How I Became a Critic of Objectivism 2

The issue of philosophical literacy is a troubling one for Objectivism on multiple levels. To begin with, many of Rand’s most ardent followers became Objectivists when they were teenagers or young adults. They discovered The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged knowing little if anything about philosophy (or anything else for that matter). For this reason, they were not equipped with the necessary tools—which is to say, the philosophical literacy—from which to evaluate the contentions that at the bottom of Rand’s Objectivist philosophy. Yaron Brook, in his conversation with Michael Malice, admits as much. Teenagers and twenty-somethings rarely have neither the philosophical literacy nor the worldly knowledge to evaluate Rand’s contentions about human nature, morality, and the role of ideas in history. Swept away by Rand’s charismatic vision of a world populated by individualistic heroes like Howard Road and Hank Rearden, they end up taking everything Rand says on trust, without asking the necessary questions or demanding appropriate evidence.

This matter is further complicated by Rand’s own philosophical shortcomings. Rand had her own issues with philosophical illiteracy—although for very different reasons than we find among her youngest admirers. Rand’s philosophical illiteracy stemmed from her innate dogmatism and her intractable hubris about her own mind which made it very difficult for her to accept criticism and learn from those whom she disagreed with. Rand  rarely if ever entertained the possibility that she might be wrong. In any dispute with an individual who held rival views, she was right and they were wrong—end of issue. This attitude rendered it inconceivable for her to appreciate the possible merits of viewpoints and philosophies that conflicted with her own. 

There is also the issue of Rand’s education to consider. We know little, for example, about what Rand imbibed during her years attending Petrograd State University in the Soviet Union. According to biographical data accumulated about Rand, the most formative philosophical influence on her thinking was Isabel Paterson. From Paterson Rand developed her obsession for “reason,” her over-fondness for the phrase “A is A,”  her admiration of Aristotle, and her enmity to Kant and Hegel. Paterson, who was widely read, presumably had acquired at least some of her views through first-hand sources. She wasn’t merely repeating what had been told to her by another person. She had done the hard work for herself, coming to an understanding of philosophy through her extensive reading. Rand, on the other hand, seems to have relied far too much on brief abstracts provided her by Paterson, the Branden’s, Peikoff, and others. Rand was hardly a voluminous reader. She was impatient with detail and nuance. She did not read to understand; she read to demolish. When confronted with texts she disagreed with, she would begin with what she called the art of “philosophical detection,” which in practice meant putting the worst possible interpretation on anything she ran across that inspired her loathing.

Ayn Rand & Human Nature 18

Psychopaths, vmPFC damage, and whim-worship. One of the central doctrines of Objectivism is the necessity of a "rational," "reason-based" morality. Human beings must follow their "rational" or "enlightened" self-interest. Emotions should not be used in moral judgments. That would amount to "whim-worship." According to Rand, people can and should follow "reason" at all times. To behave otherwise, to follow one's emotions instead of "reason," was tantamount to acting "like a zombie," without knowledge of the facts of reality. As Rand put it, "It means that a man acts in a state of temporary insanity."

Rand's view is in stark contrast with that of David Hume, who, in 1739, wrote that "reason is, and ought to only be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them." We can only image vituperation with which Rand would have responded to Hume's statement. However, it is important to note that Hume is not merely asserting that reason ought to be the slave of the passions; he is also insisting that reason is the slave of the passions, and that it can't be otherwise. In the last twenty years, experimental psychology has been forced to admit that Hume's position comes much closer to the truth than Rand's. Psychologists have found that, although people can and often do reason about morality, they don't engage in reasoning in order to discover truth, but rather use reason to support their emotional intuitions. Moral reasonings serve strategic purposes such as managing one's reputation, building alliances, recruiting bystanders to support one's side in the conflicts and scuffles endemic to social life. [Haidt, The Righteous Mind, 46] Human beings act like "intuitive politicians striving to maintain appealing moral identities in front of multiple constituencies." [ibid, 75]

Rand & Human Nature 3

Moral Philosophy = Rationalization. There are convincing and powerful reasons to believe that nearly all that passes for what might be called exhortive, "normative" ethical philosophy is almost certainly rationalization. The first strong hint that this might be the case was unconvered by Hume, who persuasively demonstrated that, logically speaking, it was invalid to derive an ought conclusion from two is premises. Hume further demonstrated the psychological impossibility of generating moral ends from "reason" alone; that in the absence of some desire, sentiment, or other natural and emotive need, no moral end could arise.

The second strong hint comes from George Santayana, who, in his demolishment of Moore's ethical philosophy (as limned by Russell) , noted that all arguments for morality committed the ad hominem fallacy:

That good is not an intrinsic or primary quality, but relative and adventitious, is clearly betrayed by Mr.Russell's own way of arguing, whenever he approaches some concrete ethical question. For instance, to show that the good is not pleasure, he can avowedly do nothing but appeal "to ethical judgments with which almost every one would agree." He repeats, in effect, Plato's argument about the life of the oyster, having pleasure with no knowledge. Imagine such mindless pleasure, as intense and prolonged as you please, and would you choose it? Is it your good? Here the British reader, like the blushing Greek youth, is expected to answer instinctively, No! It is an argumentum ad hominem (and there can be no other kind of argument in ethics); but the man who gives the required answer does so not because the answer is self-evident, which it is not, but because he is the required sort of man. He is shocked at the idea of resembling an oyster. Yet changeless pleasure, without memory or reflection, without the wearisome intermixture of arbitrary images, is just what the mystic, the voluptuary, and perhaps the oyster find to be good.

The third strong hint was noticed, among others, by Pareto when, in his mammoth work investigating the relation between conduct and belief, Trattato di sociologia generale, he noticed that most moral philosophies were devoid of specific ethical content. For this reason (among others), our conduct could not be governed by a moral philosophy, since the purpose of moral philosophy is not to provide guidance (how could it when little or no specific conduct can be deduced from it?), but to coddle and flatter human sentiments. (For Pareto's analysis of Kant's ethics, see here.)

Intellectual Sources of Latest Objectischism 1

Since the McCaskey schism is (as Daniel Barnes has noted) largely arose from "philosophical" issues, it might be illuminating to go over the sources of this particular intellectual imbroglio. There are, as far I can ascertain, three main sources:

(1) The Objectivist theory of history
(2) The Objectivist concept of "reason"
(3) The Problem of Induction

Since Daniel has already covered No. 3, that leaves us with the first two. In this post I'll cover No. 1.

