The Binswanger Loyalty Oath

A commenter on this thread reminds us of ARIan Harry Binswanger's odd requirement for joining his email list:

The HBL Loyalty Oath
I have created this list for those who are deeply and sincerely interested in Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism and its application to cultural-political issues.

It is understood that Objectivism is limited to the philosophic principles expounded by Ayn Rand in the writings published during her lifetime plus those articles by other authors that she published in her own periodicals (e.g., The Objectivist) or included in her anthologies. Applications, implications, developments, and extensions of Objectivism--though they are to be encouraged and will be discussed on my list--are not, even if entirely valid, part of Objectivism. (Objectivism does not exhaust the field of rational philosophic identifications.)

I do not make full agreement with Objectivism a condition of joining my list. However, I do exclude anyone who is sanctioning or supporting the enemies of Ayn Rand and Objectivism. "Enemies" include: "libertarians," moral agnostics or "tolerationists," anarchists, and those whom Ayn Rand condemned morally or who have written books or articles attacking Ayn Rand. I do not wish to publicize the myriad of anti-Objectivist individuals and organizations by giving names, so if you have questions about any such, email me privately and I will be glad to discuss it with you.

If you bristle at the very idea of a "loyalty oath" and declaring certain ideological movements and individuals as "enemies," then my list is probably not for you. To join my list while concealing your sanction or support of these enemies, would be to commit a fraud. Again, if you have any questions on this policy, please let me know

Are Values Hardwired?

Apropos of Greg's recent series examining the subconscious or "hardwired" part of human nature, YahooNews reports further evidence suggesting reciprocity (or what Objectivists call "the trader principle") is hardwired even into monkeys:

The latest findings suggest that a sense of fairness is deeply ingrained in human evolutionary history rather than the idea that it's a more cultural response, and thus, learned from other humans....Brosnan, along with lead author Megan van Wolkenten and Frans B. M. de Waal, both at Emory University in Georgia, trained 13 tufted capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) at Emory's Yerkes National Primate Research Center to play a no-fair game. In the game, each of a pair of monkeys would hand a small granite rock to a human in exchange for a reward, either a cucumber slice or the more preferable grape.When both monkeys received cucumber rewards, all was fine in primate land. But when one monkey handed over the granite stone and landed a grape, while monkey number two got a cucumber, madness ensued.

The Cognitive Revolution & Objectivism, Part 3

Cognitive Unconscious. Rand wanted to believe that every aspect of cognition and willing could be controlled, directly or indirectly, by the conscious mind. Thus the Objectivist contention that the unconsciousness (or "subconsciousness") "is simply a name for the content of your mind that you are not focused on at any given moment. It is simply a repository for past information or conclusions that you were once conscious of in some form, but that are now stored beneath the threshold of consciousness. There is nothing in the subconscious besides what you acquired by conscious means. The subconscious does perform automatically certain important integrations (sometimes these are correct, sometimes not) but the conscious mind is always able to know what these are (and to correct them, if necessary)." (Ayn Rand Lexicon, p. 484)

Rand never denied that unconscious (or "subconscious") processes occur in human thought. What she appears to have denied is that these processes could ever originate, in whole or in part, from below the threshold of consciousness. Hence, for Rand, "subconscious" thinking is simply conscious thinking that has been automatized, or "programmed," like with a computer. Since human beings, in the Randian view, are blank slates, nothing can ever get into the "subconsciousness" that wasn't first in the individual's conscious.

This view, at the very least, is a gross exaggeration. Consider what George Lakoff and Mark Johnson have to say about the cognitive unconscious:

Conscious thought is the tip of an enormous iceberg. It is the rule of thumb among cognitive scientists that unconscious thought is 95 percent of all thought—and that may be a serious underestimate. Moreover, the 95 percent below the surface of conscious awareness shapes and structures all conscious thought. If the cognitive unconscious were not there doing this shaping, there could be no conscious thinking....

The cognitive unconscious is posited in order to explain conscious experience and behavior that cannot be directly understood on its own terms.... The details of these unconscious structures and processes are arrived at through convergent evidence, gathered from various methodologies used in studying the mind. What has been concluded on the basis of such studies is that there exists a highly structured level of mental organization and processing that functions unconsciously and is inaccessible to conscious awareness. (Philosophy of the Flesh, p.13,103-104)

Or consider what the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio has to say on the unconscious:

The field of social psychology has produced massive evidence for non-conscious influences in human mind and behavior.... Cognitive science and linguistics have produced their own evidence. For example, by the age of three, children make amazing usage of the rules of construction of their language, but they are not aware of this "knowledge," and neither are their parents. A good example comes from the manner in which three-year-olds form the following plurals perfectly:

dog + plural = dog z
cat + plural = cat z
bee + plural = bee z

The children add the voiced z, or the voiceless s, at the end of the right word but the selection does not depend on a conscious survey of that knowledge. The selection is unconscious. (The Feeling of What Happens, p. 297)

Experiments in cognitive science have demonstrated that unconscious processes accompany and underly every facet of thinking. Indeed, some experiments suggest that most conscious thinking may be the result of unconscious processes, so that Rand nearly got it backwards. As cognitive scientist Richard Nisbett explained:

