Inductive Quest

Induction of Aristotle’s Theory of Four Causes

2011-07-09T22:24:00.000-07:00

The aim of this essay is to retrace the steps Aristotle had to reach in order to induce his revolutionary theory of causality, second only to his theory of logic in philosophical importance. In presenting these steps, we’ll also see several philosophical problems he solved in the process of reaching his theory of four causes.
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Reduction of Aristotle's Theory of Four Causes

2011-06-17T11:54:00.000-07:00

Let’s start with the definition of “causality”: “the principle that agents bring something about; a person or thing that gives rise to an action, phenomenon, or condition.”

In Aristotle’s mature view, there were four ways for something to be a cause, to be an explanation of a fact: the material, formal, efficient, and final.

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Advances in Baconian Induction: John Herschel (Part 3 of 3)

2011-05-23T09:04:00.000-07:00

(Previous posts:
Advances in Baconian Induction: John Herschel (Part 1 of 3)
Advances in Baconian Induction: John Herschel (Part 2 of 3))

John Herschel’s theory of induction is a kind of empiricist epistemology rooted in analogies, from which we can generalize to hypotheses, theories, and the laws which are the foundations for theories. This essay will present Herschel’s views on the higher-stage inductions he believes comprises true scientific theorizing.

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Induction of "Reason is Man's Only Means of Gaining Knowledge"

2011-05-11T03:41:00.000-07:00

[Previous Post in this series: "Induction of 'The Arbitrary as Neither True Nor False'" ]

In this essay, we’ll cover the inductions needed to reach the Objectivist principle that “reason is man’s only means of gaining knowledge.”

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Induction of "The Arbitrary as Neither True Nor False"

2011-04-20T04:10:00.000-07:00

[Previous post: "Induction and Reduction of 'Values as Objective'"]

The aim of this essay is to induce the Objectivist principle that arbitrary claims are neither true nor false, but are in a third class: non-cognitive. Ayn Rand said in regard to arbitrary assertions that, “it is as if nothing had been said, because nothing of cognitive value or validity has been said.”

The outline of this essay consists of three inductions and two clarifications:

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Induction and Reduction of “Values as Objective”

2011-04-14T13:57:00.000-07:00

[Previous post: "Induction and Reduction of 'Sex is Metaphysical'"]

The point of this essay is to induce and reduce the principle that “values are objective,” and we’re going to use Ayn Rand’s own life to reach this, since it was her identifications that led to the objective theory of values in the first place.

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Induction and Reduction of “Sex is Metaphysical”

2011-03-27T17:22:00.000-07:00

[Previous post: "Induction of 'the Initiation of Physical Force is Evil'"]

The goal of this essay is to very nearly reach the Objectivist principle that sex is metaphysical, which is the essential part of Ayn Rand’s theory of sex. Keep in mind that by “metaphysical,” I mean “that which pertains to reality, to the nature of things, to existence,” so I’m reaching the idea that sex has some important relationship with us and the reality around us.

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Induction of “the Initiation of Physical Force is Evil”

2011-03-12T12:14:00.000-08:00

[Previous post: "Reduction of 'the Initiation of Physical Force is Evil'"]

Having gone through the reduction, it’s time to induce the Objectivist principle that “the initiation of physical force is evil.”

The induction will consist of three steps:

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Reduction of “the Initiation of Physical Force is Evil”

2011-03-07T19:42:00.000-08:00

[Previous post in the series: "Induction of Objectivity (Ayn Rand)"]

The aim of this essay is to reduce the principle that “the initiation of physical force is evil.”

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Induction of Objectivity (Ayn Rand)

2011-02-12T16:00:00.000-08:00

[Previous post in the series: "Reduction of Objectivity (Ayn Rand)"]

The reduction of Rand’s idea of “objectivity” complete, we can now work through how she induced her redefinition of objectivity as involving both facts about the world and facts about human consciousness.

The induction will take two series of steps:

The first, basic series:

1. Assuming Aristotle’s knowledge, discover that knowledge has an order.
2. Discover that knowledge involves integration.
3. Find out that measurement is the essential means of moving beyond percepts.
4. Discover that consciousness has identity.

The second series:

1. From Aristotle’s discoveries and the above four, reach Ayn Rand’s theory of concept-formation.
2. Integrate her theory of concepts with Aristotle’s view of objectivity, and note the amendments that this involves, which include a reformulation of what it means to “follow logic,” and what it means to “be objective.” Two elements of knowledge that Aristotle only implicitly recognized, that knowledge is formed in a context and it exists in a hierarchy, will be explicitly included in logic, as it was in Rand’s view. This is the way that we’ll know how to adhere to reality by following a certain method, because we’ll be explicating that very method further than it was explained before by Aristotle.

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Current Plans for My "Inductive Quest"

2011-02-11T08:27:00.000-08:00

So here's a preview of what will be appearing on the blog in the next few months (and years)!

Induction of Objectivity (Ayn Rand) -- I'll present how Ayn Rand used her knowledge of concept-formation to reformulate Aristotle's theory of logic and conception of "objectivity."

Part 3 of John Herschel's theory of Baconian Induction -- I finish my series on the famous astronomer/philosopher of science, recounting his views on inductions of causal laws, the role of hypotheses, and analogical reasoning.

The rest of the lecture course, "Objectivism Through Induction" -- I only have three lectures left to cover, so I'm really excited about nearing the end, which leads to...

Inducing all of the principles of Objectivism -- one of my "Big Projects": I plan on working through all of the principles of Objectivism, and putting them together so that the result will be what the philosophy actually is--not words or books, but a system of inductive principles, axioms, theorems, and deductive conclusions. I'm guessing that this will take quite a few years, and "Objectivism Through Induction" is just the starting point.

William Whewell's "History of the Inductive Sciences" -- a three volume work describing how various sciences rose up from their beginnings, a work from which Whewell built his theory of induction. My second "Big Project," as I plan to work through and understand the inductions he will present in this work. I can't wait!

Whewell's "The Elements of Morality, Including Polity" and "Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences" -- These two present Whewell's inductive moral-political theory, as well as his theory of induction, "Discoverer's Induction."

John Stuart Mill's theory of induction -- presented in his work "A System of Logic," this is the theory that gave induction a bad name in science, and ended the view that the true scientific method was some form of induction. I don't think anyone should endorse this view, but it is important in the history of induction.

Induction of Mathematics -- at some point, I want to work on inducing the branches of mathematics, with a view toward understanding why we have the fields of mathematics that we do have. What problems were these fields created to solve? "Big Project" #3.

Induction of Economics -- "Big Project" #4 is working through four schools of economics: the Classical, Marxist, English Historical, and Austrian schools.

Karl Popper and the Logical Positivists -- their negative view of induction permeated 20th century philosophy of science, and thus post-modern science was further disconnected from the inductive past of modern science.

Reduction of Objectivity (Ayn Rand)

2011-01-29T12:59:00.000-08:00

[Previous post in the series: "Induction of Objectivity (Aristotle)"]

Now that we’ve reduced and induced Aristotle’s idea of “objectivity,” we can start the reduction of Rand’s concept of “objectivity,” which is an important advancement over his idea.

Let’s start with Ayn Rand’s definition, though presented in Leonard Peikoff’s words: “volitional adherence to reality by following certain rules of method, a method based on facts and appropriate to man’s form of cognition.”

The “rules of method” is Aristotelian logic, but there are important epistemological discoveries within Rand’s version of objectivity that we need to focus on. Aristotle wouldn’t have focused on man’s form of cognition as something worth analyzing in order to understand how we reach knowledge.

Whereas, for Ayn Rand, it wasn’t enough that our method is based on facts; our consciousness offers something in the acquisition of knowledge, concepts are partly human, and as a consequence, objectivity has to take this element into account. So, to reduce the idea of “a method based on facts and based on human consciousness,” we need to understand Rand’s theory of concept-formation, specifically why it is that concepts require both reality and human consciousness.

There’s some kind of element involved in forming concepts, and recognizing this element will allow us to learn something that is inherent in all concepts, to then form Rand’s theory of concept-formation, and after that we can amend Aristotle’s view of objectivity.

The next step down is: how did Rand reach her theory of concept-formation? What observations did she need to reach it?

There four elements of consciousness that we need to know before reaching her theory of concept-formation:

1. We need to know beforehand that consciousness has a specific identity, the principle that identity is the means to knowing reality, not the impediment.
2. The identity of concepts includes the fact that it does something with measurements, and this is the means by which concepts can surpass and rise above percepts.
3. An understanding of cognitive integration is necessary before we notice that aspect of the identity of concepts; we need some general awareness that integration plays a crucial role in gaining knowledge.
4. Of course, before we can put things into a sum, integrate them, we must be able to take things apart, go through a certain sequence, a series of steps. This leads to our earliest understanding that knowledge inherently has a certain kind of sequence—concept-formation involves a process of forming one concept, and then forming another based on the earlier one, etc. To understand integration, we need to reach the idea that there’s an order to knowledge.

And this is where we’ve reached the end of the reduction, since below “an order to knowledge” are specific items of knowledge that we later relate as being in a certain sequence or pattern, and these are available to introspection.

[Next post in the series: "Induction of Objectivity (Ayn Rand)"]

Advances in Baconian Induction: John Herschel (Part 2 of 3)

2011-01-09T16:04:00.000-08:00

(Previous post: Advances in Baconian Induction: John Herschel (Part 1 of 3) )

This essay will focus on the aspects of John Herschel’s Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy that discuss his ideas on causation and induction. Before presenting his rules of philosophizing, which amounts to his theory of how induction works, John Herschel discusses the characteristics of cause-and-effect.

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Induction of Objectivity (Aristotle)

2010-12-31T07:20:00.000-08:00

[Previous post in the series: "Reduction of Objectivity (Aristotle)"]

Objectivity now being reduced, we can work through the steps Aristotle had to in order to induce his principle of objectivity. It’s essentially five steps:

Grasp the distinction of percepts and concepts.
Understand that concepts are capable of error, whereas percepts are not.
Learn that the functioning of concepts is under our control, whereas percepts are not.
Discover that we can somehow use percepts as a means to measure concepts.
We’ll then know that a method is necessary, and that it is possible because we know what it would consist of, by reducing the fallible part to the infallible part.

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Reduction of Objectivity (Aristotle)

2010-12-26T13:11:00.000-08:00

[Previous post in the series: "Induction of Justice"]

The aim of this essay is to reduce the idea of objectivity so that we can inductively reach Aristotle’s understanding of the concept. It’s important because we need his understanding of the concept to really understand Ayn Rand’s discoveries. After inducing this, we can induce the full, Objectivist understanding of objectivity from Aristotle’s development.

The definition of objectivity Aristotle would have given: “volitional adherence to reality by the method of logic.”

Dictionary definition: “Not affected by personal feelings; based on facts.” Based on facts, and not based on feelings—this is the main thing people understand about objectivity.

It isn’t enough to set aside your feelings in a cognitive context without some other means of understanding facts, and “based on facts” can’t simply be about percepts, because all conceptual knowledge would be barred from the approach of objectivity. So the dictionary definition informs us that we need a method or rules of thinking that ties thinking to facts, instead of feelings.

The first step down from this idea of objectivity is: “The method of adhering to reality to gain knowledge,” and we learn what the method is later. How would we grasp the idea that we even need a method?

It isn’t as simple as: from observation and induction we know that man is capable of error, he’s fallible; from this, we can deduce that you can’t be certain of your conclusions and that therefore, we can deduce that we need a method of gaining knowledge to guide us: this is a rationalistic argument.

It is necessary to grasp that we’re capable of error if we hope to even reach the concept of objectivity, but “objectivity” and “error” are vastly far apart from each other, cognitively speaking. The understanding of the fact of error came very easily, going way back into prehistory: people would bring home the wrong animal to eat, bring the wrong things needed to start a fire, etc. The striking fact, which the rationalist would overlook, is the idea that people are fallible didn’t suggest to anyone before the Greeks that we were in need of a method for checking our thinking and conclusions. In effect, the rationalist is taking as common sense what was actually a monumental discovery by the Greeks, by specifically Aristotle. The pre-Greeks had a means to deal with errors, but it wasn’t objectivity, but intrinscicism: authority, their faith in authority. The Pharaoh knows, or God knows, or whatever. It’s an invalid leap to go from “people are capable of error” to “we need a method of checking our thinking.”

So, to grasp why we would need a method at all, we need to know something about the mind, specifically what its operations are, what is possible of the mind, where it goes wrong, and how. If we don’t know how it goes wrong, or where, or what it could be doing that is different from what it’s doing, then we have no means to improve the mind. The first thing we need to know is that there are some areas or operations of the mind in which it is safe, or infallible. We have to know that first, before we can start looking for a method, as that knowledge gives us a clue as to what we can do when we’re using a fallible process.

Once we know that some part of our mind is error-free, we can figure out later that we can guide our minds reliably by using the safe data to check our fallible data, which is the essential process of objectivity. Later, we determine that the way to check this is to reduce all conceptual products to sensory observation. This idea of infallible data is important, because without it, we could never devise a method of guiding ourselves to the truth, and we could not count on it as underlying our conclusions, including our conclusion as to how we can improve our mental processes. There are then important distinctions which exist within our individual consciousness, which we have to discover before we could construct a method for correcting our errors, or even preventing them.

How could someone discover that there’s a process that can go wrong as opposed to a process that is safe?

Well, we know that we have free will, that we have control over something in our consciousness, because it would be impossible to wonder about how to guide our thinking, or find ways to improve our conclusions, if the whole operation of the mind is out of our control.

The idea we’re getting to is that Aristotle had to make a crucial discovery: there’s a part of the mind that can go wrong, and that’s the part that we’re in control of, where our free will reigns, and that there’s a part of the mind that is safe, where we don’t need control. As a result, we can decide to check the part that can go wrong using the other, error-free part. That’s what we have to know before we can search for a method of guiding our thinking.

What obvious major discovery about consciousness had to be made before we can determine that one part is fallible while one isn’t, and that one part is controlled by our mind, while the other is not. What’s the basic distinction of consciousness that had to be discovered before we could discover other distinctions and thus grasp the need of a method? The distinction between percepts and concepts. Not those exact words: for instance, Plato and Aristotle called the distinction “the realm of sense” and “the realm of ideas.” Ideas or Forms or Universals or Essences: how we word it is irrelevant. The point is that without this distinction, we would have no footing in prescribing guidance.

So, we couldn’t reach the method of logic until we knew that the method was necessary and possible, and to know these we would need to know three things:

1. We need to know what kinds of error are possible. That means that we would have to discover what kind of mental content is fallible vs. infallible. This is necessary, because it gives us a clue as to what we’re trying to correct (the fallible part), and that we’re trying to accomplish this by somehow measuring the fallible part against the infallible part.
2. We have control over the fallible part—free will reigns over the fallible area. There’s no point in prescribing a method if we have no control over the relevant part of the mind.
3. What is the relationship between these two areas? How could we relate, measure or reduce the fallible to the infallible?

Once we know those three, we’ll know that a method is both necessary and possible. The final issue, between percepts and concepts, is directly observable, one by extrospection, the other by introspection.

[Next post in the series: "Induction of Objectivity (Aristotle)"]

Advances in Baconian Induction: John Herschel (Part 1 of 3)

2010-12-22T19:38:00.000-08:00

Introduction

John Frederick William Herschel (1792-1871) was an important 19th Century scientist, arguably the most important. (I currently put William Whewell and Herschel on nearly the same footing, with Whewell having a slight edge.) He studied and made applications to the fields of astronomy, mathematics, chemistry, botany, and electricity. He was also one of the first modern "philosophers of science," and an advocate of the use of inductive reasoning in scientific investigations, particularly a version of Francis Bacon's method of induction, informed by the discoveries of science since the early 17th Century (Bacon died in 1626). To promote and encourage the activities of the "men of science," Herschel published the work A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy (1830), a treatise on the scientific method, detailing the elements of science, scientific subjects that had been and were being studied, and the procedures that a good man of science should utilize. (This book would be influential for many later scientists, notably Charles Darwin.) Most importantly, Herschel proposed in this work an enhancement of Francis Bacon's philosophy of induction, discussing both the nature of inductive reasoning and the value that should be placed upon it in science. Indeed, the very progression of science from the state of pre-science speculations and collections of facts is a progression of inductions, Herschel would remind us.

This three part essay will detail the elements and rules of Herschel's view of induction, starting with his empiricist view of experience being the source of all knowledge, working our way through his rules for inductive reasoning and ways for verifying inductions made, and the role of analogy, hypothesis, and the complimentary relation of induction and deduction in science. As a result, it isn't a complete discussion of all the important points about science made by Herschel in his Preliminary Discourse, such as the role of precise measurement in describing laws of nature, and I would suggest that the reader takes some time to read the book itself.

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Induction of Justice

2010-11-20T07:22:00.000-08:00

[Previous post in the series: "Reduction of Justice"]

After breaking down the idea of “justice” and understanding what is required to reach the idea of it, it’s time to induce the idea that justice is important.

The induction will take four steps:

(1) Things have consequences: because they have consequences, things can be good or bad for us, and that’s why it’s important to judge them.

(2) People have consequences too, and we’ll have to judge them.

(3) Once we judge them, a certain kind of action is crucial, which brings in rewards and punishments.

(4) Something about man or the situation brings about the idea of deserved behavior.

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Reduction of Justice

2010-11-15T20:16:00.000-08:00

[Previous post in the series: "Induction of Egoism"]

The goal is to use the method of reduction to learn what things we need to know in order to induce the idea that “justice is important, it is something that we should have.” We’re not inducing the virtue of justice, as that presupposes that we already know a large amount of proper actions, and that we already have a criterion of “virtue” to compare justice with.

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Bacon's Theory of Induction as Presented in the Novum Organum Part 1 of 2

2010-10-10T19:21:00.000-07:00

Objectivists tend to be very favorable to the views of philosopher Francis Bacon (1561-1626), particularly his often used quotes that "knowledge is power," and "nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed." My purpose here is to give us all yet another reason why we should appreciate and study Bacon: his theory of induction. Bacon's ultimate aim in life was to show us all the relation between knowledge and human power, between reason and human survival, and between scientific thought and the wealth of nations. The most important part of this project was his articulation of a new theory of inductive thinking—of forming generalizations from the particulars of experience—which he propounded in his 1620 work the Novum Organum, or "New Instrument." After we examine the contents of this monumental book, the reader may come to see why he's been widely regarded as a father of modern science.

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Bacon's Theory of Induction as Presented in the Novum Organum, Part 2 of 2

2010-10-10T19:09:00.000-07:00

Book II

Human Power and Human Knowledge

On a given body to generate and superinduce a new nature or new natures, is the work and aim of Human Power. Of a given nature to discover the form, or true specific difference, or nature-engendering nature, or source of emanation (for these are the terms which come nearest to a description of the thing), is the work and aim of Human Knowledge. (Bacon, Novum Organum, Book II, Aphorism 1)

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McCaskey, Private Concerns, and Induction in the History of Science

2010-09-12T13:45:00.000-07:00

There's been quite a bit of discussion revolving around the issues brought on by Dr. John McCaskey's recent resignation from both the Ayn Rand Institute's (ARI) Board of Directors, and the Anthem Foundation for Objectivist Scholarship.

My goal in this essay is to present my own views on the whole matter, particularly what I think was the import of Dr. McCaskey's critical comments of Mr. Harriman's book The Logical Leap, and to weigh in on the issues revolving induction that this series of events has sparked.

Thoughts on McCaskey's Resignation and Private Matters

I found out from a friend that John McCaskey, Ph.D., resigned from the ARI Board of Directors and the Anthem Foundation for Objectivist Scholarship on September 3rd. According to his resignation message on his website, he made the decision after Dr. Peikoff sent a letter to the Board which contained his evaluations of Dr. McCaskey’s view of Mr. Harriman’s book, The Logical Leap: Induction in Physics, his own view of Dr. McCaskey, and his ultimatum to the ARI.

Dr. Peikoff's letter, Dr. McCaskey's resignation message, and his Amazon review, are required reading for understanding this post. They can be found here:

Resignation
Amazon Review

As I understand the history from reading his resignation message, Dr. McCaskey exchanged emails with David Harriman on issues regarding his book in progress, The Logical Leap (now published), including what he thought was a consistent problem with it. These emails were always privately discussed, and according to Dr. McCaskey, he never spoke about them to Dr. Peikoff. There was also a 2-1/2 day meeting in July between academics and professors (including Dr. McCaskey, but not the author, Mr. Harriman), where the members discussed issues surrounding the book's content; this was carried out with the understanding that they wouldn't discuss each other's views outside of the group until the speakers had time to "reflect upon, refine, write up and publish [the views]," as the resignation message states it. Between the July meeting and August 30th, someone violated the agreement, seemingly around the same time that Dr. Peikoff learned of Dr. McCaskey's emails to Harriman.

Dr. Peikoff believes that Dr. McCaskey is attacking Harriman's book, and in some way Dr. Peikoff's introduction to the book which praises it as an expression of Objectivist epistemology, and his lecture course "Induction in Physics and Philosophy." But I disagree: Dr. McCaskey says on his site that: "The historical accounts as presented [in The Logical Leap] are often inaccurate, and more accurate accounts would be difficult to reconcile with the philosophical point the author is claiming to make." Whether Harriman's historical narrative in his book is wrong or Dr. McCaskey's proposed revisions are mistaken wasn't really the point: the point of the emails and of the July meeting was to investigate ways that the book and theory could be improved. So if he thought Harriman erroneously used a scientific-historical narrative to reach a certain philosophical point, he was being helpful in pointing how the history of science might have actually occurred (backed up with scholarly publications), and then modified the philosophical point being made accordingly.

Whatever objections Dr. McCaskey made were tentative, made in an effort to help the author (whom wasn't present at the meeting) by offering criticisms of areas where the theory could be improved--they certainly were not firm, definitive judgments of Harriman's book. It was constructive criticism that may not even fully represent Dr. McCaskey's views, not an "attack." It would have been an attack to say: "Your theory is false, your historical record is bunk, etc." He clearly wasn't saying that. His criticism is an instructive point about being rigorous in one's research, and a suggestion that being objective here could mean reworking the theory, as it may conflict with the facts.

I haven't yet encountered any damning evidence which would justify the harsh treatment given to Dr. McCaskey. From his Amazon review, it appears to me that he was being helpful in general: Harriman's historical record is an important part of the book, as it integrates his theory with what scientists actually did. If that record is flawed (and Dr. McCaskey hasn't definitively said "yes" or "no" on this point), then it will hurt the theory: it will be too narrow to account for different historical records and different developments in the history of science, and will only be a partial theory or hypothesis as a result, if not outright contradicted. He offered the criticism so that Harriman would consider modifying his record (and/or his theory) to better account for what might have been the facts.

Most importantly, we should keep in mind that Dr. Peikoff made his judgment based on partial, out-of-context information about Dr. McCaskey's views. Dr. Peikoff seems to indicate that he hasn't read all of Dr. McCaskey's emails, and he must have heard about the July meeting from second-hand accounts. (Contrary to his description of the meeting as a "forum" in his letter to the Board, the meeting was not public, but private and confidential.) Because of the tentative nature of scholarly debate and discussion, and perhaps especially in email discussions which are often extemporaneously typed up, the views of the participants may change later, or they might offer an objection as a devil's advocate, etc., in other words, there could be a lot of factors involved; I'll note that my reading of Dr. McCaskey's resignation message gives me the impression that the ideas thrown about at the meeting were extemporaneous as well, and sometimes even "partly-baked," as Dr. McCaskey describes it. Given all this, it's my belief that Dr. Peikoff should have at least discussed these issues first-hand with Dr. McCaskey before taking any action, especially the drastic one he took.

(As an aside, but something that needs to be noted: this issue technically isn't about Objectivism. Objectivism does not have a theory of induction; rather, Objectivists who specialize in epistemology figure out ways to apply the philosophy to the area of induction. From the content of the Dr. Peikoff's letter, he seems to be reacting to his judgment that Dr. McCaskey thinks that either the way Harriman and himself applied the philosophy (i.e. his theory) is wrong, or that Objectivism is wrong due to its inadequacies in this area. Either reason appears good enough for Dr. Peikoff to deem a person unqualified for a position on the Ayn Rand Institute's Board. It should grab one's attention that this applies to not only public assertions of such judgments, which I could understand for obvious reasons like public image, but also for private judgments, such as those of Dr. McCaskey's. The implication of this is that any leadership role at the ARI would demand not just a commitment to advancing Objectivism in the culture (and beyond), but to Dr. Peikoff's theories as well.)

Issues Concerning Induction, the History of Science, and The Logical Leap

At the heart of this controversy are the issues raised by Dr. McCaskey in his emails and at the July meeting, a sample of which was presented to the public in his Amazon review. In his words, "[t]he historical accounts as presented [in The Logical Leap] are often inaccurate, and more accurate accounts would be difficult to reconcile with the philosophical point the author is claiming to make." The Amazon review makes it clear that he isn't 100% sure in every case whose interpretation of history's scientists are right, whether Harriman's or the scholars' who have produced works about those scientists. One case where Dr. McCaskey is correct seems clear-cut to me, however: how Galileo determined that all free bodies fall to the Earth at the same rate regardless of their material composition or weight.

On pages 43-44 of The Logical Leap, Harriman presents Galileo's discovery as the result of experiments with dropping balls of the same material but different weight (the first experiment), and balls of the same weight but different material (the second), and thus induced that the rate at which a body falls is independent of its weight or material. He goes on to say, "Imagine that he attempted to drop the lead or oak balls through water instead of air . . . . The result would not have led to any important discovery." (p. 43) Dr. McCaskey points out that Galileo considers the difference between dropping balls through air and through water as the heart of his discovery, rather than water being an uninteresting case. A read through the relevant passages of Galileo's Dialogues Concerning the Two New Sciences (Day One, 8: 110-116) shows that Dr. McCaskey is correct:

Salviati [the character representing Galileo]: [...]But tell me now whether the density [corpulenza] of the water, or whatever it may be that retards the motion [of bodies falling], bears a definite ratio to the density of air which is less retardative; and if so fix a value for it at your pleasure. (Galileo Galilei, Dialogues Concerning the Two New Sciences. Translated by Henry Crew and Alfonso de Salvio. The Macmillan Company, 1914. Day One, 8: 110-111. p. 66. First two brackets, and the fourth, are mine.)

I shall now take one of those bodies which fall in air but not in water, say a wooden ball, and I shall ask you to assign to it any speed you please for its descent through air. (ibid., 8: 111)

Indeed there appears to be a considerable antagonism between air and water as I have observed in the following experiment. (ibid., 8: 115)

Those passages show Galileo's fictional characters working through issues relating to the resistance of media in relation to falling objects, buoyancy, and how the speed of objects falling is affected by such phenomena, whether the effect is their being slowed down, quickened, or halted. Air and water are the crucial data Galileo discusses, and they are repeatedly brought up in the progression towards his probable conclusion about all falling bodies. It's examples like this that support Dr. McCaskey's point that, "[r]eaders of [The Logical Leap] should be aware that the historical accounts presented here often differ from those given by academic researchers working on the history of science and often by the scientists themselves."

From the Amazon review, the philosophical point that Dr. McCaskey may disagree with Harriman on is how concepts develop into inductive propositional generalizations. I'll quote Dr. McCaskey himself for the comparison of the two views:

Generally, scholars who try to recreate the development of scientific concepts in the minds of great scientists are struck by how successful these scientists are in making propositional generalizations while still forming--and often themselves never fully forming--the concepts that constitute the generalizations. The narrative these scholars present (using Harriman's metaphor, not theirs) is not that a fully formed concept comes into the mind of the scientist who then uses it as a green light to an inductive propositional generalization, but that a partly formed concept serves as a flickering greenish light to a partial generalization, which acts as a less flickering, somewhat greener light to a better concept, which in turn improves the generalization, which then improves the concept, and so on, until well-defined concepts and associated propositional generalizations emerge fully formed together (at which point, the subjectivist says, 'See, it's all just a matter of definitions.') Most scholars find the process of scientific progress less linear than Harriman indicates and much more iterative and spiral.

So, the difference is that Harriman presents in the book a linear approach to inductive generalization-formation—using a conceptual framework and reasoning (and experiment when applicable), one forms a concept, which acts as a "green light" to form the inductive generalization—whereas Dr. McCaskey highlights the fact that scholars in the history of science would say that the process by which scientists learn concepts is more of a iterative process. This view of new knowledge as iterative brought up in my mind a number of technical issues regarding how our reasoning impacts our concepts, and vice versa, such as whether or not this is related to the Objectivist idea of "reduction." It was because of my research that I learned about the Objectivist idea of a "spiral theory of knowledge."

The spiral theory of knowledge is a technical aspect of Ayn Rand's philosophy, Objectivism. In the Objectivist view, all of one's knowledge should be tied together into an integrated sum, with the higher, more abstract knowledge resting on the lower-level knowledge, and with one's perceptual knowledge as the base. The spiral theory is the idea that gaining new knowledge is a process of rising from the perceptual level to higher abstractions to form concepts, and them moving back down to the perceptual level to validate, apply, and refine those concepts.

(For anyone still not sure what this "spiral theory" is all about, see this lengthy, but very informative post on examples of the spiral theory from Montessori teacher Dr. Deborah Knapp.)

Ayn Rand used this "spiral" method to clarify a number of concepts in her philosophy: her simple definition of "concept" which she later develops and defines as resulting from a process of abstraction she named "measurement-omission"; her non-sophisticated concept of "egoism" which lead to her technical theory of "rational egoism/selfishness"; her general definition of "government" which produced the only justified sort of government, one which respected individual rights; and her concept of value (as being the object of one's actions) resulting in Rand's technical conclusion regarding the nature of life and the objectivity of value.

In Dr. Peikoff's lecture course "Objectivism Through Induction," he frequently makes the claim that understanding Objectivism requires reaching non-philosophical concepts and inductions about a variety of issues in life before one can truly induce the principles of Objectivism themselves. This means that one reaches a non-philosophical account of "egoism," for instance, and after gaining more knowledge, one can then spiral back to this non-philosophical knowledge, integrate it with more of your knowledge, and thus reach the Objectivist understanding of egoism inductively. When all of your knowledge is integrated, new knowledge has implications for your old knowledge, and it redounds on it and strengthens it, leading to a new integration.