The Objectivist theory of history. Since the past cannot be changed, factual claims about the motive forces in history cannot be tested experimentally. Without experimental tests, history becomes a breeding ground for dubious theories. Individuals lacking detailed knowledge of history and insight into human nature can make assertions which, however implausible they may appear to the wise, cannot be decisively refuted. One such theory is the Objectivist "philosophy of history," which claims that the course of history is largely governed by broad philosophical abstractions devised by mankind's "greatest" philosophers (namely, Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and Rand). Rand's theory serves two main purposes: (1) to explain why Rand's philosophy (or the equivalent thereof) did not prevail in the past; and (2) to explain why Rand's philosophy will likely prevail (i.e., dominate the culture) in the future. Explaining these things is important for a palpably simple reason. The very fact that Rand's political and ethical preferences have not fared well in the past would seem to constitute evidence that they are not likely to fare well in the future. Throughout human history, selfishness has usually been regarded with suspicion, whereas sacrificing oneself for the good of the community has always received the highest encomiums. Nor have we ever seen, on any significant scale, Rand's "laissez-faire" capitalism. Given these uninspiring facts, what reason could a sane person possibly entertain for believing that "rational" selfishness and laissez-faire capitalism will take hold at any time in the future?


Rand tries to solve these problems by asserting that the failure of self-interest and laissez-faire ultimately stems from a "concerted attack on man's conceptual faculty," itself a product of the failure of modern philosphers to solve the "problem of universals." Now there happens to be virtually no credible reasons (or evidence) for believing any of this to be true. Historically, the problem of universals was a metaphysical rather than an epistemological problem, and most modern (i.e., post-scholastic) philosophers paid little attention to it. Nor is it quite accurate to claim that modern philosophers were engaged in a "concerted attack on man's conceptual faculty." A great deal of fudging, distortion, and outright malicious interpretation were required to make Hume, Hegel, and Kant the great villians of the Objectivist narrative. While such intellectual malfeasance would hardly stir the conscience of the typical diehard orthodox Objectivist (who, after all, was largely ignorant of philosophy and whose concern about matters of fact and fair play had long ago been debauched by his commitment to to the Randian creed), with men of greater knowledge and integrity, things would fare otherwise. The Objectivist caricatures of great philosophers constituted a major intellectual embarrassment which made Rand's philosophy a tough sell, even among those scholars who might otherwise have been inclined to give it a place at the academic trough. Typical, in this regard, is Gary Merrill's take on Rand:

These sorts of things [i.e., examples of Rand's shoddy scholarship] would not be so bad, though they are bad, were it not for the fact that she so frequently gets things wrong. There is the business above concerning Russell [about "kinda" of knowing the concept of number], for example. There is the claim (p. 59) that “modern philosophers declare that axioms are a matter of arbitrary choice.” (no substantiation or reference is provided). There is the claim (p. 52) that “It is Aristotle who identified the fact that only concretes exist”. (Any of you Aristotle scholars want to wade in here with a brief account of particulars vs. concretes?) And none of this comes with even a hint of specific attribution that would allow a reader to evaluate it. The closest she gets is along the lines of (p. 60) “For example, see the works of Kant and Hegel.” Now that really narrows it down.

So what is it that differentiates the writing of Rand from those of classic academics and professional philosophers? It is simply that her work has every appearance of an extended and multi-faceted straw man argument that fails to meet even the minimum standards of scholarship. It has all the marks of what in science would be pseudo-science. If there is such a thing as pseudo-philosophy, this is it.

Now fortunately for orthodox Objectivism, academic philosophers are so busy arguing among themselves that it is still possible for the stray Objectivist to scatch and claw his way into a professorship. But matters fare otherwise within the hard sciences, where experiment and exacting scholarship still hold sway and a consensus based on tried and true methods is still possible. All sorts of eccentricities may be ignored or even tolerated within philosophy and the "philosophy of history," but in physics more exacting standards are applied. Objectivism's shoddy scholarship -- its egregious tendency to make extravagently controversial claims based either on bad evidence or no evidence -- is bound to attract unfavorable attention.

Now one of the principle doctrines of the Objectivist theory of history is that the influence of Kant, as long as it remains unchallenged, must eventually eat away like a cancer nearly everything within the culture, including science. Rand and her disciples, afflicted with the sort of monomaniacal confirmation bias that tends to govern most ideologues, were ever vigilant for even the most negligible "evidence" of Kant's irrationality nibbling away at the host organism. Because 20th century physics didn't exactly line up into neat and tidy categories suggested by common sense and the Objectivist axioms, Rand viewed it with suspicion. Many of the leading theories and concepts in physics were couched in terms calculated to arouse Rand's ire, such as Theory of Relativity, Uncertainty Principle, observer effect, wave-particle duality, etc. Such terms suggested a discipline awash in the horrors of Kantian subjectivity. An exorcism, involving rigorous Objectivist criticism, seemed called for. But there were no Objectivists up to the task, none having the requisite "expertise" in physics -- none, that is, until David Harriman arrived on the scene. Harriman was everything Peikoff, now occupying the Objectivist throne, could have wished for. Harriman (allegedly) had worked as a physicist for the U.S. Department of Defense and taught philosophy at California State University San Bernadino. He was a clever and amusing lecturer. To people ignorant of physics, he seemed to know what he was talking about. And even better, he eagerly embraced Rand's and Peikoff's suspicions about physics and began formulating specious rationalizations for them. It was a match made in Objectivist heaven. It would now be possible to devise an Objectivist philosophy of science to do battle for truth, justice, and the Randian way. The Kantian demons could at last be excorcised from physics. Relativity and quantum mechanics could be made safe for an Objectivist metaphysics, and the Objectivist salvation of the world could proceed without concerns about a rearguard action from academic physicists. But alas, it was not to be. There were vipers in the very bosom of ARI uttering heretical murmurs concerning Harriman's shoddy scholarship. Someone would have to go; and that someone wasn't going to be either Harriman or Peikoff.

At the core of Objectivism there has long been a tension between Rand's pretense to rationality and reason and some of her fundamental beliefs, which are neither rational nor in line with the best scientific evidence. Among the Objectivist faithful, there exists a genuine admiration of hard science, which is regarded as an exemplar of "reason," that holy of holies within the Objectivist ideology. There even existed a few (though not many) Objectivists qualified to pronounce on experimental science, including a member of the ARI board, Dr. John P. McCaskey of Stanford's History and Philosophy of Science Program. McCaskey could not help noticing errors in Harriman's scholarship, and, perhaps fearing the scorn which such errors would evoke among his academic colleagues, he tried to bring them to Harriman's attention. But Harriman, secure in his position with Peikoff, would have none of it. McCaskey's minor grumblings were exaggerated, in the usual molehills-into-mountains Objectivist fashion, into one of the great intellectual crimes of the century.