In one of our experiments, we asked people to pick out the nylon panty hose of the best quality from a set of four pairs that were arranged in front of them from left to right. Actually, the panty hose were identical, but our subjects picked the right-most pair four times as often as the left-most pair. When we asked them why they picked that pair, they gave reasons of one sort or another, but never mentioned position. And when we asked them if position could have influenced them, they denied it and sounded annoyed, or, in some cases, seemed to think they were dealing with madmen. The evidence of a number of related experiments suggests that most of the time we don't know why we think as we do, even when we feel certain we do." (Morton Hunt, The Universe Within, p. 276-277)

And finally, in conclusion, consider the testimony of Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner:

Nearly all important thinking takes place outside of consciousness and is not available on introspection; the mental feats we think of as most impressive are trivial compared to everyday capacities; the imagination is always at work in ways that consciousness does not apprehend; consciousness can glimpse only a few vestiges of what the mind is doing; the scientist, the engineer, the mathematician, and the economist, impressive as their knowledge and techniques may be, are also unaware of how they are thinking and, even though they are experts, will not find out just by asking themselves. Evolution seems to have built us to be constrained from looking directly into the nature of our cognition, which puts cognitive science in the difficult position of trying to use mental abilities to reveal what those very abilities are built to hide." (The Way We Think, p. 33-34)

Oh Yes, They Called Him The Streak

Guest poster Neil Parille from Objectiblog tells the tale of Ayn Rand's odd reaction to a famous prank at the 1974 Academy Awards.

Objectivists often accuse non-Objectivists, anti-Objectivists and apostates from ARI Objectivism as suffering from “rationalism.” This term appears to mean something like applying principles to situations without taking into account the facts of experience. A recent example is Leonard Peikoff’s 2006 statement that anyone who considers voting Republican or abstaining from voting “does not understand the philosophy of Objectivism, except perhaps as a rationalistic system detached from the world.” Incidentally, the term does not appear in this sense in either The Ayn Rand Lexicon or the index to Leonard Peikoff’s Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand.

Ellen Stuttle has drawn attention to the following from Leonard Peikoff’s 1987 talk “My Thirty Years With Ayn Rand,” reprinted in The Voice of Reason:

About a dozen years ago, Ayn Rand and I were watching the Academy Awards on television; it was the evening when a streaker flashed by during the ceremonies. Most people probably dismissed the incident with some remark like: "He's just a kid" or "It's a high-spirited prank" or "He wants to get on TV." But not Ayn Rand. Why, her mind, wanted to know, does this "kid" act in this particular fashion? What is the difference between his "prank" and that of college students on a lark who swallow goldfish or stuff themselves into telephone booths? How does his desire to appear on TV differ from that of a typical game-show contestant? In other words, Ayn Rand swept aside from the outset the superficial aspects of the incident and the standard irrelevant comments in order to reach the essence, which has to pertain to this specific action in this distinctive setting.

"Here," she said to me in effect, "is a nationally acclaimed occasion replete with celebrities, jeweled ballgowns, coveted prizes, and breathless cameras, an occasion offered to the country as the height of excitement, elegance, glamor--and what this creature wants to do is drop his pants in the middle of it all and thrust his bare buttocks into everybody's face. What then is his motive? Not high spirits or TV coverage, but destruction--the satisfaction of sneering at and undercutting that which the rest of the country looks up to and admires." In essence, she concluded, the incident was an example of nihilism, which is the desire not to have or enjoy values, but to nullify and eradicate them.

[. . .]

Having grasped the streaker's nihilism, therefore, she was eager to point out to me some very different examples of the same attitude. Modern literature, she observed, is distinguished by its creators' passion not to offer something new and positive, but to wipe out: to eliminate plots, heroes, motivation, even grammar and syntax; in other words, their brazen desire to destroy their own field along with the great writers of the past by stripping away from literature every one of its cardinal attributes. Just as Progressive education is the desire for education stripped of lessons, reading, facts, teaching, and learning. Just as avant-garde physics is the gleeful cry that there is no order in nature, no law, no predictability, no causality. That streaker, in short, was the very opposite of an isolated phenomenon. He was a microcosm of the principle ruling modern culture, a fleeting representative of that corrupt motivation which Ayn Rand has described so eloquently as "hatred of the good for being the good." And what accounts for such widespread hatred? she asked at the end. Her answer brings us back to the philosophy we referred to earlier, the one that attacks reason and reality wholesale and thus makes all values impossible: the philosophy of Immanuel Kant.

The event in question was the 1974 Academy Awards. By that time, streaking had become the national prank. Ray Stevens’ song “The Streak” had been written but not published. Based on the little evidence available to Rand that night, the most likely explanation was that the streaker was just another “kid” pulling a prank, and the Academy Awards program chosen because it would give him maximum “exposure.”

In fact, the streaker was one Robert Opel, a thirty-three year old variously described as a photographer and an advertising executive. Opel wanted to make a statement about public nudity and sexual freedom (he was for it) as well as jump-start his career. His motive, then, does not appear to have been nihilism or tearing down the Academy Awards.

Rand’s discussion of the streaker incident highlights a couple of problems common with her analysis of historical and cultural events. First, she tends to draw conclusions in the absence of evidence. Second, she tends to ascribe philosophical motivations to individuals without considering more mundane explanations. In short, it was Rand who was guilty of rationalism in this case.