Even David Harriman implicitly refers to this "spiral theory":

I began this section by emphasizing that philosophy is the foundation of the specialized sciences, and yet now I have emphasized that some crucial philosophic knowledge is induced from the history of those sciences. Both points are true and consistent with one another. One must have the essentials of a this-worldly, rational approach in order to discover specialized knowledge; then, once a significant amount of such knowledge has been discovered, one can reflect on the process and come to a more explicit understanding of method. (p. 239)

As the "spiral theory" has so many applications in learning about Objectivism, why wasn't this idea discussed in The Logical Leap? My point in bringing all this up is because these are technical, scholarly questions about induction that should have been raised and answered, not brushed aside.

There are other issues as well:

How does induction relate to the spiral theory of knowledge, and how does the spiral theory relate to the case of concepts formed by a method of induction?

What is the relationship between induction, mistaken concepts, and the principle in The Logical Leap that "induction is self-corrective"?

What is the difference between forming a predicate concept (burns, rolls, is red, is hot) and forming a universal proposition? Is a theory of propositions needed to validate a theory of induction?

Does Aristotle's distinction of a nominal ("in name only") definition and that of a causal definition have any bearing on this issue? What is its relation to how Rand would define, analyze, and then causally redefine a concept?

There are other questions to ask, but I merely wanted to indicate how I would approach Dr. McCaskey's criticisms and how I am approaching Harriman's book: with critical thinking about the claims made by all sides, and my own understanding of the issues I think we would need to solve in order to reach a fully valid theory of inductive reasoning. Tackling these issues is the means to working out such a theory, and in my view, Dr. McCaskey was helping Mr. Harriman to make the book a stronger product than it was. It is a real shame that such an attempt at providing help seems to have been construed as an attack and a denunciation in Dr. Peikoff's view.

Induction of Egoism

2010-09-09T21:43:00.000-07:00

[Previous post in the series: "Reduction of the Principle of Egoism"]

The purpose of this essay is to show that one should adhere to the principle of egoism: a person is the proper beneficiary of his own actions, he should be selfish, pursue his own interests, etc. All acts of self-preservation are proper, and all acts of self-sacrifice are improper. I'll also present some of Dr. Peikoff’s views about how to properly induce principles when we can't explicitly rely on Objectivism.

In the reduction of egoism, we concluded that in order to reach egoism and the issue of beneficiaries of action, there were three other issues we had to confront. In order to know who benefits from values, we have to know who the valuer is, how the values are achieved, and what the standard of value is. The induction, accordingly, takes four steps:

(1) You choose values.

(2) You achieve values.

(3) Life and the enjoyment of life is the standard of value.

(4) Therefore, you should be the beneficiary of values: an egoist.

The point of the induction is to show that egoism is the logical outgrowth of answering the prior questions: who chooses values, who achieves them, and by what standard? The question of who should benefit is the implication of these, and a consideration of two other moral theories should clarify this point.

Consider Christianity: (1) Who chooses values? God, of course: “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away...” (Job 1:21, King James Version.) The story of Job is an excellent indication that God chooses the values in this religion: God destroys all of Job's values as a bet to Satan of Job's unconditional piety, laying waste to his livestock, servants, house, and even family. Job's response is to basically note that he came into the world “naked,” i.e., with nothing, and he is content to die with nothing: God gave Job everything he had, and it is His right to take it all away. (2) Who achieves values? God does: in the story of Noah's ark, God grows weary of the sinfulness of humanity and wants the world cleansed, so He wipes out humanity along with all living things, save for Noah's family and two of every animal, those whom He considers “pure.” (3) What is the standard of value? Love of God, devotion to God's Will: what accords with God's Will is of value and the good, and what detracts from it is sinful and evil. Satan is the epitome of evil in Christianity because he is the leading angel who opposed God. Considering this, then (4) who is to benefit? Not God directly, but His Plan is to benefit, and His ultimate plan is to bring the Kingdom of Heaven to earth, to eternally reward the righteous and punish the wicked on Judgment Day.

(The main purpose of Jesus' life on earth, of the Bible, and of all Christianity, is to spread the Gospel, i.e., the “Good Word,” which is the tale of the time when people will truly worship and serve the Lord and are rewarded in this life and in heaven, and the wicked are punished. The essence of Christianity is then a prayer that Jesus taught: “Let Your kingdom come, let Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”)

Now, imagine believing all of this, and then claiming that the beneficiary of all this isn't God or His Plan, but you, values are for your selfish enjoyment. Such an answer is ridiculous: you're practically a zombie in the entire presentation. God creates and chooses values, He sets the standard, it's all designed for Him to benefit, and now you want to claim that values are for you? Your wanting to benefit would be a complete non-sequitur—this is the chief error and sin of Lucifer—Satan—the sin of pride, of wanting the greatness and perfection that only God possessed. (Incidentally, I hope one can see from all this why Christians are adamantly opposed to selfishness, egoism, and those who represent such positions—strictly speaking, an egoist would be very similar to Satan in his perspective on values, that values are for him.)

Another example: Socialism/Communism/Collectivism. (1) Who creates values? The group, mankind, the proletariat or the race, etc. (2) Who achieves values? The group does: the individual merely steals from the group and exploits them, like the bourgeois capitalists of Karl Marx's philosophy. (3) What's the standard of value? The fulfillment of the group's wishes. (4) Who's to benefit: It's evident that the “public good” is to benefit, the group is the beneficiary. It would be unfathomable to hold (1), (2) and (3), and yet say that you should be the beneficiary of values, when the whole argument implies that anyone focused on themselves is the enemy of the group.

The same logic applies to egoism: If I create values by my choice, if I'm the one who achieves them, and if the standard is somehow based on me, then I'm the one who should benefit from them; if values are my choice and my achievement and defined by my need, then who else could be the beneficiary of my actions, other than myself? Just think of the injustice and absurdity of saying “You choose, achieve and define values, and Vicky gets them, she benefits.” So it's the same, basic pattern.

Now, I'll present a sketch of an induction of egoism, using myself as an example.

One's role as a valuer is the subject of the first induction: (1) All the things that I treasure and value are things that I chose, as opposed to things that I merely accepted. As I grew up, I had my favorite activity (drawing), a favorite color (red), my favorite music (A Tribe Called Quest), show (Dragon Ball Z), person (Richard Huynh), and book (Catcher in the Rye, and then later Catch-22). I valued reading, writing, explaining things, learning, and various sports, and a whole host of other things. And now I value Gaem (my future wi...err, girlfriend), Objectivism, understanding induction, philosophy, certain anime programs, and peace. I wasn't just passively accepting of these things or simply letting them come into my life without pursuing them; rather, I deeply cared about them and thought they were very important to me.

In the “Objectivism Through Induction” lecture course, Peikoff tells us what a young Ayn Rand would have said in response to certain questions, and I'd like to do so, too. So, let's say I was stopped here as a kid, and was asked, “what do you think the essence of egoism is?” I would say: “I choose my favorite things, I decide what I like and what I love.” That sounds like subjective values, and I had that kind of mindset until Objectivism taught me the real origin of values and why we choose them. That values perhaps start out subjectively makes sense, since the reality of values is experienced first, it comes from within your soul, and it's very personal. The discovery of the objective criteria for values (e.g. that life makes value possible) comes later on; you discover that the nature of value is dictated by facts, not merely by your wanting something, but the knowledge of the wanting and desire comes first.

Now, the role of the person as an achiever: (2) All my values require action by me of some kind. This later leads to the identification (and definition) of value as “that which one acts to gain and/or keep.” I chose all sorts of things to sketch and color, I practiced different drawing techniques and attended art classes that I picked out; I bought red clothes and played with toys that had red apparel; I bought albums made by A Tribe Called Quest and listened to them; I read more about philosophy, induction, and Objectivism, and I share my interests with Gaem and make efforts to show interest in her life. All of these and more lead to this induction. Every time I chose a value, I had to act in some way to gain it and keep it. (The present induction is not discussing automatic values, like the assimilation of nutrients that goes on inside our bodies, as we're dealing with conscious, chosen values, the realm of ethical behavior.) Now, if you stopped a younger me at this point, and asked me what I thought egoism is, I would have a better answer: “I choose and go after all of my values.”

Now, we can approach the third stage: The common denominator of values, its underpinning. How can I reach this? I see all sorts of things that I want, and the things that other people want: how do I distinguish valuable things from things we mistakenly try to gain? It's helpful to note that I can't just observe whatever someone or myself pursues and say that it's selfishly good—I can't forget the question of whether their choice or value is rational or irrational (like the values of a heroine addict). Since I'm trying to reach the conclusion that egoism is good, I can't just pick values at random, genuinely good and genuinely destructive alike, and then decide what is good or proper—that will only lead to confusion. Before I can know that egoism is good, I need to know in some terms what "the good" is.

A lengthy aside: So here we need some rule which governs all normative induction (any induction which goes “you should do X”)--we can't simply observe things without evaluation. When I carried out the induction regarding values and choice, or about the actions I needed to take to achieve them, I didn't need any normative information; the first induction was merely a generalization that I choose all of my values, and the second induction was the generalization that all of my values require action to gain or achieve them. They were both about what is the case, plain descriptions of reality, but this third induction is different. We have to already know how to judge what is good in some sense in order to reach normative conclusions or principles. In determining what we already know about the “good,” we're not assuming egoism or Objectivism here, but something else: the assumption that, by the time we reach the field of ethics, we already know a great deal of virtues and values, and many vices and disvalues—just not technical issues, like the issue of egoism.

So it's assumed that you would know the elements of ethics, that people choose and pursue values, the difference between good and bad. You would know that courage is what a person uses to fight to keep their values (e.g. a princess) while under hostile opposition, even if the person is afraid. And you would know that being honest with a person shows him respect, while dishonesty is disrespectful. You can't set foot within ethics until you know that there's a difference between virtuous and vicious, between good and bad, proper and improper: you can't induce moral principles in a moral vacuum. We haven't produced a theory of how virtues like courage and values are all good, or the standard of value, or presented a defense, but it's assumed that we know some information pertaining to what things are right, and what are wrong. So we already need to know in some terms the difference of food and poison, of a thief and of someone stopping him, of a torturer and a rescuer, of someone listening to you play violin and of something destroying your violin, of traveling as rest from working and of traveling as an escape from the authorities. We need to start with elementary things, and we form our principles on what we know or believe is proper behavior. Years later, we use our more advanced knowledge to spiral back and validate these beliefs, but we take them for granted in the beginning. Once we discover that something is wrong, we go back to the original beliefs and change it, which is the corrective aspect of induction, but this doesn't alter the fact that without moral distinctions at the beginning of this induction, you'll never figure out what is proper or improper.

So, to reach the kind of common denominator needed for the induction, we need to start with common-sense examples of what we think is good. This doesn't mean that one can start with anything one wants and call it “common-sense.” All of these common-sense values were known to civilizations for centuries and were known even to children, way before Objectivism ever existed, and it was more than enough information for thinkers to know what is proper and improper to some extent. These examples are: food, as against starvation; strength, as against weakness; being awake and alert as opposed to being asleep and in danger; knowledge as opposed to ignorance; praise as opposed to being ridiculed; some understanding of the golden rule as a way to treat others (“I wouldn't want to be treated like that by others, so I shouldn't treat them that way.”); entertainment as opposed to boredom.

It's a mistake to claim that you would need Objectivism to value these things: you don't need Objectivism to value food, clothing, or even friends, which is an abstract value. To give the final, definitive standard, you'd need to reach the conclusion that life is the standard of value (e.g. food is a value because of its impact on life), but you can't reach that principle without first having a large amount of preliminary values, and you can't judge these values in the beginning with such an abstract principle. So the stage we have here isn't complete ignorance or an arbitrary list of values, but neither is it Ayn Rand's philosophic identification of values. To make it through this induction, or any induction, or to understand Objectivism, you have to make peace with the fact that you have to start off with common-sense examples and observations, partial understandings and the fact that you might reach errors and mistakes. If you follow the inductive method, you'll eventually end up with a complete understanding and with all your errors corrected, and that's something you can either live with or you can't. Induction will thus seem like a waste to a polemicist, as he's doing this not to gain knowledge, but to argue; he'll get into trouble when he carries out inductions and it turns out that he's wrong about something.

Back to the issue at hand: What would constitute a list of common-sense values (once we know what a value is), sufficient for defining well-being? And what could we do with this list to get to the idea of a standard of value and thus of well-being?

I gave some examples of such values above, but here's another list: Art, food, clothing, shelter, entertainment, fame, a job, friends, health, transportation, sex. Art—it affects me by showing what I like, and it gives me joy and inspires me. Food—without it, I'll starve and die. Shelter—without it, I'm not protected from the environment. Clothing—it keeps me warm or cool, and it allows me to express myself. Entertainment—without it, life would be boring and joyless. Fame—without it, I might not make a lot of money and I won't be able to enjoy whatever money can buy. A job—I produce to stay alive and gain money, it gives me purpose and meaning, and I use money to enjoy my life. Friends—they wipe out loneliness, boredom, and they enhance my other values, like clothes (or playing a video game cooperatively). Health—without it, I might die, and I wouldn't be able to enjoy many things in life, like traveling the world. Transportation—without it, I would never be able to enjoy the wonders of the earth or do any exploration, or perhaps I would never get a chance to visit my family or enjoy a new start in a new location. Sex—without it, I have far less of a chance of having kids, or if I don't want that, I won't be able to experience certain pleasures and miss out on the entertainment and other benefits of that activity.

What's the common denominator in all of this, in somewhat loose terms? A full, rich, happy life, as the Greeks would call it. Life plus the enjoyment of life, life and happiness. That standard is sketchy, but it will serve the purpose of the induction. Some of the values don't directly support life, but enhance the quality of life, make it more enjoyable, like how friends can make problems in life more bearable, etc. It can't just be “happiness,” as that would be plain hedonism. If you say, just do whatever makes you feel happy, then you've closed the door to philosophy, as you're saying that we don't need any ethical guidance and that we can just rely on our emotions and whatever evaluations we've already made. So to bring the three inductions together:

I choose and achieve objects according to the standard of: that which fosters life and the enjoyment of life. Well-being means: that which fosters life and the enjoyment of life. Values are: the things I choose and achieve which foster life and the enjoyment of life. The definition of egoism used in the reduction was: each person should hold his own well-being as the supreme end of his actions. Now to reword it: each person should hold life and the enjoyment of life, which he himself has to choose and achieve, as the supreme end of his actions. This last sentence is what egoism means: you should be the beneficiary of your own actions, your values should ultimately improve life and its enjoyment. Now that we understand that, the last question is: is this legitimate?

This brings us to the beneficiary question: who is to get to benefit from this process? Whose life and enjoyment of life should be the paramount concern of the person who acts? Should the life involved be of the person who chooses and achieves things and does so by the standard of promoting life and the enjoyment of life, or should someone else's life and enjoyment be promoted? Here, we need a contrast: what do we need to differentiate egoism from here, in order to validate it?

The genus method would be very helpful here: the larger issue is the beneficiary of human action. Well, are humans the only ones who benefit from actions? Obviously not. Humans, animals, even plants act to gain values for a beneficiary. That's different from the mechanical actions of inanimate objects, like a rock, which has no beneficiary for its action of rolling. The next difference is between that of volitional and non-volitional living beings, as the non-volitional ones are excluded from the field of ethics. Now, among volitional beings, people, there aren't just egoists or altruists (who hold that someone else should be the ultimate beneficiary of your actions): the majority of people are eclectic, unprincipled. The benefit of the genus method is that we can now separate principled men from unprincipled men, and say that an ordinary person isn't an egoist or altruist but is eclectic, and does some egoist things and some altruist things. We're trying to validate something that is principled. So the genus method brought us from living things to volitional things to principled down to principled egoists versus principled altruists versus eclectics, and since we only want principled people, the ultimate contrast is that between principled egoists versus principled altruists. So in order to validate egoism, we need to contrast those whose principle is to aim at yourself as the ultimate beneficiary, versus those whose aim is something else as the ultimate beneficiary of action.

In general, there's three broad classes of altruism to consider, three things to which men have devoted their actions towards: God or some deity (religion), the group or class or race or society (communism, collectivism), or nature (environmentalists-ecologists). So, we need to induce from direct observations of men gaining values with themselves as the ultimate beneficiary as opposed to those who gain values with something else as the beneficiary—in other words, we want to observe egoism in action in contrast to altruism.

I'll start with egoism, and the point is to observe someone who chooses and creates values, achieves values, and has life and the enjoyment of life as the standard with him or herself as the beneficiary of the actions. As I did earlier, I'll use myself as an example, but the idea is to be able to observe a lot of instances of egoistic behavior, performed by multiple people in multiple contexts. It would be impossible to carry out every observation needed to validate this principle, so I'll only use myself as a sketch.

Food, clothing, and shelter are easy examples of values I would need as an egoist—without them, my well-being would be gone and my life would be in trouble. These values have myself as the ultimate beneficiary of my actions, not my friends, family, Objectivists, or anyone who reads my blog. Slightly harder cases would be playing with friends or drawing or reading a book, because I would need to understand abstract values as opposed to physical values like subsistence and coziness, and show how these abstract values are good for my mind, and thus good for my life, and that I'm the beneficiary of even these values. Even harder cases would be “love,” or “self-esteem,” as it isn't physically obvious what values are being achieved in those cases and they are more abstract than the values I've already named, I would have to think about the ways that I earn love or self-esteem through my actions and my interest in things, and then I'd have to make the connection to how these values are in accordance with my life's promotion and its enjoyment.

Such a procedure helps us understand how values that are usually thought to be altruistic, like love, can actually be selfish, and the reason why people don't think of it that way is because they don't understand “egoism,” and thus cannot determine how such values play into an egoist's life. Most people think that if you help someone and love someone, that's altruism. An egoist is not someone who does nothing for others, just as an altruist is not someone who never does anything for himself. Even the coiner of the term “altruism,” Auguste Comte, ate, slept, performed jobs, wrote and published essays, etc.--he did self-subsistent things too, but he would have said it was to accomplish the obligations he owes to others or something along those lines. By the same logic, Christians do self-subsistent things too but ultimately, it's to promote God's Plan, just as the communist proletariat do seemingly selfish things to ultimately benefit their own class as against the capitalists. The issue is really about the ultimate beneficiary and not the direct beneficiary.

Now, I can provide the best definition of egoism we've reached thus far: the pursuit in action, by your own creative effort, of objects chosen by you as necessary to your own life and happiness. This is what we have to validate, and this why we needed to work through the dictionary definition of egoism; it's hard to understand your well-being as the “end of action,” but easier to understand that it's your life and happiness' promotion as being the goal of objects, values chosen and pursued by you. There had to be some amount of content to egoism in order to validate it, and I've more or less provided the content: egoism consists of values, of choosing values, achieving values, determining the standard and the goal of values, and then it becomes a simple task to induce it.

Now, we must contrast this to altruism. It's very important that we drop all qualifications for altruism (e.g. selfless service for two years, for the poor, only on Christmas, etc.); we need altruism as a rule or principle, and not altruism as a set of exceptions or in eclectic situations. If we're going to commit ourselves to induction, then we should use induction for altruism as well as for egoism. There's no double standard here: if we're going for universal egoism, then we should contrast it to universal altruism, and that means using the same examples for both. It's unfair for you to have to induce universal egoism, and then for your opponent to restrict or limit his altruism (like using only examples that show his theory in a good light), and never even properly induce it. We should use the same examples and look at the contrast, and the ones you use to provide support for your theory will refute his theory. The resulting contrast will become a triple assault on the opposition's side, no matter the variant: “It's better to give than to receive”; “love involves sacrifice,” etc.

Since all the instances of value are chosen by you, are achieved by your action as necessary for your life and enjoyment, then the rejection of egoism is an assault on and an affront to your choice, your achievement, and your life and enjoyment of it. It's an all-out destruction: if you already know the connection between your knowledge and choices, then you know that your mind is what makes choices and achieves values—therefore, an assault on your values and choices is an assault on your thinking and thus your mind. Altruism—the rejection of egoism—is an assault on your mind, your effort, your creative action. In effect, this is what altruism says: “You shouldn't get the result of your actions or keep it, or really even enjoy it—ultimately, your life isn't about promoting your life or even enjoying it.” Your choice made it possible for things to be values, your actions brought them into existence or made it possible for you to enjoy them, your life and enjoyment made it necessary to choose an act, and this is inherent in the pattern of creating values and pursuing them. Who could proclaim to have a stake here except for yourself? You won't see these things without making the contrast of the same examples between two opposing theories.

So then how would altruism affect my values? Let's take food: I choose certain foods as values, like eggs, chicken, grapes, cookies, etc. and altruism is against that selfish mindset. Altruism would mean something like a communist/dictatorial government forcing me to eat soy beans that they ration out to everyone, on that grounds that it's for the “public good” and to accomplish something that's “bigger than me”: it's a negation of my choice. How about achieving the values, since it takes action by me to gain them: would I be entitled to them? Absolutely not: altruism would say that I must give up what I've worked for to someone who hasn't achieved those values. So, altruism is a negation of my achievement. And what of my life and its enjoyment? Well, someone else may need my food more desperately than I do, and altruism would demand that I take food as if it were medicine, just enough to stay alive so that I continue to serve others. So it's a rejection of my life and its enjoyment, the notion that I'm entitled to live my life in a way which I find satisfying and enjoyable. Altruism cannot give me values as a reward for following its edicts, as that becomes selfish and egoistic: that's a flaw within the Christian notion that you do good things on earth and are rewarded with heaven in the next life; philosopher Immanuel Kant's altruism, in which the moral man is motivated to do things “from duty,” i.e., because it's his duty, with neither himself nor anyone else intentionally benefiting, is more consistent in this regard. Egoism means keeping my values because my life and its enjoyment are promoted; altruism means that I would have to give up my values in the name of nothing I value (else it might become an egoistic motivation), and it tells me to do this not because I gain from doing so, but because of some authority, such as the Kantian “categorical imperative,” or someone's intuition, or a commandment.

What about the example of friends? I choose them, and I love and esteem them by my choice. Altruism says: love all equally. I had to take actions to achieve these values, I had to do things to earn the benefits of friendship and their love. Altruism says that love is causeless and unconditional, that I must love my enemies, that I must love my neighbor as myself. I am friends with certain people because they enhance my life and its enjoyment. Altruism says to bless those who hate and persecute me, to feed my enemy when he is hungry, and give him a drink when he is thirsty, and to turn the other cheek. Altruism says value something and then throw it away, give it to someone else. It wouldn't be a value to anyone if I didn't value it, and then I'm supposed to abandon it.

In this connection, I could reach the conclusion that: Egoism is the affirmation of the conditions for value and thus the affirmation of value as such; altruism is a negation of the conditions of value while simultaneously demanding that you pursue values anyway.

A person should be an egoist because choosing and achieving his values promotes the standard of value, the standard of proper behavior: life, and the enjoyment of life.

[Next post in the series: "Reduction of Justice"]

Reduction of the Principle of Egoism

2010-09-03T04:46:00.001-07:00

[Previous post in the series: "A second proof that 'Reason is Man's Means of Survival'"

Reduction is a method in Objectivism that takes an advanced or high-level idea or concept, and traces it back to whatever facts would give rise to the concept in our minds. It takes a concept, and basically asks, “what would one have to know in order to reach this? If there's any steps to reach it, what are the steps and how do we reach those?” Reduction traces a concept back down to the concepts one would need to reach the higher-level one, and so on until one reaches perceptual data, the beginning of any process of knowledge. This is the method by which we can understand the hierarchy involved in learning an idea, and we'll use it to figure out which concepts we'll need for the induction of the “Principle of Egoism.”

To begin the reduction, a definition will be helpful, as we can then analyze key terms within it. One dictionary definition of egoism is: “each person should hold his own welfare, his own well-being, his own good, his own personal interest, etc. as the supreme end of his actions.” This doesn't tell us who creates values or values things, the process needed to gain values, or even a standard to determine what is a value. All it says is: however it's achieved, go and achieve the good for yourself, you are the beneficiary. Importantly, it points out that egoism involves the issue of an “ultimate” or “supreme end,” not the only end or goal of any action.

The most important concept to understand here is “welfare” or “well-being” or “the good.” To understand this, we'd need some kind of common denominator of values which tells us what our ultimate end is, our standard of value. You would need to picture countless examples of value-pursuit: buying a cake, planning next year's business strategy, climbing a wall, fencing, negotiating a potential surgery, etc. How should these and similar actions be united so as to lead to an ultimate end, and what is abstracted from them all which then becomes the standard of value?

So far then, we know that the issue of egoism revolves around the beneficiary's “well-being” or “welfare,” and this idea of welfare has something to do with a standard of value which itself results from a set of values. Defining or understanding any of these isn't self-evident, or immediately available to perception, so we need to continue with the reduction. The highest stage of the reduction is that a set or array of values leads to the discovery of some kind of standard for determining values, and that allows us to define “well-being,” “the good,” “welfare.”

The next step down in the reduction from welfare to a standard of value to a set of values is: a single value. Here, we'll assume Rand's simple definition of "value": the object of an action, that which one acts to gain or keep. Outside of Objectivism, how did we reach the idea of value? By observation and abstraction, and then generalization from what has been observed. You would need to see all sorts of things gaining or keeping objects through some kind of action.

A very clarifying contrast to use for reaching this idea of value is that between activity over passivity, motion over rest. Particularly, one would have to notice that wishing, yearning, dreaming of doing something won't achieve anything (wishing to read that good book, hang out with friends at a bar, meet a new prospective girlfriend, etc.). So, you need to observe yourself and others acting to gain things, with different amounts of knowledge, skills, different ages, races, etc. and they either gain objects or try to destroy them (such as someone trying to destroy the health of someone else).

Now to recap the reduction once again: self-interest or welfare as supreme (egoism) → standard of value → a set of values → a single value.

We've now reached the perceptual stage, and the end of the reduction: Before you experience pursuing something, acting towards a goal, you experience choosing an action, the selection of a goal. In other words, you choose something, that becomes your end or goal, and you express the choice by acting towards that end. This comes before the idea of acting to gain and keep things. You evaluated and selected things by choice and you know that this conscious activity is happening in some terms before you ever get to the idea of acting to gain and keep things. The main reason for this is that without starting with that idea of “I choose X” you won't have any sense of yourself as a “valuer,” as a person who values something. The method of contrast is important here: let's say that you played basketball with other kids just because your dad wanted you to, not because you really want to, and not because you've given it any thought either way—the person in such a state of mind would never reach the stage of egoism, of supreme ends, of ethics, of a standard of value, or even of a value. This is worlds apart from the kind of person whose mindset is: “I can play basketball or not, or practice or not, I can choose one or the other, and I choose this, this is what I want.”

This contrast has relevance to ethics as a whole: the field of ethics presupposes an abstract understanding of values (or the capacity to reach such an understanding), not basic automatic stimuli of pleasure and pain and automatic reactions. It presupposes conscious, voluntary desires to engage in something or to be motivated by something, not passive reactions to stimuli, or just doing whatever everyone else is doing with no thought about it or a desire to engage in it. So, if you never reached the idea that your values come from your choice, you'd never reach the high-level abstraction of “the beneficiary” of this complicated concept of “well-being,” or that this beneficiary will be consciously determined by you, by what you choose. You would need this knowledge of conscious choice at the very beginning: “I choose, therefore I act, therefore I seek to gain all these things which have something uniting them, which is well-being, and now I wonder: should I get this for someone else or for myself?"

The last question is: how do we reach the idea of “I choose"? The best way (but not the only way) to understand your conscious choosing is when your selection clashes with other people. So this stage of the reduction contrasts your choice with what other people are saying or telling you to do on authority or other alternatives present. If you don't contrast your choice with others, you might reach the idea of “I pursue goals,” but you won't reach the field of ethics. Having choices is important, but without that contrast with others, you'll never find a way to stress that it's your choice, that you want this thing as opposed to everyone else who doesn't. There's a self-assertion involved in valuing something (example: “I want this X”), and that aspect has to get the person's attention, or they'll never understand egoism or accept egoism, and those observant of history or our present culture know that they don't. (Egoism and selfishness are more or less typically ridiculed in the culture at large than understood, let alone accepted.) They don't choose their values; consequently, even when they have “values,” since they missed the step of noticing that it's their choice to make things values for them, there's no basis on which they could decide to become egoists. This noting of choice or self-assertion is indispensable to getting to egoism, and even to values. For egoism to even answer the question of whom should benefit from values, you'd have to first have the idea of value, and that means having the idea of valuing, and that means having the idea of choosing.

Now, I can bring it all together: the reduction of egoism led to the idea of welfare, or self-interest. The reduction of self-interest led to the idea of a standard of value which could be used to define self-interest, welfare, well-being, etc. The reduction of a standard of value led to the idea of a set of values which were integrated so as to serve as a standard. The reduction of a set of values led to the idea of a value, the object of an action and basis for the set. And the reduction of value leads to three things: value implies (1) a valuer (I choose), (2) it implies a standard of value in some terms, and (3) it implies an action that achieves it, which in philosophy is called a “virtue.” Another way of putting it is that value asks, “of value: To whom?” (The chooser.) “For what?” (The standard.) “And how—by what means?” (The action/virtue.) These elements are necessary to get to the concept of value.

The concept of value leads us to the perceptual data and thus to the end of the reduction. Values (at least in this reduction) are things evaluated and chosen by us and pursued according to some sort of standard, things like berries, a hot shower, a good night's rest, warm clothes, and so on; in many cases, they are physical objects, directly perceived with no further need to analyze any abstract ideas.

(Of course, there are exceptions, like the value of “freedom,” or “dignity,” but the point of this reduction is to reach some easily grasped values that we're aware of through our senses, not provide an explanation for all values, physical and abstract alike.)

How this leads to the induction of egoism, is the topic of a future paper.