Now all of this could have been contained within the discreet boundaries of a minor scandal were it not for one extraordinary oversight. As part of McCaskey's agreement to resign, Peikoff consented to release the email containing his infamous "someone has to go" ultimatum to ARI's legal department. Nothing demonstrates more vividly the gargantuan size of Peikoff's hubris then the carelessness by which this incendiary missive was allowed to see the light of public scrutiny. In releasing the email, Peikoff placed ARI and it's band of loyal followers in a terribly awkward position. What makes the email particularly hard to swallow for the Objectivist faithful was its blatantly irrational appeal to naked authority and its contempt for rational discourse. Peikoff expected to be obeyed unconditionally because of his "status" within the Objectivist community. "I hope you still know who I am and what my intellectual status is in Objectivism," he complained in the email. "If only we could forget who Peikoff is!" many an Objectivist undoubtedly sighed on reading that email. Peikoff had become an embarrassment difficult to ignore or evade, like the eccentric relative who comes bolting out of the attic at the most inopportune moments.

Yet although most of the consternation arising among the rank and file is over Peikoff's email, the real problem is more intractable. It is a deep rooted conflict between Objectivism and science. Objectivists have for years been sedulously evading this conflict with one ideological makeshift or another. But as a consequence of the Objectivist mania for infiltrating academia, at some point open conflict was inevitable.

In 1982, Leonard Peikoff, responding to a question about what it would take for Objectivism win, responded: "The teaching of courses on Objectivism at Harvard and Yale. After that, it is just a matter of more courses in other places. But that is the end of the battle. From that point on, it's a process of enjoying the triumph and seeing it take hold in art and in politics." With Rand's death, placing Objectivists in academic positions became Objectivism's grand strategy for taking over the culture. But the problem is that once an Objectivist manages (often against great odds) to secure an academic position, he finds himself beholden to two masters. On the one hand, he must remain ideological pure in the eyes of the Objectivist cognescenti over at ARI, and on the other, he must maintain a facade of professorial respectability among his colleagues within academia. In disciplines where no strict consensus holds sway, this may not be so very difficult; but in the hard sciences, challenging the consensus on the basis of poor or non-existent scholarship is rarely tolerated.

We see this dynamic in full play in Alan Gotthelf's five star review of Harriman's The Logical Leap over at amazon.com. "Though I can't speak personally for the full accuracy of the historical accounts," Gotthelf writes, "they are essentialized with great skill, and lucidly presented." Note how Gotthelf hedges his bets: he refuses to endorse the "full accuracy" of Harriman's historical "evidence." Gotthelf finds himself in the unenviable position of being beholden to two masters with conflicting agendas. How can he serve both without alienating one or the other?

As long as Objectivism continues to hold to its bosom positions about human nature and history that run foul of experimental psychology and historical scholarship, these rifts will continue to widen. There's no escaping it. Yet there is another problem that may prove, in the end, even more intractable. Objectivism has no way of rationally settling conflicts that arise among its denizens. This subject I will explore in my next post.

Objectivism & “Metaphysics,” Part 19

Alternatives to Foundationalism. Whenever the Objectivist mania for “validating” such things as “reality,” “causality,” “man’s mind,” “the senses,” “reason,” “concepts,” and “morality” is subjected to criticism, sooner or later somebody will come forward and suggest that without such validation, how can we know anything? If the skeptic is not refuted, how can he be prevented from wreaking havoc within society, and sending civilization over the brink?

Ironically, this challenge was laid to rest over two centuries ago by the philosopher often most associated with extreme skepticism, David Hume:

For here is the chief and most confounding objection to excessive scepticism, that no durable good can ever result from it; while it remains in its full force and vigour. We need only ask such a sceptic, What his meaning is? And what he proposes by all these curious researches? He is immediately at a loss, and knows not what to answer. A Copernican or Ptolemaic, who supports each his different system of astronomy, may hope to produce a conviction, which will remain constant and durable, with his audience. A Stoic or Epicurean displays principles, which may not be durable, but which have an effect on conduct and behaviour. But a Pyrrhonian cannot expect, that his philosophy will have any constant influence on the mind: or if it had, that its influence would be beneficial to society. On the contrary, he must acknowledge, if he will acknowledge anything, that all human life must perish, were his principles universally and steadily to prevail. All discourse, all action would immediately cease; and men remain in a total lethargy, till the necessities of nature, unsatisfied, put an end to their miserable existence. It is true; so fatal an event is very little to be dreaded. Nature is always too strong for principle. And though a Pyrrhonian may throw himself or others into a momentary amazement and confusion by his profound reasonings; the first and most trivial event in life will put to flight all his doubts and scruples, and leave him the same, in every point of action and speculation, with the philosophers of every other sect, or with those who never concerned themselves in any philosophical researches. When he awakes from his dream, he will be the first to join in the laugh against himself, and to confess, that all his objections are mere amusement, and can have no other tendency than to show the whimsical condition of mankind, who must act and reason and believe; though they are not able, by their most diligent enquiry, to satisfy themselves concerning the foundation of these operations, or to remove the objections, which may be raised against them.

Santayana expanded on this theme in his Scepticism and Animal Faith, which is one of the most thorough critiques of foundationalism to date. Pursing doubt to its ultimate end, Santayana challenges self-consciousness, discourse, logic, change, memory and time. In doing so, he goes well beyond Descartes’ doubts to discover the ultimate certainty, the perusal of a passing datum, a mere instance of awareness. This “solipsism of the present moment,” Santayana concludes, cannot possibly be a bedrock of certainty, because it does not constitute knowledge. It is the awareness of a given without a basis for belief. Knowledge does not arise until intelligence arrives on the scene and connects these instances of awareness into larger, meaningful wholes, which can then be interpreted as symbols of a posited, external reality existing in time and space. Since this exercise of intelligence is not given, why then should it be trusted? Santayana answers “by animal presumption, positing whatever object instinct is materially predisposed to cope with, as in hunger, love, fighting, or the expectation of the future.” In other words, it is by an instinct, which Santayana calls “animal faith.” But this animal faith is by no means an entirely groundless or “arbitrary” inclination, but one which is tested and corroborated during every moment when intelligence holds dominion over our lives.

