, aesthetic, or political progression. In true scholastic fashion, this lack of progress stands in inverse proportion to the huge amount of sheer verbiage Objectivism generates. It can produce any number of works allegedly defining art - "What Art Is" - yet despite all this huffing and puffing over preliminaries, can't seem to produce much in the way of actual art. It will spend countless hours discoursing on the vital importance of epistemology to the survival of the human race; but, in 40 years, has not gone any further in developing it than Ayn Rand's "Introduction." As Karl Popper puts it, it leads to "always sharpening one's pencil, and never writing anything." Such are the hidden consequences of the Aristotelian method.
The inescapable logical problems with Aristotle's definition-based methodology, and its subtly deleterious influence, are not widely discussed in general philosophical circles, and are almost completely unknown in Objectivism. Given what I view as its importance, to philosophy in general and Objectivism in particular, I present the most simple and thorough criticism of this silently destructive methodology that I know of: Karl Popper's "Two Kinds of Definition" (adapted from Chapter 11 of his brilliant "The Open Society and Its Enemies"). Enjoy.
(Warning: Long post. And don't let its length let you miss Greg's recent interesting discussion of the basic differences between Rand and Nietzsche below)
TWO KINDS OF DEFINITION
By Karl Popper
"The chief danger to our philosophy, apart from laziness and woolliness, is scholasticism, . . . which is treating what is vague as if it were precise...." - F. P. Ramsey
The problem of definitions and of the 'meaning of terms' is the most important source of Aristotle's regrettably still prevailing intellectual influence, of all that verbal and empty scholasticism that haunts not only the Middle Ages, but our own contemporary philosophy; for even a philosophy as recent as that of L. Wittgenstein suffers, as we shall see, from this influence. The development of thought since Aristotle could, I think, be summed up by saying that every discipline, as long as it used the Aristotelian method of definition, has remained arrested in a state of empty verbiage and barren scholasticism, and that the degree to which the various sciences have been able to make any progress depended on the degree to which they have been able to get rid of this essentialist method. (This is why so much of our 'social science' still belongs to the Middle Ages.) The discussion of this method will have to be a little abstract, owing to the fact that the problem has been so thoroughly muddled by Plato and Aristotle, whose influence has given rise to such deep-rooted prejudices that the prospect of dispelling them does not seem very bright. In spite of all that, it is perhaps not without interest to analyse the source of so much confusion and verbiage.
Aristotle followed Plato in distinguishing between knowledge and opinion. Knowledge, or science, according to Aristotle, may be of two kinds - either demonstrative or intuitive. Demonstrative knowledge is also a knowledge of 'causes'. It consists of statements that can be demonstrated - the conclusions - together with their syllogistic demonstrations (which exhibit the 'causes' in their 'middle terms'). Intuitive knowledge consists in grasping the 'indivisible form' or essence or essential nature of a thing (if it is 'immediate', i.e. if its 'cause' is identical with its essential nature); it is the originative source of all science since it grasps the original basic premisses of all demonstrations.
Undoubtedly, Aristotle was right when he insisted that we must not attempt to prove or demonstrate all our knowledge. Every proof must proceed from premisses; the proof as such, that is to say, the derivation from the premisses, can therefore never finally settle the truth of any conclusion, but only show that the conclusion must be true provided the premisses are true . If we were to demand that the premisses should be proved in their turn, the question of truth would only be shifted back by another step to a new set of premisses, and so on, to infinity. It was in order to avoid such an infinite regress (as the logicians say) that Aristotle taught that we must assume that there are premisses which are indubitably true, and which do not need any proof; and these he called 'basic premisses'. If we take for granted the methods by which we derive conclusions from these basic premisses, then we could say that, according to Aristotle, the whole of scientific knowledge is contained in the basic premisses, and that it would all be ours if only we could obtain an encyclopaedic list of the basic premisses. But how to obtain these basic premisses? Like Plato, Aristotle believed that we obtain all knowledge ultimately by an intuitive grasp of the essences of things. 'We can know a thing only by knowing its essence', Aristotle writes, and 'to know a thing is to know its essence'. A 'basic premiss' is, according to him, nothing but a statement describing the essence of a thing. But such a statement is just what he calls a definition. Thus all 'basic premisses of proofs' are definitions.
What does a definition look like? An example of a definition would be: 'A puppy is a young dog.' The subject of such a definition sentence, the term 'puppy', is called the term to be defined (or defined term); the words 'young dog' are called the defining formula. As a rule, the defining formula is longer and more complicated than the defined term, and sometimes very much so. Aristotle considers the term to be defined as a name of the essence Of a thing, and the defining formula as the description of that essence. And he insists that the defining formula must give an exhaustive description of the essence or the essential properties of the thing in question; thus a statement like 'A puppy has four legs', although true, is not a satisfactory definition, since it does not exhaust what may be called the essence of puppiness, but holds true of a horse also; and similarly the statement 'A puppy is brown', although it may be true of some, is not true of all puppies; and it describes what is not an essential but merely an accidental property of the defined term.
But the most difficult question is how we can get hold of definitions or basic premisses, and make sure that they are correct - that we have not erred, not grasped the wrong essence. Although Aristotle is not very clear on this point, there can be little doubt that, in the main, he again follows Plato. Plato taught that we can grasp the Ideas with the help of some kind of unerring intellectual intuition; that is to say, we visualise or look at them with our 'mental eye', a process which he conceived as analogous to seeing, but dependent purely upon our intellect, and excluding any element that depends upon our senses. Aristotle's view is less radical and less inspired than Plato's, but in the end it amounts to the same. For although he teaches that we arrive at the definition only after we have made many observations, he admits that sense experience does not in itself grasp the universal essence, and that it cannot, therefore, fully determine a definition. Eventually he simply postulates that we possess an intellectual intuition, a mental or intellectual faculty which enables us unerringly to grasp the essences of things, and to know them. And he further assumes that if we know an essence intuitively, we must be capable of describing it and therefore of defining it. (His arguments in the Posterior Analytics in favour of this theory are surprisingly weak. They consist merely in pointing out that our knowledge of the basic premisses cannot be demonstrative, since this would lead to an infinite regress, and that the basic premisses must be at least as true and as certain as the conclusions based upon them. 'It follows from this', he writes, 'that there cannot be demonstrative knowledge of the primary premisses; and since nothing but intellectual intuition can be more true than demonstrative knowledge, it follows that it must be intellectual intuition that grasps the basic premisses.' In the De Anima, and in the theological part of the Metaphysics, we find more of an argument; for here we have a theory of intellectual intuition - that it comes into contact with its object, the essence, and that it even becomes one with its object. 'Actual knowledge is identical with its object.')
Summing up this brief analysis, we can give, I believe, a fair description of the Aristotelian ideal of perfect and complete knowledge if we say that he saw the ultimate aim of all inquiry in the compilation of an encyclopaedia containing the intuitive definitions of all essences, that is to say, their names together with their defining formulae; and that he considered the progress of knowledge as consisting in the gradual accumulation of such an encyclopaedia, in expanding it as well as in filling up the gaps in it and, of course, in the syllogistic derivation from it of 'the whole body of facts' which constitute demonstrative knowledge.
Now there can be little doubt that all these essentialist views stand in the strongest possible contrast to the methods of modern science. (I have the empirical sciences in mind, not perhaps pure mathematics.) First, although in science we do our best to find the truth, we are conscious of the fact that we can never be sure whether we have got it. We have learnt in the past, from many disappointments, that we must not expect finality. And we have learnt not to be disappointed any longer if our scientific theories are overthrown; for we can, in most cases, determine with great confidence which of any two theories is the better one. We can therefore know that we are making progress; and it is this knowledge that to most of us atones for the loss of the illusion of finality and certainty. In other words, we know that our scientific theories must always remain hypotheses, but that, in many important cases, we can find out whether or not a new hypothesis is superior to an old one. For if they are different, then they will lead to different predictions, which can often be tested experimentally; and on the basis of such a crucial experiment, we can sometimes find out that the new theory leads to satisfactory results where the old one breaks down. Thus we can say that in our search for truth, we have replaced scientific certainty by scientific progress. And this view of scientific method is corroborated by the development of science. For science does not develop by a gradual encyclopaedic accumulation of essential information, as Aristotle thought) but by a much more revolutionary method; it progresses by bold ideas, by the advancement of new and very strange theories (such as the theory that the earth is not flat, or that 'metrical space' is not flat), and by the overthrow of the old ones.