[Next paper in the series: "Induction of Egoism"]

A second proof that "Reason is Man's Means of Survival"

2010-08-07T14:33:00.000-07:00

[Previous post in the series: "My Basic Proof that "Reason is Man's Basic Means of Survival"

A final “basic proof” of the principle that reason is man's basic means of survival.

Now that I've given a reduction of the principle, an attempt at proving it, observed literally weeks of examples, and listened to Dr. Peikoff's presentation of his induction, I'm more than ready to explain this principle.

The purpose of this essay is merely to show that reason is crucial and incredibly important to human survival. It's not to fully demonstrate why it is the “basic” means; this would involve contrasting it other means of survival in order to show why they are derivative.

An induction is a generalization that makes a causal connection, and this connection can be implicit or explicit. The form that this induction takes is “Every M is R (for whatever causal reason)”: every man's basic means of survival, for some causal reason, is reason. The induction itself can be broken up into three stages, which need to be validated in order to reach the proof.

(1): Certain things are required for survival. (2): Certain actions are necessary to gain these things (needed for survival). (3): Therefore, a certain thought process is required in order to take these actions.

In order to reach (1), it has to be assumed that there is such a thing as life and death, and observation confirms this for all living things. And one would also have to know that living things can face hardship and difficulties while alive, and overcome them, like when prey outruns and exhausts the predators chasing it. That's the basic knowledge needed for the idea of “survival,” that living things face this problem of survival. Assuming this then, all we need to know for (1) is that there are certain objects, goods, things that are required for survival, without which the relevant living thing will die. Immediately, three classes of things come to mind: food (including water), clothing, and shelter. These are non-controversial examples, and no knowledge of Objectivism is needed to know them: in fact, these three are the widely recognized basic human needs. These three (at the minimum) allow us to survive by giving us the physical fuel needed to continue living, and protect us from the environment, especially temperature changes and other animals.

While one is producing an endless list of foods, pieces of clothing, and shelters, and thinks of them when one considers “things required for survival,” a striking observation should be made and noted: our modern technological age. We have transportation-tools that make us much faster in traveling, such as bicycles, buses and cars, and medicinal-tools to aid us in combating and curing diseases, and healing our injuries. The technology of parachutes allow us to survive falls from heights that would otherwise be fatal, and that of airplanes and spaceships allow us to counteract the force of Earth's gravity with the force of lift. All of these have some relation to the basic needs, such as curing a patient's crippling disease in order for the patient to get back to living his life, which in part means consuming food under his own power. Here, we begin to connect basic needs with certain tools or things needed to acquire those needs. We use weapons to hunt animals for food; we create a water system with ducts, valves, and pumps to process and filter water so that's suitable for drinking; we use hammers, nails, precision-cut pieces of wood, and construction machines to build a house which shelters us from the environment; we use pins, needles, threads, and pieces of cloths produced from animal furs to create clothing to keep us warm or cool. Tools are indispensable to human survival, we come to realize. That's all we need for (1), the first induction that “certain things are required for survival.”

The next question, which (2) answers, is: how do we get (1), the very things we need to survive? Something or some process is involved, in order to reach these things required for survival. Here we know that these things are important, but we don't know where these things come from or what role reason plays, if any. What do we need to do in order to move forward?

This is when we explicitly use an essential element needed in any valid induction: the method of contrast, the method of discovering an important difference, and observing where things agree (have the same attributes/characteristics). (In theories of induction like that of John Stuart Mill, these are known as the method of agreement and the method of difference.) We need to know if there's some field or area where the things we're talking about do not apply. In other words: what is present when this technology is present and absent when this technology is absent? We have a large stock of physical tools and goods, and we know that humans are present when this technology is present and absent when it is absent, so the question is: is there another species that doesn't have technology—that isn't surrounded by boats, hammers, buildings, hospitals, factories, etc.? The contrast that highlights where the differences lie is between us and the other animals, who don't possess technology.

Harry Binswanger's “genus” method would certainly help here: about what regarding people and animals are we making a contrast? We've reached the point where we can discuss different species with different means of survival—the question is where, which “genus” proposition, should we start with? We could start with “every living thing has a means of survival” or “every conscious being has a means of survival.” Plants use chemical assimilation to survive; animals use consciousness and motion. And by contrast, other animals are guided by their senses, whereas we are guided by our thinking. And this last becomes our point of reference, of the contrast between other conscious beings and ourselves. There's something distinctive about our mode of consciousness and about our sole possession of technology, of artificial or “man-made” objects. There is a connection between our consciousness and technology that explains why animals, who possess a different kind of consciousness, cannot understand or create what we can. They simply take and use what's around them, whether from nature or from the results of human action (like a cat playing with a ball of yarn, something that we made). We, on the other hand, can't just take from nature because the things needed for our survival are not just here, like lamps, syringes, and apple juice.

So, what do we do to get these things needed for survival, in contrast to the animals? If we want food in the form of meat, we have to hunt living animals. We create tools like bows and arrows, spears, traps, and guns to capture, harm, and kill animals. And we use other tools to prepare them for our consumption, like fire, pots, pans, and seasonings we've mixed together. So the fields of weaponry and cooking comprise the kinds of actions we need to get our basic needs. To get food in the form of vegetables and fruits, we use tools to create the conditions required to grow the plants. The right seeds, a shovel to dig up the earth and bury the seed, a hoe, a till, an irrigation system, fertilizer, pesticides designed to successfully grow crops and to allow trees to bear fruit. Thus, the field of agriculture is necessary for survival, as well. To get clothing, we have to capture or breed animals and skin them, tan the furs, or grow crops and harvest their produce, like cotton, and process the material, such as with the sewing, pressing, and dyeing methods, trimming the cloth to fit particular sizes of people, and so on; this means that tailoring is a more technical field involving hunting and agriculture that we nonetheless require. And if we want shelters or homes, we need to build tools to cut down trees into precise pieces of wood, tools to mix sand, gravel and limestone into cement, and water to turn that into concrete, bulldozers, cranes and other caterpillar-track tractors to push material, drill holes, position the material that will become the shelter, and all of this happening according to the design plans of a lead engineer or architect; therefore, the field of civil engineering and architecture are also required to acquire our basic needs.

So we begin with what the animals begin with, the raw materials of nature, but we combine and separate and reposition them in order to create new things that we require for our survival. There's a process of cause-and-effect occurring here, and at this stage we now know that a process of production is involved whenever we do the kinds of things needed to acquire the things needed for survival. Production is any process of turning raw natural materials into some sort of artificial object, and it integrates all the human objects we are now considering. Therefore, production is our answer to the question: how do we get these things? This is the end of stage 2, and while we haven't finished the induction, we are getting close: we've proved that certain things are needed for survival, including tools, and we've just proved that the field of production is required for us to make those essential things, or to produce tools necessary for their acquisition (or tools to make other tools, and so forth).

The third, and final, question is: what allows us to engage in production, what enables us to create tools and provide for our needs? We again turn to the method of contrast: what is present when a process of production is present, and absent when production is absent? A mental process of thought is always involved in any act of production; in other words, reason is the root of production. And the only way to reach this idea is by observation and inferences made thereby.

Let's take the example of a major productive action in human history: the production of fire. To artificially produce fire, rather than use it only when it's naturally produced (like from a lightning strike), someone had to understand the importance of friction, that friction is the cause, and fire is the effect, such as quickly rotating a stick on a wooden base and blowing on the resulting charcoal. And someone would have had to grasp that all sorts of woods can produce fire when used properly, and that the materials for a fire should be kept away from excessive winds, or things that could smother it like dirt, rocks, or water. This means that a certain amount of generalizing and abstraction was needed to produce fire: every fire, every body of water, every piece of wood, every trail of wind, and every occurrence of friction may be different, but we can strip away or abstract out the differences and discover the key similarities which unites them. This is how we can produce fire not just by accident, but practically at will, in a variety of conditions and environments. So even very primitive productive achievements like fire require the faculty of reason. And the same kinds of mental activity are needed to cook, to mix and administer medicine, cure a disease, plot out a course and reach a destination with artificial transportation, and all other productive courses of action that we engage in. Reason, we learn from these sort of thoughts (or already know), is the mental power that allows our mind to understand cause-and-effect relationships, form generalizations and abstractions, draw inferences, and make judgments.

Consider that it's our tool of reason that allows us to plan long-range. Another difference between us and the other animals is that they don't have this capacity (except in special cases, like bears preparing for hibernation, and even this is a form of non-productive activity). Reason, which makes us aware of cause-and-effect, also makes aware of a future that may come to pass, and allows us to connect our present to it: this allows us to carry out long-range actions with an ultimate goal or object in mind, an expectation. Cooks may take hours preparing their ingredients to be processed into tasty food; hunters may spend weeks preparing weapons and tracking their prey; construction workers, engineers, and architects may spend months or years planning and physically constructing a new building. Animals can't do any of these, because they act on their perceptions and respond to their environment, and often the benefits of productive activity aren't immediately perceived or understood. We use reason to predict the future, or consider future consequences, and guide our actions accordingly, and this ability has a lot of survival value: without it, production would be impossible, or a useless exercise at best.

Language is also an important result of reason. Not only do we think, but we create means to make our thoughts physically perceivable (whether by sight, hearing, or touch), both to improve and retain our own thinking and to communicate with others. To build even the simplest tool, like a pencil or a cup, we need a set of instructions to make it effectively, and for that we need to be able to read, and before that we would have needed someone to have been engaged in thought and wrote down the set of instructions we want to follow. It's language that makes it possible for us to carry out a vast range of productive activities, like a team of hunters communicating and thereby flanking their prey, a head chef teaching his less-experienced cooking students, and a group of construction workers and engineers coordinating in order to build a wastewater system.

Lastly, there's the most obvious field which demonstrates the relation between reason and survival: the field of science. It took centuries of scientific discoveries made by many scientists to produce the motor, the engine, the car, the airplane, the skyscraper, the T.V., and the internet. Science opened completely new paths to production that would have been impossible without it, such as modern air travel, and the machines used in mass production. Reason allows us to produce theories about the world, and create practical inventions to conform to these theories. Where would modern medicine be if the field hadn't accepted William Harvey's theory that the purpose of the heart is to pump and circulate blood? And without James Lind's initial proof that citrus fruits treat and cure the disease known as scurvy? Where would the modern practice of projectile warfare be without the theories of motion produced by Galileo Galilei? Once one begins to trace out the history of science leading to our technological age, the relation between reason and survival becomes impossible to honestly ignore. Upon a survey of all sorts of fields, one can reach the general conclusion that reason is a practical faculty; it isn't just the power to gain knowledge and satisfy our curiosity and wonder (as the philosophers of ancient Greece contended), but also to amply sustain and vastly improve our survival. This is how we reach the end of stage 3, the final induction. Reason is the faculty that makes production possible, which makes the things needed for our survival possible.

To summarize the argument: Induction #1: We require certain physical objects to survive (ex. Food, water, clothing, shelter). Induction #2: We perform acts of production to gain these objects (ex. transportation, weaponry, agriculture). Induction #3: We engage in various processes of reason unique to us that allow us to produce (ex. thinking, inferring, long-range planning, isolating a problem, grasping cause-and-effect, generalizing, abstracting).

The summation or combination of these generalizations is the induction we set out to prove: reason is man's means of survival. A valid induction must state or imply the cause of why something is the way it is or carries out the actions it does, so to state the relationship explicitly: reason is man's means of survival because production is the application of reason to the problem of survival. The proof for this being the cause is contained in reaching induction #3 above, but it's also contained in understanding any given act of production.

[Next post in the series: "Reduction of the Principle of Egoism"]

My Basic Proof that "Reason is Man's Basic Means of Survival"

2010-08-04T19:33:00.000-07:00

[Previous post in the series: "Reason as Man's Basic Means of Survival--A Reduction Attempt"]

Reason as man's basic means of survival— The first thing to say about this is that a child or an animal would not reach this principle—the principle isn't on the level of percepts, thus it wouldn't be obvious from using the five senses. So something else is needed. It will likely be helpful to start with definitions of these terms.

"Reason": the power of comprehending, inferring, or thinking especially in orderly, rational ways.

"Man": first-level concept, so only an ostensive definition. (You can point to people, and you don't need to know that man is the “rational animal” to reach this principle--in some sense, this principle is a precondition of that definition.)

"Means": how an aim is achieved.

"Basic": something that acts as a base or starting point from which higher-level things are constructed upon.

"Survival": continuing to live despite problems, hardships, adversity, etc.

To begin, we should consider what all living things do all the time. Dogs, cats, horses and men sleep, eat, breathe, run (gallop), respond to sounds, and a plethora of other actions. These (and many more) are first-level generalizations that we gain simply from observations of the relevant animals. And plants, in time, grow from seeds, sprout, spread, grow over and around surrounding objects, and engage in reproduction. These are first-level generalizations too, available in principle to sense-perception. The next logical step is to connect what you know about people and the other animals with what you know about plants (and bacteria, once one knows about them)--that living things as a whole engage in activities that inanimate matter and natural forces never do. This is a second-level or higher-level generalization, not validated by self-evident means such as the process of perception, but rather by reasoning based on the perceptual generalizations I've noted. This integration makes the claims about classes of animals like dogs and humans and about plants stronger, as it points us towards a (if not the) causal factor—the fact that they're alive.

Living dogs sleep, but rocks (upon observation) do not—more importantly, deceased dogs do not sleep, either. There's a causal connection between non-living things and inanimate objects that separates them from entities that are still alive. A piece of gravel or dirt remains motionless and doesn't change in any visible respect unless some outside force acts on it, but people, ants, and even flowers change and move with or without external interference. (Though this motion is much more limited in the flower's case.) Those things that aren't alive cannot carry out a vast number of actions that living things can—this unites dead things with the earlier generalization that inanimate objects cannot do a host of things that living things can, as both dead and inanimate things are classed under the phrase “not alive.” What idea connects the peculiarity of living things' actions with the difference between life and death and between life and non-living things? Self-initiated action and goal-directed action, two ideas which point towards the same actions in living things. Life gives organisms a capacity to self-initiate actions without recourse to external events: animals eat, drink, play, and heal whether the weather was windy, rainy, sunny, or balmy—within a certain range, the events that befall inanimate matter have no significant effect on living creatures. By the same token, these actions are all goal-directed, and the ultimate goal of all such actions are the continuation of life. We learn this generalization from both observation and reasoning. Starvation is what happens to living things when they are deprived of the food needed to make their energy and thus maintain their body; death by bleeding out is what happens when they are deprived of the blood needed for the delivery of substances to the body's cells. When something external injures a living thing, or something internal to the body fails to operate right or is damaged, the living thing can die.

Organisms self-initiate goal-directed actions in order to continue living, and this prevents their death. This explains their peculiarity when compared to the reactions of the dead and inanimate objects. Differences in the kinds of actions of living and non-living things brings us to a key generalization needed for this proof: All living things survive. (This is a necessary generalization needed for the proof, I think.) Life is an ongoing process of self-maintenance, and the world around us presents all sorts of difficulties and obstacles to overcome, whether in the form of natural disasters, other harmful living things, or sheer accidents. Such a realization allows us to connect our concept of “survival” to the forgoing points, particularly to the field of self-initiated, goal-directed actions. This connection allows me to restate a point: Organisms self-initiate goal-directed actions in order to continue living, and this prevents their death, i.e., they carry out this kind of action in order to survive.

This brings us to a generalization that is implicit in this point about survival: survival doesn't happen by chance or through accident, but through a certain means, a certain process. The flight of a bird is its means of survival; running after prey is a wild dog's means of survival; cooking our food before eating it is a means of survival for us. We already know the cause of why animals, plants, indeed, why all living things survive, and that this takes the form of definite courses of actions varying with the kind of living thing being observed: all we need for the next generalization is integration. Every living thing has a means of survival. This is a vast integration, covering all living things that I'm aware of, and all living things that I may ever become aware of.

“Every living thing has a means of survival,” is a broad proposition, and the proposition we're trying to prove is contained within: all that's needed now is to draw out some implications which are currently hidden. (Though I've pointed this out as an “implication,” I'm emphatically not using deduction. I'm still performing an inductive integration.) Observing all forms of life, we notice that not all living things act in the same basic ways—plants have no awareness and take in the substances needed for their survival, while animals direct their attention to the perceptual objects of their environment, and follow mechanisms like pleasure and pain, and people learn about facts far outstripping their limited perceptual field. One observes reeds, flowers, trees, algae, and other plant life, and reaches the generalization that assimilation of substances in the environment is not only a means of survival for plants: it is every plant's basic means of survival. Animals and people assimilate things too, but they survive by utilizing a whole field of new actions which exploit their awareness of their environment, like fish swimming, octopi spraying ink, chameleons camouflaging to elude predators, and wolves forming packs. Without consciousness, an animal would be lost in this world, unable to identify its allies or enemies, its source of food and water, and would be completely oblivious to the ubiquitous dangers confronting a living thing, including its feelings of pleasure and pain. Due to the importance of consciousness for animals, I can generalize that consciousness, for those organisms who possess it, is their basic means of survival. From this step, we could even tie together our knowledge of plants' means of survival and reach a further, more abstract generalization: “every living thing has a basic means of survival.”

Proving that “reason is man's basic means of survival” requires working through the vast generalization that “every living thing has a basic means of survival.” The assimilation inherent in plants takes different forms (e.g. compare an ordinary flower to a Venus fly-trap when it comes to eating); the same is true of conscious beings. Jellyfish are restricted to the sensory stage of consciousness, which they use to react to stimuli from both predators and prey. (This is due to their body-encompassing “nerve net” instead of the central nervous system and brain that we're accustomed to.) Biologically more complex animals like octopodes, cats, eagles, and lions possess the perceptual stage of consciousness. Like us, they aren't aware of mere stimuli, but of persisting things, of objects, of entities, of the environment in which they live. That perceptual animals can't live on the more limited sensations of, say, a jellyfish, is open to observation: just imagine if you had to live off of the impulse of sensations which you couldn't integrate into some kind of thing you could direct your attention to—you'd get nowhere and accomplish nothing, and without assistance you would quickly die. An important point towards the proof I'm reaching is: humans couldn't live on the perceptual stage of consciousness, let alone the sensory stage. What's the relevant difference between other animals and humans that justifies that negative generalization? There are many differences between us and the perceptual animals we study in biology, but we must focus on two fundamental differences that highlights the next step in my induction: (1) the natural endowments of animals compared to us and (2) the control mechanism of the consciousness of animals as opposed to our own.

(1) The other animals naturally have very dangerous weapons and other means of survival that we do not possess, or possess only to a limited extent. Panthers have ferocious claws: we do not; Cheetahs and other animals are blisteringly fast; we're pretty slow; Sharks have multiple sets of razor-sharp teeth, made for tearing flesh; ours are not suited for such a task. Birds can take flight and perform deadly aerial assaults, and fish have gills and fins and can quickly navigate bodies of water; without special instruments and inventions, we cannot do or possess any of these things. The method of survival for the other animals is primarily physical; they utilize their physical advantages to deal with reality to the best of their ability. Rather than relying on our perceptual field, or our fingernails, muscle strength, or agility, we principally rely on our minds. We learn how animals move in the water, and use our minds to develop carbon-fiber fins to mimic them; we discovered the connection between fire and our food, so we can improve the flavor, texture, and tenderness of what we eat, something that other animals haven't grasped. In this “information age,” a good deal of our lives isn't spent foraging for food or finding mates, like other animals, but using inventions of others' minds to interact with people across the world and impact not just our immediate environment, but a whole neighborhood, a town, a country, even the world (as inhabited by humans). And we can spend our time like this because the problems of survival have largely been solved by the minds of others, and this principle is more obvious in the more technological parts of the world; for instance, while other animals and prehistoric men had to hunt, I have the luxury of merely microwaving already hunted, skinned, and prepared/processed food. By contrast to other animals, then, the method of survival for humans is primarily intellectual.

(2) As we've learned from a study of biology and physiology, all bodily functions have control mechanisms. And in the case of humans and other higher animals, the most important functions are controlled by the brain of the organism. With the exceptions of humans, the control of a being's consciousness is also directed by the brain. Animals have an inbuilt capacity to act in certain ways, which the brain automatically makes use of when external conditions call for it, along with the faculty of memory which allows them to learn from the behavior of their parents or other nearby animals. So they learn from their parents (or their siblings or owners) how to stalk their prey (for instance), and then it becomes automatic with an environmental cue, or their instincts will make them act a certain way unerringly. (Like a mother duck's instinctive rejection of a duckling when it smells like a predator.) A significant difference here is that people have no instincts; we can override our biological drive of food or sex, and many of our automatic, subconscious reflexes. Rather than being dominated by instinct, human action, mental and physical, is under our control through the operation of our consciousness. We're able to choose between alternatives, like directing our attention to the outside world or inside our own mind, raising our right or left arm, assessing our own thinking or not. Human consciousness is volitional. But something to consider is that we still wouldn't be much better off if we were restricted to the mental faculties possessed by the other animals. The power of volition only gives us very limited control in the cognitive states we share with animals, and our control over our bodies doesn't create much of a survival advantage than if it were merely instinctive. But volition is the mode of operation for human reason.

The faculty of reason gives us a capacity to form concepts, to think, and to use a method of rational thinking known as “logic.” This allows us to form ideas about the world, to gain conceptual knowledge, and exploit conceptual thinking in ways that the other animals can't even fathom. We live principally by comprehending the world around us, by understanding it with our ideas, and acting in accordance with what we know. We use ideas to learn that certain things are magnets, that things fall because of gravity, that imperceptible germs lead to disease in the body, that we love people because of our values. (This is a lead into the principle that “reason is man's means of gaining knowledge,” but won't be pursued here, merely noted.) And we know all of this because one of the powers of reason is thought, the ability to direct one's cognitive focus on a particular subject or issue for a purpose. It's thinking that allows us to make connections between our ideas and the facts out there, in reality, and this point is obvious to introspection. It's my prior thinking as a small kid which allows me to tie my shoes everyday; it's my thinking over the past four years that allows me to write this essay; it's my prior thinking that allows me to know what will happen if I eat rotten food, or if I sit in cold weather without heat insulation, or if I try to get to know someone. We think and reach conclusions everyday, on myriad issues, such as clothing options, whether or not we want to take a swim, or whether and how much we want to sleep at night. We use reason to comprehend, for instance, that it takes time and energy to cover long distances, and thus to reach enough scientific knowledge to know that a car would make us more efficient in reaching destinations; we use reason to comprehend that germs cause disease, so we invent hand soap and sanitizers to cleanse our bodies of such harmful agents. We use reason to conclude that it's the unrestricted political power of certain individuals that leads to the oppression and suppression of individuals in society, and so we develop a system that limits the power of executive officials and the government. Such focus on the facts of reality explains the success of the science and technology of aviation, of automobiles, of manufacturing, of architecture, and many other fields. If we understand the relevant facts, then there is really nothing stopping us from accomplishing our goals, and not only surviving, but surviving in the way that we truly want to. This is how we reach the induction that “reason is man's basic means of survival.”

[As I wrote this before listening to Dr. Peikoff's presentation of the inductive proof, it doesn't represent the complete proof that was understood and presented by Ayn Rand. The point was to present what *I* think proves this principle, so it would have been counter-productive and rationalistic to simply read what she said, and write this with that understanding in mind. Now that I have listened to the lecture, I'm aware of what's missing in the proof, which I'll correct in a later post. I suggest that others try out this inductive method, too.]

[Next post in the series: "A second proof that 'Reason is Man's Means of Survival'"]

Reason as Man's Basic Means of Survival--A Reduction Attempt

2010-08-04T19:17:00.000-07:00

In my unannounced hiatus from writing, I've been listening to Dr. Leonard Peikoff's "Objectivism Through Induction," and working through the main principles of Objectivism inductively, from the evidence in reality I see everyday. For the last two weeks, I've been on a "reason as a tool of survival" walk, observing all the ways that the faculty of reason is crucial to human life, and I'm ready to present some of my findings. The following is my attempt to reduce the basic principle of Objectivism that "reason is man's basic means of survival"--to show what identifications that principle depends on, and what these depend on, all the way down to sense-perception/observation.

Let's start with “reason”: what would we have to know in order to grasp the concept “reason”? One would have to reach the step of self-consciousness, of introspection, not only to understand that one has consciousness or a power of awareness, but to reach the more advanced notion that it has different states or manifestations. These manifestations have different powers, and reason's power is to allow us to comprehend the world. We learn that certain things are magnets, that things fall because of gravity, that imperceptible germs lead to disease in the body, that we love people because of our values. (This is a lead into the principle that “reason is man's means of gaining knowledge,” but won't be pursued here, merely noted.) And we know all of this because one of the powers of reason is thought, the ability to direct one's cognitive focus on a particular subject or issue for a purpose. It's thinking that allows us to make connections between our ideas and the facts out there, in reality, and this point is obvious to introspection. It's my prior thinking as a small kid which allows me to tie my shoes everyday; it's my thinking over the past four years that allows me to write this essay; it's my prior thinking that allows me to know what will happen if I eat rotten food, or if I sit in cold weather without heat insulation, or if I try to get to know someone. We think and reach conclusions everyday, on myriad issues, such as clothing options, whether or not we want to take a swim, or whether and how much we want to sleep at night. Lastly, in some sense, one would need to grasp free will, volition, at the very least as the power to direct one's own life and be in control of oneself. This notion has a huge overlap with being rational, with using reason, because to a regular person being “in control” of his life means being able to carry out whatever rational thinking he has engaged in. (For instance, cutting off your own leg is within your volition, but your subconscious and conscious mind won't even entertain the idea unless an emergency situation called for it, such that you would be far worse off or dead if you didn't amputate it. Examples like this also lead to the induction that “the faculty of reason is the faculty of volition,” thus connecting rational, logical deliberation and decision-making with voluntary actions as a whole class, but this won't be pursued, either.)

Next comes “man”: We know that man is an animal, a living thing with consciousness and locomotion. Both are observable facts: we can observe the motions of ourselves and others in our perceptual field, and we can observe our own consciousness directly. (We infer the existence of consciousness in others, since we can't be in their heads.) We know all kinds of biological facts about man and how similar he is to the other animals. But we also know about crucial differences. We drive cars, keep busy on the internet, read books, develop machines, and do countless other things that animals never do. And even the things that other animals do by their nature, like living underwater and flying, are possible to us by making and using inventions, like scuba gear, submarines, (de)pressurization tanks, and aircrafts. What explains the difference, more than any other factor? The fact that man has the power of reason. We use reason to comprehend, for instance, that it takes time and energy to cover long distances, and thus to reach enough scientific knowledge to know that a car would make us more efficient in reaching destinations; we use reason to comprehend that germs cause disease, so we invent hand soap and sanitizers to cleanse our bodies of such harmful agents. So before reaching the induction that “all humans have reason as their basic tool of survival,” one must grasp that “all humans are rational; they possess reason by their nature.”

Lastly, “basic means of survival”: All living things can go out of existence—we know this from observations of various living things dying in all sorts of ways, and generalizing to all living things in all places and all times. To prevent death, living things need to act so as to sustain and maintain their lives across time: they need a way to survive. Plants need to utilize soil, water, and sunlight; animals need speed, keen awareness, and their claws, fangs, and hunting ability. The use of these abilities do achieve the end of sustaining life—if a lion successfully hunts a gazelle, then it was his means of survival. If a plant turns its leaves up towards the Sun and uses photosynthesis to create energy to live, then it was its means of survival. If a worm breaks down the material of corpses, then that is its means of survival. All of these actions result in the furtherance of the organism's life—all of them are means of survival to the relevant organisms. So, the next question is: what constitutes a “basic” means of survival? It would have to be an ability that gives rise to all the different varieties of ways that living things carry out the actions needed for their survival. Based on everything I know about plants, I would say that assimilation is their basic means of survival—simply taking root and taking in whatever they can use from the environment. And I would say that an animal's basic means of survival is consciousness, an awareness directed at its environment; even its other distinguishing characteristic, self-initiated motion in order to change location (i.e. locomotion), is only made meaningful by an awareness of locations, by their possession of consciousness. In other words, foraging for food, hunting, scaring off other predators, hiding, finding a mate, finding a safe place to sleep, protecting one's territory, leading a pack or group of similar animals, and a host of other actions would be impossible without an ability to be aware of the external world. So to know for certain that “reason is man's basic means of survival,” it would strengthen one's induction to generalize that “all living things have a basic means of survival.”

[Next post in the series: "My Basic Proof that 'Reason is Man's Basic Means of Survival'"]

Nathaniel Branden Against Ayn Rand and Objectivism

2010-06-12T22:36:00.000-07:00

Nathaniel Branden delivered a speech on May 25, 1982 entitled, "The Benefits and Hazards of the Philosophy of Ayn Rand A Personal Statement." It was reprinted in the Journal of Humanistic Psychology, it's available on the internet, and it is also the epilogue of his The Vision of Ayn Rand: The Basic Principles of Objectivism. (This last being in very bad taste stylistically, in my view: it undercuts the entire purpose of putting the BPO lectures into book-form, by claiming that the ideas contained within them caused so much harm to people.) It doesn't amount much to a criticism of the philosophy—it rarely critiques any of its principles. Rather, it's mainly a criticism of Rand and of the attempts of people to apply Objectivism to their lives, the errors that they fall into—errors which Branden claims are practically guaranteed to happen. He makes several dozen negative claims about Rand and Objectivism in this essay: I believe I have covered them all, or at least the vast majority. I've broken the essay up into claims Branden makes about practicing Objectivists, and claims concerning Rand, organizing them so as to present a detailed case of each.
Continue...

Part 6: Tolerance

2010-05-24T17:31:00.000-07:00

Introduction

In chapter 4, Kelley presents his view of tolerance, arguing that it is a virtue, and is required by the virtue of justice, and due to the nature of objectivity. (CLAR, p. 61) Strictly speaking, tolerance is not a virtue in Objectivism because Rand does not list it as one of the seven primary virtues that she incorporates into the Objectivist ethics. But this doesn't mean that intolerance in and of itself is the proper moral stance by contrast, something that Kelley wants us to believe is the case with Peikoff and anyone who agrees with him. My purpose is to indicate the morality or immorality of tolerance with Objectivism as a guide, and to identify the differences between my view and that of Kelley's.