Critical to Santayana’s view is the notion that some views are biologically inevitable, so that philosophers who deny them are not being altogether sincere. “I should be ashamed to countenance opinions which, when not arguing, I did not believe,” he insists. Some beliefs are inevitable because they have been bred in us by evolution (or by “nature,” if you prefer). These are beliefs that are associated with successful action, which is often the best test of truth. For Santayana, while the nature of truth is correspondence, the test of truth is pragmatic. This is a different orientation than what is found in Objectivism, which, in relation to these issues, often equivocates between rationalistic speculation (e.g., the Objectivist axioms) and an extreme empiricism (e.g., basing all knowledge on the “evidence” of the senses). But the ultimate raison d’être of knowledge is to cope with animal needs; and so whatever knowledge best satisfies these needs, which leads to successful action and solves the most problems in the real world, is that knowledge which most likely has the stamp of truth about it.

Santayana concludes as follows:

Living when human faith is again in a state of dissolution, I have imitated the Greek sceptics in calling doubtful everything that, in spite of common sense, any one can possibly doubt. But since life and even discussion forces me to break away from a complete scepticism, I have determined not to do so surreptitiously nor at random, ignominiously taking cover now behind one prejudice and now behind another. Instead, I have frankly taken nature by the hand, accepting as a rule in my farthest speculations the animal faith I live by from day to day. There are many opinions which, though questionable, are inevitable to a thought attentive to appearance, and honestly expressive of action. These natural opinions are not miscellaneous, such as those which the Sophists embraced in disputation. They are superposed in a biological order, the stratification of the life of reason. In rising out of passive intuition, I pass, by a vital constitutional necessity, to belief in discourse, in experience, in substance, in truth, and in spirit. All these objects may conceivably be illusory. Belief in them, however, is not grounded on a prior probability, but all judgements of probability are grounded on them. They express a rational instinct or instinctive reason, the waxing faith of an animal living in a world which he can observe and sometimes remodel.

Objectivism & "Metaphysics," Part 7

Rand’s axioms: one exists possessing consciousness. While no sensible person would deny that physiologically normal individuals "possess" consciousness, it is questionable whether such a fact deserves to be embalmed as an Objectivist axiom. Remember that these axioms are, according to Rand, "fundamentally given and directly perceived." Now it must be admitted that consciousness, however obvious its existence may seem to the intelligent observer, is neither given nor directly perceived. All that is "given" is the solipsism of the present moment, out of which no knowledge (including axiomatic knowledge) can ever arise. Knowledge, whether axiomatic or otherwise, requires (among other assumptions) trust in memory and belief that what is given (i.e., some datum or "essence") can serve as a description or symbol of real things or events taking place in a substantive world existing in space and time. Consciousness, far from being given or directly perceived, is only recognized through an act of inference. Since (as even Rand admits) consciousness cannot be conscious merely of itself, direct perception of consciousness is an incoherent notion.




David Hume's "attack" on personal identity is relevant to this issue. In his A Treatise of Human Nature, Hume wrote:

There are some philosophers, who imagine we are every moment intimately conscious of what we call our SELF; that we feel its existence and its continuance in existence; and are certain, beyond the evidence of a demonstration, both of its perfect identity and simplicity. The strongest sensation, the most violent passion, say they, instead of distracting us from this view, only fix it the more intensely, and make us consider their influence on self either by their pain or pleasure. To attempt a farther proof of this were to weaken its evidence; since no proof can be deriv'd from any fact, of which we are so intimately conscious; nor is there any thing, of which we can be certain, if we doubt of this.

Unluckily all these positive assertions are contrary to that very experience, which is pleaded for them, nor have we any idea of self, after the manner it is here explain'd. For from what impression [i.e., perception] cou'd this idea be deriv'd? ... [S]elf or person is not any one impression, but that to which our several impressions and ideas are suppos'd to have a reference. If any impression gives rise to the idea of self, that
impression must continue invariably the same, thro' the whole course of our lives; since self is suppos'd to exist after that manner. But there is no impression constant and invariable. Pain and pleasure, grief and joy, passions and sensations succeed each other, and never all exist at the same time. It cannot, therefore, be from any of these impressions, or from any other, that the idea of self is deriv'd; and consequently there is no such idea.

What Hume says of the self (or "personal identity") is easily transferable to consciousness: these are not realities that can be directly perceived or fundamentally given. They are, rather, inferred from the very process of perceiving. The inference by which intelligence identifies consciousness is so obvious and inescapable that it may seem as if it were given through direct perception. But it clearly isn't.

Another problem with the Objectivist axiom of consciousness is the vagueness of the term itself, especially within Objectivist writings. Rand tended to use it in several different senses, and it is not always clear, in each of her usages of the term, which sense she means. It would seem that, in this axiom, Rand is using consciousness in the sense of raw sentience. Consciousness, in this sense, is merely the light of awareness. Generally speaking, however, she seems to identify consciousness with intellect or mind. At other times, she identifies it with the self or the will, describing it as "the faculty of awareness" and as "an active process." She even goes so far as identify consciousness with knowledge: if "no knowledge of any kind is possible to man," she opined, then "man is not conscious."

As we shall note in later posts, Rand's tendency to play fast and loose with the term consciousness enables her to equivocate her way to precisely the sort of metaphysical conclusions she desires to reach. While the notion of consciousness may seem "inescapable" (at least via inference) to a foundationalist mindset, only consciousness as raw, passive sentience would be "inescapable" in this sense. After all, surely even Rand would not declare that intellect or knowledge are "axiomatic"! This being so, it is not clear how inferences against idealism or traditional monotheism can be justified using this axiom. But more of this anon.

Objectivism & Politics, Part 57

Ayn Rand contra Libertarianism 2. In my last post I summed up Rand’s allegations against Libertarianism as follows:

Libertarians are bad and evil because:

1. Libertarians are a “monstrous, disgusting bunch of people.”
2. Libertarians are “plagiarists” who stole Rand’s ideas without giving credit.
3. Libertarians are anarchists.
4. Libertarians are anti-intellectual collectivists, worse than Marxists.
5. Libertarians are hippies and scum and intellectual cranks.
6. Libertarians are worse than the New Left, because they want to combine anarchism with capitalism.
7. Libertarians are led by men of various persuasions, including “religious conservatives and anarchists.”
8. Libertarianism is based, in part, on “borrowed ideas.”
9. Libertarians denounce Rand when it fits their purpose.
10. Libertarians would like to have an amoral politics.
11. Libertarianism is a cheap attempt at publicity.

I examined the first five in the previous post; now let’s tackle the final six.




6. Libertarians are worse than the New Left, because they want to combine anarchism with capitalism. As with many of her allegations against Libertarianism, this one is guilty of painting a brush a mile wide. Yes, some Libertarians want to combine libertarianism with anarchism, but not all do.