In the above excerpt, Peikoff continues that hearing Rand that night inspired him to write the chapter on Weimar culture in The Ominous Parallels. This misguided work, in which Peikoff all but blames Kant for Auschwitz, illustrates the streaker problem in reverse: the facts available to the historian are so vast that determining the one philosophic principle explaining it all (if there is just one) is close to impossible. It is more likely that a number of philosophical trends converged in 1933 which, when combined with the German public’s frustration over the economy and the humiliation of the Treaty of Versailles, resulted in the Nazi takeover. As Greg Nyquist argues in his book, if Hitler’s adversaries had adopted a better strategy, it is possible that the Nazis might not have seized power.

- Neil Parille

Van Damme Replies (Sort of)

While cleaning up some comments spam I came across this brief note that may have been lost in the flurry. In this post Greg criticised a passage from Lisa Van Damme's essay "The False Promise of Classical Education."

In a kind of proxy comment, an anonymous contributor passed this reply on, allegedly from Van Damme:

From Lisa VanDamme:

What defines the hierarchical order of concepts is distance from the perceptual level, not "wideness." "Doberman" is, unquestionably, more abstract than "dog": Ayn Rand addresses this issue in ITOE, and nothing I have ever said contradicts it.

Leaving aside the oddness of replying by anonymous proxy - surely it would be easier just to reply directly - this also seems to not answer the issue. Here's what Greg quoted from Van Damme's original essay:

Van Damme: "There is a necessary order to the formation of concepts and generalizations. A child cannot form the concept of “organism” until he has first formed the concepts of “plant” and “animal”; he cannot grasp the concept of “animal” until he has first formed concepts such as “dog” and “cat”; and so on. The pedagogical implication of the fact that there is a necessary order to the formation of abstract knowledge is that you must teach concepts and generalizations in their proper order. An abstract idea—whether a concept, generalization, principle, or theory—should never be taught to a child unless he has already grasped those ideas that necessarily precede it in the hierarchy, all the way down to the perceptual level."

Greg's point in the post was that if this was true, one would start with "Doberman", go up to "dog", then to "organism" etc. Yet this seems unlikely.

Van Damme and other commenters do not seem to have a direct response to this, and merely reply to the effect that Greg's demonstration is a "straw man" because Rand said otherwise in the ITOE. But if Rand's theory (or Van Damme's expression of it) does not stand up to its own derivable consequences, this is hardly Greg's problem! Rather it speaks to the basic wooliness and what I regard as the outright emptiness of most of the speculations expressed in the ITOE.

At any rate, it would be interesting if Van Damme wished to reply in a bit more detail - even by proxy - to Greg's original post, and we cordially invite her to do so.

Conjectural Notes on Free Will

The intense interest on this blog in the question of free will has persuaded me to interrupt my series on the Cognitive Revolution and Objectivism to expound on this contentious topic.

Most criticisms of Objectivism focus on the alleged contradiction between Rand's acceptance of causality on the one side and her insistence on free will on the other. "Ayn Rand's views on causation contradict her views on free will," writes one commentator. "The reason is very simple: her views on causation are those of a determinist; her views on free will, however, make her a libertarian. And those two positions are, by definition, incompatible." Oh, well, if they are incompatible "by definition," that settles the question! Such reasoning, however, is circular: the terms have been defined in such way as to reach the conclusion desired. This is rationalistic verbalism—and is nothing to the purpose. Neither is Peikoff's assertion that "one must accept [free will] in order to deny it" very helpful. Surely the question is every bit as empirical as any other concerning matters of fact. So why not attend to the relevant facts, thereby supplying one's reasonings with the useful check of experience?

Causal determinism asserts "that future events are necessitated by past and present events combined with the laws of nature." The doctrine is very convincing when applied to physical objects. The material world does appear to be deterministic in just this sense, as innumerable experiments have shown. Things get a bit more dicey once we go down to a quantum level. But a propensity interpretation of quantum mechanics, as suggested by Karl Popper, may turn out to be a convincing way around these issues. In any case, the question arises: does the determinism found in the physical world (at least above the quantum level) hold good in the mental world? And if so, why?

One cannot simply assume, a priori, that all of existence is fashioned after a single plan, so that if determinism is found operable in the material world, it must also be found operable in the mental world as well. Do the facts support such a supposition? Not entirely. Do physical entities or events possess the same kinds of characters or properties as percepts and images? Do they exist in the same spatial and temporal order with them? Our experience suggests otherwise. Ideas, concepts, percepts, mental images are one thing, the material world is something else. The mental and physical orders are clearly worth distinguishing.

The next question is: how do these two planes of existence relate? Scientific determinism generally favors the view that the mind is solely determined by physical processes. Superficially, this view seems to be supported by the fact that the mental world depends so enormously on the brain. Yet here we must be careful. There are some facts that simply don't square with the idea that all mental processes are really only material processes in disguise. In the first place, this view strongly suggests that consciousness is epiphenomenal and, ipso facto, inefficacious. But if so, why did evolution breed and select it? Then there's the problem of our own introspective experience. We experience ourselves making decisions and choosing between alternatives. Is our own experience to be ignored as a mere illusion? But if that experience is illusory, why isn't our experience of the material world as deterministic also illusory?