Tolerance, Justice, and Objectivity

After his introduction, Kelley ties tolerance to justice, and afterward connects it with benevolence. (pp. 61-63) Regarding justice, he says that tolerance consists in not condemning individuals solely for the disagreeable ideas they hold, claiming that it would be unjust to do so. (He gives exceptions to this, as in the cases of clear irrationality from the content of a person's ideas.) Justice sets the limits of proper tolerance—and the limits are set by our consideration of the person's context, what evidence we've accumulated, and what level of tolerance we're considering. Are we tolerating an action, a trait, or the person as a whole? Later he relates tolerance to benevolence, stating that it's the "recognition and acceptance of the needs of a rational being, especially the recognition that rational knowledge is held contextually and acquired by independent thought." (p. 62) It means understanding another person's context, and realizing that they won't change their long-held philosophical views at a moment's notice, and that we should present ourselves as philosophical equals who are also open to persuasion by the facts. Interestingly, Kelley limits the discussion of tolerance to the area of honest errors: "The negative aspect of toleration is refusing to condemn people for errors that are honest; the positive aspect is valuing their honesty even when it is in error." (p. 63)

From practically the outset, Kelley is unclear on his fundamental views, as he says that, "[t]olerance is at root a negative concept; it means not condemning a person solely on the basis of his ideas." (p. 61) This is a very, very narrow definition—more along the lines of a definition of "intellectual tolerance," but even that isn't right. To see why, consider another description of tolerance by Kelley: "It means suspending judgment when we lack sufficient evidence." (p. 62) Neither of these statements capture the meaning of the term—for instance, refusing to condemn someone until one has sufficient evidence isn't tolerance per se, but strictly an aspect of objectivity and justice.

To fully appreciate this, consider the relationship between tolerance and justice. "To tolerate," Dr. Tara Smith remarks in an essay, "is to allow behavior of which one disapproves." (Tolerance & Forgiveness: Virtues or Vices?, p. 32) There has to be a conflict between the views of the person being tolerant and the action being allowed. In addition, there must exist for the relevant individual a moral right or prerogative to tolerate or not tolerate some action; what a stranger wears daily, or how a person chooses to study, are usually the kind of activities in which one is not even in a position to choose between tolerance or intolerance. An example of a circumstance in which the issue of tolerance does arise, by contrast, is when one discovers that a friend or business partner has systematically deceived one for years, because it is one's own stake in the relationship (the bond of friendship, a partner, etc.) that is questioned by considering tolerance, rather than an issue that is strictly the concern of someone besides oneself. To sum this all up, Dr. Smith reflects that a person, "extends tolerance when, holding the authority to disallow activity that he regards as wrong, he allows it." (p. 33)

How does this relate to the virtue of justice? At first glance: not favorably. Justice in the realm of morality (or moral judgment), let's again note, is the virtue of recognizing the facts and moral characters of others, evaluating them according to one's standards/principles, and acting accordingly, thereby granting to each person that which he deserves. The call for tolerance seems to fly in the face of this virtue: it essentially instructs one to identify and evaluate the actions and character of people and then not act in accordance with one's negative evaluations. "Tolerance directly contradicts the conviction that a person should be treated as he deserves. Extensions of tolerance declare (in kinder, gentler language): to hell with what a person deserves." (p. 33) In Rand's philosophical works, we see various examples of improper tolerance: the tolerance of the moral coward who abstains from moral judgment for the sake of convenience (Moral Cowardice); of the person who doesn't know how to apply his morality to others, and thus tolerates moral breaches he would never allow himself to practice; of the militant tolerationist, willing to tolerate without context or rational discrimination; of a person who represents the "sanction of the victim," who allows others to criticize him for his virtues and good character; of the person who substitutes mercy for justice, granting to the immoral or evil more than they deserve; and of the appeaser willing to tolerate the evils of others due to his own fear of them (Appeasement).

However negative this initial appraisal is, it is important to realize that tolerance is occasionally proper, and that it's propriety depends on the context. Is the disagreeable action an isolated incident, or one of many such transgressions? Does the individual attempt to own up to his mistake or moral breach, and try to make amends, or does he shrug it and/or you off as insignificant? Did the action occur while the person was under extenuating circumstances, such as a painful divorce, a mental breakdown, the influence of drugs, or a natural emergency? Is the action of such a negative scale as to be outside any rational possibility of tolerance? All of these questions (and more) are relevant to understanding the guilty person's context, and reaching a decision as to whether moral condemnation would lead one to sacrifice one's broader, well-considered interests. All such questions allow one to incorporate the benefits of being rationally tolerate while still conforming tolerant behavior to the principles of justice.

The up-shot is that tolerance is sometimes a virtue, and sometimes it is not, and this is determined by its conforming to the virtue of justice, as well as one's considered interests. Contra Kelley, there can be legitimate conflicts between justice and tolerance: to hold that there aren't any such, Kelley shrinks the meaning of tolerance in such a way as to make it fit within the broader theory of justice. (The exception is that we should be intolerant of outright irrationality.)

A closer reading shows that Kelley intends to replace some of the functions of justice with his view of tolerance. Specifically, he utilizes tolerance (instead of an element of justice) to demand that one does not reach moral judgments hastily without considering all the available facts, and the demand of justice that one hold the other person's context in mind when considering one's moral judgment of him. This, however, misunderstands the role of justice in a moral person's life. Dr. Smith reminds us that to reserve judgment until one has an adequate basis to condemn is not tolerance; rather, it is simply a realization that one is not in a position to come to a moral conclusion. This policy is neither an act of tolerance or a violation of justice, but rather is precisely the objective kind of judgment that the virtue of justice advises us to adopt. "The proper corrective to ill-founded intolerance is not the leniency of tolerance; it is a more rigorous dedication to justice," Smith advises. (p. 36)

Kelley's misunderstanding of tolerance permeates his entire chapter on it, including the section "Tolerance and Objectivity." The section is lengthy, but it can be summarized as: to reach certainty in the kind of issues being discussed, we must know and be able to refute all of the available evidence in support of alternative explanations; to access and assess such evidence, we must be tolerant and open to discussion on these alternative theories and principles with others, without condemning them for their differences or honest errors—this is the way in which objectivity requires tolerance. As one can see from reading CLAR, this is only a lengthy elaboration of the previously mentioned idea that tolerance is taking into account the context and ideas of others, including how they might have reached their conclusions. Tolerance only applies once one is certain of the actions or ideas of others with which one disagrees, and when that person is in a position to even tolerate anything. Objectively identifying and evaluating the theories and ideas of others, such as in open debate or discussion, persuading people through logic, considering alternative theories for justifying ideas that one holds—these are all aspects of justice and objectivity, not the domain of tolerance. That Kelley doesn't understand this, only reveals the depth of his knowledge on these concepts.

Conclusion

There are other issues involved that I won't discuss in relation to "tolerance." More than moral condemnation is a logical consequence of being intolerant, against Kelley's definition. Kelley's lengthy (and weird) tying of objectivity to tolerance through the ideas of integration, unit-economy, and certainty, is worthy of another essay in response. The main theme of my paper has been that Kelley misunderstands tolerance: we could certainly benefit from a much lengthier and more detailed presentation of tolerance and its connection to the philosophy of Objectivism. Kelley disagrees with Peikoff's interpretation of his own view (i.e., "fairness through skepticism"), but when everything's considered, Kelley's position amounts to, "fairness through context-induced skepticism." While I haven't taken up all of these issues, I hope I've addressed the fundamental conclusion in Kelley's chapter, that tolerance is required by justice and objectivity, in a way that suggests how those ideas relate to each other as approached from an Objectivist perspective. (Given what I've written about Kelley in this series, it shouldn't be a surprise that I don't consider him to be an Objectivist.)

Reference Works

Ayn Rand Lexicon: Appeasement. http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/appeasement.html Accessed May 18, 2010.
Ayn Rand Lexicon: Errors of Knowledge vs. Breaches of Morality http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/errors_of_knowledge_vs_breaches_of_morality.html Accessed May 18, 2010.
Ayn Rand Lexicon: Moral Cowardice http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/moral_cowardice.html Accessed May 18, 2010.

Kelley, David. The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand: Truth and Toleration in Objectivism. http://www.objectivistcenter.org/David%20Kelley – Truth and Toleration.pdf

Smith, Tara. "Tolerance & Forgiveness: Virtues or Vices?" Journal of Applied Philosophy. Vol. 14, No. 1, 1997. pp. 31-41.

The Vampires of Objectivism

2010-05-24T15:13:00.000-07:00

I completely understand why Diana Hsieh had to practically put everything else down she was doing in order to write the majority of her "False Friends of Objectivism" series! I wanted to resume my Inductive Quests posts, but my mind is still racing with the issues that revolve around The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics.

Here's a couple:

(1) David Kelley's hypocrisy. Kelley roundly criticized Peikoff and the ARI when they turned a mostly blind eye to the substance of Barbara Branden's biography, The Passion of Ayn Rand. He said:

The most damaging aspect of idolatry is the feeling that any flaw in Ayn Rand as a person means a flaw in the philosophy, with the implication that any evidence of such flaws is metaphysically threatening. In effect (to paraphrase [Dostoevsky]), people felt that if Ayn Rand is not perfect, then everything is permitted. I’m convinced that this explains some of the virulence of the reaction to Barbara Branden’s book.

It is clear to me that Ayn Rand was a woman of remarkable integrity, who largely embodied the virtues she espoused. But it is also clear that she had certain other traits often found in great minds who have waged a lonely battle for their ideas: a tendency to surround herself with acolyte from whom she demanded declarations of agreement and loyalty; a growing sense of bitter isolation from the world; a quickness to anger at criticism; a tendency to judge people harshly and in haste. These faults did not
outweigh her virtues; I consider them of minor significance in themselves. But they were real, and I thought Branden’s book, whatever its other shortcomings, gave a reasonably fair and perceptive account of them.

All of this is arguable, of course. But it should have been argued, and it wasn’t. When the book appeared, I was shocked by the refusal of many prominent Objectivists to discuss the issues it raised, and their tendency to condemn anyone who did. [Italics mine]

But Kelley can't make this argument anymore, now that PARC exists, and has so for nearly five years. As James Valliant himself said: "That's what I was trying to do: start a critical discussion, one long overdue." http://www.solopassion.com/node/11

What was it met with? Ironically, the same mound of silence Kelley and his supporters criticized the ARI for committing.

In five years, Kelley has not said a word, from what I've researched.

Asked if he would respond to PARC, Nathaniel Branden said: "No. What for? If a reader can't see what's insane about that book on his own, I doubt that help from me would accomplish much."
http://marklerner.blogspot.com/2005/09/passion-of-ayn-rands-enemies.html

Barbara Branden has become absolutely bored by the entire spectacle of Objectivists digging into Rand's life, conveniently when the facts being uncovered reveal great immoralities and conscious evils on her part. As her lies have come more out in the open than they were, something unsurprising happened: she lied some more.

In her book, Barbara claimed she heard [the origin of the name "Rand" coming from a Remington-Rand typewriter] from Rand’s first cousin, Fern. For his part, Nathaniel later claimed that he heard it from Rand herself. On SOLO, we were treated to Barbara suddenly recollecting, after her memory was refreshed by Nathaniel, that she had, indeed, heard this from Rand herself and not just from Rand’s first cousin. Those who had relied on the veracity of her book and its sourcing were dealt the first blow to its credibility.
http://www.solopassion.com/node/11

Also, based on zero evidence, she accused Lindsay Perigo, creator of Sense of Life Objectivists (SOLO), of being an alcoholic: the same charged she levied against Frank O'Connor in her biography, thereby revealing her level of scholarship in the process.

Neil Parille, Robert Campbell, and other TOC-supporters have nothing positive to say at all about PARC, despite the far higher standard of scholarship that it has over both of the Brandens' works, and, most shockingly, even though it contains primary material from Rand herself. Instead, they attack it piecemeal, similar to Daniel Barnes of the "Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature" blog. Shouldn't we be worried when the alleged Objectivists are in substance no different from the anti-Objectivist, Rand haters?

(2) (This is taken from an e-mail I sent that I haven't edited, but may do so in the future.)

It vexes and angers me that this is the state of self-styled "Objectivists," who feel free to embrace subjectivism and pass moral judgments on little to no evidence whatsoever (or with deliberate lies).

Finishing PARC has brought to my attention so much information I've been storing since my early days reading SOLO, or participating on the [Objectivism Online] forum, all the while learning about Objectivism. The Brandens and their ilk (Dr. Robert Campbell, Michael S. Kelly, and so forth) are hell-bent on defending their main criticisms and positions:

(1) Their conspiracy theory that Leonard Peikoff has stifled independent thought (much like the Brandenian criticism of Rand), creating Objectivist robot zombies out of anyone involved with ARI, including OAC students [Campbell is especially adamant on this issue.]. This includes an alleged shift after Understanding Objectivism experienced by Peikoff, from being "tolerate" and "benevolent" to becoming a rationalistic moralizer, due to the publication of PAR. [This was brought up by Kelley in "Truth and Toleration," p. 92.]

(2) It was Rand who maligned and wronged the Brandens. Everything that the Brandens said about Rand was undoubtedly true--and that we all owe a lot to the Brandens for revealing the truth.

(3) Corollary to (2): PARC is useless nonsense, and is even worse than Peikoff's non-response all these years(!) [This is what Robert Campbell holds.] This, after the Brandens's side has criticized Peikoff/Rand's side for years for being dishonest and not presenting their views, even if it aired out dirty laundry. (N. Branden basically dismissed Rand's private journal entries before they even came out(!) as a pile of lies. This is probably the same attitude taken by those who side with the Brandens and Kelley.)

(4) The conspiracy theory that the ARI (specifically Peikoff) is guilty of "airbrushing" or "rewriting" the history of Objectivism, removing literature or works of those who have been "purged," i.e. the Brandens, Packer, Reisman, Kelley, etc. The counterpoint that it might be for legal reasons is only a convenient cover-up for the ARI's self-serving rewriting.

(5) Peikoff is wrong on every issue he debates with Kelley, and Kelley is completely right.

(6) Corollary of (5): The closed system must result in the treating of Rand as an infallible Goddess, and the works of hers as true dogma, to be accepted on faith in order to be an "Objectivist." Objectivism must be accepted in total or in part, and the philosophy includes all of Rand's views, philosophic or not.

All of these are arbitrary: Anyone who seriously holds any of them is either grossly ignorant of Rand, of Peikoff, or of the fields of philosophical scholarship or copyright law, or (more likely) is a habitual evader on the kind of scale that precludes an honest understanding of Objectivism, even before the evasions. Instead of learning the merits of their opponent's view, they spend their time insulting them on the internet, with no appreciation for the opposition's actual views (or a care to even appreciate). Dr. Campbell is a case in point: he's a professor of psychology, yet he totally dismisses the closed system viewpoint: is his position then that we're free to change the content of previous psychologist's theories at will, which is the (underlying) purpose of the open system regarding Objectivism? I bet he would say "no," and would rationalize this in some way so as to not show a contradiction when the same logic is applied to Objectivism's connection to Rand as its originator. [...]

B. Branden apparently gave a speech on "Objectivist Fundamentalists," last month, and one of its main points was summarized as: "They believe it is their duty to carry on the great battle of modern history, the battle of God (i.e., Rand) against Satan (i.e., the Brandens), of light against darkness, and to stamp out all dissenters who attempt to undermine Objectivism."
http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=8337&view=findpost&p=97067

In a sense, they're guilty of the worst sort of criticisms of us (of anyone who agrees with Peikoff), condemning us for following Objectivism, which necessarily involves passing moral judgments (it is their own fault that these judgments are mostly negative when applied to them).

But in another sense, they're right: If Rand is right about philosophy's role in history, if Objectivism is true, then this Rand (and Peikoff)--Branden and Peikoff-Kelley controversy is a great battle of sorts, a war that will determine the future prospects of the philosophy. If the Brandens (and their side) have their way, then Rand will be rewritten in accordance with their biographies and summarily dismissed, with them becoming the very "Popes" that they criticize Peikoff for representing. (As we know from PARC, the Brandens are more than capable of being autocrats when the opportunity presents itself. See: Objectivist Living. See also the case of Brant Gaede, who read PARC and disassociated himself from B. Branden, and then shifted his position back to pro-Barbara--which is simply bewildering.) Objectivism will be followed cautiously, if not abandoned entirely, as the Brandens's (false) criticisms of the philosophy will be fresh in every student's mind. If Kelley wins, then a principled Objectivist will be seen as nothing but a hopeless sycophant, incapable of independent judgment or intellectual agreement; Objectivism will turn into the philosophical mess that libertarianism currently enjoys, merely a grab-bag of philosophic systems--with similar practical results in reality (which are few and far between).

If we (by that I mean any Objectivist wishing to defend the truth) believe that ideas matter, we can't let their nonsense go unchallenged, it'll only reduce the credibility of Rand and of Objectivism (which, I'm now convinced, is their deep, underlying and unexpressed purpose). We have to stand up and fight them.

Mary Ann Sures once said that when Rand died, someone somberly stated that anger had gone from the world. If that's so, then I'm going to bring anger back, and I'll argue with every ounce of my intellect as to why such anger is warranted. I'll pick up and proudly wave Rand's banner, in whatever form is available to me, for as long as her name and philosophy needs a defender.

There's more where that came from.

Part 5: Errors vs. Moral Breaches

2010-05-19T21:13:00.000-07:00

Introduction

Among all the issues that must be confronted in the Peikoff-Kelley split, the most difficult is surely the topic of error vs. evil, of errors of knowledge in contrast to breaches of morality. Fortunately, it is also the most philosophically revealing. As in the topics of my previous essay, I agree with Peikoff's view. To see why, I'll describe my understanding of the error/evil distinction, and compare it to the statements of both Peikoff and Kelley, adding my own comments and polemics when needed. As this isn't a topic that's discussed much, online or anywhere else, I hope my essay here improves the reader's understanding on this technical issue.

My View of Errors of Knowledge vs. Breaches of Morality

The Objectivist view is that an error of knowledge is not a moral vice and must be given every possible tolerance and allowance, while breaches of morality cannot be forgiven or tolerated or accepted. The basis for this view is an aspect of human nature, including our need to pursue our self-interests.

We are beings of volitional consciousness: we have the power of free will, of choosing our actions and thus of bearing the responsibility of our actions' results. We have to choose to exert the effort required to live our lives, and we have to do so by means of our reason, our fundamental means of dealing with reality. This means that we are not omniscient, and it means that we do not automatically live by reason. In Objectivism's view, reason is free will: acting in accordance with reason, and correctly or incorrectly applying one's reason, is a matter of choice. Having reason doesn't entail the possession of knowledge, or even the proper method of gaining such knowledge: the mind is born "tabula rasa" ("as a blank slate") in Rand's view: there is no mental content, and thus no method that is dependent on such content. Because reason isn't automatic, we are capable of errors, of evasion, of distorting what our reason is identifying. Accordingly, we have to choose to discover the proper means to be rational—we must learn how to reach correct conclusions, how to identify truths and falsehoods, and how to determine what counts as knowledge. (Ayn Rand Lexicon: Epistemology)

Whether it is the character and minds of others or of one's self, the Objectivist morality asks (and leads one to answer questions such as): how does a person use his tool of rationality? Is he focusing on the facts, applying his knowledge, forming principles and sticking by them? When he makes errors, does he strive to identify them and correct them, or does he ignore his mistakes or evade them or rationalize them into nonexistence? Does the person practice the Objectivist virtues (even implicitly)? These questions matter because the Objectivist morality is designed to promote those beings of free will who have chosen to use their reason to the best of their ability.

Because humans are not omniscient, morality can't declare that a person is morally flawed for making errors and mistakes, and that he must be judged according to the standard of omniscience, of knowing everything at once. Such a principle would ignore how humans live in reality, and would ignore our need to reach conclusions through the fallible process of reason, even if we occasionally make mistakes and reach contradictions. Engaging in thought and making a mistake along the way is immensely more practical than evading the responsibility of thought, provided that the person continues along a reality-oriented train of thought, as this is the way in which mistakes are corrected. Objectivism is opposed to impractical theories and irrational standards such as omniscience: they contradict reality, and offer only genuine losses for those who try to adhere to them.

Objectivism's censure of irrationality has another form (among others): the refusal to advocate willful immorality. A breach of morality is an conscious choice to go against what one deems to be good, to act in some way that promotes what one regards as evil, to evade one's knowledge of the good. To act against what one knows to be the good, is to act against what one considered in the past to be beneficial behavior and against one's values. Such an action would necessitate that a person judge this person as (at least) immoral. To understand why, let's consider this distinction in regard to the virtues most concerned with the moral character of others and of oneself: justice and pride.

The virtues of justice and pride recognize the basic facts about humans I mentioned above, regarding our volition and need to discover how to use reason correctly. Justice tells us: other people's ideas and actions matter to one's self-interest and life, so determine what kind of person they've chosen to be and their personal context, determine whether they are good or evil according to your standards and principles, and act according to that evaluation. Pride tells us that our principles matter to our self-interest and life, and that we should strive for moral perfection, practicing our virtues and judging our own selves as good or evil according to our morality and our personal context, and pursuing only rational courses of actions, correcting ourselves when we deliberately do otherwise (whenever and to what extent this is possible).

Justice informs us to understand the people we deal with (or, at least, acknowledge the moral characters of people we learn about) due to their effects on our own lives and values. Intellectually, this means discovering facts about other people's lives, especially how they use their mind, and toward what ends. At first, one gives a stranger the moral benefit of the doubt, due to one's acknowledgment of another's nature as a human, that is, as someone who possesses a rational faculty and from whom benefits can be expected. As the relationship is extended or becomes wider in scope and relevance (for example, a daily acquaintance, a friend, a business partner), an awareness of the person's moral standing becomes selfishly obligatory. In the relevant context, this means determining whether the person makes mistakes honestly, struggling to grasp the facts and comply with them, or if the person is practicing evasion, and determining whether rationality or irrationality is the ruling factor in the person's character. This is another way of protecting one's clarity of vision: the rationality of giving one's car keys and car to a parking valet depends on whether the person is a dependable and reputable driver, is known to be (unintentionally) accident-prone, or is a suspected vandal or thief.

In action, justice here means respecting the fallible nature of human reason, and not altering the moral evaluation of those who make honest mistakes. This includes brushing the mistake off as insignificant, helping the individual to correct his actions, or changing one's goals in order to achieve your values (such as, kindly suggesting an honest (but bad) cook to let you do the cooking for an upcoming meeting, or offering cooking lessons). It also means not tolerating, "brushing off," or otherwise ignoring a breach of morality or an act of evasion; immorality, in the Objectivist view, is the path to failure, value-loss, destruction, and death, and is precisely the line where "allowance" and "permissibility" must be drawn. "Tolerating" a gangster, a pathological liar, a swindler, or a hypocrite is an assault on one's values and an injustice to those who are virtuous, including the honestly mistaken among them. "To abstain from condemning a torturer, is to become an accessory to the torture and murder of his victims," Rand says. (The Virtue of Selfishness, p. 83.) The proper response to breaches of morality is to withhold one's sanction of the activity, and even the person if he proves to not desire to change his behavior in hopes of bettering himself and earning one's forgiveness.

Pride is "moral ambitiousness," it is striving to adhere to one's moral code, creating one's optimal moral character, and taking the actions needed to make one's life worth living—to make one worthy of positive self-esteem. Pride is working towards moral perfection, which is, "an unbreached rationality—not the degree of your intelligence, but the full and relentless use of your mind, not the extent of your knowledge, but the acceptance of reason as an absolute." Intellectually, pride means taking moral issues seriously, seeking to understand them and acting as one's moral code dictates, to be "good" by one's moral standard and principles. By the same token, this means consciously refusing to engage in willful evil, to create flaws in one's character. The proud man is one who recognizes that one's virtuous or flawed character is a result of one's own volitional actions, and is therefore capable, in principle, of being changed for the better. As Peikoff puts the point (and several other points), the fact of volition's role on character and it's importance in regard to pride means that:

There is no excuse, therefore, for a man who resigns himself to flaws in his character. 'Flaws' does not mean errors of knowledge, which involve no evasion; it means breaches of morality, which do involve evasion. The moral man may lack a piece of knowledge or reach a mistaken conclusion; but he does not tolerate willful evil, neither in his consciousness nor in his action, neither in the form of sins of commission nor of sins of omission. He does not demand of himself the impossible, but he does demand every ounce of the possible. He refuses to rest content with a defective soul, shrugging in self-deprecation 'That's me.' He knows that that 'me' was created, and is alterable, by him. (Peikoff, Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand, p. 304)

In action, the proud person engages in rational actions unwaveringly, earnestly practicing the virtues he regards as true. He does not fault himself for honest mistakes, but rather accepts his fallibility and moves forward, correcting them whenever the means are available to do so. He doesn't accept unearned guilt, faulting himself for failing to fully practice something that is impossible to accomplish. Nor does he motivate his actions by evasion or other forms of evil. Despite this, Objectivism is opposed to the view that moral perfection is a "one-shot thing"; if a person does become guilty of a vice, he doesn't sit in moral helplessness, but rather uses his rationality to redeem himself. He, "condemns his improper behavior, analyzes its roots (identifying in the process the underlying evasions), makes reparation (where applicable), and works to reshape his mental policy; he thereby retrains his character for the future." (OPAR, p. 305)

In the cases of both justice and pride, moral innocence is the crucial virtue to consider. Whether a person thinks he's committed a moral crime or not, or whether he thinks this is the case in regard to someone else or not, are important facts to consider in determining errors of knowledge versus breaches of morality. Honest errors are not to be confused with evils, and Objectivism's moral code upholds the innocent, including the rational but mistaken, while condemning the willfully evil.

Ideas as True or False, Good or Bad

In several important respects I've maintained that Kelley is misrepresenting the Objectivist view in epistemology and ethics. This series of distortion is in full force in his chapter on "Error vs. Evil."

Kelley repeats his dual-standards of human life and rationality, now applying it to the evaluation of ideas, and states that there are two characteristics which apply to ideas, one more essential than the other: the content of an idea, and its relation to some action. He states:

Whether an idea is true or false, and whether it is good or bad, are related issues. But they are distinct, and the issue of truth is primary. The essential characteristic of an idea is its content, the claim it makes about reality. The first and essential question to ask about any idea, therefore, is whether the claim it makes is true or false. Truth or falsity is a feature that an idea has by virtue of its content. An idea is good or bad, by contrast, in virtue of its relation to some action. As I indicated in 'A Question of Sanction,' there are two categories of relevant action. We can evaluate an idea by its effects—the actions it leads people to take—as measured by the standard of human life. And we can evaluate an idea by the mental actions that produced it, as measured by the standard of rationality. In either case, the value significance of the idea is a derivative property, which depends not only on the content of the idea but on the nature of the relevant action. And in either case, as I said, 'the concept of evil applies primarily to actions, and to the people who perform them.' It applies only in a derivative way to the ideas themselves. (CLAR, p. 39)

I won't repeat my criticism of the standards of human life and rationality I made in part 2, but I will comment on some of his other views.

My first point is that Objectivism has no content/action dichotomy, in which the truth of an idea flows from the content, and the moral rightness (or wrongness) of an idea flows from its effects—the actions or consequences of the idea. If this is literally what Kelley believes, then he's completely abandoned the Objectivist view of truth, and thereby of objectivity. The truth of an idea depends not only on what it claims about reality (its "content"), but also the mental processes used to reach it by a given individual, and its practical consequences. (I'm opposed to Kelley redefining "content" here as basically the definition of an idea, since a lot more information than that is relevant to determining an idea's truth.)

An idea's relation to action, including its ethical significance, is part of the content of the idea. It's one's knowledge of the idea, including relevant practical consequences, the reasoning that led to it, and value-judgments made, that constitute the content of the idea. Speaking of this sort of integration, the same kind of reasoning applies to the truth of an idea—the effects in reality of an idea partly determine its truth or falsehood. There's no reason in Objectivism to separate a part of the content of an idea and declare it to be a derivative trait, as far as the value significance of that idea goes. In fact, there's no reason for the content/action split in the first place: Kelley merely introduces it, claims that one corresponds to a primary trait (truth), and that the other applies to the secondary trait (value significance).

Diana Hsieh presented the criticism that Kelley embraces the mind-body dichotomy in moral judgment: well, here it is, in full form, in his discussion of value significance and its application to actions. Notice what Kelley says: "Had the same actions [i.e. Stalin's mass-murder motivated by Marxism] been committed by an Attila, whose power did not rest on ideological justifications, the actions would have been equally wrong." (p. 40) That quote implies that ideas don't matter in evaluating actions; so long as the scale of destruction is the same, then the actions are equally evil, no matter the ideological justification (or lack of it). That's entirely opposed to Objectivism.

First, it's ridiculous to suggest that anyone could've performed the same actions as Stalin without any ideological justifications. Mass murder, conquering other nations—these could be actions of force-wielders without a specific philosophy. Erecting a command economy, contributing to socialist theory and then putting it into blood-soaked practice, purging one's ranks of potential enemies, forcing scientists into labor camps or outright killing them, and so on, couldn't possibly have happened without an ideology driving it, a very definite ideology. If not, then what does Kelley take to be the relationship between ideas and actions, between the mind and body?

Second, Kelley's ignoring the fact that the scope and level of evasion plays a significant role in determining the amount of evil in a given action; indeed, evasion is the source of evil, its basic form. From what I said in Part 3, it should be clear that I think that it takes a greater amount of evasion to believe and practice Marxism to the extent that Stalin did than to commit the actions of Attila. Precisely because of Stalin's ideas, and how he reached them, then, his actions would have been far worse than those of Attila, even if they led to the same number of deaths or other superficial similarities in reality.

Peikoff vs. Kelley on the Role of Philosophy in History

In the next section, "Ideas and Original Sin," Kelley presents what he takes to be his differences with Peikoff on the role of philosophy in cultural events.