Does wishing to combine capitalism with anarchism make Libertarians worse than the New Left? Why? Because, according to Rand, it is better to be consistent in a bad cause than inconsistent in a good one. This has it's basis in one of Rand's oddest prejudices—namely, that human beings are the mere pawns of the logical deductions of their most basic premises. Why this is so, Rand never explained. It is a tacit assumption, rarely recognized, let alone questioned.

To impotent ideologues whose ideas are incapable of finding realization in the world of fact, there exists no empirical consequences to serve as a check to their wildest, fact impoverished speculations. Without empirical checks, one's practical sense of things gradually dissolves away. The imagination, guided by wishful thinking, becomes king.

To practical individuals rooted in the world of fact, what is important is the empirical fruits or consequences of a specific ideology. The fact that one ideology is more consistent with its so-called "basic" premises is of little importance. What is important is the actual consequences, as read from the book of fact, of the ideology in question. On this standard, Libertarianism can hardly be considered as "worse than the New Left," even from an Objectivist viewpoint. The bad effects of Libertarianism are limited by the very fact that, beyond providing rationalizations for free trade and deregulation, the effects of Libertarianism have been negligible. The New Left, on the other hand, has been enormously influential in schools, universities, city and state government, and, since President Obama's election, in Federal government. Policies influenced by New Left ideals have led to a serious demoralization of American society that grossly outweighs whatever mischief has resulted from the Libertarian rationalizations put forth on behalf of free trade and deregulation. So the notion that Libertarians are "worse" than the New Left is not terribly plausible from the empirical point of view.

7. Libertarians are led by men of various persuasions, including “religious conservatives and anarchists.” This is a strange and even troubling allegation for Rand to make, particularly in light of all the virtuous noise she makes on behalf of individualism. Rand is upset that Libertarians (who, after all, are individualists of one stripe or another), are not, as she apparently wants them to be, merely a horde of indistinguishable ideologues, alike in all "essential" respects. There exists a central paradox at the core of Objectivism. On the one hand, Objectivism is supposed to be a philosophy of extreme, uncompromising individualism; yet on the other, it preaches an equally extreme, uncompromising form of “rational” morality, which demands a moral uniformity far more rigid and exacting than found in the worst sort of secular or theocratic totalitarian states. Even worse, Rand extended her totalitarian “rationality” to the psychological and aesthetic spheres. According to the example set by Rand, Objectivists not only had to accept all the same moral injunctions, but they also had to experience the same emotional and aesthetic reactions. And all this was done under the pretense of individualism and excused because it was voluntary!

Would Rand really have felt better about Libertarianism if it were made up of men of a single persuasion? Hardly likely. She was merely searching for any pretext at all that she could give herself for hating Libertarianism, and this was merely one that she ran across. Yet it does reveal something about her psychology that she would object to an ideological movement being made up of individuals of “various persuasions.”

8. Libertarianism is based, in part, on “borrowed ideas.” What movement isn’t based “in part,” on “borrowed ideas”? Even more troubling here, however, is the whole notion of “borrowed ideas”—as if ideas are like private property and can only be “loaned out” to those who don’t “own” the ideas. There are a very few narrowly technical or aesthetic “ideas” that may be patented or copyrighted—e.g., a poem, a software program, an industrial formula. Beyond that, no ideas can be owned or copyrighted. Philosophical and political ideas are not “owned” by their originators (and if they were, they would long ago have fallen out of copyright, since most of our philosophical and political notions were originated long ago). Once a philosopher releases an idea to the world, others may take it up and use it as they see fit. There is no question of borrowing or stealing or plagiarism or any of that kind of nonsense.

9. Libertarians denounce Rand when it fits their purpose. And why shouldn’t they denounce Rand? After all, who start the denunciations, Rand or the Libertarians? Rand despised the Libertarians right from the beginning, so there’s no point at being indignant because some libertarians despised her back. It’s little more than reciprocity.

Even more troubling is Rand's narcissistic assumption under which it is entirely appropriate for her to denounce anyone she likes yet not appropriate for anyone to denounce her in return. Rand allows herself to ignore various rules of fair play and decency, while expecting everyone to abide by these rules in their conduct toward her. Heads Rand wins, tails everyone else loses. Anyone have a problem with this? Or is this what it means to follow one's “rational” self-interest?

10. Libertarians would like to have an amoral politics. This is a rather confusing allegation. What Rand is really saying is: Libertarians do not base their political convictions, or argue on behalf of those convictions, on the basis of my morality. Rand had convinced herself that capitalism, freedom, and individualism could only be nurtured and defended on the basis of a moral system. Yet Rand’s own belief on this issue is based merely on her own say-so. Nearly everything we know from history, sociology, experimental psychology, and cognitive science testifies against it. A moral base, in practical terms, is merely those rationalizations that people put forth to spread a veneer of logic over whatever political ideology suits their economic interests and their sentimental proclivities. Since just about any rationalization will do, the specific rationalization is of little moment. Whether one defends a specific political idea on the basis of “natural” law, “right reason,” “A is A,” “divine” right,” or the thunderbolts of Zeus, it is all the same and hence makes hardly one jot of difference. To charge Libertarians with wanting an “amoral politics” is merely another way of saying Libertarians don’t care which rationalizations you put forth to defend the specific political order that Libertarians fancy. Why should a group bicker or divide over obscure doctrinal matters, when all their members ultimately want the same thing?

11. Libertarianism is a cheap attempt at publicity. And why is this a bad thing? Libertarians wish to spread ideas about liberty. How are they to do so without publicity? Or is the crux of Rand’s complaint that the publicity is “cheap”? But isn’t it rather snobbish to make such a complaint? After all, Libertarians are a mere fringe political faction, without much access to the corporate cash of the two big players in the political scene, the Republicans and the Democrats? So why shouldn’t they try get their publicity as inexpensively as possible?

As can easily be appreciated from the last two posts, Rand’s criticism of Libertarianism is grossly unfair, illogical, unmeasured and confused—mere ranting and raving with hardly a scintilla of dispassionate rational analysis over the whole course of it. How could someone as intelligent as Rand—someone, moreover, who prided herself on “reason” and not allowing one's emotions to infect one's cognition—sink so low? I shall address this question in my next post.

Objectivism & Politics, Part 49

Ayn Rand contra Conservatism 3. In “Conservatism: an Obituary,” Rand, after criticizing conservatives for not providing a “moral base” for their defense of the “American way of life,” suddenly turns course and asserts that in “recent years the ‘conservatives’ have gradually come to a dim realization of the weakness of their position, of the philosophical flaw that had to be corrected.” However, “the means by which [conservatives] are attempting to correct it are worse than the original weakness.”