But this view of scientific method means that in science there is no 'knowledge', in the sense in which Plato and Aristotle understood the word, in the sense which implies finality; in science, we never have sufficient reason for the belief that we have attained the truth. What we usually call 'scientific knowledge' is, as a rule, not knowledge in this sense, but rather information regarding the various competing hypotheses and the way in which they have stood up to various tests; it is, using the language of Plato and Aristotle, information concerning the latest, and the best tested, scientific 'opinion'. This view means, furthermore, that we have no proofs in science (excepting, of course, pure mathematics and logic). In the empirical sciences, which alone can furnish us with information about the world we live in, proofs do not occur, if we mean by 'proof' an argument which establishes once and for ever the truth of a theory. (What may occur, however, are refutations of scientific theories.) On the other hand, pure mathematics and logic, which permit of proofs, give us no information about the world, but only develop the means of describing it. Thus we could say (as I have pointed out elsewhere ): 'In so far as a scientific statement speaks about reality, it must be falsifiable; and in so far as it is not falsifiable, it does not speak about reality.' But although proof does not play any part in the empirical sciences, argument still does; indeed, its part is at least as important as that played by observation and experiment.
The role of definitions in science, especially, is also very different from what Aristotle had in mind. Aristotle taught that in a definition we have first pointed to the essence - perhaps by naming it - and that we then describe it with the help of the defining formula; just as in an ordinary sentence like 'This puppy is brown', we first point to a certain thing by saying 'this puppy', and then describe it as 'brown'. And he taught that by thus describing the essence to which the term points which is to be defined, we determine or explain the meaning of the term also.
Accordingly, the definition may at one time answer two very closely related questions. The one is 'What is it?', for example 'What is a puppy?'; it asks what the essence is which is denoted by the defined term. The other is 'What does it mean?', for example, 'What does "puppy" mean?'; it asks for the meaning of a term (namely, of the term that denotes the essence). In the present context, it is not necessary to distinguish between these two questions; rather, it is important to see what they have in common; and I wish, especially, to draw attention to the fact that both questions are raised by the term that stands, in the definition, on the left side and answered by the defining formula which stands on the right side. This fact characterizes the essentialist view, from which the scientific method of definition radically differs.
While we may say that the essentialist interpretation reads a definition 'normally', that is to say, from the left to the right, we can say that a definition, as it is normally used in modern science, must be read back to front, or from the right to the left; for it starts with the defining formula, and asks for a short label for it. Thus the scientific view of the definition 'A puppy is a young dog' would be that it is an answer to the question 'What shall we call a young dog?' rather than an answer to the question 'What is a puppy?' (Questions like 'What is life?' or 'What is gravity?' do not play any role in science.) The scientific use of definitions, characterized by the approach 'from the right to the left', may be called its nominalist interpretation, as opposed to its Aristotelian or essentialist interpretation. In modern science, only nominalist definitions occur, that is to say, shorthand symbols or labels are introduced in order to cut a long story short. And we can at once see from this that definitions do not play any very important part in science. For shorthand symbols can always, of course, be replaced by the longer expressions, the defining formulae, for which they stand. In some cases this would make our scientific language very cumbersome; we should waste time and paper. But we should never lose the slightest piece of factual information. Our 'scientific knowledge', in the sense in which this term may be properly used, remains entirely unaffected if we eliminate all definitions; the only effect is upon our language, which would lose, not precision, but merely brevity. (This must not be taken to mean that in science there cannot be an urgent practical need for introducing definitions, for brevity's sake.) There could hardly be a greater contrast than that between this view of the part played by definitions, and Aristotle's view. For Aristotle's essentialist definitions are the principles from which all our knowledge is derived; they thus contain all our knowledge; and they serve to substitute a long formula for a short one. As opposed to this, the scientific or nominalist definitions do not contain any knowledge whatever, not even any 'opinion'; they do nothing but introduce new arbitrary shorthand labels; they cut a long story short.
In practice, these labels are of the greatest usefulness. In order to see this, we only need to consider the extreme difficulties that would arise if a bacteriologist, whenever he spoke of a certain strain of bacteria, had to repeat its whole description (including the methods of dyeing, etc., by which it is distinguished from a number of similar species). And we may also understand, by a similar consideration, why it has so often been forgotten, even by scientists, that scientific definitions must be read 'from the right to the left', as explained above. For most people, when first studying a science, say bacteriology, must try to find out the meanings of all these new technical terms with which they are faced. In this way, they really learn the definition 'from the left to the right', substituting, as if it were an essentialist definition, a very long story for a very short one. But this is merely a psychological accident, and a teacher or writer of a textbook may indeed proceed quite differently; that is to say, he may introduce a technical term only after the need for it has arisen.
So far I have tried to show that the scientific or nominalist use of definitions is entirely different from Aristotle's essentialist method of definitions. But it can also be shown that the essentialist view of definitions is simply untenable in itself. In order not to prolong this discussion unduly, I shall criticize two only of the essentialist doctrines; two doctrines which are of significance because some influential modern schools are still based upon them. One is the esoteric doctrine of intellectual intuition, and the other the very popular doctrine that 'we must define our terms', if we wish to be precise.
Aristotle held with Plato that we possess a faculty, intellectual intuition) by which we can visualize essences and find out which definition is the correct one, and many modern essentialists have repeated this doctrine. Other philosophers, following Kant, maintain that we do not possess anything of the sort. My opinion is that we can readily admit that we possess something which may be described as 'intellectual intuition'; or more precisely, that certain of our intellectual experiences may be thus described Everybody who 'understands' an idea, or a point of view, or an arithmetical method, for instance, multiplication, in the sense that he has 'got the feel of it', might be said to understand that thing intuitively; and there are countless intellectual experiences of that kind. But I would insist, on the other hand, that these experiences, important as they may be for our scientific endeavours, can never serve to establish the truth of any idea or theory, however strongly somebody may feel, intuitively, that it must be true, or that it is 'self-evident'." Such intuitions cannot even serve as an argument, although they may encourage us to look for arguments. For somebody else may have just as strong an intuition that the same theory is false. The way of science is paved with discarded theories which were once declared self-evident; Francis Bacon, for example, sneered at those who denied the self-evident truth that the sun and the stars rotated round the earth, which was obviously at rest. Intuition undoubtedly plays a great part in the life of a scientist, just as it does in the life of a poet. It leads him to his discoveries. But it may also lead him to his failures. And it always remains his private affair, as it were. Science does not ask how he has got his ideas, it is only interested in arguments that can be tested by everybody. The great mathematician, Gauss, described this situation very neatly once when he exclaimed: 'I have got my result; but I do not know yet how to get it.' All this applies, of course, to Aristotle's doctrine of intellectual intuition of so-called essences, which was propagated by Hegel and in our own time by E. Husserl and his numerous pupils; and it indicates that the 'intellectual intuition of essences' or 'pure phenomenology', as Husserl calls it, is a method of neither science nor philosophy . (The much debated question whether it is a new invention, as the pure phenomenologists think, or perhaps a version of Cartesianism or Hegelianism, can be easily decided; it is a version of Aristotelianism.)
The second doctrine to be criticized has even more important connections with modern views; and it bears especially upon the problem of verbalism. Since Aristotle, it has become widely known that one cannot prove all statements, and that an attempt to do so would break down because it would lead only to an infinite regression of proofs. But neither he nor, apparently, a great many modern writers seems to realize that the analogous attempt to define the meaning of all our terms must, in the same way, lead to an infinite regression of definitions. The following passage from Crossman's Plato To-day is characteristic of a view which by implication is held by many contemporary philosophers of repute, for example, by Wittgenstein: '. . . if we do not know precisely the meaning of the words we use, we cannot discuss anything profitably. Most of the futile arguments on which we all waste time are largely due to the fact that we each have our own vague meaning for the words we use and assume that our opponents are using them in the same sense. If we defined our terms to start with, we could have far more profitable discussions. Again, we have only to read the daily papers to observe that propaganda (the modern counterpart of rhetoric) depends largely for its success on confusing the meaning of the terms. If politicians were compelled by law to define any term they wished to use, they would lose most of their popular appeal, their speeches would be shorter, and many of their disagreements would be found to be purely verbal.' This passage is very characteristic of one of the prejudices which we owe to Aristotle, of the prejudice that language can be made more precise by the use of definitions. Let us consider whether this can really be done.
First, we can see clearly that if 'politicians' (or anybody else) 'were compelled by law to define any term they wished to use', their speeches would not be shorter, but infinitely long. For a definition cannot establish the meaning of a term any more than a logical derivation can establish the truth of a statement; both can only shift this problem back. The derivation shifts the problem of truth back to the premises, the definition shifts the problem of meaning back to the defining terms (i.e., the terms that make up the defining formula). 14 But these, for many reasons, are likely to be just as vague and confusing as the terms we started with; and in any case, we should have to go on to define them in turn; which leads to new terms which too must be defined. And so on, to infinity. One sees that the demand that all our terms should be defined is just as untenable as the demand that all our statements should be proved.