The Objectivist theory of history is that philosophy, i.e. the realm of ideas, is the prime cause of the course of history, the cause that influences all of the other causes, social, political, economic, technological, and so on. This isn't to say that history doesn't have many factors which can account for historical events, but it does conclude that not all such factors are primary. Philosophy is capable of this because of its broad range of abstractions, because of the importance of philosophical issues to human life. (Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand, p. 452) A philosophy first influences a small group of individuals concerned with philosophical issues, commonly known as intellectuals, and these individuals pass the philosophy down in ways that begin to influence the culture, affecting the fields of art, science, government policy, law, and countless others, in both subtle and stark ways.

As Kelley presents what he takes to be Peikoff's view, I can't help but notice that he treats "Fact and Value" as some sui generis article, as if Peikoff hadn't described his (and Rand's/Objectivism's) view of history in The Ominous Parallels, or even Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand. As we're about to see, Kelley is going to say things that Peikoff does not hold, and thus his critique will be that much weaker.

Kelley's portrait of Peikoff's view is a variant of ideological determinism: as soon as you inject a philosophical idea or system into a culture, the result will necessarily lead to certain consequences consistent with that idea, rendering the free will of the people who live under this idea or culture moot. The philosopher thus takes the blame for the transmission and effects of his ideas, as Peikoff notes in F&V with regard to Immanuel Kant. Kelley notes, "[t]hese individuals must, in effect, be helpless and unwitting carriers of the intellectual virus." (CLAR, p. 41) He also comments (rightly) that Peikoff's view is that the majority of people are not in the position needed to exercise their choice regarding fundamental philosophical ideas, and thus are shaped and influenced by these abstractions without their knowledge. Kelley draws the deduction: if such ideas are so embedded into the culture that they are never explicitly identified and challenged by the majority of people (the non-intellectual, the "ordinary"), that they are never issues about which one could choose to think about or not, then one cannot be accused of evasion or irrationality for accepting them. Trying to catch Peikoff in a contradiction, Kelley remarks that Peikoff holds those influenced by ideas they hadn't even thought about to be responsible for the consequences of the idea. Kelley ties this belief to Peikoff's (alleged) principle that an idea's falsehood "immediately implies" irrationality in the persons who accept the idea. Kelley then completes his "reduction to the absurd" argument, noting that if we hold them responsible, then we haven't negated their free will, and they are partially responsible for the disasters of practicing bad philosophical ideas; therefore, the originating philosopher does not really take the blame of such consequences, or only a diluted share of it. (p. 42) He then restates the argument:

In short, Peikoff cannot have it both ways. Ideas necessitate historical results only to the extent that people do not freely choose all of the intellectual contents that govern their values and behavior. Ideas necessitate results only to the extent that artists, journalists, politicians, and people in other walks of life operate within an intellectual context that they necessarily take for granted. But to this extent, they are not responsible for the effects of the premises that make up that context, and cannot be condemned as irrational. To the extent that people are responsible for thinking about their premises, and choosing to accept or reject them, the link between the originators of the ideas and the ultimate consequences is not one of causal necessity. We cannot hold the originators fully responsible for those effects, any more than we can hold a bartender fully responsible for the drunken behavior of his patrons. (ibid.)

Kelley concludes that Peikoff is espousing a form of original sin applied to culture: that Peikoff is claiming that ideas will influence individuals no matter what, free will aside, and that we share moral blame for the negative consequences of these ideas.

Unfortunately for Kelley, his argument has several flaws, some more glaring than others.

(1) Peikoff's discussion of history and philosophy in Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand:

Philosophy determines essentials, not details. If men act on certain principles (and choose not to rethink them), the actors will reach the end result logically inherent in those principles. Philosophy does not, however, determine all the concrete forms a principle can take, or the oscillations within a progression, or the time intervals among its steps. Philosophy determines only the basic direction—and outcome." (OPAR, 452)

Ideas necessitate certain results in reality due to the actual casual connection between ideas and action, a fact that is outside the power of human choice. Ideas, when practiced, can only lead to certain results, following the logic of the idea. What is open to human choice is whether and to what extent such philosophical ideas are practiced or rejected. Which brings us to the next topic:

(2) The limits of free will. In Objectivism, free will is the capacity to control and direct one's consciousness, to regulate it towards focus or non-focus, towards thought and non-thought, and direct certain physical actions that are under our conscious control. It's a very delimited faculty: exercised in a certain way, it can lead to great things, but it does not grant one the power to do everything or to be omnipotent. This is the basic reason why we must rely on the knowledge and trade of others who specialize in different fields in order to live, the basic reason for the need of the division of labor.

In "Fact & Value," Peikoff states that, "[t]o an individual in a division-of-labor society, it makes a life-or-death difference whether he is surrounded by producers or parasites, honest men or cheats, independent men or power-lusters." The implication of all of this is that if the specialists or experts are corrupt in their field, the innocent people who rely on them will pay the negative consequences for following their ideas. As examples in psychology, Freud's theories of the id, ego, and super-ego and the theory of behaviorism have been derided by Objectivists for decades precisely because of the damage to human life those ideas have caused, because the non-specialists rely on the faulty views of the specialists. It would be grave context-dropping to blame these negative consequences on the victims as much as those who should have known better. Free will does not mean: go out and discover and do everything by yourself, and if you act on someone else's mistake or deception, then it's your fault, you had free will and could have prevented/ceased the blame-worthy action, but you chose not to.

Peikoff is not dropping the context here: his position is that people can't be blamed for ideas that they couldn't have been expected to know, given their own time, energy, and need to work in some specialized field; this field will typically be something outside the discipline of philosophy or even the humanities. Since this is the case, once a certain philosophical climate sets into a culture, its consequences will influence the individuals of a culture, not due to determinism, but due to the limits of free will and knowledge. (I have to thank Paul Hsieh for quoting some of Peikoff's take on this issue from "The Art of Thinking, lecture 2" in a Noodlefood comment. Not only is the above what I take to be the correct response to Kelley's charge of Peikoff endorsing a version of idea-determinism with respect to a culture, but it also summarizes Peikoff's own words, in which he was showing how an argument about free will much like Kelley's can be met with integrating one's knowledge from other fields and disciplines, with the example being the division of labor and the knowledge of specialists.)

With that said, I'll comment next on the "reduction to the absurd" stage of Kelley's argument, where Kelley insinuates that Peikoff does hold the average person responsible.

(3) Peikoff's notion of "inherently dishonest ideas." To actually make his argument, Kelley has to take elements from Peikoff's section on "inherently dishonest ideas," expanding conclusions made regarding that set of ideas to all ideas in general, with the suppressed premise that this is what Peikoff does in his article (pages 41-42 of CLAR). In particular, he rips these sentences out of their context: "The mass base of such [inherently dishonest] movements are not evaders of the same kind [as the idea's originator(s), leaders, or intellectual spokesmen]; but most of the followers are dishonest in their own passive way. They are unthinking, intellectually irresponsible ballast, unconcerned with logic or truth.” On this count alone, this step in Kelley's argument should be considered context-dropping and summarily dismissed.

Peikoff's view is that unwitting followers of ideas typically are not to blame for relying on the ideas in their cultures, that they are not aware of the issues at stake. “Millions, billions, of men may be oblivious to the mind, they may be ignorant of philosophy, they may even be contemptuous of abstractions. But, knowingly or not, they are shaped ultimately by the abstractions of a small handful of individuals.” ("Philosophy and Psychology in History," Objectivist Forum 6 (Oct. 1985). pp. 14; quoted in CLAR, p. 41) But the followers of "inherently dishonest ideas" are a special case.

In Fact & Value, Peikoff says that "inherently dishonest ideas" are forms of openly rebelling against reason and reality, and in the 1983 lecture course "Understanding Objectivism" (UO) he states that such ideas can have no basis in reality. He says that, "[i]f the conscientious attempt to perceive reality by the use of one’s mind is the essence of honesty, no such rebellion can qualify as 'honest.'" (F&V) In UO, he specifies three kinds of "inherently dishonest ideas": (1) those explicitly against reason and reality, (2) those against values as such, and (3) those which advocate totalitarian states. In any event, Peikoff holds that the area of "inherently dishonest ideas" is filled with notions that couldn't be honestly understood and accepted. Even with such dishonest ideas, Peikoff excludes the very young, the retarded, the illiterate, and a small number of adults of the charge of evasion and irrationality; these are people who, for various reasons, cannot grasp the issues involved or the corruption that results from advocacy of these ideas. Kelley slyly forgets to mention the exceptions that Peikoff makes in F&V, but we should not follow suit.

The topic of "inherently dishonest ideas," as presented in "Fact & Value," is merely a summary of his views; these views are introduced and elaborated upon in the UO lecture course. This fact is something which Kelley also conveniently never discusses in the present issue. But the fact that F&V's discussion is only a summary doesn't mean that Kelley is free to quote statements out of the context that gives them meaning. Unfortunately for Kelley, his "reduction" falls due to Peikoff's actual views on the moral responsibility of cultural innovators/intellectual specialists versus that of ordinary people, and Kelley's quoting material out of context.

(4) Falsehood "immediately implies" irrationality. Kelley continues his "reduction," stating that (his misrepresentation of) Peikoff's views are a result of his general principle that "the falsity of an idea 'immediately implies' irrationality on the part of those who accept it." (CLAR, p. 42) This is false, as Peikoff doesn't hold this view. What he says is that falsehood is a contradiction of reality, and (within a certain range or scope) is the result of honestly mistaken, rational thinking; beyond this range, falsehood does imply irrationality, evasion, a process of vice. "Now we must note that falsehood does not necessarily imply vice; honest errors of knowledge are possible." (F&V) And later:

There is only one basic issue in philosophy and in all judgment, cognitive and evaluative alike: does a man conform to reality or not? Whether an idea is true or false is one aspect of this question—which immediately implies the other aspects I mentioned: the relation to reality of the mental processes involved and of the actions that will result. Truth is a product of effort and leads in action to value(s); hence, one says, the true idea is not only true: it is also good. Falsehood, assuming it reaches a certain scale, is a product of evasion [i.e. irrationality] and leads to destruction; such an idea is not only false; it is also evil. (Italics and brackets mine.)

Peikoff is saying that falsehood "immediately implies" irrationality only if his views are exaggerated, and this is precisely what Kelley does.

Relatedly, Kelley misrepresents Peikoff's views on honest errors, or falsehoods which imply rationality. Kelley says: "Honest errors, especially in regard to philosophical issues, are thus very rare; he suggests that they are essentially limited to the retarded, the illiterate, and the young." (CLAR, p. 40) Actually, the retarded, illiterate, and the young are the honestly mistaken followers of "inherently dishonest ideas" in Peikoff's view, not the representatives of honest errors in general. Indeed, the whole "reduction to the absurd" that Kelley's argument consists of is merely Kelley quoting Peikoff out-of-context and expanding his claims beyond their valid scope, outside the confines of Peikoff's notion of "inherently dishonest ideas."

Now, let's put it all together: Men have free will, but this doesn't mean omnipotence: for countless reasons and in countless situations, we need the specialized skills and labors of others, and we benefit greatly from this division of labor. But our reliance on corrupt specialists, particularly in philosophy, can lead to us creating disastrous events, disasters which are logically consistent with these ideas. This is the way that philosophy is the primary cause of history: the wrong ideas will be accepted and picked up, and people who don't know any better will act on them, to everyone's loss. In the case of "inherently dishonest movements" the philosophic originator of the movement is primarily responsible, as it is his ideas that are being carried out, and the blame is extended to his intellectual followers and spokesmen to a lesser extent, and base followers of the movement to an even lesser extent.

If my presentation of Peikoff is correct here, then Peikoff's view here certainly doesn't represent a "cultural version of the doctrine of original sin," as Kelley claims. (p. 42)

Kelley on the Degree and Kind of Moral Responsibility

Kelley, in the next section "The Role of Ideas in History," reintroduces the topic of Soviet tyrants and academic Marxists, an issue he initially discussed in "A Question of Sanction." He states that Stalin and his henchmen are primarily responsible, as they're the proximate cause of the mass deaths in Russia. The intellectuals were responsible for creating the cultural conditions (or shaping the ones which already existed) making it possible for Stalin and his kind to gain power, and abuse it on a monstrous scale. But there's an important difference in degree of responsibility, Kelley warns. Stalin was personally responsible for the deaths, as he used his political power to instigate the murders and torture. But the intellectuals are not in such a position: it took the effort of many Marxist intellectuals to create the cultural climate suited for Stalin's machinations. As a result, the charge that the academic Marxist is guiltier than Stalin is fallacious on two counts: "first in attributing causal agency to the ideas themselves, and secondly for investing that agency in every individual adherent of the ideas, treating each one as fully responsible for effects that occurred only because millions of other people embraced the same ideas." (p. 49)

Actually, the claim that Marxist intellectuals or academics are guiltier than Stalin or any dictator (which I agree with) doesn't involve either of those fallacies—both are non sequiturs. The Marxist intellectuals are guiltier than the dictators because of their practice with the ideas, not due to any causal efficacy on the idea's part. The intellectuals and dictators share varying degrees of responsibility, with the intellectuals holding the greater share. There's a number of reasons why the intellectuals are guiltier than the dictators.

(For some of the reasons stated below, see Diana's Hsieh's post Marxist Dictators Versus Marxist Intellectuals)

-The Marxist intellectuals presented the moral rightness of the rise of the proletariat, and the takeover of the means of production. They argued that it was morally obligatory, the rational, scientific thing to do, even historically inevitable. Even anti-Marxist practices, like Lenin's New Economic Policy (i.e. which brought private profits to the agriculture industry, instead of outright nationalization), were justified on grounds of historical necessity: it was argued that such policies were needed to implement "state capitalism" (fascism), the last stage before the evolution of socialism could be completed. On economic grounds (and on moral grounds pertaining to the proletariat's historical struggle), it was supposed to bring about prosperity and wealth beyond any of the capitalist's countries' wildest imaginations. The opponents of Marxism were thus faced with the nearly impossible task of combating a carefully crafted doctrine, one that was defended on moral, social, political, economic, and historical grounds. The fact that there were many Marxist intellectuals doing this only made the task of standing against the seemingly universal support for Marxism that much more difficult—their numbers do not absolve them of moral culpability or the degree of blame that they individually deserve, which is what I take Kelley to be implying.

-The dictators, soldiers, and force-wielders in general, merely cashed-in on their position's moral superiority, as established by the intellectuals. As a consequence, the intellectuals rationalized the delusions of grandeur held by corrupt men, bringing them into power over hapless citizens.

-The intellectuals manipulated people's understanding of altruism, history, economics, and political systems. In a response to supposed fears of potential espionage, Stalin began the "Great Purge," rounding up alleged saboteurs, "corrupt" members of the Communist Party, and social groups which were accused of acting against the Party, all with the intellectuals' full support and sanction. They preached historical determinism and involuntary altruism, topics that ordinary people couldn't be expected to know or defend against. Together with their economic criticisms of capitalism and advocacy of communism and socialism, the citizens were not intellectually prepared to combat these ideas—anyone that was surely would have died in the Purge and similar political persecutions, if that person were foolish or careless enough to let that kind of intelligence become public knowledge. If the citizens didn't accept the intellectuals' arguments due to confusion, evasion, or faith, then they most likely accepted it due to fear, fear of being killed for not conforming.

Given that, I find Kelley's distinction between the intellectuals who persuade versus the dictator who uses force to be complete dropping of the context:

More important, however, there is a difference in the nature of their responsibility. Stalin was a murderer; he intended to kill, and he carried out his intention. His victims had no choice in the matter; he did not have to persuade them to volunteer for immolation. The academic, by contrast, was an exponent of ideas. Even though his ideas were incompatible with man’s nature as a rational being, the office he occupied in the causal chain was consistent with that fact: he was engaged in persuasion, in the effort to provide reasons for his political views. Even if he was intellectually dishonest, and his views were caused by evasion, his advocacy of Marxism could have an effect only by eliciting the willing assent of his listeners. If we believe in free will, we must assume that they freely endorsed and adopted his position, that his arguments were not causes affecting them willy-nilly. I am not denying that such advocacy is a form of action, as Peikoff seems to think. I am simply noting the difference between two kinds of action: murder and persuasion. Objectivists, of all people, should be alive to that distinction. (p. 49)

Note the rationalism at work here. Force-users such as Stalin are presumably more culpable than intellectuals because force negates the mind and can kill us. The intellectuals, by contrast, espoused ideas and engaged in persuasion, providing reasons for his beliefs; unlike Stalin, they didn't use force and allowed people to decide for themselves, in effect.

Even if the citizens had a choice, it's preposterous to conclude that they could uncover the evasions and distortions committed by their intellectuals. But it's not more absurd than Kelley's belief that, because of free will, we must assume that they "freely endorsed and adopted [the intellectual's] position." (p. 49) This was a totalitarian state: whatever the nature of their "agreement" with the intellectuals, there was always the threat of physical force, even in private conversations with friends and family. Further, it's important to stress that Marxist intellectuals are certainly not advocates of "persuasion," Kelley's points to the contrary: all Marxists advocate the initiation of force on a massive scale, engulfing the entire globe. That's essential to the moral and political philosophy of Marxism: it's Marxism 101. Consequently, the intellectuals posed as advocates of civilization, using the methods of persuasion and open debate while actually advocating mass murder, and sanctioning the political oppression of dissenters.

Kelley criticizes Peikoff's claim in F&V that a young follower of an "inherently dishonest idea" (Kelley fallaciously expands this to "bad ideas" in general) would seek to make amends for his honest errors as a follower. Kelley appears indignant, calling Peikoff an "intrinsicist" for suggesting that the follower should feel guilt and seek to atone for his past transgressions, even if undertaken honestly. (pp. 49-50) But Kelley is mistaken: Peikoff isn't resorting to religion or intrinsicism in making this point, but rather causality and social objectivity. When a person does make a mistake with regard to "inherently dishonest ideas," it's an expression of causality for others to pay attention and determine if the person is seeking to correct his errors. If they've known of his previous support of communism or ideas of that sort, they can't simply take on faith that he's changed for the better, and they shouldn't tolerate a stance akin to "I've got nothing to prove to anyone." They have a self-interested reason to know if the person was honestly mistaken, and if he truly is trying to reform (even if, in the full context, he's done nothing morally wrong). A perfectly moral man can still have qualities that will turn people away from him, including honest errors of the scope being discussed. In accordance with that, it isn't religion but objectivity and justice that demands that he make his change of view known to those who associate with him, as it is pertinent for them to consider changing their views regarding him just as it was in his own case.

Lastly, Kelley refers to Peikoff's stance that academic Marxists can not be honestly mistaken. In Understanding Objectivism, Peikoff mentions the fact that Marxism rejects Aristotelian logic, and also points to the academic Marxist's necessary evasion of historical knowledge about socialism, fascism and communism. Scholars are supposed to know the historical facts about their field of study, and the history of Marxism is filled with failed states and the deaths of millions of lives, whether the lives of the capitalist bourgeoisie or the proletariat. I agree with Peikoff—there is simply too much literature in history, in economics, and political theory for any knowledgeable Marxist to be actually honest—too many facts to ignore, too many dictators, too many actual tactics of the intellectuals of the past, and far, far too much blood.

I won't discuss most of Kelley's criticisms of Peikoff in the sections "The Scope of Honest Error" and "Inherently Dishonest Ideas" because I've more-or-less answered them when I elaborated on Peikoff's notion of "inherently dishonest ideas." Kelley notes that he isn't clear on what Peikoff means when he discusses philosophical errors and evasions, and their relation to "inherently dishonest ideas." Indeed, I think the same belief applies to a lot of supporters of Kelley's views. But that doesn't stop him from grossly ignoring or misstating Peikoff's views on such ideas, expanding his view of evasion far beyond what he genuinely holds.

Conclusion

"Errors of honest vs. breaches of morality" is a technical topic in the Objectivist ethics, but no less important to understanding the morality's role regarding a person's character and moral judgment. The issues of philosophy's role in history, the moral evaluation of ideas, and the Objectivist idea of free will are no less difficult to understand and appreciate. A thorough study of Objectivism, however, can reveal valuable knowledge pertaining to these ideas and their interrelationships, their larger context, and their applications. I think such knowledge leads to the conclusion that Peikoff has accurately represented Objectivism on all of these issues, while Kelley continually shows himself to stray—perhaps in accordance with his earlier thesis that Objectivism has little to say on judging a person morally in terms of his motives, such data being relevant to the verdict of an honest error or willful evil. More than anything, I hope this essay has given readers enough reason to consider listening to Peikoff's lectures again (or for the first time, as will be my own case) to consider his more detailed views on subjects like "inherently dishonest ideas," and why a non-expert can blame an expert for bad or destructive advice or instruction. The main problem with Kelley's chapter here is his ignorance of Peikoff's actual views on the topics being debated, as it is these criticisms that make up the bulk of it.

Reference Works

Ayn Rand Lexicon entry: Epistemology
Ayn Rand Lexicon entry: Errors of Knowledge vs. Breaches of Morality

Branden, Nathaniel. The Vision of Ayn Rand: The Basic Principles of Objectivism. Gilbert: Cobden Press, 2009.

Kelley, David, The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand: Truth and Toleration in Objectivism. 2000 (1990)

Peikoff, Leonard. Fact & Value. Accessed May 2nd, 2010.
Peikoff, Leonard. Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand. New York: Meridian, 1993 (1991).
Peikoff, Leonard. "Philosophy and Psychology in History," Objectivist Forum 6 (Oct. 1985).
Peikoff, Leonard. Understanding Objectivism. 1983.
Peikoff, Leonard. The Art of Thinking. 1992.

Rand, Ayn. The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism. New York: Signet, 1964.

On "Being One's Self": a Review of James Valliant's "The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics"

2010-05-11T00:42:00.000-07:00

"The discovery of actual evil in a specific person is a painful experience in a moral person." (The Voice of Reason, "The Psychology of Psychologizing," p. 25)

(Books are abbreviated as follows: The Passion of Ayn Rand--PAR; Judgment Day--JD; My Years with Ayn Rand—MYWAR; The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics--PARC.)

I've been a student of Objectivism for nearly 4 years now, and I've only recently dove into the issues surrounding Rand's personal life and her affair with Nathaniel Branden. Almost since I learned that there was such a philosophy, I stumbled upon personal attack after personal attack on the internet in regards to Ayn Rand's character, the events of her life, and her faked adherence to her own philosophy in light of her life-choices. Without an intimate knowledge of her history, such as provided by a biography, I couldn't make any judgments regarding them, effectively giving Rand the moral benefit of the doubt. I thought that I should work to understand the philosophy first: the issues under dispute were charges of immorality, and I had little understanding of Objectivism's view on morality. Nonetheless, the issues kept rearing up their heads over these years: Rand the repressor? Rand the intolerant authoritarian? Rand the moralizer? Rand the self-centered narcissist, oblivious to the personal context and needs of others, including her friends? Frank O' Connor, the alcoholic whose marriage with Rand was largely a fraud? (Among many other issues, to be discussed in the foregoing.) Was any of it true?

I finally decided to find out, and I found the prime sources for the majority of these criticisms to be none other than Nathaniel and Barbara Branden, two of Rand's former associates, friends, and key members of the early Objectivist movement. Upon discovering this a few years ago, earlier this year I purchased Barbara Branden's The Passion of Ayn Rand and James Valliant's The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics. (I was planning on buying Nathaniel Branden's memoir Judgment Day, and his revised My Years with Ayn Rand, but the internet is choke-full of quotes from those works, along with interviews of N. Branden which correspond to my understanding of his account of Rand and Objectivism.)

Finishing the books left me with feelings of anger and sadness I've rarely felt. My anger was reserved for the Brandens; my sadness was for Ayn Rand.

The Brandens would meet Rand and Frank O' Connor in 1950, both couples becoming mutually impressed with each other, personally and intellectually. As they learned about the mind and the philosophy of this woman that they admired, they simultaneously began to suppress their true selves, in order to fit something that Rand would better accept and support. They became the greatest of friends, helping Rand in the process of finishing Atlas Shrugged, and becoming part of the reason why Rand pursued non-fiction writing outside of her novels, forming the Nathaniel Branden Institute (NBI) as a result. It would even lead to a romantic affair between Nathaniel Branden and Rand that was agreed upon by everyone involved, Frank and Barbara included. But they weren't being true to themselves, or to Rand and Frank and to other students of Objectivism; they tried to live a life of lies, to fake and wipe out reality—instead, reality wiped out the wipers, destroying the romantic, personal, intellectual, and financial relationships that they worked hard, if dishonestly, to build. What followed was "the Break" of 1968, with Rand's "To Whom It May Concern," outlining her reasons for banishing N. and B. Branden from all aspects of her life, the end of their status as eminent Objectivists, and the end of the NBI. Both of the Brandens responded with their "In Answer to Ayn Rand, Part 1 and 2," basically accusing Rand of lying or distorting the truth in all of her accusations regarding them. This line of argument would continue in both of their biographies/memoirs, published years after Rand's death, presenting her as a highly intelligent and a great, if enormously flawed, woman.

As Valliant shows in PARC, both of the Brandens deceived Rand and other Objectivists since the beginning of their nearly 20 year relationship with her, all the while feigning an advocacy for Objectivism. (I'll note that both of the Brandens partially admit to their explicit dishonesty in their biographies.) By considering the claims of Nathaniel and Barbara Branden in their memoirs/books, and comparing them with other evidence, Valliant seeks to expose the Brandens for the liars that they really were, and still are. Part 1 of PARC presents practically all of the claims made by the Brandens about Rand--those regarding her psychology, her adherence to her own philosophy, and her relationship to the Brandens themselves, and others—and shows them to be either contradictory, fabricated, or insufficiently proven. Part 2 presents a synopsis of Rand's affair with Nathaniel Branden, criticizing both of the Branden biographies and offering Rand's private journal entries which chronicle her romantic relationship with Nathaniel Branden, and its slow disintegration due to psychological sessions he requested her to administer. This part culminates with Rand the detective summarizing her romantic relationship with Nathaniel, unraveling his psychology, and realizing that he's holding some dark, important secret that is the real cause of his (alleged) celibacy-inducing "sex problem" and of his distancing from Rand and the philosophy. (The secret was his 4-year affair with Patrecia Gullison (Scott, and then Branden), meaning that he had no "sex problem" in reality, and that the psychology sessions were designed to distract Rand from learning about all of this.)

In Barbara's PAR, and Nathaniel's JD and MYWAR, they present a definite psychological description of Rand, and like any good rationalist, they use this portrait to deduce all sorts of actions she must have taken, motivations she must have possessed, and the kind of character she must have created within herself. (A rationalist in Objectivist terminology is a person who relies and focuses on abstract reasoning and concepts and stresses deduction, considering conceptual interrelationships, but failing to relate them to concrete reality. The result is a person's whose thinking is "floating," not integrated with facts, and non-objective.) They present her as an alienated person, from the needs and contexts of other people, from the practical aspects of the world, and from physical reality itself. A repressed person who was pained by the negative events in her life, she thus becomes in need of "control," an authoritarian who creates a culture of conformity with her views. This need to dominate explains why she chooses Frank O' Connor, a passive man, and why she demanded complete agreement, especially philosophical agreement, with those whom she befriended. Her snap moral condemnations stifled independent thought and the expression of her students' true selves. She practically made repression a requirement of those around her, and such repression is implicit in her philosophy's view of reason and emotion. And her narcissism was reflected in her inability to accept any "breaks" with Nathaniel Branden romantically for any reason, including their age difference, that this would have to lead to a complete break, personally and professionally.

From this portrait, the Brandens give examples, alleged quotes, and sources detailing Rand's actions and events of her life which fit to this psychological profile. Valliant examines an extensive amount of their claims and evidence, several dozen by my count, and either shows evidence to demonstrate the falsehood of their claim or the lack of evidence needed to reach a decision either way.

To get an idea of what I mean, let's consider some of the things Valliant proves in PARC:

(1) The origin of Rand's American name. Both Nathaniel and Barbara Branden claim that Rand (originally Alice/Alyssa Rosenbaum) changed her name to that of her Remington-Rand typewriter which she brought with her from Russia, with Rand's cousin Fern Brown as Barbara's source. Barbara even claims that Rand never told her family her new name, suggesting a kind of callousness and betrayal of a family who had cared for her enough to help her get out of Russia—fitting perfectly with their portrayal of Rand as manipulative. But these are all lies. As Valliant demonstrates, the Rand Kardex company didn't merge with the Remington company (i.e. the one which manufactured typewriters of the two) until 1927, a year after Rand arrived in America with her typewriter; in fact, Remington-Rand typewriters weren't even made in the 1920's, according to the Remington-Rand company itself. In a letter to a fan, Rand states that her first name is an American version of a Finnish name, and in a New York Evening Post interview she states that her last name is an abbreviation of her Russian surname. (Evidence of this is provided at the ARI site.) In any event, there's no proof that she took her name from a typewriter that didn't even exist at the time she had actually invented the name "Ayn Rand," (sometime around 1925), besides the claims of the Brandens. Furthermore, there are letters from Rand's family in 1926 that explicitly call her "Rand," which were sent before she communicated with them in America, meaning she told them her new name before leaving, contrary to Barbara's claims. A small point, but that the Brandens felt the need to lie about this, and to even suggest that Rand was unfair to her family and left them in the dark about her life in America, is unforgivable and revolting. (PARC, p. 12-14; "How do you pronounce "Ayn?" and "What is the origin of "Rand?"; the "Objectivism Reference Center" speculates that Rand herself may have spread the story of the typewriter, if N. Branden's story is correct. His dishonesty generally, and her accounts of her name being an abbreviation of her Russian name to both the Evening Post and The Saturday Evening Post, however, suggest another instance of Branden simply lying.)