Rand continues: "There are three interrelated arguments used by today’s “conservatives” to justify capitalism, which can best be designated as: the argument from faith—the argument from tradition—the argument from depravity."

In this post, we will concentrate on Rand’s analysis of the argument from faith. Rand’s analysis is as follows:

Sensing their need of a moral base, many “conservatives” decided to choose religion as their moral justification; they claim that America and capitalism are based on faith in God. Politically, such a claim contradicts the fundamental principles of the United States: in America, religion is a private matter which cannot and must not be brought into political issues.

It is important to reiterate what I have stated in previous posts: all these “moral-base” arguments are mere rationalizations covering a complex blend of motives, interests, and sentiments that could never be summarized in a handful of broad moral injunctions. Rand commits the error of greatly exaggerating the influence of moral-base arguments. Her remarks about faith-based rationalizations must be seen in this context.

Are the “fundamental principles of America” contradicting by the claim that capitalism and freedom are based on “faith in God”? Well, that all depends on what one means by such vague phrases as “faith in God” and the “fundamental principles of America.” If, however, we frame this matter somewhat differently, in terms that are more empirical and testable, we will come closer to what a more sophisticated conservatism asserts when it attempts to link religion with capitalism and freedom. It is a fact that capitalism, in its early stages, had a “link” of sorts with religion. As the sociologist Max Weber noted: “As a matter of fact it is surely remarkable, to begin with a quite superficial observation, how large is the number of representatives of the most spiritual forms of Christian piety who have sprung from commercial circles…. Similarly, the remarkable circumstance that so many of the greatest capitalistic entrepreneurs—down to Cecil Rhodes—have come from clergymen’s families… Even more striking … is the connection of the religious way of life with the most intensive development of business acumen….” [The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 43-44]

Note that Weber does not claim that there is a connection between religious “doctrine” [i.e., religious rationalizations] and business acumen; no, Weber specifies the connection exists between the “religious way of life” and business acumen, a different matter altogether. The religious way of life is rarely, if ever, entirely consistent with religious doctrine. How could it be? Religions contain dogmas which, if taken literally, would overstep important practical realities. Such doctrines have to be reinterpreted to fit the practical demands of everyday life. The effect of religion is not in all cases as irrational as Rand would have us believe. Religion may, and often will, leave plenty of room for practical success in life. This does not mean that the “non-practical” (or “irrational”) side of religion has no effect at all. But the so-called “irrational” side of religion tends to display itself in various non-practical pursuits, such as worship and ritual. To a non-religious person, the amount of time and effort spent by intensely religious people in practicing their faith may seem like a horrid waste of time. Yet, ironically, there may exist positive benefits from this sort of non-logical behavior. Ritual and worship, whatever might be said against them, are entirely consistent, and in some measure may promote, some of the virtues necessary to succeed in business, such as sobriety, monogamy (divorce, mistresses, adultery are expenses the frugal businessmen can do without), self-discipline, etc. In any case, it is simply a fact that, in the early stages of capitalism, the business class tended to be dominated by the intensely religious. This fact can hardly be elucidated on the basis of Rand’s doctrinal view of religion, which attempts to explain the behavior of religious people on the basis of the “fundamental” premises of religion. Neither human nature nor religion work in so simplistic a fashion.

Ignoring these important facts, Rand resumes her harangue against “faith”:

Intellectually, to rest one’s case on faith means to concede that reason is on the side of one’s enemies—that one has no rational arguments to offer. The “conservatives’” claim that their case rests on faith, means that there are no rational arguments to support the American system, no rational justification for freedom, justice, property, individual rights, that these rest on a mystic revelation and can be accepted only on faith—that in reason and logic the enemy is right, but men must hold faith as superior to reason.

Consider the implications of that theory. While the communists claim that they are the representatives of reason and science, the “conservatives” concede it and retreat into the realm of mysticism, of faith, of the supernatural, into another world, surrendering this world to communism.

Here Rand reverts to one of her favorite strategies: polarization. An individual either believes entirely in “faith” or entirely in “reason.” Given that Rand claimed to admire Thomas Aquinas, she should have known better. Most religious conservatives do not regard “faith” and “reason” as opposites, but as supplementary. No conservative would claim that his case for capitalism and freedom rested solely on faith. Faith is merely used as a way to circumvent Hume’s is/ought gap in conservative rationalizations about morality. In this sense, there is a point in common between conservatism and Objectivism in that both rationalize their way around Hume’s gap. The main difference is that the conservatives are more honest about it and talk about “faith,” whereas Rand claims she gets around it (per impossible) through “reason.”

At the core of Rand’s criticism is the implicit claim that her moral rationalizations are superior (i.e., more convincing) to those of conservatives. Yet this goes against a very well established fact—namely, that there are a great many more conservatives than there are Objectivists. Of course, such rationalizations are only persuasive to those already inclined to believe them; which is why Rand’s complaints on this score seem much ado about nothing. Claiming that the moral base for capitalism is religious faith may not sound very convincing to the secular enemies of the free market; but Rand’s "reason"-based rationalizations have not been a jot more convincing to such individuals. Changing people’s minds through arguments (i.e., rationalizations) is very difficult and not very effective. Especially ineffective are broad arguments based on abstract moral principles. Most human beings instinctively sense that such arguments are hollow and not to be trusted. Moreover, because of their vagueness, broad, abstract principles do not yield any clear specific guidelines for practical actions, but can be interpreted to fit a variety of specific guidelines. So people tend to follow, instead, the complex web of strategies for navigating through the problems of life that they have learned and absorbed through years of trial and error experience.

Objectivism & Politics, Part 16

Politics of Human Nature 1: human rationality. The achievement of Objectivism’s political goals rest on the assumption that most human beings are at least potentially “rational.” Nor is it enough for them to be rational merely about the means they wish to achieve; they must also be rational about the ends as well. Rand and her followers are somewhat confused on this point. Rand never explains precisely how one arrives at a rational end and even suggests that her ultimate end is (or is based on) a conditional! However, all of that is of little importance for the issue at hand. For the fact remains that, whether her followers recognize it or not, a substantive rationality (i.e., a rationality of ends) is necessary in order for her politics to work. In order to implement the Objectivist politics, it’s not enough that individuals become rational about the means by which they attain their goals: they must also be able resolve problems that arise from conflicting ends; and if there exists no such thing as a rational end, then there exists no rational means of resolving conflict, because rationality about ends is psychologically impossible. Faction becomes unavoidable and laissez-faire unattainable.