If consciousness is efficacious, if the mind provides a contribution to human life that goes beyond merely physical processes, then free will, in some measure or form, has been established. In what precise measure or form is a question best answered, again, by consultation of the relevant facts. Here neuroscience can provide fascinating perspectives, particularly when combined with evolutionary psychology. If the brain is a product of evolution, then free will must also be a product of evolution. But if free will has evolved, then this suggests that it has in the past, and could still, exist in degrees. A strange notion, to be sure. Is there any evidence beyond evolutionary speculation on its behalf? Yes, there is. People with damage to the ventromedial frontal cortex of the brain are no longer able to engage in effective decision making. It is as if there free will is impaired. Decision making, initiative, planning all rely on the frontal cortex of the brain. If there exist innate factors that increase or decrease how well this prefrontal cortex functions, its plausible that differences in the degree of free will could be partially innate. Indeed, we know intelligence is partially innate, and individuals with greater intelligence probably have a greater degree of free will than those wilth less intelligence.

This view of the mind suggests the following conjecture: that free will is perhaps best conceived as a kind of module of the brain, working in tandem with other modules, such as those providing motivation and thought. There is certain level of innateness running through all these modules, particularly in the affect system, but there's also a certain amount of plasticity to both experience and thought, so that the mind is best envisioned as a complex web of drives and thoughts and self-initiative which interact against one another, perhaps even slightly altering one another in the process, and commencing in volitions that are influenced by thoughts, innate drives, memory, social-training and self-initiative, all working at difference degrees and intensities. Under this model, there is none of the sort of unsaddled free will imagined by Rand. The majority of humans beings are what we find them in everyday life, in history, in great literature, and in scientific research: inherently limited, imperfect, yet still capable, through initiative, discipline and hard work, of attaining a modest level of dignity and self-efficacy. Some may be able to attain more along these lines, some less, depending on the amount of intelligence, initiative, and emotional stability that they are born with.

ARCHNblog Flashback: "Rand and Empirical Responsibility"

Given the recent discussion it seems apropos to re-run Greg Nyquist's Journal of Ayn Rand Studies article - which was a reply to Fred Seddon's review of "ARCHN" - on this very topic.

Objectivism and the Descent Into Pseudoscience

The debate over at www.richarddawkins.net vs "The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics" author Jim Valliant now appears to be over, as it seems Valliant has retired. It has however been most revealing as an example of what seems to be the trend within Objectivism towards the embrace of pseudoscience. Among other rather amazing claims, Valliant attempted to pass off his own "introspections" as a compelling empirical basis for Ayn Rand's theory of volition, and when pressed to name any of the numerous "scientists" he initially claimed were Objectivists, could only offer the anti-relativity crank Petr Beckmann*. This apparent trend we will explore further here at ARCHNblog, as it is corroborates Nyquist's thesis that Objectivism in practice only pays lipservice to scientific standards. But what are the underlying drivers in the philosophy that explain this? In a post at www.richarddawkins.net I offer one speculation as to why:

Dave, I'd like to touch on a central point that risks being overlooked.

Yes, Rand and her followers are generally - and as Mr Valliant demonstrates with his "Objecto-empiricism", even hilariously - ignorant of science. This is basically admitted every time they attempt to ring-fence some of her (and their) absurdities by appealing to a "philosophic" context, rather than a scientific one.

But the key point is this: basically Rand believed philosophy should quite literally set the terms for science (she says this quite clearly in the ITOE, in a remarkable passage where she insists that philosophers like herself will tell scientists the "proper" meaning of the words they use**). Philosophy is always in control; it might refute science; but it can never be the other way around. Philosophy is the master discipline - with Objectivism at the summit of that - from which "true" science (as well as ethics, politics, aesthetics etc) flows.

One can easily see the seduction here. The dream of the kind of intellectual power that allows you to make pronouncements over what is "proper" to even disciplines that you are ignorant of, has, like other more obvious dreams of power, perennial appeal. Further, it is a power that seems remarkably easily achieved; for it is basically very easy to play with words, as the Aristotelian method of definition that Rand adopted inevitably leads to (just as it lead to the scholasticism of the Middle Ages). This in turn empowers people like Mr Valliant to rock up to a science forum and begin instructing all and sundry as to what does and does not constitute "empirical" evidence. (And surely enough, with sufficiently determined sophistry, we see the determinist arguments from the massive empirical successes of physics and chemistry become dismissed as "empty arguments from authority", and his personal "introspections" promoted as both "empirical" and even "objective.")

It could be that Mr Valliant merely thinks it is Opposites Day here at Dawkins.net. However, I think there's a bigger story here. I conjecture that it is this underlying dream, and its accompanying scholastic methodology, that accounts for this peculiar picture of a movement ostensibly dedicated to reason, freedom, science, and productivity exhibiting, as you have already noted, so many alarming tendencies in the reverse direction.

*Even this appears to be incorrect, as Beckmann was apparently merely influenced by Rand. More about Beckmann here
**see pp289/290 "Introduction To Objectivist Epistemology"

Cognitive Revolution & Objectivism, Part 2

Behavioral Genetics. From the modular theory of the mind, we proceed to behavioral genetics. It is here that the first really serious challenge to Rand's man-as-self-creator view of human nature commences. Steven Pinker outlines behavioral genetics as follows:

[T]he findings of behavioral genetics are highly damaging to the Blank Slate and its companion doctrines. The slate cannot be blank if different genes can make it more or less smart, articulate, shy, happy, conscientious, neurotic, open, introverted, giggly, spatially challenged, or likely to dip buttered toast in coffee. For genes to affect the mind in all these ways, the mind must have many parts and features for the genes to affect [i.e., the mind must be modular]. Similarly, if the mutation or deletion of a gene can target a cognitive ability as specific as spatial construction or a personality-trait as specific as sensation-seeking, that trait may be a distinct component of the psyche.