At first sight this criticism may seem unfair. It may be said that what people have in mind, if they demand definitions, is the elimination of the ambiguities so often connected with words such as 'democracy', 'liberty', 'duty', 'religion', etc.; that it is clearly impossible to define all our terms, but possible to define some of these more dangerous terms and to leave it at that; and that the defining terms have just to be accepted, i.e., that we must stop after a step or two in order to avoid an infinite regression. This defence, however, is untenable. Admittedly, the terms mentioned are much misused. But I deny that the attempt to define them can improve matters. It can only make matters worse. That by 'defining their terms' even once, and leaving the defining terms undefined, the politicians would not be able to make their speeches shorter, is clear; for any essentialist definition, i.e. one that 'defines our terms' (as opposed to the nominalist one which introduces new technical terms), means the substitution of a long story for a short one, as we have seen. Besides, the attempt to define terms would only increase the vagueness and confusion. For since we cannot demand that all the defining terms should be defined in their turn, a clever politician or philosopher could easily satisfy the demand for definitions. If asked what he means by 'democracy', for example, he could say 'the rule of the general will' or 'the rule of the spirit of the people'; and since he has now given a definition, and so satisfied the highest standards of precision, nobody will dare to criticize him any longer. And, indeed, how could he be criticized, since the demand that 'rule' or 'people' or 'will' or 'spirit' should be defined in their turn, puts us well on the way to an infinite regression so that everybody would hesitate to raise it? But should it be raised in spite of all that, then it can be equally easily satisfied. On the other hand, a quarrel about the question whether the definition was correct, or true, can only lead to an empty controversy about words.
Thus the essentialist view of definition breaks down, even if it does not, with Aristotle, attempt to establish the 'principles' of our knowledge, but only makes the apparently more modest demand that we should 'define the meaning of our terms'.
But undoubtedly, the demand that we speak clearly and without ambiguity is very important, and must be satisfied. Can the nominalist view satisfy it? And can nominalism escape the infinite regression?
It can. For the nominalist position there is no difficulty which corresponds to the infinite regression. As we have seen, science does not use definitions in order to determine the meaning of its terms, but only in order to introduce handy shorthand labels. And it does not depend on definitions; all definitions can be omitted without loss to the information imparted. It follows from this that in science, all the terms that are really needed must be undefined terms. How then do the sciences make sure of the meanings of their terms? Various replies to this question have been suggested, but I do not think that any of them is satisfactory. The situation seems to be this. Aristotelianism and related philosophies have told us for such a long time how important it is to get a precise knowledge of the meaning of our terms that we are all inclined to believe it. And we continue to cling to this creed in spite of the unquestionable fact that philosophy, which for twenty centuries has worried about the meaning of its terms, is not only full of verbalism but also appallingly vague and ambiguous, while a science like physics which worries hardly at all about terms and their meaning, but about facts instead, has achieved great precision. This, surely, should be taken as indicating that, under Aristotelian influence, the importance of the meaning of terms has been grossly exaggerated. But I think that it indicates even more. For not only does this concentration on the problem of meaning fail to establish precision; it is itself the main source of vagueness, ambiguity, and confusion.
In science, we take care that the statements we make should never depend upon the meaning of our terms. Even where the terms are defined, we never try to derive any information from the definition, or to base any argument upon it. This is why our terms make so little trouble. We do not overburden them. We try to attach to them as little weight as possible. We do not take their 'meaning' too seriously. We are always conscious that our terms are a little vague (since we have learnt to use them only in practical applications) and we reach precision not by reducing their penumbra of vagueness, but rather by keeping well within it, by carefully phrasing our sentences in such a way that the possible shades of meaning of our terms do not matter. This is how we avoid quarrelling about words.
The view that the precision of science and of scientific language depends upon the precision of its terms is certainly very plausible, but it is none the less, I believe, a mere prejudice. The precision of a language depends, rather, just upon the fact that it takes care not to burden its terms with the task of being precise. A term like 'sand-dune' or 'wind' is certainly very vague. (How many inches high must a little sand-hill be in order to be called 'sand-dune'? How quickly must the air move in order to be called 'wind'?) However, for many of the geologist's purposes, these terms are quite sufficiently precise; and for other purposes, when a higher degree of differentiation is needed, he can always say 'dunes between 4 and 30 feet high' or 'wind of a velocity of between 20 and 40 miles an hour'. And the position in the more exact sciences is analogous. In physical measurements, for instance, we always take care to consider the range within which there may be an error; and precision does not consist in trying to reduce this range to nothing, or in pretending that there is no such range, but rather in its explicit recognition.
Even where a term has made trouble, as for instance the term 'simultaneity' in physics, it was not because its meaning was imprecise or ambiguous, but rather because of some intuitive theory which induced us to burden the term with too much meaning, or with too 'precise' a meaning, rather than with too little. What Einstein found in his analysis of simultaneity was that, when speaking of simultaneous events, physicists made a false assumption which would have been unchallengeable were there signals of infinite velocity. The fault was not that they did not mean anything, or that their meaning was ambiguous, or the term not precise enough; what Einstein found was, rather, that the elimination of a theoretical assumption, unnoticed so far because of its intuitive self-evidence, was able to remove a difficulty which had arisen in science. Accordingly, he was not really concerned with a question of the meaning of a term, but rather with the truth of a theory. It is very unlikely that it would have led to much if someone had started, apart from a definite physical problem, to improve the concept of simultaneity by analysing its 'essential] meaning', or even by analysing what physicists 'really mean' when they speak of simultaneity.
I think we can learn from this example that we should not attempt to cross our bridges before we come to them. And I also think that the preoccupation with questions concerning the meaning of terms, such as their vagueness or their ambiguity, can certainly not be justified by an appeal to Einstein's example. Such a preoccupation rests, rather, on the assumption that much depends upon the meaning of our terms, and that we operate with this meaning; and therefore it must lead to verbalism and scholasticism. From this point of view, we may criticize a doctrine like that of Wittgenstein, who holds that while science investigates matters of fact, it is the business of philosophy to clarify the meaning of terms, thereby purging our language, and eliminating linguistic puzzles. It is characteristic of the views of this school that they do not lead to any chain of argument that could be rationally criticized; the school therefore addresses its subtle analyses exclusively to the small esoteric circle of the initiated. This seems to suggest that any preoccupation with meaning tends to lead to that result which is so typical of Aristotelianism: scholasticism and mysticism.
Let us consider briefly how these two typical results of Aristotelianism have arisen. Aristotle insisted that demonstration or proof, and definition, are the two fundamental methods of obtaining knowledge. Considering the doctrine of proof first, it cannot be denied that it has led to countless attempts to prove more than can be proved; medieval philosophy is full of this scholasticism and the same tendency can be observed, on the Continent, down to Kant. It was Kant's criticism of all attempts to prove the existence of God which led to the romantic reaction of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. The new tendency is to discard proofs, and with them, any kind of rational argument. With the romantics, a new kind of dogmatism becomes fashionable, in philosophy as well as in the social sciences. It confronts us with its dictum. And we can take it or leave it. This romantic period of an oracular philosophy, called by Schopenhauer the 'age of dishonesty', is described by him as follows: 'The character of honesty that spirit of undertaking an inquiry together with the reader, which permeates the works of all Previous philosophers, disappears here completely. Every page witnesses that these so-called philosophers do not attempt to teach, but to bewitch the reader.'
A similar result was produced by Aristotle's doctrine of definition. First it led to a good deal of hairsplitting. But later, philosophers began to feel that one cannot argue about definitions. In this way, essentialism not only encouraged verbalism, but it also led to the disillusionment with argument, that is, with reason. Scholasticism and mysticism and despair in reason, these are the unavoidable results of the essentialism of Plato and Aristotle. And Plato's open revolt against freedom becomes, with Aristotle, a secret revolt against reason.
As we know from Aristotle himself, essentialism and the theory of definition met with strong opposition when they were first proposed, especially from Socrates's old companion Antisthenes, whose criticism seems to have been most sensible. But this opposition was unfortunately defeated. The consequences of this defeat for the intellectual development of mankind can hardly be overrated.