(2) Rand's ignorance of psychology. During his association with Rand, Nathaniel Branden praised Rand for her fictional characters and philosophy, as both provided valuable information about, and the philosophical underpinning towards, a new science of psychology, particularly in the areas of self-esteem, and the relationship between reason and emotion. (See, for instance, Who is Ayn Rand?) In the years after his break, Branden repeatedly claimed that Rand, in fact, had little to no insights into psychology, and that this was a problem as far as practicing Objectivism is concerned. (One of Branden's criticisms of Objectivism, reflective of this ignorance of psychology, is that the philosophy encourages repression and thus is detrimental to psychological health.) This is a gross misrepresentation. According to Branden himself, Rand discussed psychology with him countless times, and they had identified, in some terms, what I view as the Objectivist equivalent of a "philosophy of psychology," discussing the role of the conscious and subconscious mind, the importance of reason, volition, and emotions regarding psychological health, and the need of "psychological visibility" (mutual understanding of one another's self) between romantic partners. (Though this did not apply exclusively to romance, as friends and business partners, to name a couple of examples, would need such visibility as well.) And in her fiction and non-fiction, we're given evidence of Rand's impressive understanding of mental functioning, identifying the nature of rationalization, of evasion, of different kinds of motivations for action, of one's view on sex being an expression of one's highest values, and of acting on one's whims (on emotions that one doesn't understand, and doesn't care to understand), to name a few. (See the Ayn Rand Lexicon entry on "Psychology" in the Conceptual Index.)

But none of this prepares the reader of PARC for the revelation that Branden uses Rand as a psychotherapist for years right up until the end of their relationship (Part 2 of PARC), something that Branden (for decades, on up to the present) never discusses when he is dismissing Rand's understanding of psychology. In fact, her private journal entries reveal her to be very good at psychological analysis, tying together statements and actions of Branden's over the years in order to discover the cause and solution for his admitted "sex problem" and repression (a task that he asked her to undertake under ulterior motives)—instead of a solution finding in Branden bad epistemological standards, a "Kantian"-duty approach to his beliefs in Objectivism which opposed the interests of his "true self," an indifference to the needs and context of the women in his life, and finally, covert dishonesty and breaches of morality.

(3) Rand as authoritarian/Mullah Rand. Another long-standing accusation of the Brandens is that Rand demanded total agreement from those around her. Nathaniel Branden even goes so far as to say that the implicit beliefs of the NBI (which were conveyed to the students) were that a "good Objectivist" is one who admires and condemns exactly what Rand admires and condemns, and that she was the arbiter of what is moral, rational, and appropriate to man's life in reality. By claiming that these beliefs were "implicit," Branden has to mean that no one ever stated this, including Rand. Mary Ann and Charles Sures, Barbara Branden, and Leonard Peikoff (among others) have offered discussions with Rand that show her ability to analyze issues, clarifying the aspects involved. When Rand thought that her friend was mistaken about something, she would draw out the person's thinking, reaching definite conclusions. But no one ever quotes Rand as saying that she demanded that they agree with her reasoning, that her's was the only rational argument. In fact, Peikoff says quite the opposite: "She never suggested that I accept what she said on her say-so; on the contrary, she was working diligently to get me to see the truth with my own eyes and mind..." (The Voice of Reason, p. 335) "Unquestioning agreement is precisely what Ayn Rand did not want," Mary Ann Sures informs us regarding Rand. (Facets of Ayn Rand) As the Brandens themselves admit, they repressed their true values and emotions in order to fit what they, not Rand, thought Objectivism requires, and later blame Rand for it. It's interesting that other close friends of Rand's were not complaining of repressing their true selves to be "good Objectivists" but were learning how the philosophy applies to their contexts.

Peikoff's thirty years with Ayn Rand is an instructive example against the claims of the Brandens. Peikoff's early years with Rand were spent unraveling all of his confusions and bad mental methods, particularly rationalistic thinking. (Peikoff states in one of his podcasts that he had written various essays on the phenomenon of rationalism and ways to combat it.) She didn't want Peikoff's blind obedience, or the agreement of a second-hander, she wanted him to learn the right method of thinking. He didn't distort or repress what he knew: if he had a disagreement or counter-point or confusion, he let Rand know up front, and thus was a paradigm of intellectual honesty. When Nathaniel and Barbara Branden had confusions or criticisms of Objectivism, they never told Rand about them, but repressed their ideas and feigned agreement; for years, this meant that every meeting with Rand was filled with role-playing and deception. Rand's psychological counseling notes prove that once she had discovered Branden's self-admitted repression in his sex life, she constantly tried to help him find ways to derepress, to identify and experience his emotions and values, all the while reassuring him that he hasn't betrayed his values. (So much for the Branden charge that Rand and Objectivism encourages repression, as N. Branden alleged (and still does). Of course, unbeknownst to her for years, betraying his values was exactly what he did, at least regarding his professed intellectual values in the presence of Rand and as intellectual heir of Objectivism.)

Other issues raised were Frank O'Connor's (non-existent) alcoholism, Rand's intolerance towards those who disagreed with her, her moralism, her view on intelligence and moral virtue, and her alleged literal attempt to destroy N. Branden after the break. In all these cases and more, we witness the lies, the omissions, and the selective memories of the two individuals closest to Rand besides her husband, the ones who had the most to lose when their personal and professional relationships came to an end.

The most important of all issues confronted was the issue of the affair between Nathaniel Branden and Ayn Rand. The Brandens lie about nearly everything concerning the affair. Frank secretly resenting Rand and N. Branden for initiating it; Nathaniel's claim that it was Rand who wanted the affair and that she kept reinvigorating it; that Rand would instantly break with Nathaniel in all areas if he revealed the "age" issue (the 25-year age gap between, which Rand knew very well of, offering Nathaniel many “outs” in their affair on that basis alone); Nathaniel's claim that Rand was "obsessed" about him after the break; that their relationship before the break hadn't been nothing but "psycho-therapy"; that Rand would never accept a "Miss X" (another woman in addition to herself and Barbara). Rand's journal entries reveal all of these to be self-serving lies. These entries show a concerned and generous Rand, a Rand understanding of another's context, exactly the kind of person that would be impossible in the Brandens' portrait of her.

In PARC, we learn that near the end of her relationship with Nathaniel, she would learn of the deceptions regarding their romance, their psychology sessions, and even the values of the man himself (and she even got an inkling of the deeper truth concerning Nathaniel's cheating on her with Patrecia). She realized that Nathaniel Branden became "the deadly enemy I had been fighting all of my life: not those who do not see the good, but those who see it and don't want it (because they lack the courage for it, and the self-confidence)." (Valliant, PARC, p. 374, July 12, 1968 entry). To her, Branden was a person who admired her ideas, but who tries his best to pretend that she isn't real, that she isn't a real person that should be dealt with honestly or that she should remain “invisible” (an ignorance of another's self); in this vein, she calls him the real enemy of Atlas Shrugged, "the man who wanted Rearden Metal without Rearden, in the deepest, metaphysical meaning of that concept, much deeper than I could ever have imagined possible." (ibid.) She repeatedly discusses the psychological torture Branden was putting her (and Barbara) through in those years. In light of what their relationship evolved into, and of how Nathaniel Branden portrays things to this day, one can certainly understand Rand's assessment that in regard to him she feels "the strongest contempt I have ever felt—and I regard him as the worst traitor and the most immoral person I have ever met." (PARC, p. 349, July 4th, 1968)

Besides demonstrating the truth about Rand's character and the Affair, PARC also discusses some nuances of Objectivism in its applications to one's life. Learning about terms like "meta-selfishness," "stylized universe," and of two technical meanings of "being oneself" was totally unexpected, and a real treat for me. A "stylized universe" results from the actions of a "stylized person," which Rand describes as a "person who lives in reality according to his highest values, who takes nothing less, accepts no substitutes, and struggles to translate his values into reality, no matter what the difficulties.” Since Objectivism advocates pursuing ones values and furthering one's life as a moral endeavor and as morally right, an obvious extension of that fundamental view would be a principle counseling one to work to live in reality according to one's values. "Meta-selfishness" is an extension of the Objectivist idea of a “hierarchy of values”—of an interrelation of higher, more important values and of lesser values: when you're choosing a particular value, like a car or job or a girlfriend, the actual propriety or prudence of that choice depends on the end-goal of acquiring that value—on what's really in it for you, as Valliant clarifies. Lastly, "being oneself" has two different meanings, depending on the perspective being personal or social. In the social realm, being "oneself" means being "psychologically visible" to someone else, someone who is understood and appreciated for one's character and values; in other words, we allow a person to “be himself” when we understand a person for who and what that person is, and thus he doesn't have to engage in conscious actions to give us evidence of who he really is. In the personal realm, being "oneself" means a person insofar as he relies on the automatized processes of his mind, on his present knowledge subconsciously held, including his sense of life perspective.

Knowing what I know now from PARC, I wouldn't identify their dishonesty as the fundamental cause of their destruction of their relationship with Rand, though it was a significant factor. By their own admission, they were never really Objectivists: within months of meeting Rand, they were suppressing their "true selves," they weren't relying on their subconscious processes, and thus weren't being "themselves" around Rand or Frank, or even among the students of Objectivism they would later teach. They weren't identifying or pursuing their "meta-selfishness," merely parroting the values and views of Rand in order to keep their appearances as good Objectivists. As a result, they didn't have a "stylized universe," they didn't work for their true values, but instead lived with a kind of mind-body split—their professed "Objectivist" values and views experienced in the public, outside world, and their repressed "true selves" and true values which they refused to experience and kept in their own consciousness. Despite Nathaniel being once Rand's intellectual heir, and Barbara having a technical knowledge of the philosophy as well one would presume (18 years spent with Rand, one must remember), the point must be made that they never understood Objectivism in the most important sense—in how it applies to one's own life. Later, they would blame their repression and betrayal of their real values on Rand and on the philosophy, including their dishonesty (which they never reveal to its full extent)--when the real cause always was their erroneous approach to the whole philosophy. And now I can fully understand why that approach led to the events in their lives that it did, thanks to PARC and Rand's journal entries.

All in all, I wish such a book had not been necessary. I wish Barbara Branden hadn't felt the need to "break the presumed link between the validity of Objectivism and the perfection of Ayn Rand," as she says in an essay defending her book from 2005. I wish the Brandens' hadn't felt the need to present Rand's imperfections, if that meant resorting to the kind of dishonesty we're now in the position to appreciate. The facts, however, are the facts. To know the validity of Objectivism, one must consult the works, and judge it for oneself. But to understand that Rand had achieved moral perfection as Objectivism understands it in her own life and person, PARC is certainly without substitute. I whole-heartedly recommend it.

Part 4: Moral Sanction

2010-04-27T14:32:00.000-07:00

Introduction

The issues that constitute the Peikoff-Kelley dispute are very difficult to understand, and require a very technical grasp of Objectivism to confront and answer. This applies to moral sanction as any of the other topics. To determine which side represents the Objectivist position here, I'll follow the methodology I used in Part 3: I'll state my interpretation of the genuinely Objectivist position, and then compare and contrast the statements made by Kelley (and those who side with him) and Peikoff (including those who side with him). During the comparisons, I'll also add relevant points about Objectivism that might have been out of place in my succinct summary of the Objectivist position.

My Interpretation of Objectivist Moral Sanction

As I said in my section on moral judgment from Part 3, the Objectivist view of moral judgment consists of two aspects: consciousness and existence, or its intellectual and existential demands. Intellectually, moral judgment is the identification of facts about other people and evaluating the morally salient facts in reference to the morality of rational selfishness—that is, the moral standard of man's life and principles of egoism. Existentially, moral judgment is using one moral evaluations to guide one's actions, granting to each person that which he deserves, in the form of rewards and punishments. In Objectivism, there is one fundamental kind of recompense for (that is, an action in response to) the characters and actions of others, for their virtues and vices: the granting or withholding of one's moral sanction.

To morally sanction is to regard someone (or action, ideology, organization) as morally good and to endorse, support, approve, and generally promote that person (or action, function). In essence, it is acknowledging the good (that is, good people, practices, etc.) for what it is and choosing to deal with it, giving it one's spiritual and material support. The Objectivist theory of moral sanction holds that it is the good, as defined by the morality of rational egoism, who create and sustain the kind of world that is beneficial and conducive to human life; thus they deserve our support, our cooperation, the practicing of our virtues, and our recognition of the virtues that the good themselves practice.

The reason that people deserve one's moral sanction (or the withholding of it) is the fact of the effects of their volitional action (potential, if not actual) on one's own life and well-being. The people who employ the virtues of Objectivism--being rational, honest, productive--they are the ones who create the values that further our lives, and so it is an act of rationality on our part to repay such virtues with values, especially moral sanction, and vices with disvalues (particularly the withholding of such sanction). (Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics, p. 144) In addition, granting one's moral sanction is a way to protect the clarity of one's awareness of people, and the rationality of the ends and courses one chooses to pursue. (Rand, Virtue of Selfishness, 84-85) Moral sanction is a way to express the acknowledgment of the moral values that one perceives in another, and thus is a way to gauge the rationality of the areas of one's life that directly involve others. "It makes a difference whether one thinks that one is dealing with human errors of knowledge or with human evil." (The Virtue of Selfishness, 84-85)

The policy of moral sanction has important implications for how one deals with the morally good people one encounters, this much is certain. It also has an important implication in regard to human evil: the refusal to sanction it.

In essence, the evil in the Objectivist view is evasion, the willful rejection of one's reason and the rejection of reality, on the premise that if only one doesn't acknowledge something, then it doesn't exist. Due to the nature of evasion, evil is necessarily impotent—closing one's mind off to reality, and substituting one's wishes for it, is not the path to practicality. The nature of existence means that it has primacy over consciousness: conscious wishes, in and of themselves, are fruitless. Such a course of evasion can only end in the frustration of one's goals, the adoption of methods incompatible with the achievement of such goals, and the destruction of values—those of the evader and those of others with whom he deals, and this pertains especially to moral values. Indeed, destruction is the only power of the evil. The crazed dictator who starves millions and ruins his country's economy, the manipulative liar who wrecks his business plans and reputation, the hypocrite who eventually loses his friends and political endorsements—as a principle, the actions of evil are detrimental to human life. "Evil men, though impotent, can disappoint, deceive, and betray the innocent; if they turn to crime, they can rob, enslave, and kill." (Peikoff, Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand, p. 331) It is due to the (in many cases, obvious) threats to one's self-interest that evil men and actions pose that constitutes the case against sanctioning evil. The immoral characters and actions of men deserve our refusal to sanction them, our moral condemnation, ostracism, and the discussion of the moral judgments made with others when this is appropriate (such as when someone is starting to befriend the immoral person).

Evil is impotent, but it can feed off of the virtues of the good, such as the thought and productive effort of slaves, the genuine benevolence of unsuspecting friends, the sense of justice of those who cannot fathom the deliberate evil that can exist in the characters of others. "Evil left to its own devices is powerless, but evil has not been left to its own devices. It has been able to survive by harnessing and placing the power of the good in its service." (Nathaniel Branden, Vision of Ayn Rand, p. 485) In response to such evil, the Objectivist position is that:

The weapon necessary to defend against evil is justice: the unequivocal identification of the evil as evil. This means the refusal to grant it, by word or by deed, any moral respectability. It is by scrupulously withholding from the irrational even a crumb of a moral sanction—by rejecting any form of accommodation with the irrational—by forcing the irrational to stand naked and unaided—that one keeps evil impotent. (Peter Schwartz, "On Moral Sanctions")

The failure to refuse to sanction evil takes a particularly painful form when the victim of evil concedes his moral stance to that of his enemies, his destroyers. In Objectivism, this is known as the "sanction of the victim." Nathaniel Branden (writing as an Objectivist in the 60s) states:

There is another form, perhaps the most tragic one, of the manner in which the good supports the evil and makes the success of evil possible. These are the countless situations where men of virtue help evil not because of their own evasions, weaknesses, or flaws, but because of their own virtues—because of their own innocence, honesty, generosity, endurance, and sense of justice. Innocence is the key virtue in such cases, the virtue most viciously exploited.

Men who are fundamentally rational are unable to conceive of the kind of motives that prompt the irrational. They do not understand the nature of evil and do not know how to identify its symptoms. Their own honesty makes them regard the wrong actions of others as mere errors of knowledge. Their generosity makes them feel benevolence towards others and reluctant to suspect the worst. Their endurance makes them willing to bear out a good deal of undeserved pain, on the assumption that those who caused it didn't do it intentionally. Their own sense of justice makes them unable to condemn others without understanding, and leads them to give others too much 'benefit of the doubt' for too long. This is the error which Ayn Rand calls, 'the sanction of the victim.'

'The sanction of the victim' means: the willingness to let one's own virtues be used by others against oneself. It means the willingness to bear injustice, to takes actions which help others against one's own rational self-interest, and to concede moral validity to the claims of one's own destroyers. (The Vision of Ayn Rand, 488)

Just as justice is the weapon needed to defend against evil, so it is one's defense against giving evil the sanction of the victim. Two of the characteristics of such sanction are (1) a moral double standard, in which a moral man mistakenly tolerates evils in others that he would condemn in his own character, and (2) an ignorance of the fact that evil men count on and condemn the victim's virtues--his honesty, integrity, productivity, and pride, among other positive traits—not his moral flaws. The solution to (1) and (2) is moral objectivity: being able to articulate one's moral code, to prove it to any honest inquisitor, to understand it, and to apply it to one's own life. In regard to (1), moral objectivity means justice: it means not tolerating what one regards as evil, but applying the same abstract standards and principles one practices in one's own life to the characters and actions of others, and judging them accordingly. "Whenever you are able to say about some immoral action, with full rational knowledge of your reasons, 'I would not permit myself to do this,' do not accept, tolerate, forgive, or sanction it, when it is done by others."(The Vision of Ayn Rand, 491) In regard to (2), moral objectivity means reminding oneself that virtue should be rewarded with values, not disvalues. Upon detecting that one's virtues are being exploited and simultaneously condemned, one should make this injustice apparent to the guilty party: one presents the objectivity of one's case and of one's judgment.

Obviously, there's a lot more to be said about moral sanction, but I think this covers the essential elements of it, as well its importance in the present controversy, i.e. What moral sanction is and how it is applied according to the philosophy of Objectivism.

Objectivism, Existential Aid, and Pragmatism

Peikoff and Kelley certainly differ on the topic of moral sanction. In addition to that, in Truth and Toleration (as well as The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand), Kelley introduces the subject of existential aid, a point on which he claims that he disagrees with Peter Schwartz and Peikoff; I'll note that I agree with his judgment here: their disagreements here reveal philosophically relevant differences. To understand why, let's consider what they say.

Existential aid is benefiting something or someone in some material form, such as funding an event, increasing voter turnout, or even buying a movie ticket, insofar as one increases the movie's prospects for a great financial return on the production crew's expenses. The special case of aid that is being disputed is that of contributions to the morally evil.

Kelley's very first point about evil contributions is that, "it's impossible to avoid every such contribution." He elaborates on this point, claiming that we can't control the actions of others, and thus cannot control what they will do with the benefits we give to them. (CLAR, p. 32) In economics, we give such aid to evil totalitarian countries and groups indirectly, through our savings; in the "marketplace of ideas," we give such aid to magazines by benefiting them at the expense of helping to promote one's ideological enemies, and gaining Ph.D.s at the expense of fostering a graduate program that can continue to promote ideas that one is opposed to. These unavoidable contributions to evil aside, we must pursue our values, Kelley holds; negative consequences cannot deter us in living our lives and pursuing our values. With this in mind, we must "avoid aiding evil any more than necessary." We should make sure that any such aid is an unavoidable byproduct of a rational purpose." (p. 33) We should minimize our aid to evil as much as possible, and avoid granting such aid when the evil's magnitude outweighs the positive effect of our actions.

The first point I'd like to make is that the pursuit of values does not necessarily lead to the benefit of evil, contra Kelley. If the moral state of the people around us, and the world at large, is so corrupted that any given action towards a value may contribute to the morally evil in some way, that says a lot about the current state of things. It also makes the issues of morality, of justice and moral judgment, more urgent in our lives. (Ayn Rand's active philosophical career, for example, is a testament to this need for urgency, as she devoted vast amounts of her energy arguing for the good and rational, and making her judgments about irrationality and immorality known in countless instances. Typically this consisted in analyzing some morally corrupt expression or idea and identifying its relationship to Objectivism, and how a rational person should respond to it.) Kelley here seems to be forgetting the distinction between the metaphysically given and the man-made (Ayn Rand Lexicon: Metaphysical vs. Man-Made). The amount of evil in the world, and the possibility of our contributing to it, are both man-made facts, and accordingly are capable of being judged and changed for the better. As Objectivists, we are not content with minimizing our impact on the ends of evil, and living with the way things are—we are radicals for objectivity, for justice, for a rational society in which the evil is left unaided and condemned for what it is.

(Another way to combat any contributions to evil is practicing moral judgment and especially withholding one's moral sanction, but this will be discussed in the next section.)

In accordance with these ideas, which he calls "commonsense standards" (but aren't they technical details of Objectivism, in his view?), he states that we weigh the costs and benefits of an action, stressing the degree of the good or bad we think may result. As I said in the essay on moral judgment, the Objectivist position is not to merely to assess particular degrees of anything and then consider the "foreseeable consequences" or what "may result." What Kelley is saying is a variant of consequentialism—specifically, a form of pragmatism.

Kelley, of course, denies the charge of pragmatism, first raised by Peter Schwartz in "On Moral Sanctions." (CLAR p. 33) Since his denial is important here, I'll quote it in full:

A benefit is a value, and a cost is a disvalue. The essence of pragmatism is not its concern with costs and benefits; that concern is shared by any value[-]oriented, teleological ethics, including Objectivism. The essence of pragmatism is its claim that costs and benefits can be measured without the use of principles. That is why, as the old joke says, pragmatism doesn’t work.

Moral principles tell us what kinds of things are valuable or harmful, beneficial or costly to our lives. They tell us which traits of people are virtuous and vicious, and thereby tell us whom it is in our interest to deal with. To pursue our interests, therefore, we must act on principle: the moral is the practical. This point is not in dispute. But Schwartz writes as if every action we consider is governed by a single principle. In fact, this is almost never the case. The circumstances in which we act are normally complex, and the consequences various. We use principles to identify the goods and ills at stake, but we must then weigh the good against the ill, in the manner I’ve indicated. This normally requires that we consider specific degrees of good or harm. For example, we do not hesitate to put our money into savings instruments, despite the fact that we thereby lower the cost of loans to evil governments, because the benefits are substantial and the harm negligible. These are quantitative judgments, and they are not always this obvious. Such weighing of costs and benefits is the only possible method of acting on principle, and it is therefore morally required of us: the practical is the moral. (CLAR, pp. 33-34)

It's important to note here that in Objectivism, any sort of "cost-benefit analysis" does not have the kind of importance that Kelley here is stating it does. Objectivists are primarily principled, they live by and according to their principles—the issue of costs and benefits only arises after it's been decided that an action (or policy or function) is in accordance with one's principles. The reason is that principles are general truths on which a number of other truths depend, and thus integrate vast amounts of inductive data. (Though some principles are deductively formed as well.) We exploit the integrations made thereby, judging our actions by their long-range consequences and effects on our other ends, as gauged by the facts we know concerning the principles. If an action is deemed to be against one's principles, that rules it out—there's no need to further consider the case, as if one had to act without the benefit of principles: there's no point in such "cost-benefit" analysis. Objectivism holds that its moral principles identify the kinds of actions that are conducive to human life, and the ones which are detrimental to it—acting against one's principles must resort to courting disaster, and jeopardizing one's values.

In her chapter on integrity, Objectivist Tara Smith makes similar remarks on being principled:

To commit to a principle is to decide in advance how one should act when confronting certain kinds of choices. The reason to do that is the realization that a person will make better decisions that way. By stepping back from the immediate pulls and pushes of a decision-making situation, a person can better grasp what actions will be, all things considered, best for him. Adopting a principle means committing to staying that predetermined course, to taking the kinds of action that the principle prescribes when the relevant occasions arise. (Smith, Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics, p. 180)

Kelley doesn't explicitly deny the role of principles, but he does misunderstand them. He states that the role of principles is to inform us of the good or ill that is at stake, but that's all they do; we then must act on principle by means of cost-benefit analysis. That is not their only purpose, and the analysis of costs and benefits is not the follow-up of every consideration of actions and the principles governing them, as I've made clear.

As another indication of this misunderstanding, Kelley criticizes Schwartz's view, implying that it's simplistic: "...Schwartz writes as if every action we consider is governed by a single principle. In fact, this is almost never the case. The circumstances in which we act are normally complex, and the consequences various..." (p. 33) By implication of Kelley's statements, Objectivist principles are normally at war with each other in practical reality, and actions often have multiple principles governing them, offering conflicting moral estimates. In other words: principles are unhelpful in reality; cost-benefit analysis is necessary precisely because principles do not (and cannot, by his reasoning) allow us to determine the moral permissibility of an action, and thus cannot motivate our actions either way.

Kelley is criticizing principles for the same reason that explicit pragmatists have derided principles for nearly a century now. Principles are vast integrations and thus are highly abstract, and this very fact disqualifies them as offering practical guidance in this complex world we live in. As Rand once put it, describing the essence of pragmatism: "Their dogmatic agnosticism holds, as an absolute, that a principle is false because it is a principle—that conceptual integration (i.e., thinking) is impractical or 'simplistic'..." (Ayn Rand Lexicon: Pragmatism) The consideration of reality's complexity, and the seeming conflicts that can occur between principles, leads to a hypothesis that principles are indeed false, at least in some contexts: the cost-benefit analysis works in a way so as to solve the conflict and determine what action a person should take or judgment he should make.

The use of practical methods--cost-benefit analysis or otherwise--in response to the recognized failure of ideologies and principles, however, is quintessential pragmatism.

Kelley states that his position is not pragmatism because that school of philosophy endorses the view that costs and benefits can be measured without use of (or reference to) principles. But this lack of principles is one of the Big Lies spread by pragmatist theorists. The truth is that pragmatists typically plagiarize the popular philosophical ideas outside of their own philosophy, not crediting their sources, all the while criticizing those alien ideas and the philosophies upholding them. Dewey promoted a combination of racism, social subjectivism, and altruism without mentioning them (see his "My Pedagogic Creed"). William James's pragmatic theory of truth is in part the correspondence theory of truth melded with the coherence theory of truth (see his "Lecture VI. Pragmatism’s Conception of Truth"). Kelley is merely a pragmatist who explicitly incorporates (badly understood) Objectivist ideas into his philosophy.

An honest pragmatist is still a pragmatist.

On Sanction and Libertarianism

Kelley's section on sanction doesn't add much to the discussion. He adds that sanction involves a conscious judgment which is typically expressed in words, though there are cases where action would betray sanction even if the person consciously doesn't sanction a certain person, group, or organization. (p. 34) Kelley describes various degrees of association, ending with a short explanation of why a speaker's appearance is not a sanction of the group's ideas—that an Objectivist speaking at a libertarian function is not sanctioning libertarianism. He compares the speaker events of ideological groups to that of more open-forum venues, like that of the Ford Hall Forum, which Rand famously attended. It is mistaken to hold that a speaker agrees with the ideology of whomever he is speaking to. (p. 35)

His footnote #5 gives an important quote from Rand, one which Kelley thinks agrees with his view. Here is his footnote in full:

Several people have drawn my attention to the fact that Ayn Rand dealt with precisely this point in connection with a charge by Senate liberals that Justice William Rehnqulst once spoke to a right-wing group: “This is an insidious kind of intimidation: it equates a speaker’s views with those of the discussion’s sponsors. A man of integrity is conscientiously precise about the nature of his views on any subject. If his views are going to be judged, not by his own statements, but by the views of those who invite him to speak... then his only alternative is to accept no speaking engagements. If so, what happens to our freedom of speech?” “The Disenfranchisement of the Right,” The Ayn Rand Letter I (Dec.20, 1971), p. 26.

Rand is correct: it is intellectually dishonest to judge a speaker by the view of those who ask him to speak, instead of his own statements. But Kelley is grossly mistaken if he believes that this is what Peikoff and Schwartz were doing, or that this was the reason why the ARI ended its association with him. Part of the reason was his refusal to denounce The Passion of Ayn Rand, as Kelley claimed, and this is true. Barbara Branden was guilty of psychologizing and rationalization on a massive scale (which I've only learned about in these last few months), and had succeeded in her destruction of the value of Rand's character in the minds of many, and still does so today (check out the Objectivist Living forum and The Atlas Society, for more on that). (My opinion of her has dropped even lower as my reading of The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics continues.) The other part of the reason was the presentation of his philosophical views justifying his action at the Supper Club as contained in "A Question of Sanction," not his speaking there as such. (Though his failure to articulate what he thinks libertarianism is in contrast to Schwartz's view, and his dealings with libertarians regardless, certainly didn't help.)

Schwartz, in his two essays on moral sanction, didn't equate Kelley's views with those of his libertarian audience. He criticizes Kelley for arguing for Objectivism in a format endorsed and structured by libertarians, under their "auspices." There was a well-reasoned argument for this:

If one wishes to reach those who have been defrauded by Libertarianism, it cannot be done by speaking under the auspices of the defrauders. It cannot be done even if one’s topic is why Objectivism offers the proper foundation for genuine liberty. Such a talk grants Libertarianism precisely the moral sanction it seeks and thrives on. Libertarians will readily listen to a talk on Objectivism and liberty—and the next day they will invite someone to speak on why the Bible is the only basis for liberty—and the next week they will hear someone argue why only skepticism and amoralism can validate liberty, etc. They lap this up. It is all entirely consistent with Libertarianism. It is consistent with the philosophy that philosophies and reasons are irrelevant to a belief in 'liberty.' By speaking under the roof of an organization dedicated to purveying Libertarianism, one concedes that Libertarianism does in fact value liberty (and is simply confused about the proper means—i.e., Objectivism—by which to gain that end). Once that fatal concession is made, Libertarianism has obtained the basic moral sanction its survival requires. (On Moral Sanctions)

Kelley is focused on his own motivations for speaking there: "I am therefore on record as having refused to endorse, approve, or sanction any subjectivist variety of libertarianism. It would be entirely irrational to attribute to me a moral judgment that I not only haven’t made, but have explicitly and publicly rejected." (p. 36) He fails to mention that the motives of the libertarians may have something to do with Schwartz's claims: namely, the intellectual promiscuity that libertarianism relies on and fully encourages, the desire to incorporate a host of philosophical viewpoints and adherents to a "common cause." To sanction libertarianism, all one needs to do is claim that they genuinely value "liberty" and that they are a positive force in the cultural (and global) fight for liberty and a proper society—exactly what Kelley did then, and does now (see William Thomas's and Kelley's "What Is the Objectivist View of Libertarianism?") Kelley's actions betray his conscious judgments.