So is there such a thing as a rational end? We have covered this issue elsewhere; but since it is so important, it bears repeating. Can human beings pursue rational ends? Or is it, as Hume asserted, psychologically impossible for reason to generate rational ends?

The philosopher Arthur Lovejoy explored the issue in his excellent Reflections on Human Nature, where he comments on Hume’s discovery:

Hume’s fundamental thesis must have shocked some of his contemporaries… For while they had declared that the Reason seldom if ever does in fact control the passions, they had still assumed, in accord with the long dominant tradition, that it should do so, that control was the function for which it was intended… But Hume challenged the great tradition of moral philosophy, and asserted that it is a psychological impossibility for the Reason to influence volition…. Hume does not … mean by this to deny that the understanding has an instrumental use in the determination of conduct. Given a desire for some end, a reasoned knowledge of the relations of cause and effect may show how to satisfy it by adopting the means without which the end cannot be attained. What he is asserting is that “reason,” the knowledge of any kind of truth, is not a passion or desire, is not the same psychological phenomenon as liking or wanting something; and that a thing can become an end only by being desired. The role of reason consists in judging of propositions as true or false, as in “agreement or disagreement” with the matters of fact to which they refer. “Whatever is not susceptible of this agreement or disagreement, is incapable of being true or false, and can never be an object of our reason.” But “our passions, volitions and acts” are “original facts and realities, compleat in themselves… ‘Tis impossible, therefore, that they can be either true or false, and be either contrary or conformable to reason.” And since reason neither is nor can produce a desire, it cannot even tell us what we should desire, it cannot even evaluate desires; or if it professes to do so, it will only the more clearly reveal its irrelevance and impotence. You either have a desire or you do not; unless you have one, you will never act at all; and a desire can be combatted or overcome, not by reason, but only by another desire. [181-183]

Now the importance of this insight into human nature is that it emphasizes the role that motivation plays in human conduct. All human conduct is motivated by non-rational sources—that is, by desires, sentiments, emotions, call them what you will. In Objectivism, there exists a tendency to make light of motives. The issue, for the denizen of Rand, is not what motivates the individual, but why a person should choose one motive rather than another. Objectivism goes so far as to deny that man’s most basic choices can be explained at all. “Why he chooses one or another [motive]… cannot be further explained,” contends Peikoff. “That is what it means to say that man has choice and is not determined. A volitional choice is a fundamental beneath which you cannot get.” [“Philosophy and Psychology in History”]

This extreme view of volition is tantamount to a denial of human nature. For it challenges the view, shared by all those who have a “constrained” vision of the human condition, that most human beings are strongly influenced by innate tendencies and that if you understand the pathology of those innate tendencies, you can make educated guesses as to the likelihood of various types of social conduct and the probability (or impossibility) of various social and political ideals.

I have discussed the issue of innate tendencies in previous posts (such as here). Outside of Ayn Rand and left-wing social science, nearly everyone believes in their existence. In the last half century, behavioral science has further strengthened the case for these tendencies. Indeed, to deny them is to be guilty of a kind of scientific illiteracy, not very different from denying the theory of relativity or the experimental success of quantum mechanics.

Once we have established the reality of innate tendencies, the next step is to investigate what those tendencies are and how they effect the social and political order. That will be the subject of the next half dozen or so “Objectivism and Politics” posts.

Objectivism & History, Part 12

Eschatology. Eschatology is a part of theology or philosophy dealing with the ultimate destiny of humanity or end of the world. While Objectivism does not have an explicit eshatology, it’s philosophy of history contains obvious eshatological implications. Consider the following from the pen of Leonard Peikoff: 



From another point of view, however, [the power of philosophy to change the world] is not ominous—it can even be regarded as encouraging. For it means that if a good philosopher arises who answers and philosophically destroys [a pernicious philosopher like Kant], that will turn the reign of the evil and save the world. And such a philosopher has arisen in our time—in my judgment, at least, and I am sure in most of yours. I am speaking, of course, of Ayn Rand.

On the basis of the theory of history I have put forth today, therefore, it is proper to have hope for the future. I do think that Objectivism will triumph ultimately and shape the world’s course, and that today’s culture will be remember in the end only for what it is—which I refrain from saying.

So Objectivism will “ultimately” triumph! Here we find the primary raison d’être of Rand’s philosophy of history. “It took decades of collectivist philosophy to bring this country to its present state,” Rand wrote to a correspondent in March of 1962. “And it is only the right philosophy that can save us. Ideas take time to spread, but we will only have to wait decades—because reason and reality are on our side.”

This optimistic prognosis was made over four decades ago, and still Objectivism has made little if any progress towards its “ultimate” triumph. Indeed, if by Objectivism we mean the purest, orthodox brand of that philosophy, we would have to admit that it has regressed since 1962, thanks to two major schisms in the movement, one involving Rand and her leading disciple Nathaniel Branden, the other involving Rand’s intellectual heir Leonard Peikoff and the movements most promising and effective advocate, David Kelley.

Since Rand’s 1962 prognosis has turned out to be so palpably wrong, how much faith should we place in Peikoff’s suggestion of an “ultimate” triumph? Given the intellectual foundation that these Objectivist hopes are based on, no faith should be placed in them. The Objectivist hope for an “ultimate” triumph is on the same level as the Marxist’s hope of for the eventual triumph of the communist paradise or the Christian’s hope for the rapture. It is an extra-empirical hope, without basis in fact, science or even good sense. It completely ignores what actually motivates human beings, substituting instead an entirely baseless schema of motivations based on abstruse metaphysical and epistemological notions that hardly anyone understands or cares for. Worst of all, it is a species of conceit so gross and intense that it boggles the mind: for it suggests that Rand and her disciples, simply by wagging their tongues and jiggling their pens, can “turn the reign of evil and save the world.” Under this notion of history, ideas become a kind of talisman or power. “In the beginning was the Word,” begins the Platonist gospel of John. Rand’s philosophy of history is merely a kind of secularist riff on this mystical theme.

Should this mystical, Platonist detour surprise us? Not at all. For that is the tradition of philsophy that Rand harkens from: the Platonic-Aristotelean tradition of metaphysics and wishful thinking, rather than the tradition of the Greek Naturalists, modern science and the critical empiricism of Hume and Popper.