- Karl Popper, 1945
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
JARS: "Nietzsche-Rand Symposium"
In the next issue of the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, there will be a symposium of sorts discussing the relation between Rand and Nietzsche. During the sixties and seventies, Rand was often accused of being indebted to Nietzsche. One critic went so far as to describe Rand's philosophy as little more than a mixture of Nietzsche and Adam Smith. The motivation behind the linkage of these two literary philosophers is twofold: first, to undermine Rand's claim to originality by suggesting that Rand got all her individualistic notions straight from Nietzsche; and second, to undermine Rand's credibility by associating her with a philosopher who at one time was linked to Hitler and the Nazis.
My own position is that Rand's mature thought is not in any significant way influenced by Nietzsche. Not only is her ideal of man very different from Nietzsche's, but so is her individualism. Nietzsche believed that great men are forged in the crucible of brutal myths (e.g., the myth of eternal recurrence) and harsh adversity ("what doesn't kill us outright makes us stronger"). Rand believed that rational thinking, when zealously followed, lead to the complete integration of emotion and thought, which formed for her the bedrock of human greatness. Nietzsche identified freedom with the battle for freedom; Rand with the attainment of free market individualism. Nietzsche believed in the inevitability of conflict; Rand argued that no conflict was even possible between rational men. Nietzsche equated skepticism with honesty and regarded convictions with immense suspicion; Rand equated even the mildest forms of skepticism with a concerted attempt to undermine man's cognitive faculty. Nietzsche contended that nearly everything men believed were lies, but that some of these lies were psychologically or socially useful; Rand insisted that all lies are bad and that no good can come from believing something that is not true.
This brief sketch should demonstrate that, regardless of the few superficial resemblances between Nietzsche's philosophy and Rand's, they are nevertheless very different philosophers. For those that may still have a few doubts on this score, consider the following. Rand evinces no real understanding or insight into Nietzsche's thought, despite having read at least three of his books. She says of Nietzsche that he advocated sacrificing "others to oneself." Of course, Nietzsche's view on egoism, altruism, and self-sacrifice are actually far more complicated and ambiguous. Consider the following quote from Nietzsche's Anti-Christ:
Rand's other major complaint against Nietzsche is that he disowned reason in his book The Birth of Tragedy. If Rand had bothered to read the preface of that book, she might have realized that the work is not representative of Nietzsche's mature thought, that he turned against the sort of romantic Wagnerism expressed in its pages and became much more sympathetic to science and even "reason."
Now if Rand didn't even understand Nietzsche, how on earth could she have been influenced by him? Perhaps a case could be made that she was influenced by what she read into Nietzsche; but she was hardly influenced by what Nietzsche actually wrote and meant.
My own position is that Rand's mature thought is not in any significant way influenced by Nietzsche. Not only is her ideal of man very different from Nietzsche's, but so is her individualism. Nietzsche believed that great men are forged in the crucible of brutal myths (e.g., the myth of eternal recurrence) and harsh adversity ("what doesn't kill us outright makes us stronger"). Rand believed that rational thinking, when zealously followed, lead to the complete integration of emotion and thought, which formed for her the bedrock of human greatness. Nietzsche identified freedom with the battle for freedom; Rand with the attainment of free market individualism. Nietzsche believed in the inevitability of conflict; Rand argued that no conflict was even possible between rational men. Nietzsche equated skepticism with honesty and regarded convictions with immense suspicion; Rand equated even the mildest forms of skepticism with a concerted attempt to undermine man's cognitive faculty. Nietzsche contended that nearly everything men believed were lies, but that some of these lies were psychologically or socially useful; Rand insisted that all lies are bad and that no good can come from believing something that is not true.
This brief sketch should demonstrate that, regardless of the few superficial resemblances between Nietzsche's philosophy and Rand's, they are nevertheless very different philosophers. For those that may still have a few doubts on this score, consider the following. Rand evinces no real understanding or insight into Nietzsche's thought, despite having read at least three of his books. She says of Nietzsche that he advocated sacrificing "others to oneself." Of course, Nietzsche's view on egoism, altruism, and self-sacrifice are actually far more complicated and ambiguous. Consider the following quote from Nietzsche's Anti-Christ:
When the exceptional human being treats the mediocre more tenderly than himself and his peers, this is not mere politeness of the heart—it is simply his duty
Rand's other major complaint against Nietzsche is that he disowned reason in his book The Birth of Tragedy. If Rand had bothered to read the preface of that book, she might have realized that the work is not representative of Nietzsche's mature thought, that he turned against the sort of romantic Wagnerism expressed in its pages and became much more sympathetic to science and even "reason."
Now if Rand didn't even understand Nietzsche, how on earth could she have been influenced by him? Perhaps a case could be made that she was influenced by what she read into Nietzsche; but she was hardly influenced by what Nietzsche actually wrote and meant.
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Rand's Anti-Heroic Ethics
ARCHN's chapter on Rand's morality thoroughly explores its various fallacies, especially Nyquist's thoughtfully argued sub-chapter on altruism. However, perhaps the most clearcut example of the highly unrealistic nature of her ethics occurs in her "The Ethics of Emergencies", in The Virtue Of Selfishness.
"The Ethics of Emergencies" comes as standard with the usual Randian features, such the opening arguments from intimidation, wiggy, evidence-free psychological speculations, and the retro-fitting of standard terms, such as "sacrifice", with entirely opposite meanings to the usual ones (Rand often reminds me of something someone once said about Gertrude Stein: "she doesn't seem to know what words mean"). And as always, she maintains her habit of saying something on one page, and then taking it back on the next.
But despite this typical thicket, we can eventually struggle through to find Rand stating an interesting and original ethical position, and stating it clearly.
She takes what she calls the "altruist's favourite example: the issue of saving a drowning person." She then recommends the following:
"If the person to be saved is a stranger, it is morally proper to save him only if the risk to one's own life is minimal; when the danger is great, it would be immoral to attempt it; only a lack of self esteem could permit one to value one's life no higher than that of any random stranger." (emphasis DB)
That's right. If you endanger your life to save a stranger, you are immoral. Not just immoral, but psychologically damaged, in that you lack self-esteem.
Now, let’s try to imagine just such a situation, but in a world where almost everyone has adopted Rand’s moral code. A lone young girl is swept out to sea on a dangerous surf beach. The crowd stands by, doing nothing, as they have too much self-esteem to risk their own life for the young girl, who is after all a ‘random stranger.’ A man plunges in after her. Both nearly drown in the attempted rescue, but eventually after a great struggle he brings the both of them into shore alive. They both lie exhausted, gasping on the beach. Eventually he lifts his head only to be greeted by grim faces and contemptuous stares from the surrounding crowd. One woman eventually speaks, voice brimming with emotion: “That was the most immoral thing I’ve ever seen. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.” The crowd nod fiercely, and turn away in frank disgust.
Or alternately: as the girl is swept out to sea, a man walks to the edge of the churning surf. As she cries for help, he stands there, assessing the situation. Then, having decided it’s just too dangerous, he steps back, and returns to his towel by the shore. A wave of spontaneous applause breaks out among the beachgoers, in appreciation of a truly moral act; a woman says to her young son, “Look at that man just did. I hope you grow up to be just like him.”
While this seems absurd, it is actually perfectly consistent with her general stance of the morality of only acting in your own self-interest. Clearly then, by Objectivist standards, people such as lifeguards, or firefighters, are not heroic as they are usually considered, but pursuing fundamentally immoral professions due to their "lack of self-esteem". But of course, while they repeat her rhetoric, Objectivists stop well short of actually living by it. Having just watched Oliver Stone's "World Trade Centre", where two trapped policemen are rescued by Marines (one a committed Christian) at considerable risk to their own lives, I wondered where the ARI's fierce condemnations of the "immorality" these and other voluntary actions on Sept 11 were.
Because absurd as this seems, this is just what Rand is advocating.
"The Ethics of Emergencies" comes as standard with the usual Randian features, such the opening arguments from intimidation, wiggy, evidence-free psychological speculations, and the retro-fitting of standard terms, such as "sacrifice", with entirely opposite meanings to the usual ones (Rand often reminds me of something someone once said about Gertrude Stein: "she doesn't seem to know what words mean"). And as always, she maintains her habit of saying something on one page, and then taking it back on the next.
But despite this typical thicket, we can eventually struggle through to find Rand stating an interesting and original ethical position, and stating it clearly.
She takes what she calls the "altruist's favourite example: the issue of saving a drowning person." She then recommends the following:
"If the person to be saved is a stranger, it is morally proper to save him only if the risk to one's own life is minimal; when the danger is great, it would be immoral to attempt it; only a lack of self esteem could permit one to value one's life no higher than that of any random stranger." (emphasis DB)
That's right. If you endanger your life to save a stranger, you are immoral. Not just immoral, but psychologically damaged, in that you lack self-esteem.