Kelley objects to Schwartz's charge that it is a form of nihilism and subjectivism. But he has no way to identify the political philosophy as a positive alternative to the image formed by Schwartz's arguments. At best, he says: "It is one thing to hold that the advocacy of liberty does not require any objective philosophical basis. It is another thing—and in my experience a more common view among libertarians—to hold that liberty does have an objective basis, but that one may make common cause with those who subscribe to a basis other than one’s own." Since when was Objectivism the common view held by libertarians—or does Kelley now believe that other philosophies can give objective bases for liberty? He also says that the motivation for libertarians isn't what Schwartz says it is, but is more likely an attempt to figure out which philosophy is correct, and therefore which philosophy offers the defense for liberty. (p. 38) "Why would a group bother to invite philosophers at all if they thought philosophy irrelevant?" Kelley asks. The answer in my mind is: to keep up the pretense of being considered a serious political philosophy.

There's never going to be a final answer for libertarianism as to which philosophy offers the best, or only, defense for liberty, because its basic method is to deny that any definitive defense is necessary or desirable. Libertarianism presented itself as a big tent political program, and the subsequent decades haven't lead to a philosophically reasoned consensus, but to further divisions and disagreements. For proof of this, consult the vast and varied works of libertarian authors, and consider their arguments, which I predict will only continue to grow and become even more disparate. (I'll caution that the amount of libertarian works produced has long since became too much to read in a lifetime.) If Kelley's vision was a libertarianism in agreement with (or largely in favor of) Objectivism, as philosophical and political allies, then I truly believe Kelley's hopes are in vain.

Conclusion

Moral Sanction is an important topic in the Objectivist ethics, and understanding it is necessary for not only understanding this debate, but for applying the philosophy in one's own life and for one's own benefit. I certainly hope my essay has helped in both regards. On this topic, as in others, Kelley hasn't represented the Objectivist view in any significant way, and has made claims that are clearly opposed to it, such as our pursuit of interests necessarily benefiting evil. I've also given my reasons for thinking that Kelley is guilty of the very pragmatism he's been denying, largely due to his lack of appreciation for the underlying method of that school of philosophy. Finally, I've argued that Kelley was indeed sanctioning libertarianism, and that his behavior towards libertarianism over these past two decades is no different than it was before his split with the ARI, and is quite the opposite of not sanctioning them.

Reference Works

Ayn Rand Lexicon: Evil
Ayn Rand Lexicon: Metaphysical vs. Man-Made
Ayn Rand Lexicon: Moral Judgment
Ayn Rand Lexicon: Pragmatism
Ayn Rand Lexicon: Sanction
Ayn Rand Lexicon: Sanction of the Victim

Branden, Nathaniel. The Vision of Ayn Rand: The Basic Principles of Objectivism. Gilbert: Cobden Press, 2009.

Dewey, John. "My Pedagogic Creed" Accessed April 22, 2010.

Hsieh, Diana. Documents, Sanction, and Confusion Accessed April 17, 2010.

James, William. Lecture VI. Pragmatism's Conception of Truth

Kelley, David. 'A Question of Sanction." March 1989. http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=722 Accessed March 27, 2010.
Kelley, David, The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand: Truth and Toleration in Objectivism. 2000 (1990)
Kelley, David, and William Thomas. "What is the Objectivist View of Libertarianism?" http://www.objectivistcenter.org/showcontent.aspx?ct=591&h=54 Accessed April 21, 2010.

Peikoff, Leonard. "Fact & Value." http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=objectivism_fv Accessed April 14, 2010.
Peikoff, Leonard. Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand. New York: Meridian, 1993 (1991).

Rand, Ayn. The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism. New York: Signet, 1964.
Rand, Ayn. The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought. Edited by Leonard Peikoff. New York: Meridian, 1990.

Schwartz, Peter: On Moral Sanctions Accessed April 13, 2010.
Schwartz, Peter. On Sanctioning the Sanctioners Accessed April 13, 2010.

Smith, Tara. Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: the Virtuous Egoist. Cambridge U, 2006,

Part 3: On Moral Judgment

2010-04-13T15:31:00.000-07:00

Introduction

As I've said in the previous parts, Leonard Peikoff and David Kelley differ on a number of issues, especially in the realm of ethics, but also in epistemology in subtler ways (and some which are not so subtle). We'll see several examples of these differences as we discuss their views on moral judgment a bit later. Before delving into these positions, I'd like to offer my own interpretation on moral judgment in the Objectivist view. If my analysis is accurate, it will benefit us greatly in assessing the relative merits of both sides.

My View of Objectivist Moral Judgment

Moral judgment is an aspect of justice, the virtue of identifying and evaluating the characters and actions of the individuals which one deals with by reference to moral principles, and acting according to one's estimates. While we need to judge individuals in numerous different respects and for many (non-moral) reasons, such as intelligence, romance prospects, musical tastes, and career interests, moral judgment allows us to understand the essence of the person, the moral principles which mold his character and direct his actions. In other words, we use our reason to identify the relevant facts about the individual's character and actions, evaluate these facts logically and reach an assessment, and then act on this assessment, thereby granting each person that which he deserves. Like all acts of justice, moral judgment, is a means of promoting our interests in the field of men and women around us.

The Objectivist view of moral judgment recognizes a basic fact about human beings: our minds are in our own private awareness and possession, and are therefore inaccessible to others, in and of themselves. It is only when our mental processes are manifested in some kind of physical action that they become perceivable by others (they are perceived in the form of inferences that can be drawn), and it is only then that the person can be judged, morally and in other respects. To further clarify, morality (and philosophy) is concerned with a person as a conscious being, the aspect of his mind that can be directly controlled by his actions. It is only the evidence (actions) of a person's conscious mind—his observable actions, statements, and conscious convictions—that can be used to judge his moral character.

(The evidence of the human subconscious, as well as the natural facts about the human mind and its abilities in general, are the subject matters of psychology, of course, but not of moral judgment, morality, or philosophy. For Rand's view on the differences between morality and psychology, and the errors that occur in mixing or ignoring their domains, see "The Psychology of Psychologizing," in The Voice of Reason, pp. 23-31. For more information on the facts of the conscious mind in regard to moral judgment, see ibid., pp. 27-29; Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand (OPAR), p. 280.)

The means by which we must judge the moral characters of others is established by rationality. Rationality, the application of one's reason to the issues of human life, is not something that can be dispensed with. Reasoning, logical analysis, objective evaluation according to one's standards, acting towards goals and values through a rational thought process—such are our tools for navigating the realm of facts and achieving our well-being. The aspect of rationality known as justice acknowledges that the same reasoning applies to the facts regarding people as to inanimate matter and the other forms of life:

Justice is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake the character of men just as you cannot fake the character of nature, that you must judge all men as conscientiously as you judge inanimate objects, with the same respect for truth, with the same incorruptible vision, by as pure and as rational a process of identification—that every man must be judged for what he is and treated accordingly... (For the New Intellectual, p. 144)

Forming a judgment essentially means evaluating a concrete by the application of an abstract principle or standard (Lexicon entry: Moral Judgment). In the case of moral judgment, this means evaluating the characters and actions of people as good or bad according to the abstract standard of man's life, the "terms, methods, conditions and goals required for the survival of a rational being through the whole of his lifespan—in all those aspects of existence which are open to his choice." (Rand, "The Objectivist Ethics," The Virtue of Selfishness, p. 26) That which furthers the life of a rational being is the good by the standard of man's life—that which detracts from or negates man's life is the evil. By reference to this standard, we identify and evaluate the characters and actions of people by their effects on man's life, as well as their causes. It is the recognition of these facts that also allows us to evaluate the people we're assessing in relation to moral principles. Thus, on the basis of the evidence we discover, we can determine if the people we deal with are characteristically rational or irrational, productive or parasitical/lazy, honest or dishonest, principled or hypocritical.

To reach an assessment of a person's moral character, we must judge that person's actions and convictions by their causes and effects. When judging a person's actions, one identifies the ideas, value-judgments, and mental process which led to the action (the cause), and the physical results of the action (the effect), and evaluates all of this according to man's life as either good or bad. In the judgment of a person's ideas or value-judgments, one must determine the evidence for the idea's truth or falsehood, the cause-and-effect of the idea—the mental processes that led to it and the physical actions that would result from acting on it (or already have resulted), and then evaluate these elements by reference to the same standard. Rand states the point similarly in regard to actions:

The basic principle that should guide one's judgment in issues of justice is the law of causality: one should never attempt to evade or break the connection between cause and effect – one should never attempt to deprive a man of the consequences of his actions, good or evil. (Rand, Letters of Ayn Rand, p. 558, quoted in Tara Smith, Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: the Virtuous Egoist, p. 143)

The parallel lesson, that we must morally judge people's ideas and convictions, can be understood by realizing why the philosophy advocates paying attention to the statements and other manifestations of a person's convictions, such as in a written treatise. Statements and convictions are expressions of ideas. Ideas are not isolated phenomena, with little to no relation to other facts and to our lives; rather, they are integral to human life, allowing us to identify and pursue our goals, motivating our actions, and changing our personal understanding of ourselves and our social/political relationships, for better or worse. The very fact that Objectivism counsels using abstract ideas and standards ("man's life," "good," "evil," "rational being," etc.) presupposes this understanding of the role of ideas in human life. It is because of this cause and effect relationship between the mind's ideas and their ramifications (beneficial or harmful) in the outside world that ideas must be judged according to man's life as the moral standard.

(This, I submit, is the reason why Ayn Rand considers German philosopher Immanuel Kant to be the most evil person in human history (see, Rand, "Brief Summary,” The Objectivist, Sept. 1971, 4; Lexicon entry: Kant, Immanuel). Kant was not a violent or overtly manipulative man, in fact he was a model citizen of Germany, but his theories and philosophy were irrational in Rand's view, and had to lead to widespread destruction and death in action.)

This respect for causality is reflected by our assessment of people in relation to our moral principles, as well. In the Objectivist view, moral principles are identifications of the actions needed to sustain the life of a rational being—they are recognitions of facts that, in principle, lead to the achievement of values. Because of this, they are judged as "good," by the standard of man's life. As a consequence, our evaluation of people as being rational, honest, productive must mean, other things being equal, that one can expect to benefit from dealing with him, creating and gaining new values and social relationships (friendship, love); our evaluations of people as being their opposites—irrational, dishonest, parasitical—must mean that one can expect the loss and destruction of one's values, other things being equal.

Identifying the facts pertaining to particular individuals, and evaluating them by reference to abstract standards and moral principles, constitutes the intellectual aspect of moral judgment. Now, we must consider the existential aspect: granting to each man that which he deserves. To "deserve" something is to possess certain qualities or complete certain actions so as to become worthy of some kind of recompense, positive or negative This recompense takes the form of rewards and punishments:

A reward is a value given to man in payment for his virtue or achievement; it is a positive such as praise, friendship, a sum of money, or a special prerogative. A punishment is a disvalue inflicted in payment for vice or fault; it is a negative such as condemnation, the withholding of friendship or even outright ostracism, or the loss of money or prerogative, including (in criminal cases) the loss of freedom or of life itself. (Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand, p. 283)

Recognizing the role of causality in the creation of values and the promotion of our lives, we esteem those whom we judge to be virtuous, bestowing on them our moral sanction, business deals, and time (among other things), and we condemn those we judge to be vicious, withdrawing our sanction, separating from them professionally, actively avoiding them (also advising others to stay away from them as a matter of safety, among other things). [I'll discuss moral sanction in much more detail in my upcoming essay on the subject.] This stems from Objectivism's broader theory that we should recognize and adopt the "trader principle," the principle that one should expect and give rewards and punishments as payments, as an exchange for the material and spiritual benefits (or detriments) that one possesses or judges others to possess. A trader is a person who treats others as equals, neither seeking something for nothing, nor granting something for nothing; in turn, a trader exchanges value for value, seeking mutual consent to mutual benefit, whether in issues of matter or spirit. The trader says that "[a] man deserves from others that and only that which he earns." (OPAR, p. 287).

Lastly (and most importantly), moral judgment must be understood for its egoistic basis and ramifications. All moral principles, according to Objectivism, should be accepted because they promote our self-interests. In the case of moral judgment, we identify the moral characters of those we deal with, thereby creating avenues to promote our values, and protecting ourselves from those who would do harm to our values (and our persons). The virtuous are the kind of people we can expect to enhance our lives, such as a brilliant scientist, a gifted composer, an articulate teacher; the vicious are the kind of people we can expect to detract from (or even destroy) our lives, such as a manipulative liar, a violent brute, a ruthless dictator. More importantly, justice, especially moral justice, is the principle that protects and promotes those who think and sustain the human way of existence. Because justice demands that the virtuous, in effect, deal with and uphold the similarly virtuous, it is the moral principle that preserves those who preserve life. (OPAR, p. 278)

(I'll provide a list of references for the Objectivist view of moral judgment at the end of the essay. Please keep in mind that this is my own summary of the virtue of justice, and there is a lot of derivative material on the virtue missing. Among them are: what is a person's "character" and how it is formed; how Objectivism deals with people of morally mixed--"gray"--characters in contrast to morally "white" and "black" individuals; how the virtue of justice applies to individuals we do not know enough information about someone else to judge them objectively; the distinction between errors of knowledge and breaches of morality; how moral judgment demands an unimpeachable, uncorrupted character in the man who pronounces moral judgment; the relation of Aristotle's principle of "final causation" to all of this. I'm discussing what I take to be the essence of moral judgment; other aspects will be considered in later essays, but others may have to wait for another time.)

Does an "Is" Imply an "Ought"?

In the Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand (CLAR), page 20, Kelley criticizes Peikoff's claim that "every fact bears on the choice to live," stating that certain seemingly unimportant facts have no bearing on his, Kelley's, life. Before I discuss this point, I'll quote two relevant paragraphs from Peikoff (which also includes Peikoff's quoted statement):

In the objective approach, since every fact bears on the choice to live, every truth necessarily entails a value-judgment, and every value-judgment necessarily presupposes a truth. As Ayn Rand states the point in “The Objectivist Ethics”: “Knowledge, for any conscious organism, is the means of survival; to a living consciousness, every ‘is’ implies an ‘ought.’” Evaluation, accordingly, is not a compartmentalized function applicable only to some aspects of man’s life or of reality; if one chooses to live and to be objective, a process of evaluation is coextensive with and implicit in every act of cognition.

This applies even to metaphysically given facts (as distinguished from man-made facts). Metaphysically given facts, Miss Rand points out, cannot as such be evaluated. Sunlight, tidal waves, the law of gravity, et al. are not good or bad; they simply are; such facts constitute reality and are thus the basis of all value-judgments. This does not, however, alter the principle that every “is” implies an “ought.” The reason is that every fact of reality which we discover has, directly or indirectly, an implication for man’s self-preservation and thus for his proper course of action. In relation to the goal of staying alive, the fact demands specific kinds of actions and prohibits others; i.e., it entails a definite set of evaluations. (Fact and Value)

With this in mind, it's important to note that Kelley misunderstands the import of that clause he quoted. Kelley believes Peikoff is saying that every fact impacts our choice of whether or not we choose to live, which I agree would be obviously false. But what Peikoff is saying (as the surrounding context makes clear) is that every fact has an implication for our goal of self-preservation, after we've chosen that as our goal. This implication(s) is expressed in the form of evaluations in the objective approach; after that choice has been made, nothing is completely irrelevant to that goal. Even Kelley's examples, of hairs on Plato's beards and the number of grass blades in Peikoff's lawn, are intelligible if we've already evaluated similar facts and judged them to be irrelevant to our survival. Kelley even acknowledges one aspect of this: "The bearing that a given fact may have for our lives is not self-evident; to establish its significance, we must undertake a further process of investigation, including the discovery and integration of other related facts." (CLAR p. 20)

Kelley continues, taking aim at Peikoff's claim that "cognition implies evaluation."

He states:

From the flood of information pouring through perception, from the mass of information we encounter in reading, conversation, or experience, we become aware of a great many facts. Many of them are irrelevant to our purposes, and we properly disregard them. Others are of such marginal or dubious relevance that it isn’t worth our while to ascertain their value significance. (ibid.)

His criticism, however, is not in any way devastating; he merely claims that Peikoff is going beyond his limits in making claims about objectivity, cognition, and evaluation such as these:

[...]if one chooses to live and to be objective, a process of evaluation is coextensive with and implicit in every act of cognition. (FV)

The reason is that every fact of reality which we discover has, directly or indirectly, an implication for man’s self-preservation and thus for his proper course of action. In relation to the goal of staying alive, the fact demands specific kinds of actions and prohibits others; i.e., it entails a definite set of evaluations.

Kelley claims that this goes too far. Often, we merely evaluate a given fact epistemologically, in whether it is worth our time and effort to give it any more consideration; rarely is it the case that we need to be cognizant of a fact, as well as evaluate it in terms of our purposes and our own lives. Peikoff claims that, in the objective approach, cognition and evaluation are inextricably linked; Kelley applies this unbreakable link instead to the relation of cognition and cognitive evaluation:

In this attenuated sense, it is true without exception that all cognition involves evaluation; the point follows from the fact that cognition is goal-directed...(21)

(As an aside, I disagree that we're merely dealing with deduction from the premise that "cognition is goal-directed." From that, we'd only get precise examples of goal-directed cognitions as deductive conclusions, not the point that cognition involves evaluation. The argument either needs more premises and information to infer what Kelley wants here, or it needs induction. For some of my views on induction (and deduction), as well as my thoughts on other thinkers in philosophy's history on this subject, please see my other essays on this site.)

First, Peikoff doesn't merely say that cognition "involves" evaluation, he's claiming that the former demands the latter, that this is what objectivity means here. Cognition also involves the brain, but the brain doesn't have the kind of importance here that Peikoff is claiming evaluation to have—Peikoff's making a stronger claim than Kelley is implying in his word choice.

Second, and more important, is that I don't think Kelley has understood how objectivity applies here. His perspective reminds me of how a person from our culture would discuss the issue, if he had the philosophical ideas to express his thoughts. In everyday life, I'm sure that many people live their lives not considering how their thoughts on various topics and issues correspond with their values, especially moral values, or how their thoughts would determine their evaluations. But being objective means more than this, and it is radically different from the cultural influences on our thinking.

In footnote #2 to chapter one, Kelley claims that the quote Peikoff uses from Rand is basically lifted out of its context, and questions his interpretation. (The quote is: "Knowledge, for any conscious organism, is the means of survival; to a living consciousness, every ‘is’ implies an ‘ought’.) But let's take a look at a similar quote from Rand, in one of her matured journal entries on the philosophy behind Galt's speech:

...If you cannot judge, you will not think. The aim of every action, mental or physical, is to achieve a value, to further your life. Why think, if you cannot reach any conclusion, if you cannot appraise the value of any choice? Every thought implies a value judgment. [Sound familiar?] If you cannot value, you cannot think. You may know that giving poison to a man will kill him, but why consider it, if you cannot know whether it is right or wrong to kill him? (Journals of Ayn Rand, p. 660)

It's telling that Kelley doesn't consider his disagreement with Rand here (in the footnote) to be a departure of the philosophy (assuming her statement which Peikoff quoted is in essence the same as the one I just used, which seems to be the case). It's not just a disagreement with her on a non-philosophical issue, or an application of her philosophy to some issue, but a technical point between epistemology and ethics, on the role of objectivity in both fields.

In her essay, "How Does One Lead a Rational Life in an Irrational Society?" Rand states that, "[the policy of always pronouncing moral judgment means]: (a) that one must know clearly, in full, verbally identified form, one's own moral evaluation of every person, issue and event with which one deals, and act accordingly..." (p. 84) Since this is what Rand takes to be the Objectivist kind of moral judgment, we should appreciate how much this differs from Kelley's account.

To understand this difference, we must consider why one should have to know (clearly and verbally) one's own moral evaluation of "every person, issue and event with which one deals, and act accordingly." The reason is that no aspect of reality is separated or unconnected to our lives, no matter how insignificant a given fact may seem; we need to know our moral evaluations of such things as a guide to our actions regarding them. Choosing to live demands a lot more from an Objectivist than forming some solidly-constructed concepts, and "[deciding] whether it is worth our while, in light of our purposes, to evaluate a given fact." (CLAR, p. 21) Some facts are worth study beyond those that are relevant to our purposes, because purposes do not singlehandedly determine the worthiness of the attention we should pay to reality. A good Objectivist is someone who recognizes this, who gains knowledge of reality with the express purpose of evaluating its impact on that individual's life, and this necessarily includes a great number of facts across a broad spectrum of fields; this is a person who is constantly expanding his moral knowledge and evaluations, because this is one of the demands of the virtue of rationality.

Rationality is, in part, objectivity: it is recognizing the facts of reality and integrating them with what you already know, and this includes moral values and judgments. Kelley seems to criticize this take on objectivity, saying that, "objectivity requires that we be prepared to identify the factual basis of all our values, not that we engage in a fevered search for the possible value implications of every fact we encounter." Whatever his opinion of Peikoff's view on this, by suggesting that only some facts are worth our cognitive attention and moral evaluation, he's actually stating that one's cognitive discoveries need not be morally assessed. In this case, I agree with Peikoff that Kelley has abandoned the concept of "objectivity" here, as he, "[rejects Rand's] view of logic, which demands that one integrate every idea with perceptual data and with all one’s other ideas, including one’s code of moral values." (FV)

Kelley on Moral Judgment

Motives and Consequences, Rationality and Life

Kelley spends the rest of his first chapter discussing moral judgment from the Objectivist view, or rather, his take on this view. The problem I have with it is his set-up and deceitful language. Basically, he compares moral judgment to our judgments of non-moral actions and things, claims that Objectivism has no developed account of how to combine a person's motives and consequences into a single judgment (of how to morally judge others), and then proceeds to give his account of moral judgment, as if the philosophy doesn't have one already.

The question Kelley wants to address is how to integrate the consequences of an action with the motives for the action into a single moral judgment of the actor. Philosophers have been battling over this issue for centuries, and Kelley believes that the philosophy has little to add to the dispute. Well, in a sense, he's right: since Objectivism doesn't separate the two factors of an action, motives and consequences, it isn't left in bewilderment as to how to integrate them again.

Objectivism regards humans as indivisible entities of mind and body, consciousness and matter. Related to this, the most important attribute for judging these aspects of a given individual--like his motives and his actions' consequences--is the individual's character. A person's character is the result of that persons' actions and chosen moral values, and is expressed by the principles he lives by. A person's character, then, is his basic nature, the typical way the person uses his mind and lives his life. (Tara Smith, Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics, p. 141) It is a person's character that determines the kind of actions he takes (and usually would even consider taking), their likely consequences, and the type of thinking he will engage in, and this includes the motives he will adopt. The best way to understand a person's motives and to understand what shaped the consequences of his actions is to understand a person's character.

As a consequence, the philosophy has nothing to offer for philosophers trying to determine whether motives or consequences are important in determining moral judgment, and if they are, to what extent. To fill in this supposed lacuna in the philosophy, Kelley has taken the task of addressing the debate in its terms. He starts by claiming that reaching a moral judgment of an action involves judging the consequences of the action as well as judging the motives. These factors are measured by different standards in Kelley's view: consequences are judged by the standard of life, and motives are judged by the standard of rationality. He criticizes the two camps, those who favor consequences in isolation as morally worthy of judgment and those who uphold the person's motives as decisive of the moral verdict to be given to the action. Afterward, he attempts to integrate motives and consequences by focusing on the standards of rationality and life, and gives an example of their interrelation. He then presents four types of moral judgment, and concludes with a criticism of Peikoff's position. It has the structure and feel of an academic philosophy paper, but lacks an accurate and detailed presentation of Objectivism's actual position on this issue.

For starters, let's analyze his claim that the elements of a human, chosen action have two different standards of judgment, one of life for consequences, and one of rationality for motives. The easiest criticism to make is that nowhere in the Objectivist corpus is human action split into two aspects, motives and consequences, with different standards applied to each—this is Kelley's "open system" at work. The genuine Objectivist position is that a person's motives are identified for what they are and evaluated according to the standard of man's life, just as consequences of moral actions are, and then the motive and the person are treated as they deserve in response to our evaluation. Kelley eventually states this point as well (on page 23), but he has to use some confusing logic to reach it. He says:

If we divorce the inner choice from the outer action, then we divorce the standard of rationality from the standard of life. But rationality is a means to an end, not an end in itself. If reason did not help us pursue and maintain our lives—if it made no difference whether we thought well, or poorly, or not at all—then rationality would not be a virtue nor a standard of judgment. In moral judgment, as in any other type of evaluation, life is the fundamental and all-encompassing standard. (CLAR 23)

What's confusing is this whole approach—positing two different, but somehow related, standards, and then struggling to relate them in a way that effectively makes one of them subordinate and seemingly unnecessary. (The standard of rationality, based on Kelley's reasoning above, only has meaning in relation to the standard of life, and so seems to be pointless.)

A well-versed Objectivist, on the other hand, knows that the standard of rationality is the same as the standard of life: reality, and the commitment to stay in it. It is reality that determines the rationality of an action or a goal, because it is the metaphysically given, mind-independent facts of reality that determine the means to the goal's accomplishment, and the consequences for any such achievement. In other words, we assess the rationality of human action and goals by its relationship to the laws of identity and cause and effect:

Reality sets the standard of rationality. Facts about the world we inhabit—facts that are quite independent of human wishes or purposes—render certain ends unattainable, render certain ends incompatible with other ends, and render certain ends destructive of ends that are necessary for a person's ability to pursue any ends. (Viable Values, p. 49)

Similarly, the choice to live determines the rationality of goals and actions insofar as rationality is in service to human life: a person who is completely unfazed by the prospects of life or death and has no concern for either outcome thus has no reason to be rational or irrational, to pay attention to the facts in the world or respect causality (or even to distort or reverse cause and effect, in the case of irrationality).

(For more information on the relationship of reason, rationality, and reality, see Ayn Rand Lexicon entry: Rationality, Ayn Rand Lexicon entry: Reason, and Ayn Rand Lexicon entry: Responsibility/Obligation; Rand, "Causality Versus Duty," pp. 128-136; Peikoff, Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand, p. 244, 248; Tara Smith, Viable Values, pp. 48-51.)

In the same respect, it is reality that determines what needs to be achieved to sustain human life, the consequences for failing to satisfy such needs, and the need to form and live by concepts and principles. Reality, and the choice to live, are the deepest reasons why man's life is the standard of moral value and morality. Just like the relationship between the choice to live and rationality, a person indifferent to his own life or death has no reason to act or follow any moral code or to assign any standards for determining values.

Rather than the standard of rationality being subordinated to the standard of life, the true point is that the standard of rationality constitutes the standard of life, as Diana Hsieh reasoned in "David Kelley's Mind-Body Dichotomy in Moral Judgment". This point isn't missed by knowledgeable Objectivists: it's partly the reason why the moral standard of man's life has both human life (as expressed by egoism, the policy of selfishly pursuing human life) and rationality as its basic elements: "Since reason is man’s basic means of survival, that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; that which negates, opposes or destroys it is the evil. " (Ayn Rand Lexicon entry: Morality.)

Kelley ends the sub-section "Moral Judgment" with two examples of evasion, with an alleged enormous difference of degree. He contrasts the evasion of a dieter cheating with some dessert, with the mass-murdering evasions of a totalitarian dictator. In response to this, he says that we, "measure the degree of irrationality by considering the scope and value significance of the foreseeable consequences that were evaded." (p. 23) Actually, the Objectivist approach is to identify what irrationality and evasion are, relate it to fundamental facts about human nature and reality, and then relate any practical (not merely "foreseeable") consequences to those facts—in other words, we exercise the mental processes of reduction and integration (elaborated upon in OPAR, chapter 4, "Objectivity").

Evasion is the willful suspension of one's reason, thought, and judgment—it is the volitional refusal to use's one reason to gain knowledge or guide one's actions or achieve one's values. Irrationality is the commitment to evading, to defying reason and thus to rejecting a means of human survival, a policy of not recognizing reality for what it is and thus inviting disaster and destruction. The latter is the logical consequence of the former, and both of them lead to and are expressed by what Rand calls "whim-worship," the seeking of desires and acting without reference to the cause of the desire, its rationality, or whether it can even be achieved. Regardless of the degree of irrationality, then, it is still fundamentally opposed to rationality and reality; the consequences of such a stance have to be the destruction of one's values, the inability to deal with reality, and death. It is these facts (and the philosophy's positive evaluation of rationality) which constitute Objectivism's censure of irrationality and evasion, and its designation of the latter as the source of the former and the very source of evil itself. Applying this to the relevant cases: it is true that the dieter's action was a minor lapse, but it's still something that he needs to recognize for what it was and correct it, committing himself to rationality and rejecting any indulgences in evasion; and the dictator is well beyond any moral reform, not only due to his use of force (in that respect alone, his soldiers may be more guilty than he is), but more significantly it is due to the countless and massive evasions and outright irrationality which rules his life.

But the moral judgment of these two cases and the evaluation of their respective degrees of irrationality can't be understood by merely considering the "scope and value significance of the foreseeable consequences that were evaded." On this consequentialist approach, a consideration of a few cases of evasion and irrationality would be sufficient for a rule of thumb of, say, "reject evasion," or "stay rational," but it wouldn't be the principled approach that characterizes Objectivism—it wouldn't identify the causes of the consequences or relate them to the principles of human survival. We would be left are merely pragmatic estimations or suggestions of actions without adherence to principles: this, I believe, characterizes Kelley's approach and basic methodology, and is another instance where he differs substantially from Objectivism.

(For a brief discussion of the Objectivist approach versus the consequentialist approach, read the comment thread here at Noodlefood, starting at comment #15.)

Types of Moral Judgment?