Moreover, many of the traits affected by genes are far from noble. Psychologists have discovered that our personalities differ in five major ways: we are to varying degrees introverted or extroverted, neurotic or stable, incurious or open to experience, agreeable or antagonistic, and conscientious or undirected.... All five of the major personality dimensions are heritable, with perhaps 40 to 50 percent of variation in a typical population tied to differences in their genes. The unfortunate wretch who is introverted, neurotic, narrow, selfish, and undependable is probably that way way in part because of his genes, and so, most likely, are the rest of us who have tendencies in any of those directions as compared with our fellows.

It's not just unpleasant temperaments that are partly heritable, but actual behavior with real consequences. Study after study has shown that a willingness to commit antisocial acts, including lying, stealing, starting fights, and destroying property, is partly heritable.... People who commit truly heinous acts, such as bilking elderly people out of their life savings, raping a succession of women, or shooting convenience store clerks lying on the floor during a robbery, are often diagnosed with "psychopathy" or "antisocial personality disorder." Most psychopaths showed signs of malice from the time they were children. They bullied smaller children, tortured animals, lied habitually, and were incapable of empathy or remorse, often despite normal family backgrounds and the best efforts of their distraught parents. Most experts on psychopathy believe that it comes from a genetic predisposition, though in some cases it may come from early brain damage. (Blank Slate, 50-51)

If behavioral genetics is largely correct, than Rand's tabula rasa view of human nature is wrong. Man is not a being of a self-made soul; his volition is in fact saddled with tendencies; and his emotions are not entirely the product of his conclusions. Now the evidence for behavior genetics is very compelling. "The effects of differences in genes in minds can be measured, and the same rough estimate — substantially greater than zero, but substantially less than 100 percent — pops out of the data no matter what measuring stick is used," writes Pinker. Whether we're talking about identical twins raised apart or experiments involving isolation of genes, it all points to one conclusion: that genes influence (though they don't determine!) the mind and the behavior that emerges from it.

The Cognitive Revolution & Objectivism, Part 1

Starting in the 1950s, the sciences of mind, brain, genes, and evolution began forming a new understanding of human nature, based on an ever growing body of empirical data. This "cognitive revolution" presents a formidable challenge to the largely speculative model of the mind implicit in Objectivism.

Here's Steven Pinker's description of the new model of the brain emerging from the cognitive revolution:

Before the revolution, commentators invoked enormous black boxes such as "the intellect" or "the understanding," and they made sweeping pronouncements about human nature, such as that we are essentially noble or essentially nasty. But we now know that the mind is not a homogeneous orb invested with unitary powers or across-the-board traits. The mind is modular, with many parts cooperating to generate a train of thought or an organized action. It has distinct information-processing systems for filtering out distractions, learning skills, controlling the body, remembering facts, holding information temporarily, and storing and executing rules. Cutting across these data-processing systems are mental faculties (sometimes called multiple intelligences) dedicated to different kinds of content, such as language, number, space, tools, and living things.... Still another layer of information-processing systems can be found in the affect programs, that is, the systems for motivation and emotion.

The upshot is that an urge or habit coming out of one module can be translated into behavior in different ways—or suppressed altogether—by some other module.... More generally, the interplay of mental systems can explain how people can entertain revenge fantasies that they never act on, or can commit adultery only in their hearts. In this way the theory of human nature coming out of the cognitive revolution has more in common with the the Judeo-Christian theory of human nature ... than with behaviorism, social constructivism, and other versions of the Blank Slate. Behavior is not just emitted or elicited, nor does it come directly out of culture or society. It comes from an internal struggle among mental modules with differing agendas and goals.

This modular theory of the mind, when combined with behavioral genetics, challenges Rand's tabula rasa view of the mind, her denial that free will is "saddled" with tendencies, and her ideal of a consciousness "in perfect harmony."

The Passion of "Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature"'s Critics

Discovered dissing "Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature" over at at Richard Dawkins' site (registration required), James Valliant, author of "The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics", offers to personally critique Nyquist's dread tome. But then sadly he changes his mind.

(some scrolling may be required)

Update: Post retitled due to the excellent suggestion of Anon in comments. The exchange is particularly valuable as a verbatim example of what Objectivists such as Valliant pass off as "empirical" support for their views. As I wrote, Valliant simply has "persistent difficulty differentiating an imaginative conjecture from an empirical reality. Something of a problem." This problem is of course perfectly consistent with the marvellous combination of sophistry, sycophancy, and fantasy that is "The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics", the miscellaneous weirdnesses of which the ARCHNblog has outlined here, here, and here.

It's probably just as well as he didn't mention Rand's views on evolution there...

Rand on Compromise

Special guest poster Neil Parille from Objectiblog takes at look at the difficulties of Rand's view of compromise:

Ayn Rand is often admired for her devotion to principles and unwillingness to compromise. In her biography of Rand, Barbara Branden tells the moving story of how Rand fought heroically to prevent changes to the script of The Fountainhead during its filming. (Branden, The Passion of Ayn Rand, pp. 208-209.)