Now, let’s try to imagine just such a situation, but in a world where almost everyone has adopted Rand’s moral code. A lone young girl is swept out to sea on a dangerous surf beach. The crowd stands by, doing nothing, as they have too much self-esteem to risk their own life for the young girl, who is after all a ‘random stranger.’ A man plunges in after her. Both nearly drown in the attempted rescue, but eventually after a great struggle he brings the both of them into shore alive. They both lie exhausted, gasping on the beach. Eventually he lifts his head only to be greeted by grim faces and contemptuous stares from the surrounding crowd. One woman eventually speaks, voice brimming with emotion: “That was the most immoral thing I’ve ever seen. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.” The crowd nod fiercely, and turn away in frank disgust.
Or alternately: as the girl is swept out to sea, a man walks to the edge of the churning surf. As she cries for help, he stands there, assessing the situation. Then, having decided it’s just too dangerous, he steps back, and returns to his towel by the shore. A wave of spontaneous applause breaks out among the beachgoers, in appreciation of a truly moral act; a woman says to her young son, “Look at that man just did. I hope you grow up to be just like him.”
While this seems absurd, it is actually perfectly consistent with her general stance of the morality of only acting in your own self-interest. Clearly then, by Objectivist standards, people such as lifeguards, or firefighters, are not heroic as they are usually considered, but pursuing fundamentally immoral professions due to their "lack of self-esteem". But of course, while they repeat her rhetoric, Objectivists stop well short of actually living by it. Having just watched Oliver Stone's "World Trade Centre", where two trapped policemen are rescued by Marines (one a committed Christian) at considerable risk to their own lives, I wondered where the ARI's fierce condemnations of the "immorality" these and other voluntary actions on Sept 11 were.
Because absurd as this seems, this is just what Rand is advocating.
Monday, April 23, 2007
JARS: "Nyquist Contra Rand, Part II" by F. Seddon
Those who wish to read Fred Seddon's reply to my response to his original review of my book are advised to locate a copy of the Fall 2007 edition of the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies and read it for themselves. I will not attempt to summarize it here. I merely wish to respond to one of Seddon's objections. As with his original review of my book, Seddon demonstrates a wanton blindness to the subtleties of my position vis-a-vis Rand and Objectivism. "[Nyquist] thinks Rand and the Objectivists limit logic to deductive logic," Seddon pontificates, "and the triumphantly claims that some modern sciences have proven that 'Most practical knowledge ... is based on generalizations drawn from experience,' that is, on induction." Seddon falls into just the sort of special pleading and word twisting that is more befitting an ambulance chasing lawyer than a philosopher. Instead of trying to understand my point, he only wishes to distort it for his own purposes, so he can evade facing up to the issues I raise. That is what he does with the phrase "generalizations drawn from experience," which he equates not merely with induction, but, by implication, with just the sort of induction advocated by Rand, Peikoff, and Kelley! Never mind that induction, except in a very loose sense of the word that surely would be opposed by Rand and Peikoff, has little to do with generalizations. Induction is a reasoning or inference from the particular to universal. The confusion arises because often the word general is used instead of universal, but it is a mistake to confound the terms general and generalization. The so-called problem of induction would not arise for a mere generalization, because no generalization can be refuted by a single observation. If I say that swans are generally white, that is very different from saying that all swans are white. The observation of a black or a purple swan won't refute the notion that swans are generally white, because generalizations are not universal. They allow for exceptions. But once you grant exceptions, you're no longer in the realm of inductive "logic." Can anyone imagine, for example, Rand or Peikoff advocating the view the laws of nature are only "generally" true, that, in other words, there exist exceptions to them? And so Seddon is merely conflating the term generalization with the term universal and thus basing his whole argument on an ambiguity of language.
Yet this is not the least of it. If Seddon had been attentive to the full context of the passage quoted, particularly what had been written earlier about unconscious knowledge, he should have understood that little if any reasoning takes place when people form the generalizations that make up what I called practical knowledge; that such generalizations are often made intuitively, without conscious direction, from the innermost reaches of the mind's unconscious database. This, in and of itself, makes the whole issue of induction irrelevant. Rand's reason, even when applied to the homely generalizations of everyday life, could be as inductivist as Seddon or anyone else pleases; that still would not allow Rand's empirically unsubstantiated claim that "Reason is man's only means of grasping reality and of acquiring knowledge" to pass muster. If people can gain knowledge intuitively, without direct conscious thinking at all, then the Randian view that only "reason" leads to knowledge becomes unacceptable.
In the greater scheme of things, these technical arguments about the role of reason and "induction" in the Randian epistemology are of little relevance and are only brought up by Seddon to throw sand in our eyes. The real point at issue, which I have raised again and again and which Seddon sedulously evades, is the issue of evidence. Rand made any number of statements about matters of fact concerning human nature, human cognition, and social interaction. Many of these statements are highly controversial, such as man is a being of self-made soul or man's emotional and cognitive mechanisms are blank at birth. Yet Rand provided no evidence for these controversial statements of fact. None whatever! And neither does Seddon. There may be a very good reason for this. Perhaps the lack of evidence stems from the fact that these assertions are not true!
Yet this is not the least of it. If Seddon had been attentive to the full context of the passage quoted, particularly what had been written earlier about unconscious knowledge, he should have understood that little if any reasoning takes place when people form the generalizations that make up what I called practical knowledge; that such generalizations are often made intuitively, without conscious direction, from the innermost reaches of the mind's unconscious database. This, in and of itself, makes the whole issue of induction irrelevant. Rand's reason, even when applied to the homely generalizations of everyday life, could be as inductivist as Seddon or anyone else pleases; that still would not allow Rand's empirically unsubstantiated claim that "Reason is man's only means of grasping reality and of acquiring knowledge" to pass muster. If people can gain knowledge intuitively, without direct conscious thinking at all, then the Randian view that only "reason" leads to knowledge becomes unacceptable.
In the greater scheme of things, these technical arguments about the role of reason and "induction" in the Randian epistemology are of little relevance and are only brought up by Seddon to throw sand in our eyes. The real point at issue, which I have raised again and again and which Seddon sedulously evades, is the issue of evidence. Rand made any number of statements about matters of fact concerning human nature, human cognition, and social interaction. Many of these statements are highly controversial, such as man is a being of self-made soul or man's emotional and cognitive mechanisms are blank at birth. Yet Rand provided no evidence for these controversial statements of fact. None whatever! And neither does Seddon. There may be a very good reason for this. Perhaps the lack of evidence stems from the fact that these assertions are not true!
Saturday, April 14, 2007
JARS: "Rand and Empirical Responsibility"
The following is my response to Fred Seddon's review of my book Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature. The point of this response was not merely to reply to Seddon's criticisms, but, just as critically, to restate my argument against Rand, which is become even stronger because of new evidence gathered by the sciences of human nature. This essay originally appeared in Fall 2006 edition of The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 111-119. Please refer to the JARS issue for a full bibliography.
After going through Fred Seddon’s review of my book, Ayn Rand
Contra Human Nature, I find myself not so much disagreeing
with his points as regarding them as irrelevant. His review more or
less evades what I consider the main point at issue—namely, whether
Rand is right about human nature. If I attempt to answer Seddon’s
specific criticisms, I will merely be caviling about matters I regard as
trivial. However critical I may be of Rand’s Objectivist system, I do
not regard her as a trivial philosopher. Some of the key points of her
philosophy, if true, would entail a major transvaluation of moral,
social, political, and aesthetic values. Rand considered herself a
radical. Let us not underestimate what this means. She challenged
the view of human nature advanced by most of the great thinkers and
poets of human civilization. If she is right and all the thinkers and
poets wrong, the value of most of the great works of mankind’s
literary and philosophical giants, of the dramas of Sophocles and
Shakespeare, the political writings of Machiavelli and Burke, the
novels of Flaubert and Tolstoy, will in some degree be diminished.
Rand’s dislike of Shakespeare, for example, is no mere personal
idiosyncrasy, something that can be brushed aside as inconsequential.
It derives from her vision of human nature. “I refused to believe that
Lear and Macbeth represent what man really is,” she told Barbara
Branden (1986, 45).
With so much at stake, we need to be very careful in how we go
about determining whether Rand’s vision of man accords with reality.
We don’t want to make a mistake and wind up living in ignorance of
the truth about human nature. This is one of those questions that we
need to get right. Those who fail to understand human nature either
expect too much or too little from other people. Political theories
based on false expectations of other people can be dangerous if those
in power are foolish enough to implement them.