Objectivism & History, Part 8

Kant contra Rand There appear to be many orthodox Objectivists still in denial about Kant’s influence on history. Despite never having read Kant or the philosophers Kant influenced, they are nevertheless certain that Kant’s influence is precisely as Rand limned it. This prejudice can easily be refuted by quoting any non-controversial account of Kant. Take, as an example, what Karl Popper writes about Kant in the Open Society:

Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason, asserted under the influence of Hume that pure speculation or reason, whenever it ventures into a field in which it cannot possibly be checked by experience, is liable to get involved in contradictions or ‘antinomies’ and to produce what he unambiguously described as ‘mere fancies’; ‘nonsense’; ‘illusions’; ‘a sterile dogmatism’; and ‘a superficial pretension to the knowledge of everything’. He tried to show that to every metaphysical assertion or thesis, concerning for example the beginning of the world in time, or the existence of God, there can be contrasted a counter-assertion or antithesis; and both, he held, may proceed from the same assumptions, and can be proved with an equal degree of ‘evidence’. In other words, when leaving the field of experience, our speculation can have no scientific status, since to every argument there must be an equally valid counter-argument. Kant’s intention was to stop once and forever the ‘accursed fertility’ of the scribblers on metaphysics.

Popper’s summation of Kant’s Critique is in line with the mainstream view. Kant’s attack on “pure reason” was not meant as an attack on knowledge as such, but only on speculative knowledge, i.e., claims of knowledge about matters of fact that aren’t backed by evidence. As Thomas Henry Huxley put it:

The aim of the Kritik der reinen Verunft is essentially the same as that of the Treatise of Human Nature, by which, indeed, Kant was led to develop that “critical philosophy” with which his name and fame are indissolubly bound up: and, if the details of Kant’s criticism differ from those of Hume, they coincide with them in their main result, which is the limitation of all knowledge of reality to the world of phenomena revealed to us by experience.

Kant’s basic position can be summed up from the famous aphorism from the preface of the second edition of The Critique of Pure Reason: “Concepts without percepts are empty; percepts without concepts are blind.” Whatever errors and mistakes Kant may have committed in explicating and developing this seminal insight, the principle itself remains sound. Nor would even Rand necessarily have disagreed with it, even if she might have quibbled about the terms in which the principle is expressed.

An anonymous commentator in an earlier post insisted “that Kant's philosophy and Objectivism are diametrically opposed.” This is a bit of exaggeration. Even in the field of ethics, where the differences between Kant and Rand are the most striking, there are still similarities (e.g., they are both absolutists, and they both believe in “autonomy”). So would Rand have necessarily disagreed with Kant’s view that “when leaving the field of experience, our speculation can have no scientific status”?

Orthodox Objectivists (including Rand herself) have always been vague on this point. While Rand and her disciples will occasionally stress the importance of keeping one’s concepts in touch with reality and avoiding what they call “floating abstractions,” if we judge Objectivists by how they act rather than on what they say it becomes clear that they really are quite attached to the type of speculative reason that Kant (and Hume) criticizes. Rarely do Rand or Peikoff provide detailed, convincing evidence for their numerous controversial assertions. If they deign to advance any kind of argument at all, it is nearly always of a wantonly speculative and, ipso facto verbalistic nature. Rand’s entire theory of human nature is merely a speculative leap from her equally speculative defense of free will! One can hardly get more rationalistic and non-empirical than that!

To the extent that there is real difference between Rand and Kant on this issue “pure” reason, it is Kant, not Rand, that is on the side of science, truth and realism. The world is weary of philosophers who seek to determine matters of fact with logical, rhetorical, or moral constructions. The sort of “reason” that Objectivists actually practice (as opposed to vague, amorphous “reason” they theorize about and provide genuflect-like homage to) is merely a futile exercise in generating concepts without percepts. Kant and Hume were right to criticize such an approach. To the extent that this aspect of their philosophy has been influential, it has been influential for the better. Objectivism, on the other hand, would, if it exercised any influence at all on this issue, would constitute a step backwards for the human intellect.

Rand's Ethics, Part 6

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Consider the following syllogisms.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Ayn Rand and the Is/Ought Problem"

Over at Mises.org we find Patrick M. O'Neil's detailed breakdown of Objectivist ethics, and despite Rand's claims to the contrary, exactly how it fails to overcome Hume's problem. The result is what he calls the "essential subjectivity of Objectivism.":

"...It is at this stage in her argumentation, at the very point of seeming triumph over subjectivity, that Rand loses the battle. She takes aim at the Humean disjuncture of the prescriptive from the descriptive and fatally wounds the pretentions to objectivity of her own systematic ethics: "The fact that a living entity is, determines what it ought to do. So much for the issue of the relation between 'is' and 'ought'"("The Objectivist Ethics"). In these two sentences, Rand reveals a serious misconception of the nature of the Humean is-ought gap and introduces a dangerous potential for self-contradiction into her own ethical system.

In his work A Treatise of Human Nature, the Scottish philosopher David Hume challenged the basis of all objective systems of morality:

"I can not forbear adding to these reasonings an observation, which may, perhaps, be found of some importance. In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remarked, that the author proceeds for sometime in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God. or makes observations concerning human affairs: when of a sudden I am surprised to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not. I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new revelation or affirmation, 'tis necessary that it should be observed and explained; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what seems altogether
inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it."

Clearly, Rand thinks that Hume denied a connection between facts and systems of morality. This error is not uncommon, and forms the basis for A. C. MacIntyre's revisionist reinterpretation of Hume's famous paragraph. Claiming that Hume could not have meant to establish a total divorcement of facts from values because Hume uses facts in his own ethical system, MacIntyre interprets Hume to be assaulting only theologically-based morality. In fact, there is nothing in the Humean formulation of the problem which hinders the simple integration of facts and values. The sole difficulty arises over the derivability of values from facts...In conclusion, then, Ayn Rand's system of Objectivist ethics does not provide the basis for a solution to the Humean dilemma of the is/ought gap; nor have attempts by a new generation of natural law ethicians to rework her system succeeded in subduing that central ethical difficulty. Since no ethical system has been demonstrated to have solved the is-ought problem, it may be thought a minor flaw in Rand. It is her specific claim to have overcome this difficulty that magnifies its importance in regard to her system."

Objectivist Myths: 1. Rand Solved Hume's 'Problem of Induction'

A handy, ongoing list of fact-free beliefs about Ayn Rand's intellectual achievements.

Rand is widely believed by her followers to have solved most of the major philosophic questions. For example, she is thought to have answered what has come to be known as Hume's "problem of induction."

But did she in fact do this? Sadly, no:

Prof M:"The question is: where does one stop? When does one decide that enough confirming evidence exists? Is that the province of the issue of induction?

Rand: "Yes. That's the big question of induction...Which I couldn't even begin to discuss - because...I haven't worked on that subject enough to even begin to formulate it..." - Introduction To Objectivist Epistemology p304