Rand’s most important discussion of compromise is a brief three page essay in The Virtue of Selfishness entitled “Doesn’t Life Require Compromise?” She boldly proclaims that “there can be no compromise on basic principles or on fundamental issues.” (Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness, p. 80.) She highlights the mixed economy as an example of an unacceptable compromise on moral principles. “There can be no compromise between freedom and government controls; to accept ‘just a few controls’ is to surrender the principle of inalienable individual rights . . . .” (Id., pp. 79-80.)

As is often the case with Rand, she is good on principles, but weak on specifics. She gives examples of acceptable compromises (such as coming to a mutually agreed upon price with a vendor) and unacceptable compromises (attending a religious ceremony to placate one’s family). These examples make sense from the Randian perspective, but why not discuss situations that are more likely to confront the average Objectivist? For example, Rand considered taxation immoral. Yet she faithfully paid her taxes. By paying taxes one isn’t one “sanctioning” the welfare state? What about working for the government? Isn’t this a compromise on moral principles? A state employee’s income comes from money immorally seized by the government. Many Objectivist professors, including Leonard Peikoff, have taught at state run universities. Some, such as Robert Mayhew, have taught at religious schools. Voting appears problematic as well. Unless there is a consistently Objectivist candidate, isn’t it a compromise to vote? Wouldn’t the prudent course be to abstain from voting? Rand, however, voted for Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. (During the 2006 elections, Leonard Peikoff went so far as to claim that anyone who refused to vote Democratic or abstained from voting “does not understand the philosophy of Objectivism.”)

Throughout her life Rand had little use for economists and conservative intellectuals who were not consistent supporters of the free market economy. In her recently published question and answers, she described Milton Friedman as a “miserable eclectic.” (Mayhew, ed., Ayn Rand Answers, p. 43.) In her marginalia, she launched a nasty attack on Friedrich von Hayek calling him, among other things, a “God damn fool” and a “vicious bastard.” (Mayhew, ed., Ayn Rand’s Marginalia, pp. 149 and 151.)

Interestingly, one compromising free market economist whom Rand admired was Alan Greenspan. Greenspan met Rand in 1951 and remained close friends with her until her death in 1982. He contributed three essays to her anthology Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, one supporting the gold standard and two criticizing, respectively, antitrust laws and consumer protection regulations.

In 1974, Greenspan was chosen by President Richard Nixon to head his Council of Economic Advisors. After Nixon resigned, President Ford re-nominated him. Rand attended Greenspan’s swearing-in ceremony in the White House. Greenspan states in his memoirs that by this time he had disagreed with Rand’s belief in government financing through voluntary contributions and hints that he had come to reject consistent laissez-faire policies.

Shortly before Rand’s death, Greenspan accepted an appointment by President Ronald Reagan to head the National Commission on Social Security Reform, which recommended large tax increases. The culmination of his career was his lengthy chairmanship of the Federal Reserve Board. As Chairman of “the Fed,” Greenspan, in effect, repudiated his three essays in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. The Fed sanctions the printing of paper money, oversees anti-trust laws with respect to bank mergers and heavily regulates consumer transactions. “Compromise,” he now says, is “the price of civilization.”

Rand, of course, had no way of knowing that her friend and disciple would become the enabler-in-chief of the mixed economy, but she could not have been unaware of his partial betrayal of Objectivist principles by 1974. Ten years earlier she had written in “The Cult of Moral Grayness” that a mixed economy is “an immoral war of pressure groups, devoid of principles . . . whose outward form is a game of compromise.” (Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness, p. 91, emphasis is the original.)

- Neil Parille

Saturday Nite Whim-Worshipping

Contra Rand, there are some times when you've got to let your whims rule. For no other conscious purpose other than a joyful racket unto the creator, here is my favourite tune of the moment. Basically the missing link between the Rocksteady Crew and The Fall, with a splash of Sesame St, The Go! Team perform the miracle of surpassing the polymorphous genius of their debut.



Disclaimer: Greg bears no responsibility for my musical tastes...;-)

Naturalist Theory of Emotions

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dear Dr Leonard

Dr Leonard Peikoff now personally answers your philosophical questions via podcast.

Regular ARCHNblog readers who may be interested in tossing the good doctor a few posers can get him at leonard@peikoff.com. And as a special ARCHNblog offer, a free copy of "Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature" to anyone who actually gets their question answered!*

*bonus copy of "The Ominous Parallels" for mentions of Howard Stern and/or Baba Booey

Rand's Theory of Emotions Examined

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

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

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

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

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

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

That Winston Tunnel Scene in Full

As part of our "Atlas Shrugged" 50th Anniversary discussions, we present one of the most controversial passages from Ayn Rand's bestseller. Here the doomed Comet train, part of the decaying infrastructure in slow motion collapse due to concomitant political, social and economic collapse, heads towards disaster in the eight-mile Winston tunnel:

"As the tunnel came closer, they saw, at the edge of the sky far to the south, in a void of space and rock, a spot of living fire twisting in the wind. They did not know what it was and did not care to learn.

It is said that catastrophes are a matter of pure chance, and there were those who would have said that the passengers of the Comet were not guilty or responsible for the thing that happened to them.

The man in Bedroom A, Car No. 1, was a professor of sociology who taught that individual ability is of no consequence, that individual effort is futile, that an individual conscience is a useless luxury, that there is no individual mind or character or achievement, that everything is achieved collectively, and that it's masses that count, not men.