Before any attempt can be made to determine whether Rand’s
theory of man accords with reality, we need to get our epistemological
house in order. How should we go about determining whether
Rand’s view of human nature is true? In my book, I suggested that
the best way to settle questions about matters of fact was to consult
the relevant facts. Seddon, however, will have none of this. He
charges me with the great philosophical crime of positivism. But I
have not, nor have I ever been, a positivist. Seddon has merely
imported positivist meanings into some of my words and phrases
where no such meaning was ever intended. All I was trying to suggest
in my book is that controversial assertions about matters of fact, if
they are to be taken seriously, need to be backed with compelling
evidence. I only emphasized the empirical side of knowledge because
that’s precisely where many philosophers, including Rand, fall short.
If I had been criticizing a philosopher who piled fact on top of fact
without rhyme or reason, I would have emphasized the role that
intelligence plays in interpreting and giving meaning to facts. Would
Seddon have then seen fit to accuse me of being a rationalist?
When assessing a controversial assertion about some matter of
fact, the first order of business for the critic is to examine the
evidence presented on behalf of the assertion. In the case of Rand’s
assertions about human nature, this is not so very difficult. Rand
presented no evidence to back up her theory of human nature, so no
evidence needs to be examined. Typical in this respect is her essay
“The Objectivist Ethics.” If you go through this essay, you will find
several bold assertions about human nature. “Man is born with an
emotional mechanism, just as he is born with a cognitive mechanism,”
contended Rand; “but, at birth, both are ‘tabula rasa.’” “Emotions are
the automatic results of man’s value judgments integrated by the
subconscious.” “Emotions are not tools of cognition” (Rand 1964,
28, 27, 29). These are very interesting assertions. It would be nice if
Rand had provided evidence for these assertions so we could evaluate
whether they are true or at least plausible. But Rand gives us nothing.
Not even the tiniest shred or sliver of evidence.
At other points in the essay, Rand introduces moral ideals that
depend on the validity of certain facts. Again she fails to provide
evidence for those facts. Consider some of her remarks about the
virtue of rationality. “Rationality means the . . . acceptance of reason
as one’s only source of knowledge, one’s only judge of values and
one’s only guide to action.” And not only that, but rationality also
“means . . . that all one’s convictions, values, goals, desires and actions
must be based on, derived from, chosen and validated by a process of
thought—as precise and scrupulous a process of thought, directed by
as ruthlessly strict an application of logic, as one’s fullest capacity
permits” (1964, 25–26). This implies not merely that reason is man’s
only source of knowledge; it also gives logic a critical role in the
reasoning process, suggesting that any form of thought that does not
use logic is invalid or cognitively dubious.
Rand’s failure to provide evidence supporting her view of human
nature would not, in itself, indicate that she is wrong. Before any kind
of judgment can be made on the veracity of Rand’s views, the relevant
evidence must be examined. Does there exist any compelling evidence
that stands witness against Rand’s theories?
As a matter of fact, such evidence does exist. Neither the “tabula
rasa” view of human nature advocated by Rand, nor her theory that
emotions are derived from value judgments, would be taken very
seriously by cognitive scientists, neuroscientists, or evolutionary
psychologists working today (Pinker 1997, 31–36, 363–424; Pinker
2002, 38–41; Damasio 1994, 127–64). Even her insistence that
emotions have no legitimate role in cognition would be rejected by
those researchers acquainted with the relevant evidence. “The action
of biological drives, body states, and emotions may be an indispens-
able foundation for rationality,” suggested the neuroscientist Antonio
Damasio (1994, 200), whose research provides compelling evidence
for the role of emotion in the reasoning process (165–222). The
cognitive scientists George Lakoff and Mark Johnson are much less
tentative than Damasio on this issue. “The idea of a pure reason that
can function in the moral domain independent of emotion is
empirically untenable,” they insist (1999, 439).
The most surprising evidence to emerge from these new sciences
of human nature challenges Rand’s contention that reason “is man’s
only means of grasping reality and of acquiring knowledge” ([1971]
1975, 84). If “reason” includes the conscious application of logic (as
Rand would have it), this statement is simply not true. Indeed,
cognitive scientists at the University of Iowa have found that certain
facts of reality can be grasped unconsciously, before any process of
consciously deliberated reason even has a chance to occur.
Yet this is not the least of it. By studying how people actually
think, cognitive scientists have found that thinking based on formal
logic is, for most practical purposes, not terribly useful. The cognitive
scientist Paul E. Johnson, after extensive analysis of how experts in
medicine, engineering, and other skilled professions think when
solving problems related to their specialties, made the following
observation:
I have quoted this lengthy passage because it goes to the very
heart of my critique of Objectivism. Most practical knowledge (i.e.,
the sort of knowledge used to confront and solve the problems that
we face in everyday life) is based on generalizations drawn from
experience. By making logic one of the essential foundations of
human cognition, Rand, by implication, invalidates the practical
knowledge of everyday life, which depends on logically invalid forms
of reasoning. Most of what we know about human nature, for
example, exists as generalizations from experience. Rand’s tabula rasa
view of human nature, however, rejects any type of generalization that
threatens her over-romanticized conception of man.
As an illustration of this, consider the human tendency toward
self-deception. Literally hundreds of experiments in social psychology
have shown that most people think better of themselves than is
warranted by the facts. “Indeed, most people claim they are above
average in any positive trait you name,” notes the cognitive scientist
Steven Pinker (1997, 422). In other words, most people are incapable
of judging themselves objectively. Worse, they don’t even realize this.
They regard their self-estimations as fair and objective (Pinker 2002,
265).
If most people are and always have been like this, it poses a
serious problem to Rand’s virtue of pride, which requires at the very
least that people be honest about themselves. If there exists a
biological predisposition toward self-deception—and the evidence
strongly suggests that such a predisposition does in fact exist (45–51,
263–66)—then making a virtue of pride may not be such a great idea.
Perhaps it would be far wiser to encourage most people to be humble
as a countermeasure to their tendency toward self-deception and false
pride.
Rand, of course, would never have accepted the notion that
human nature somehow renders pride unattainable for most people.
We know that Rand did not believe in human nature in the traditional
sense of the term; that she believed, instead, that man was a blank
slate who could shape “his soul in the image of his moral ideal, in the
image of . . . the rational being he is born able to create” (1961, 160).
Instead of providing empirical evidence for this rather extraordinary
view, she based it on a logical argument. Free will, she argues, is
“axiomatic” because the opposite view, determinism, is self-contradic-
tory. But if people have free will, they cannot have biological
predispositions or tendencies, Rand concluded, because this would
violate their freedom of choice (169).
The problem with this argument is that it goes in the face of a
growing body of scientific evidence that shows that genes account for
about half of the variation in most psychological traits (Pinker 2002,
48). The tabula rasa view of human nature does not accord with the
best scientific opinion. Nor does it accord with human experience, as
we find it represented in literature. Yet Rand, on the basis of a mere
“logical” rationalization, would turn her back on the empirical
evidence provided by scientific research and by ordinary human
experience.
In my book, I sought to challenge not merely Rand’s vision of
human nature, but also the method of logical rationalization used to
defend it. At one point in his review, Seddon (2003, 366) wonders
“what [I] would have Rand do if not use logic?” I have no problem
with Rand using logic to settle logical problems. I do, however, have
a problem when Rand attempts to settle matters of fact without doing
the necessary empirical research. That is not a very reliable method
of settling controversial issues regarding matters of fact. It is not the
method used by scientists, who seek to supplement their logical
reasonings with a copious fund of empirical research; nor is it the
method primarily used in everyday life, where logically invalid
inferences drawn from accumulated experiences are used much of
time.
The problem with Rand is that she was not an empirically
responsible philosopher. She makes all kinds of controversial
assertions about matters of fact without backing them up with the
relevant empirical evidence. How does Seddon respond to this
criticism? By accusing me (1) of positivism and (2) of equating
sensory observation with knowledge (368–69). But even if I were
guilty of these philosophical sins, that would not get Rand off the
hook. All I have done in my book is compare some of Rand’s most
controversial assertions about matters of fact with the relevant
evidence compiled by cognitive scientists, evolutionary psychologists,
neuroscientists, social psychologists, and sociobiologists. Excellent
research is being done in these fields—research that is helping us
develop an understanding of the human mind based on empirical
science rather than on mere philosophical speculation. Rand’s views
of human nature and cognition don’t altogether square with this
research. Indeed, other than Rand’s insistence on unit economy, most
of her epistemology is either irrelevant and trivial or exaggerated and
untrue. Much the same could be said of her view of human nature,
particularly her tabula rasa view of human psychology. The latest
scientific evidence simply does not support the Randian view on these
issues.