The man in Roomette 7, Car No. 2, was a journalist who wrote that it is proper and moral to use compulsion 'for a good cause' who believed that he had the right to unleash physical force upon others - to wreck lives, throttle ambitions, strangle desires, violate convictions, to imprison, to despoil, to murder - for the sake of whatever he chose to consider as his own idea of 'a good cause',which did not even have to be an idea, since he had never defined what he regarded as the good, but had merely stated that he went by 'a feeling' -a feeling unrestrained by any knowledge, since he considered emotion superior to knowledge and relied soley on his own 'good intentions' and on the power of a gun.

The woman in Roomette 10, Car No.3, was an elderly schoolteacher who had spent her life turning class after class of helpless children into miserable cowards, by teaching them that the will of the majority is the only standard of good and evil, and that a majority may do anything it pleases, that they must not assert their own personalities, but must do as others were doing.

The man in Drawing Room B, Car No. 4, was a newspaper publisher who believed that mend are evil by nature and unfit for freedom, that their basic interests, if left unchecked, are to lie, to rob and murder one another - and, therefore, men must be ruled by means of lies, robbery and murder, which must be made the exclusive privilege of the rules, for the purpose of forcing men to work, teaching them to be moral and keeping them within the bounds of order and justice.

The man in Bedroom H, Car No. 5, was a businessman who had acquired his business, an ore mine, with the help of a government loan, under the Equalization of Opportunity Bill.

The man in Drawing Room A, Car No 6, was a financier who had made a fortune by buying 'frozen' railway bonds and getting his friends in Washington to 'defreeze' them.

The man in Seat 5, Car No.7, was a worker who believed that he had "a right" to a job, whether his employer wanted him or not.

The woman in Roomette 6, Car no. 8, was a lecturer who believed that, as a consumer, she had "a right" to transportation, whether the railroad people wished to provide it or not.

The man in Roomette 2, Car No. 9, was a professor of economics who advocated the abolition of private property, explaining that intelligence plays no part in industrial production, that man's mind is conditioned by material tools, that anybody can run a factory or a railroad and it's only a matter of seizing the machinery.

The woman in Bedroom D, Car No. 10, was a mother who had put her two children to sleep in the berth above her, carefully tucking them in, protecting them from drafts and jolts; a mother whose husband held a government job enforcing directives, which she defended by saying, 'I don't care, it's only the rich that they hurt. After all, I must think of my children.'

The man in Roomette 3, Car No. 11, was a sniveling little neurotic who wrote cheap little plays into which, as a social message, he inserted cowardly little obscenities to the effect that all businessmen were scoundrels.

The woman in Roomette 9, Car No. 12, was a housewife who believed that she had the right to elect politicians, of whom she knew nothing, to control giant industries, of which she had no knowledge.

The man in Bedroom F, Car No.13, was a lawyer who had said, 'Me? I'll find a way to get along under any political system.'

The man in Bedroom A, Car No.14, was a professor of philosophy who taught that there is no mind - how do you know that the tunnel is dangerous? - no reality - how can you prove that the tunnel exists? - no logic - why do you claim that trains cannot move without motive power? - no principles - why should you be bound by the laws of cause and effect? - no rights - why shouldn't you attach men to their jobs by force? - no morality - what's moral about running a railroad? - no absolutes - what difference does it make to you whether you live or die anyway?. He taught that we know nothing - why oppose the orders of your superiors? - that we can never be certain of anything - how do you know you're right? - that we must act on the expediency of the moment - you don't want to risk your job do you?

The man in Drawing Room B, Car No.15, was an heir who had inherited his fortune, and who had kept repeating, 'Why should Rearden be the only one permitted to manufacture Rearden Metal?'

The man in Bedroom A, Car no. 16, was a humanitarian who had said, 'The men of ability? I do not care what or if they are made to suffer. They must be penalized in order to support the incompetent. Frankly, I do not care whether this is just or not. I take pride in not caring to grant any justice to the able, where mercy to the needy is concerned.'

These passengers were awake; there was not a man aboard the train who did not share one or more of their ideas. As the train went into the tunnel, the flame of Wyatt's Torch was the last thing they saw on earth."
- Ayn Rand, "Atlas Shrugged", p566-568

"From Romantic Fallacy to Holocaustic Imagination"

As the ARCHNblog's "Atlas Shrugged" 50th Anniversary critique-athon continues, we link to a perceptive essay by Thomas F. Bertonneau*, "Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged: From Romantic Fallacy to Holocaustic Imagination."

Bertonneau contends that Rand constitutes "both an early symptom of, and a major influence on," the universal vulgarization of 21st century culture. He also describes the book as "morally incoherent", but not in the way we have usually come to expect. He writes that "in her divulgence of the “altruist” mentality, Rand seems to me accurately to have gleaned much about late-twentieth century left-liberal piety, not least its addiction to righteous display. But, to use one of her own favorite terms, her narrative builds on a borrowed premise." Bertonneau argues that the hidden "borrowed premise" behind "Atlas Shrugged" is sacrifice. Here he is on what he calls Rand's cataclysme a clef; the Winston Tunnel scene:

"In earlier instances we have observed how Rand’s sacrificial imagination can betray itself by a stylistic discrepancy. So it is again with the Tunnel incident... (Rand writes):“It is said that catastrophes are a matter of pure chance, and there were those who would have said that the passengers of the Comet were not guilty or responsible for the thing that happened to them.”...Who are the unnamed “those” in Rand’s sentence who “would have said,” absent a hearing by the rules, that, no legitimate sentence could in the moment attach to the fated ones? We can name them as any readers who at this point in the narrative might feel uneasy about what Rand proposes momentarily to execute in her role as author, she who makes things happen. Note how the passive inflection, “happened,” in the sentence, as though the event could boast of no agent, dissimulates a great deal: primarily it would dissimulate the author herself, were she not,in the writing of the utterance, betraying her manipulative and determining presence. The luckless ones must be made out as guilty. Rand must demonstrate that the random passengers have sinned sufficiently to substitute for the known “looters...”