Although Rand’s theories of morality and politics are largely
untouched by recent scientific developments, there are still problems
to be noted. In my book, I argued that her social and political ideals
were unrealizable, and could be dismissed on those grounds alone.
Seddon objects to this line of inquiry, accusing me of “an unwilling-
ness to even consider” normative political theory and of “totally”
misunderstanding “the logic of the social sciences versus the natural
sciences” (371). But the misunderstanding is on Seddon’s part, who
fails to grasp how easily normative political theory degenerates into
advocacy theory and special pleading. Political partisanship, when
combined with the human tendency to self-deception, constitutes an
immense threat to descriptive theory (Hunt 1982, 128–30; Burnham
1963, 287–305). For those of us who prefer truth to ideology and
science to rationalization, one of the techniques to help us avoid the
pitfalls of special pleading and rank partisanship is to zealously
separate descriptive social science from normative theory. But note:
this separation is not motivated by any sort of unwillingness to
“consider” normative social science. We simply don’t want to give
way to the all-too-human temptation to allow our political and social
prejudices from contaminating our scientific work.
Near the end of his review, Seddon expresses puzzlement that I
should consider Rand an important and perhaps even great thinker,
despite regarding her philosophy as a mistake. But here context is
everything. Her philosophy is only a mistake if we assume that Rand
was trying to provide apt description of human nature and the human
condition. On these issues, Objectivism is a failure. It would,
however, be unfair to dismiss Rand and her philosophy on these
grounds alone. If we examine the history of philosophy, it becomes
increasingly evident that most philosophers, as Nietzsche (1968, 202)
pointed out, are “advocates who resent the name.” Philosophy, if we
define it by the example of the great philosophers, is primarily
concerned with providing rationalizations for the idols of human
sentiment. So if, as I contended in my book, Objectivism is largely a
rationalization of Rand’s peculiar vision of man and society, that does
not necessarily make Rand a bad philosopher. After all, isn’t she
merely following in the footsteps of Plato, Hegel, Marx and other
great philosophers, who also rationalized preconceived notions? All
I am seeking to accomplish in my book is to refute Rand’s pretensions
as a realist, as a purveyor of truth and wisdom. She is none of these
things. But as philosophical rationalizer, as casuist par excellence, she
may, for all I know, deserve very high marks.
Although I have little use, personally, for the rationalizing type of
philosophy, I am not so prejudiced as to contend that there is no
merit in it at all. There are, to be sure, some very serious disadvan-
tages to rationalizing a misconceived vision of the world. But there
are some advantages as well that must be weighed in the balance.
When Seddon (2003, 371), for example, suggests that Rand’s “laissez-
faire capitalism is more of a goal to be aimed at than anything that
may actually be,” he has stumbled upon what could prove a rich vein
of analysis. Extend this line of thinking to all of Rand’s thought, and
suddenly Objectivism is transformed into a kind of Sorelian myth.
Rand’s ideals of man and society, as descriptions of truth, may fall
considerably short of the mark, but as myths that inspire individuals
to reach the summit of their potential, there may be real utility in
them.
Rand and Empirical Responsibility
by Greg Nyquist
After going through Fred Seddon’s review of my book, Ayn Rand
Contra Human Nature, I find myself not so much disagreeing
with his points as regarding them as irrelevant. His review more or
less evades what I consider the main point at issue—namely, whether
Rand is right about human nature. If I attempt to answer Seddon’s
specific criticisms, I will merely be caviling about matters I regard as
trivial. However critical I may be of Rand’s Objectivist system, I do
not regard her as a trivial philosopher. Some of the key points of her
philosophy, if true, would entail a major transvaluation of moral,
social, political, and aesthetic values. Rand considered herself a
radical. Let us not underestimate what this means. She challenged
the view of human nature advanced by most of the great thinkers and
poets of human civilization. If she is right and all the thinkers and
poets wrong, the value of most of the great works of mankind’s
literary and philosophical giants, of the dramas of Sophocles and
Shakespeare, the political writings of Machiavelli and Burke, the
novels of Flaubert and Tolstoy, will in some degree be diminished.
Rand’s dislike of Shakespeare, for example, is no mere personal
idiosyncrasy, something that can be brushed aside as inconsequential.
It derives from her vision of human nature. “I refused to believe that
Lear and Macbeth represent what man really is,” she told Barbara
Branden (1986, 45).
With so much at stake, we need to be very careful in how we go
about determining whether Rand’s vision of man accords with reality.
We don’t want to make a mistake and wind up living in ignorance of
the truth about human nature. This is one of those questions that we
need to get right. Those who fail to understand human nature either
expect too much or too little from other people. Political theories
based on false expectations of other people can be dangerous if those
in power are foolish enough to implement them.
Before any attempt can be made to determine whether Rand’s
theory of man accords with reality, we need to get our epistemological
house in order. How should we go about determining whether
Rand’s view of human nature is true? In my book, I suggested that
the best way to settle questions about matters of fact was to consult
the relevant facts. Seddon, however, will have none of this. He
charges me with the great philosophical crime of positivism. But I
have not, nor have I ever been, a positivist. Seddon has merely
imported positivist meanings into some of my words and phrases
where no such meaning was ever intended. All I was trying to suggest
in my book is that controversial assertions about matters of fact, if
they are to be taken seriously, need to be backed with compelling
evidence. I only emphasized the empirical side of knowledge because
that’s precisely where many philosophers, including Rand, fall short.
If I had been criticizing a philosopher who piled fact on top of fact
without rhyme or reason, I would have emphasized the role that
intelligence plays in interpreting and giving meaning to facts. Would
Seddon have then seen fit to accuse me of being a rationalist?
When assessing a controversial assertion about some matter of
fact, the first order of business for the critic is to examine the
evidence presented on behalf of the assertion. In the case of Rand’s
assertions about human nature, this is not so very difficult. Rand
presented no evidence to back up her theory of human nature, so no
evidence needs to be examined. Typical in this respect is her essay
“The Objectivist Ethics.” If you go through this essay, you will find
several bold assertions about human nature. “Man is born with an
emotional mechanism, just as he is born with a cognitive mechanism,”
contended Rand; “but, at birth, both are ‘tabula rasa.’” “Emotions are
the automatic results of man’s value judgments integrated by the
subconscious.” “Emotions are not tools of cognition” (Rand 1964,
28, 27, 29). These are very interesting assertions. It would be nice if
Rand had provided evidence for these assertions so we could evaluate
whether they are true or at least plausible. But Rand gives us nothing.
Not even the tiniest shred or sliver of evidence.
At other points in the essay, Rand introduces moral ideals that
depend on the validity of certain facts. Again she fails to provide
evidence for those facts. Consider some of her remarks about the
virtue of rationality. “Rationality means the . . . acceptance of reason
as one’s only source of knowledge, one’s only judge of values and
one’s only guide to action.” And not only that, but rationality also
“means . . . that all one’s convictions, values, goals, desires and actions
must be based on, derived from, chosen and validated by a process of
thought—as precise and scrupulous a process of thought, directed by
as ruthlessly strict an application of logic, as one’s fullest capacity
permits” (1964, 25–26). This implies not merely that reason is man’s
only source of knowledge; it also gives logic a critical role in the
reasoning process, suggesting that any form of thought that does not
use logic is invalid or cognitively dubious.
Rand’s failure to provide evidence supporting her view of human
nature would not, in itself, indicate that she is wrong. Before any kind
of judgment can be made on the veracity of Rand’s views, the relevant
evidence must be examined. Does there exist any compelling evidence
that stands witness against Rand’s theories?
As a matter of fact, such evidence does exist. Neither the “tabula
rasa” view of human nature advocated by Rand, nor her theory that
emotions are derived from value judgments, would be taken very
seriously by cognitive scientists, neuroscientists, or evolutionary
psychologists working today (Pinker 1997, 31–36, 363–424; Pinker
2002, 38–41; Damasio 1994, 127–64). Even her insistence that
emotions have no legitimate role in cognition would be rejected by
those researchers acquainted with the relevant evidence. “The action
of biological drives, body states, and emotions may be an indispens-
able foundation for rationality,” suggested the neuroscientist Antonio
Damasio (1994, 200), whose research provides compelling evidence
for the role of emotion in the reasoning process (165–222). The
cognitive scientists George Lakoff and Mark Johnson are much less
tentative than Damasio on this issue. “The idea of a pure reason that
can function in the moral domain independent of emotion is
empirically untenable,” they insist (1999, 439).
The most surprising evidence to emerge from these new sciences
of human nature challenges Rand’s contention that reason “is man’s
only means of grasping reality and of acquiring knowledge” ([1971]
1975, 84). If “reason” includes the conscious application of logic (as
Rand would have it), this statement is simply not true. Indeed,
cognitive scientists at the University of Iowa have found that certain
facts of reality can be grasped unconsciously, before any process of
consciously deliberated reason even has a chance to occur.
Yet this is not the least of it. By studying how people actually
think, cognitive scientists have found that thinking based on formal
logic is, for most practical purposes, not terribly useful. The cognitive
scientist Paul E. Johnson, after extensive analysis of how experts in
medicine, engineering, and other skilled professions think when
solving problems related to their specialties, made the following
observation:
I’m continually struck by the fact that the experts in our
studies very seldom engage in formal logical thinking. Most
of what they do is plausible-inferential thinking based on the
recognition of similarities. That kind of thinking calls for a
great deal of experience, as we say, a large data base. If
anybody’s going to be logical in a task, it’s the neophyte,
who’s desperate for some way to generate answers, but the
expert finds logical thinking a pain in the neck and far too
slow. So the medical specialist, for instance, doesn’t do
hypothetical-deductive, step-by-step diagnosis, the way he
was taught in medical school. Instead, by means of his
wealth of experience he recognizes some symptom or
syndrome, he quickly gets an idea, he suspects a possibility,
and he starts right in looking for data that will confirm or
disconfirm his guess. (Hunt 1982, 139–40)
I have quoted this lengthy passage because it goes to the very
heart of my critique of Objectivism. Most practical knowledge (i.e.,
the sort of knowledge used to confront and solve the problems that
we face in everyday life) is based on generalizations drawn from
experience. By making logic one of the essential foundations of
human cognition, Rand, by implication, invalidates the practical
knowledge of everyday life, which depends on logically invalid forms
of reasoning. Most of what we know about human nature, for
example, exists as generalizations from experience. Rand’s tabula rasa
view of human nature, however, rejects any type of generalization that
threatens her over-romanticized conception of man.
As an illustration of this, consider the human tendency toward
self-deception. Literally hundreds of experiments in social psychology
have shown that most people think better of themselves than is
warranted by the facts. “Indeed, most people claim they are above
average in any positive trait you name,” notes the cognitive scientist
Steven Pinker (1997, 422). In other words, most people are incapable
of judging themselves objectively. Worse, they don’t even realize this.
They regard their self-estimations as fair and objective (Pinker 2002,
265).
If most people are and always have been like this, it poses a
serious problem to Rand’s virtue of pride, which requires at the very
least that people be honest about themselves. If there exists a
biological predisposition toward self-deception—and the evidence
strongly suggests that such a predisposition does in fact exist (45–51,
263–66)—then making a virtue of pride may not be such a great idea.
Perhaps it would be far wiser to encourage most people to be humble
as a countermeasure to their tendency toward self-deception and false
pride.
Rand, of course, would never have accepted the notion that
human nature somehow renders pride unattainable for most people.
We know that Rand did not believe in human nature in the traditional
sense of the term; that she believed, instead, that man was a blank
slate who could shape “his soul in the image of his moral ideal, in the
image of . . . the rational being he is born able to create” (1961, 160).
Instead of providing empirical evidence for this rather extraordinary
view, she based it on a logical argument. Free will, she argues, is
“axiomatic” because the opposite view, determinism, is self-contradic-
tory. But if people have free will, they cannot have biological
predispositions or tendencies, Rand concluded, because this would
violate their freedom of choice (169).
The problem with this argument is that it goes in the face of a
growing body of scientific evidence that shows that genes account for
about half of the variation in most psychological traits (Pinker 2002,
48). The tabula rasa view of human nature does not accord with the
best scientific opinion. Nor does it accord with human experience, as
we find it represented in literature. Yet Rand, on the basis of a mere
“logical” rationalization, would turn her back on the empirical
evidence provided by scientific research and by ordinary human
experience.
In my book, I sought to challenge not merely Rand’s vision of
human nature, but also the method of logical rationalization used to
defend it. At one point in his review, Seddon (2003, 366) wonders
“what [I] would have Rand do if not use logic?” I have no problem
with Rand using logic to settle logical problems. I do, however, have
a problem when Rand attempts to settle matters of fact without doing
the necessary empirical research. That is not a very reliable method
of settling controversial issues regarding matters of fact. It is not the
method used by scientists, who seek to supplement their logical
reasonings with a copious fund of empirical research; nor is it the
method primarily used in everyday life, where logically invalid
inferences drawn from accumulated experiences are used much of
time.
The problem with Rand is that she was not an empirically
responsible philosopher. She makes all kinds of controversial
assertions about matters of fact without backing them up with the
relevant empirical evidence. How does Seddon respond to this
criticism? By accusing me (1) of positivism and (2) of equating
sensory observation with knowledge (368–69). But even if I were
guilty of these philosophical sins, that would not get Rand off the
hook. All I have done in my book is compare some of Rand’s most
controversial assertions about matters of fact with the relevant
evidence compiled by cognitive scientists, evolutionary psychologists,
neuroscientists, social psychologists, and sociobiologists. Excellent
research is being done in these fields—research that is helping us
develop an understanding of the human mind based on empirical
science rather than on mere philosophical speculation. Rand’s views
of human nature and cognition don’t altogether square with this
research. Indeed, other than Rand’s insistence on unit economy, most
of her epistemology is either irrelevant and trivial or exaggerated and
untrue. Much the same could be said of her view of human nature,
particularly her tabula rasa view of human psychology. The latest
scientific evidence simply does not support the Randian view on these
issues.
Although Rand’s theories of morality and politics are largely
untouched by recent scientific developments, there are still problems
to be noted. In my book, I argued that her social and political ideals
were unrealizable, and could be dismissed on those grounds alone.
Seddon objects to this line of inquiry, accusing me of “an unwilling-
ness to even consider” normative political theory and of “totally”
misunderstanding “the logic of the social sciences versus the natural
sciences” (371). But the misunderstanding is on Seddon’s part, who
fails to grasp how easily normative political theory degenerates into
advocacy theory and special pleading. Political partisanship, when
combined with the human tendency to self-deception, constitutes an
immense threat to descriptive theory (Hunt 1982, 128–30; Burnham
1963, 287–305). For those of us who prefer truth to ideology and
science to rationalization, one of the techniques to help us avoid the
pitfalls of special pleading and rank partisanship is to zealously
separate descriptive social science from normative theory. But note:
this separation is not motivated by any sort of unwillingness to
“consider” normative social science. We simply don’t want to give
way to the all-too-human temptation to allow our political and social
prejudices from contaminating our scientific work.
Near the end of his review, Seddon expresses puzzlement that I
should consider Rand an important and perhaps even great thinker,
despite regarding her philosophy as a mistake. But here context is
everything. Her philosophy is only a mistake if we assume that Rand
was trying to provide apt description of human nature and the human
condition. On these issues, Objectivism is a failure. It would,
however, be unfair to dismiss Rand and her philosophy on these
grounds alone. If we examine the history of philosophy, it becomes
increasingly evident that most philosophers, as Nietzsche (1968, 202)
pointed out, are “advocates who resent the name.” Philosophy, if we
define it by the example of the great philosophers, is primarily
concerned with providing rationalizations for the idols of human
sentiment. So if, as I contended in my book, Objectivism is largely a
rationalization of Rand’s peculiar vision of man and society, that does
not necessarily make Rand a bad philosopher. After all, isn’t she
merely following in the footsteps of Plato, Hegel, Marx and other
great philosophers, who also rationalized preconceived notions? All
I am seeking to accomplish in my book is to refute Rand’s pretensions
as a realist, as a purveyor of truth and wisdom. She is none of these
things. But as philosophical rationalizer, as casuist par excellence, she
may, for all I know, deserve very high marks.
Although I have little use, personally, for the rationalizing type of
philosophy, I am not so prejudiced as to contend that there is no
merit in it at all. There are, to be sure, some very serious disadvan-
tages to rationalizing a misconceived vision of the world. But there
are some advantages as well that must be weighed in the balance.
When Seddon (2003, 371), for example, suggests that Rand’s “laissez-
faire capitalism is more of a goal to be aimed at than anything that
may actually be,” he has stumbled upon what could prove a rich vein
of analysis. Extend this line of thinking to all of Rand’s thought, and
suddenly Objectivism is transformed into a kind of Sorelian myth.
Rand’s ideals of man and society, as descriptions of truth, may fall
considerably short of the mark, but as myths that inspire individuals
to reach the summit of their potential, there may be real utility in
them.
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