*We note that contrary to Randian cliche, Bertonneau is a member of The Center for Literate Values, which upholds the Western literary tradition, and his "Declining Standards at Michigan Public Institutions" apparently 'stirred the rancor of teacher's unions for daring to objectify our culture's progressive ignorance."

Honesty in Objectivism

Ayn Rand, "For The New Intellectual::

"Honesty is the recognition of the fact that the unreal is unreal and can have no value, that neither love nor fame nor cash is a value if obtained by fraud - that an attempt to gain value by deceiving the mind of others is an act of raising your victims to a position higher than reality, where you become a pawn of their blindness, a slave of their non-thinking and their evasions, while their intelligence, their rationality, their perceptiveness become enemies you have to dread and flee - that you do not care to live as a dependent, least of all a dependent on the stupidity of others, or as a fool whose source of values is the fools he succeeds in fooling - that honesty is not a social virtue, but the most profoundly selfish virtue a man can practice..."

Ayn Rand Institute press release, Sept 12, 2007:

"Atlas Shrugged" ranks as one of the most influential books of all time, ranking second only to the Bible in a 1991 survey by the Library of Congress."

"To a gas chamber - go!"

With the 50th anniversary of the publication of Atlas Shrugged well upon us, several internet postings of the adulatory sycophantic fustian variety have already appeared to celebrate the occasion, and several of these postings have cited Whitaker Chambers notorious review of Rand's magnum opus, "Big Sister is Watching You", with its famous but often misinterpreted line: "To a gas chamber — go!" In an earlier posting at ARCHNBlog, I attempted, in vain no doubt, to clear up the misconceptions that so many of Rand's partisans entertain about the quote . Contrary to what so many Randian sympathizers believe, Chambers was not accusing Rand of being a genocidal maniac, eager to murder everyone who disagreed with her or committed palpable breaches of morality. He merely was noting that Rand's feelings toward people she didn't like were similar to those of a mass murderer toward his (or her) victims. Where would Chambers have gotten such an idea? That is easily answered: from Rand's evident approval, if not delight, in the demise of the villains of Atlas Shrugged. Recall Rand's commentary on the victims of the tunnel collapse on the train, the implicit upshot of which is: They all deserved to die!. In other words, while Rand certainly never wanted to murder anyone (nor did Chambers ever suggest that she did), she did, as far as we can tell, believe that people who didn't follow Objectivist "reason" would die and, more to the point, that such vile scum deserved to die. Here's Chamber's commentary on this disturbing facet of Rand's thought:

Out of a lifetime of reading, I can recall no other book in which a tone of overriding arrogance was so implacably sustained. Its shrillness is without reprieve. Its dogmatism is without appeal... [R]esistance to the Message cannot be tolerated because disagreement can never be merely honest, prudent, or just humanly fallible. Dissent from revelation so final (because, the author would say, so reasonable) can only be willfully wicked. There are ways of dealing with such wickedness, and, in fact, right reason itself enjoins them. From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: "To a gas chamber — go!" The same inflexibly self-righteous stance results, too (in the total absence of any saving humor), in odd extravagances of inflection and gesture-that Dollar Sign, for example. At first, we try to tell ourselves that these are just lapses, that this mind has, somehow, mislaid the discriminating knack that most of us pray will warn us in time of the difference between what is effective and firm, and what is wildly grotesque and excessive. Soon we suspect something worse. We suspect that this mind finds, precisely in extravagance, some exalting merit; feels a surging release of power and passion precisely in smashing up the house. A tornado might feel this way, or Carrie Nation.

Now we can all argue over whether this passage overreaches or not. Chambers has clearly indulged in a bit of hyperbole to emphasize his point. But the point itself is well worth emphasizing! Atlas Shrugged does indeed exhibit, in the tone of the piece, a very disdainful contempt toward anyone who might be so horrid as to disagree with its author, and that in places it even exults in the deaths of those who refuse to follow Rand's moral ideals.

That Rand and her acolytes delight in the demise of those whom they regard as "immoral" can be demonstrated by quoting a letter Alan Greenspan sent to the New York Times in defense of Atlas, back in the fifties:

Atlas Shrugged is a celebration of life and happiness. Justice is unrelenting. Creative individuals and undeviating purpose and rationality achieve joy and fulfillment. Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should.

"Perish as they should"! Keep in mind that the phrase "parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason" is a rather wide abstraction that potentially includes, not merely the usual unsympathetic drunk hobos and intransigent shirkers and malingerers, but also the mentally ill, the retarded, congenitally poor reasoners, people who can't make up their mind, and people maimed and demoralized by tragedy. Such people, it is here suggested, not only will die, but should die. "Justice is unrelenting"!

- Greg Nyquist