Kelley presents his (admitted) sketch of the types of moral judgments that an objective person would need to take. He claims that these types are "evaluating an action, interpreting its motive, inferring a character trait, and judging that someone is good or bad as a person." (p. 23) But these aren't "types" of moral judgments, merely different aspects of the same issue: reaching a judgment of the person in question. "Types" suggest something that can stand alone, that has significant features in common with other particular things, but a person's actions, convictions, motives, and character traits are all aspects in relation to reaching a verdict on his moral stature.

His discussion of evaluating actions though, the first type of moral judgment, has an important epistemological point that he makes and that should draw our attention. Quoting himself from "A Question of Sanction," he states:

When we formulate moral principles, we abstract from differences of degree; we omit measurements, as Ayn Rand explained. But when we apply the principles in forming moral judgments about particulars, we must reintroduce the relevant measurements.

This is mistaken. Formulating moral principles doesn't merely involve abstracting from differences in measurement—it is also crucially involves integration, or "measurement-inclusion," as Harry Binswanger once called it. Generally, we integrate our knowledge of the units of the concept, as this is the essence of measurement-omission or abstraction, and this allows us to apply this knowledge to any new concrete of the same kind. It is in reference to this integration that distinctions can be made, and they are considered a secondary matter.

For instance, if one had judged several individuals to be good by the Objectivist standard, then adherence to one's moral principles would demand that one grant them one's moral sanction. Depending on the values at stake and interests of the individuals involved, this sanction may also include occasional discussions, gifts, becoming friends, a romantic relationship, or a business partnership, among other benefits. All are responses to differences of degree, but must conform to the relevant principles in order to actually be in the person's interests.

This can't be done if we "reintroduce the measurements." Doing so ruins the conceptual relations and connections made in the integration, as we're now dealing with different particulars with different measurements. It makes following principles impossible, and principles themselves superfluous. Kelley says that we must "specify these measurements to know the degree of wrong done by a thief. It is worse to embezzle a person's life savings than to steal an apple from his tree." (p. 24) We can't know which is worse without first understanding the relation between the instances presented and the relevant principles. I said earlier that Kelley's approach would lead to rules of thumb, and he gives us an example of this in his principle that "[i]t is wrong to take someone's property without his consent." (p. 24) The mere application of the moral issue involved, and the reintroduction of measurements, is apparently sufficient to determine how wrong a given act of thievery is—no need to go through the processes of reduction and integration, in other words, no need for a proof of one's conclusions.

(Please see Bennett Karp's "Reintroducing the Measurements: An Old Fallacy with a New Name" for a complete analysis of the problems with "reintroducing the measurements.")

Next, Kelley discusses "interpreting motives." On this rare occasion, I agree with Kelley: the majority of our understandings of people's motives are hypotheses, they are contextual conclusions based on the evidence available, including the given person's known character and actions. But some of our estimates of people's motives become certainties, cases such as intensive personal knowledge of the individual being investigated, and clear-cut cases of devotion towards—or complete rejection of—moral principles. Catching someone in an outright lie, discovering a friend's hypocrisy, finding out about a person's parasitical behaviors, they are all instances of proofs of violations of moral principles. In some cases, it can be difficult to know a person's motives, or to accurately identify the consequences of an action, but the eventual decision regarding them rests on our evaluations of the easier cases—of motives integrated with and corresponding to consequences—along with the relevant facts of the case. In such difficult cases, until one can reach a certain moral judgment, one gives the person's motives, and the person, the moral benefit of the doubt.

After this, he discusses his ideas on inferring a character trait, and finally judging the person. Like his sections on evaluating actions and interpreting motives, the examples he gives in these two sections present difficulties to the person giving his moral judgment, cases that can only be addressed by reference to what Objectivism actually has to say on moral judgment, on which Kelley is silent. In presenting these four sections, these "types" of moral judgment, Kelley claims that objectivity requires asking a number of questions relating to moral judgment: We must ask whether the actions are good or bad with life as our standard. What other motives can explain a given persons' rational or irrational behavior? Is this person's character that of an honest man? When is it valid to generalize about a person's essence, his character? How do we judge a person as a whole? Since Kelley has declared that Objectivism technically has no developed answer to these kind of questions, he's left on his own, and by his own statement, he doesn't provide an answer, either. By splitting them up into types of judgment, he doesn't integrate motives and consequences of actions, motives and consequences into character traits, and character traits into the whole person. And by ignoring what the philosophy actually has to say, he of course has to depart from it, in very fundamental and derivative ways.

Conclusion

The topic of moral judgment is very complicated, and takes years of study to understand at any great depth. This applies to Objectivism's view as any other. But once you do understand it, confronting the issues raised by Kelley and Peikoff becomes a relatively easier task than learning the philosophy's actual position, and practically impossible without such an understanding. Or at least this was my experience as a budding student of Objectivism, as I attempted to wade into the issues of the split mere months after discovering the philosophy through Atlas Shrugged. Hopefully, my essay has helped somewhat in that needed understanding.

Reference Works

Ayn Rand Lexicon entry: Character.
Ayn Rand Lexicon entry: Evasion.
Ayn Rand Lexicon entry: Irrationality.
Ayn Rand Lexicon entry: Justice.
Ayn Rand Lexicon entry: Kant, Immanuel.
Ayn Rand Lexicon entry: Morality.
Ayn Rand Lexicon entry: Moral Judgment.
Ayn Rand Lexicon entry: Psychologizing.
Ayn Rand Lexicon entry: Rationality.
Ayn Rand Lexicon entry: Reason.
Ayn Rand Lexicon entry: Responsibility/Obligation.
Ayn Rand Lexicon entry: Standard of Value.
Ayn Rand Lexicon entry: Trader Principle.
Ayn Rand Lexicon entry: Whims/Whim-worship.

Berliner, Michael S., ed. Letters of Ayn Rand. New York: Penguin, 1995.

Harriman, David, ed. Journals of Ayn Rand. New York: Penguin, 1997.

Hsieh, Diana. "David Kelley's Mind-Body Dichotomy in Moral Judgment." http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog/2006/03/david-kelleys-mind-body-dichotomy-in.html Accessed March 23, 2010.
Hsieh, Diana. "David Kelley Versus Ayn Rand on Kant." http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog/2006/02/david-kelley-versus-ayn-rand-on-kant.html Accessed March 25, 2010.

Karp, Bennett. "Reintroducing the Measurements: An Old Fallacy with a New Name." http://www.lyceum.dk/karp.html Accessed April 03, 2010.

Kelley, David. 'A Question of Sanction." March 1989. http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=722 Accessed March 27, 2010.
Kelley, David, The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand: Truth and Toleration in Objectivism. 2000 (1990)

Peikoff, Leonard. "Fact & Value." http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=objectivism_fv Accessed March 20, 2010.
Peikoff, Leonard, Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand, New York: Meridian, 1993 (1991).

Rand, Ayn. For the New Intellectual. New York: Signet, 1963.
Rand, Ayn. Philosophy: Who Needs It. New York: Signet, 1984.
Rand, Ayn. The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism. New York: Signet, 1964.
Rand, Ayn. The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought. Edited by Leonard Peikoff. New York: Meridian, 1990.

Smith, Tara. Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: the Virtuous Egoist. Cambridge UP, 2006.
Smith, Tara. Viable Values: A Study of Life as the Root and Reward of Morality. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000.

Closed vs. Open Part 1: Introduction, and the Issues

2010-03-28T13:57:00.000-07:00

Introduction

The dispute between the Objectivists who've sided with Leonard Peikoff and the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI), and those who've sided with David Kelley and The Atlas Society (TAS), is a philosophical war: a series of ideological battles. Since 1989, boundaries have been drawn, and sides have been taken. Short articles, philosophical essays, critical replies, and even books have written in regard to it; I strongly believe my comments in the essays to come won't be the last. And like any war, it's had dire consequences for the parties involved. Or to phrase it as Pain would, a character from the fictional anime/manga Naruto: “War brings pain and injury and death to both sides.” (Naruto, issue 429, page 2) While I'm pretty sure no one's died from this conflict, spiritual pains and injuries have certainly been inflicted, and will be for years to come. Friends and family have already become estranged or even bitter enemies; people have left organizations, quit attending philosophical meetings, and canceled speakers for lecture events; others have given up the philosophy altogether.

The Issues in Dispute

The issues involved are very technical and varied, concerning issues in epistemology and ethics. The two camps differ on five specific issues, but also differ in meaningful ways within these issues, as we'll see. The issues were encapsulated in the table of contents of David Kelley's book The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand: Truth & Toleration in Objectivism (CLAR): moral judgment, sanction, error and evil, toleration, and Objectivism itself.

(1) What is the nature of moral judgment, and how should it be applied?
(2) What is it to morally “sanction” something, and can (or should) we avoid doing so at all?
(3) Can ideas be “evil,” and what is the scope of honest error, and of dishonest ideas?
(4) What is the proper way to understand tolerance; what kind of people should we tolerate, and does tolerance as presented contradict the Objectivist notion of justice?
(5) Is Objectivism open or closed? What does this imply about the movement?

Conclusions and Comments

Based on what I've read, I don't believe there's a peaceable resolution to this conflict, just as there hasn't been these last 20 years. Peikoff and Kelley have declared that the other contradicts fundamental aspects of Objectivism, particularly in regards to “objectivity,” and by implication anyone else who agrees with either. Both groups think the other is detrimental to the movement, and prefers the other to simply drop out; Peikoff says this explicitly, while Kelley implies this on page 17 of CLAR's “Introduction.” (He calls Peikoff's approach to the movement “tribalism” and says that we need to get over it in order to progress.)

I stated in an earlier series of essays that I was a “closed system” advocate. Since I think this is the easiest of the issues to discuss, I will comment on it in part 2.

As for polemics: I'm more interested in presenting the views of the two positions, for clarity and to avoid misrepresentation. But if possible, I will critique any statements I find to be untrue, so as to give my perspective on these issues.

Comments would be appreciated.

Part 2: The History of the Dispute, and the Closed and Open Systems

2010-03-28T13:38:00.000-07:00

A Brief History in the Second-Generation Objectivist Movement

Early in 1989, Peter Schwartz published "On Sanctioning the Sanctioners" in The Intellectual Activist, a short essay critical of supporters of the libertarian movement, and of those who either engage in, or support, the smearing of Ayn Rand. The main message of the article was that we should not sanction—approve of, endorse—that which (or those whom) we regard as evil, with particular focus on those who support groups like the two mentioned: we should not “sanction the sanctioners.” One of the targets of the article was Objectivist writer and lecturer David Kelley, who had spoken at a few libertarian events and had declined to speak out against a critical Rand biography by Barbara Branden called The Passion of Ayn Rand. Kelley replied back with "A Question of Sanction," (AQoS) thus briefly revealing his views of moral judgment, his cost-benefit methodology, and his vision of what Objectivism and the movement could be (and, to him, should be). Especially important for my current essay is Kelley's proclamation that Objectivism is not a “closed system,” but can be changed by our consideration and incorporation of new ideas from other viewpoints, it is “open” to such integrations and revisions—though Kelley doesn't elaborate on this point until his next work.

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Prerequisites for Understanding Bacon's Induction Part 2: Scholastic Natural Philosophy

2010-03-08T20:16:00.000-08:00

Bacon can and should be read within different contexts, but the one most fundamental for understanding the Novum Organum as Bacon meant it to be understood is the Aristotelian. (Regula Socratis, p. 212)

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Prerequisites for Understanding Bacon's Induction Part 1: Natural Magic

2010-02-24T22:28:00.000-08:00

Introduction

In 2006, John McCaskey stated in his dissertation that Bacon's view of induction could not be fully understood without acknowledging the Aristotelian background from which it arises. I'll discuss that in Part 2; for now, I want to discuss the natural magic tradition that Bacon uses for his own purposes. Since Bacon doesn't address any particular magicians in his criticism, neither will I, but I will discuss his general criticism of the practice of magic.

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Bacon on the "Helps" of Induction

2010-02-16T18:34:00.000-08:00

Introduction: Some Context

In the 17th Century, Francis Bacon wrote a two-book work, the Novum Organum (New Instrument). Its aims were extraordinarily vast, covering both theoretical and practical goals. Bacon proposed a new epistemology, a new way to reach knowledge, to form concepts or notions, and to know the true causes of natural events—induction, as Bacon proposed it, would be the "new instrument" which would bring us to a greater understanding of things. Practically, induction, properly carried out, would lead to a full control of nature by mankind, and thus to a general improvement of our condition in the world.

His theory of induction is a bit technical, to say the least. To fully understand it, one would need to know a little bit about the general aims of the natural magic tradition (such as alchemy), a great deal of Aristotle's philosophy, particularly its metaphysics, physics, and epistemology (especially the treatises on logic collectively known as the "Organon"), and the Scholastic philosophy which revamped Aristotle's.

Instead of discussing all that, I'll save it all for another time, and focus now on nine things that Bacon said are helps in our ability to properly inductively reason.

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Thomas Reid (and David Hume) on Induction, Causality

2009-12-16T18:57:00.000-08:00

Introduction

Philosopher Thomas Reid's significance in regard to induction does not derive from his own inductive theory, as in Aristotle's case or Francis Bacon's. In fact, he explicitly states that he has adopted Bacon's method of induction in his Inquiry into the Human Mind, and gives Lord Bacon nothing but the highest praise. What makes Reid so significant is that he understood Hume's criticism of causality (in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding), interpreted what it would imply about induction and inductive reasoning, and offered a sort of counterargument to Hume's skeptical doubts.

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Aristotle's View of Induction: A Summary

2009-10-05T02:22:00.000-07:00

[On Induction]: “The soul is so constituted to be capable of this process.” [Aristotle, Posterior Analytics 2.19, 100a14]

In the history of induction, Aristotle features prominently as the first person to explain what it was. While Socrates practiced induction and sought universal definitions, Aristotle was the first to discuss the process of inductive thinking itself. And even though Aristotle thought that “[what] sort of thing induction is, is obvious,” he nevertheless took some effort in explaining its origin, its logical process, and the benefits that could be gained from using it (Topics 8.1, 157a8).

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Induction by Enumeration and Sophistry

2009-09-26T15:58:00.000-07:00

A person who upholds “induction by enumeration” is one who believes that, by counting instances, limiting one's reasoning to some finite list of particulars, or in some way including all the particulars that one is reasoning about (such as saying “etc.”) he can reach an inductive conclusion that is true.

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Aristotle's "Two" Views of Induction: McCaskey's Resolution (Part 3)

2009-09-23T06:49:00.000-07:00

McCaskey’s Revision of Prior Analytics 2.23

Throughout this series, I’ve maintained that there are two conflicting interpretations of Aristotelian induction, and that Dr. John McCaskey has discovered a way to resolve the issue, to the detriment of one of those views. His resolution is essentially a revisionist interpretation of Aristotle’s Prior Analytics, book 2, chapter 23 (PrA 2.23); an interpretation that, if correct, will make the eight uses of the term “induction” (that is, those uses that originally posed the controversy) consistent with the other eighty-eight uses of the term that support McCaskey’s interpretation.

PrA 2.23 is composed of three paragraphs and is found near the end of the book, after Aristotle finishes a lengthy exposition on the syllogism and conversion of terms, and the chapter starts as he compares the role of conversion with types of argument such as “example” or “objections.”

The first paragraph says nothing that damages McCaskey’s interpretation of induction, and the last sentence of it is consistent with that interpretation: “[f]or we have conviction about anything either through deduction or from induction.” (PrA 68b13-14. Compare with Aristotle’s other claims that there are two ways of reasoning or arguing, one is induction and the other is deduction.)

It is the second paragraph that poses the difficulty. To understand the basis for the conventional interpretation, let’s follow McCaskey’s approach, and summarize how Aristotle is interpreted in light of this paragraph.

The second paragraph begins, “Induction, then--that is, a deduction from induction--is deducing one extreme to belong to the middle through the other extreme.” Afterwards, Aristotle gives this example (I‘m abbreviating Aristotle‘s argument for sake of length):

(1) Man, horse, and mule are long-lived.
(2) Man, horse, and mule are bileless.
By conversion of (2): (3) Bileless animals are man, horse, and mule.
By (1) and (3): (4) Bileless animals are long-lived.

Here, Aristotle is drawing a universal conclusion (“B is A”: bileless animals are long-lived) by deducing one extreme (“A”: long-lived) to belong to the middle (“B”: bileless) by means of the other extreme (“C”: particular types of animals, specifically man, horse, and mule). The deduction is valid if the conversion from (2) to (3) is valid (that is, if “man, horse, and mule are bileless,” can be restated validly as “bileless animals are man, horse, and mule.”); and the conversion is valid only if the only bileless animals in the world are men, horses, and mules. According to the conventional interpretation, Aristotle is asking us to presume that this is true for the sake of illustrating his point. The paragraphs ends with, “One must understand C as composed of every one of the particulars: for induction is through them all.”

Therefore, he is saying that the only valid induction is a complete enumeration (“for induction is through them all [the particulars]”); that induction is ultimately a kind of deduction (a “deduction from induction” that “[deduces] one extreme to belong to the middle through the other extreme”); and that induction is reducible to a deduction, since the “inductive” argument here is really a syllogistic argument that enumerates all the particulars. This is what the conventional interpretation concludes about Aristotle’s view of induction.

The “Deduction from Induction”

Now, how does McCaskey challenge this interpretation? Answer: by using the surrounding text to elucidate what Aristotle means by a “deduction from induction.” McCaskey says that an “alternative interpretation can be found by reading the chapter from the outside in rather than from the inside out.” [p. 50] I said earlier that PrA 2.23 consisted of three paragraphs; McCaskey is suggesting that we imagine that the second, substantive paragraph is missing and has to be reconstructed from the surrounding passages (the first and third paragraphs).

The first paragraph states that all knowledge becomes such through the syllogistic figures presented earlier (the chapters before 23), and ends with the statement that we have belief about anything through deduction or from induction. None of this suggests a new understanding of induction is to follow. Now we ignore the second paragraph, assuming it exists but pretending that its contents are unknown, and focus on the third paragraph. It begins “This is the sort of deduction that is possible of a primary and unmiddled premise,” which indicates that the second paragraph must have been about a “deduction of an unmiddled premise.” The next sentence plainly states that there are two kinds of deductions: (1) deductions of middled premises in which the premise is the conclusion of a syllogistic argument with a middle term, and (2) deductions of unmiddled premises, in which the role played by a middle term is carried out by an induction. McCaskey decides to call the first a “deduction-from-a-middle” and the second a “deduction-from-induction,” and notes that the second paragraph must have been an example of a “deduction-from-induction,” instead of the “deduction-from-a-middle,” which had been treated substantially in earlier chapters. McCaskey argues that paragraph three is consistently about the differences between the “deduction-from-a-middle,” and the “deduction-from-induction.” Afterward, he shifts our focus back to the second paragraph, taking what we’ve learned with us.

Based on the third paragraph, we expect to see an example of a “deduction-from-induction” in the second paragraph, and we are not disappointed. Again, the second paragraph begins “Induction, then--that is, a deduction from induction--is deducing one extreme to belong to the middle through the other extreme.” [My emphasis] The example given is the argument that all bileless animals are long-lived, which will be addressed in the next section.

Students and commentators have had difficulty with those first four words (“Induction, then--that is“), as the phrase seems to indicate that “induction” is really a shorthand for the more specific “deduction from induction,” which implies that our understanding of induction in his other works should be corrected by considering them as “deductions from induction.” McCaskey rejects this conclusion, and claims that the “induction” shorthand only applies to the few sentences that follow in the second and third paragraphs; this would mean that Aristotle is only using “induction” in those paragraphs as a lecturer’s shortening of the long-winded phrase “deduction from induction,” and therefore is not to be confused with the “induction“ discussed in the Topics, for example. As McCaskey aptly states, either his own interpretation of “induction” here being a shorthand is correct, or we must accept the absurd conclusion that, “without warning, Aristotle has proposed a new understanding of induction, inconsistent with the rest of the corpus [that is, his other works] and inconsistent even with the immediately preceding sentence.” [p. 54]

Converting a Deduction from Induction

Even if the phrase “deduction from induction” doesn’t mean that induction is a form of deduction, doesn’t the example given justify the conventional interpretation, that induction is a complete enumeration that can be turned into a deduction? Here is where McCaskey suggests an alternative interpretation for PrA 2.23, specifically the second paragraph, one in which we learn how inductions become the premises for deductions.

He begins with a broad overview of what the first two paragraphs are about:

From the opening of the [second] paragraph and from what Aristotle said in the preceding, introductory paragraph we know he wants to exhibit how a deduction-from- induction ‘comes about through the figures previously mentioned,’ that is, through the syllogistic figures. His tool for doing so will be conversion, the subject of discussion in the preceding chapter and the subject Aristotle mentioned right at the beginning of this one. His subject for the chapter’s middle paragraph, then, is how conversion is used to effect a deduction-from-induction. Aristotle will first present the relevant syllogistic figure using a simple example, an example in which the conversion is justified by a method other than induction, in this case by surveying one or a few particulars or kinds of particulars. He will then expand the example by replacing a conversion justified by survey with a conversion justified by induction. He will spend the bulk of the paragraph setting up the simple example and discussing the role that conversion plays. He will execute the expansion in the paragraph’s final words.

He then notes that the example which follows is an application of a conversion rule Aristotle brought to our attention--and proved--in the preceding chapter, PrA 2.22. “When A and B belong to the whole of C and C converts with B, then it is necessary for A to belong to every B.” This is exactly what Aristotle is arguing to be the case with a deduction from induction--that it has this syllogistic figure:

(1) All C is A.
(2) All C is B.
By conversion of (2): (3) All B is C.
By (1) and (3): (4) All B is A.

Aristotle lets “A” stand for “long-lived,” “B” stand for “bileless,” and “C” stand for particular long-lived animals, such as a man, horse, or mule. We are left guessing if he means one particular man, horse, or mule, or several of them, or whether he means specific men, horses, or mules, or particular kinds of long-lived animals. But what we do know is that Aristotle is not saying that men, horses, and mules are the only long-lived animals in the world: he is only using those three animals as a surveyable and illustrative list of long-lived things--a “sample” of such things, as McCaskey puts it.

The argument then becomes:

(1) All particular things on the list are long-lived.
(2) All particular things on the list are bileless.
By conversion of (2): (3) All bileless things are particular things on the list.
By (1) and (3): (4) All bileless animals are long-lived.

Here, we have a deduction from a surveyable list: all of the samples of particular things Aristotle introduced are both bileless and long-lived, and the conclusion is that everything bileless is long-lived, since the conclusion only extends as far as the surveyable list. This is not yet a deduction-from-induction, but Aristotle sees no difficulty in expanding it to be so. To do so, he redefines C, “But one must understand C as composed of every one of the particulars: for [a deduction-from-]induction is through them all.” [page 58 of McCaskey’s PDF] Earlier, Aristotle defined C as particular long-lived things (with man, horse, and mule as examples), but now means C to be all particular long-lived things, because a deduction-from-induction is not a deduction from a surveyed list, but through all the particulars. With this, Aristotle proceeds to the next paragraph, and his expansion of C finishes his demonstration of how a deduction-from-induction is presented in a syllogistic figure and how it is properly converted.

Unfortunately, Aristotle doesn’t completely explain his line of reasoning: from the looks of it, those of us reading him have seemed to miss a step. With his redefinition, we now have:

(1) All particular long-lived things (men, horses, mules, and others) are long-lived.
(2) All particular long-lived things (men, horses, mules, and others) are bileless.
By conversion of (2): (3) All things bileless are particular long-lived things (men, horses, mules, and others).
By (1) and (3): (4) All things bileless are long-lived.

Aristotle justified the earlier conversion by surveying the particulars in his sample; he now justifies this expanded conversion by means of induction.

Ingeniously, McCaskey remarks that the justification lies somewhere else, outside of this paragraph; Aristotle isn’t saying that he’s justified in extending his argument to all particulars because of the list of long-lived things surveyed in the earlier argument. (Contrary to the conventional interpretation.) “He is saying that because of some induction performed elsewhere, he is justified in claiming that not only are all particular long-lived things bileless (2), but that every particular thing (or kind of thing) that is bileless is also long-lived (3).”

The question then is: what would justify premise 3? Premise 3 would be justified if Aristotle believed that lacking bile was the essential cause of longevity in all animals; if this were the case, then the conversion would be valid, and the universal statement (premise 4) would be true. This relates back to what Aristotle said about triangles, to the fact that knowing something to be true of all triangles does not make it valid to conclude that it applies to triangles as triangles: justifying the conclusion would require identifying the essential nature of the universal’s subject. And this, identifying the essential cause of something being the kind of thing it is, is what Aristotle believes induction is, as McCaskey’s survey of his works has persuasively argued. As McCaskey points out, “It was an ancient view that lack of bile was the essential cause of longevity in animals, and Aristotle agreed. That belief is the step that Aristotle presumed we knew, and that he presumed we knew was a discovery reached by induction.” [page 59-60]

(Aristotle affirms that lack of bile was the essential cause of longevity in animals in Parts of Animals, book 4, chapter 2, lines 677a30-35. He calls bile a “purifying excretion,” in one translation, suggesting that its leaving the body extended the health of animals.)

A “deduction from induction,” then, utilizes the same syllogistic figure and is validated by the same law of conversion as the earlier deduction from a surveyed list, but the justification for the conversion itself is understanding that the universal statement is valid for all the particulars due to their essential nature. What’s important to know here is that “(4) All things bileless are long-lived.” is not the inductive generalization, but rather is the deductive conclusion. “Induction operates in the premises, not in the conclusion,” as McCaskey aptly remarks.

Aristotle is not here arguing for an inductive generalization, but rather is demonstrating that once one knows the premises by induction, it is possible to then form a syllogism, a deduction from induction; the induction here does the work that a middle term does in a deduction-from-a-middle. The third paragraph said that the second was about a “deduction from induction,” in which a deductive conclusion results from an induction operating in the premises, and if read correctly (McCaskey’s interpretation), that is what the second paragraph is about.

If McCaskey’s revision is correct, then PrA 2.23 is not about an induction being proved by complete enumeration, or that an induction can be changed into a deduction by assuming that men, horses, and mules are the only bileless and long-lived animals that exist. It has nothing to do with coming to an inductive conclusion whatsoever.

As to what PrA 2.23 actually is about, I‘ll let McCaskey have the last words, as I don‘t think I can put the point any better myself:

[The passage in PrA 2.23] is about the reason and method by which inductive conclusions, once reached, can provide the premises for syllogisms. The reason they can be is that conclusions reached inductively are universal. They apply to all particulars of a kind, not just those surveyed in performing the induction. The method by which they can be is the swapping of subject and predicate by conversion.

Such conversion is the goal of identifying essence. If one can determine by Socratic induction that the essence of being the best is having the most knowledge, then one can convert ‘All men who are the best in a profession are the ones who have the most knowledge of that profession’ with ‘All men who have the most knowledge of that profession are the best in that profession.’ If, as in the Metaphysics, it can be claimed that contrariety is the maximum difference of two ends of a continuum, then ‘contrariety’ and ‘maximum difference of two ends of a continuum’ can be interchanged in a syllogistic premise. Induction, for Aristotle, is a process by which such equivalences can be reached, and thus premises for deductions generated. [p. 61]

Comments would be appreciated.

Introduction to Induction: What is Induction and Why Study It?

2009-09-14T06:31:00.000-07:00

The aim of this essay is to give a preliminary statement about what induction is, and to present reasons why we should be interested in figuring out the answer.

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Aristotle's "Two" Views on Induction: McCaskey's Resolution (Part 2)

2009-09-13T16:42:00.000-07:00

In part 1, I explained that Aristotle is currently understood to have advocated two conflicting views on induction. I said that the interpretation of him adopting enumerative induction is the far more popular interpretation, despite the understandable confusion that results from anyone reading Prior Analytics 2.23 (PrA 2.23). I also said that John McCaskey has found an approach which does away with the popular “enumerative inductivist” interpretation. In addition, it gives even more support to the conclusion that Aristotle, when talking about induction, is almost always referring to the induction presented in his Topics and Posterior Analytics 2.19. Lastly, I said that this approach also presents to us how inductions become the general premises for deductions (syllogisms). Let us now turn to this approach.

Criticism of the Conventional Interpretation

Returning to something I said in part 1, the conventional interpretation of Aristotelian induction is that it is validated by complete enumeration of cases, that it is just a kind of deduction, and that its applicability doesn’t extend beyond the particulars which originally formed the induction. Are these claims really substantiated by all that Aristotle has to say on induction? McCaskey would say "no," and proceeds to show us why through the majority of his dissertation’s first chapter and in his essay "Freeing Aristotelian Epagōgē from Prior Analytics II 23."

In general, McCaskey proceeds through every use of the word “induction” (epagōgē) in the known Aristotelian works, beginning with passages whose overall meaning is clear, and proceeding to the more confusing ones; this method allows us to learn about the meaning of induction by understanding the passage. For instance, McCaskey begins his journey through the 96 uses of “induction” in the Topics, book 1, chapter 12, lines 105a10-19, in which four claims are clearly made about induction:

[Induction] (1) is different from and a counterpart to deduction, (2) is a proceeding from particulars to a universal, (3) results in a universal generalization that extends beyond the particulars that went into its formation, and (4) is generally easier for people to grasp than deduction. [McCaskey, “Regula Socratis,” page 23]

These four claims about induction are repeated multiple times throughout Aristotle’s works, and make it highly doubtful that he would suddenly adopt a view of induction that contradicts one or more of these claims, as would be the case if the conventional understanding of PrA 2.23 is correct. Indeed, McCaskey uses this survey of “induction” to not only elucidate the meaning of the concept “induction,” but also to point out how erroneous the conventional interpretation must be.

Two of his counter-arguments to the conventional view should suffice before I move on to his revisionary interpretation of PrA 2.23.

(1) McCaskey notes that in the vast majority of Aristotle’s inductive arguments, the particulars subsumed in the generalizations are countless and cannot be enumerated successfully before making the generalization, such as his argument that what makes someone the “best” in a profession is their knowledge (in the Topics) or his argument about the nature of goodness I mentioned in part 1. Aristotle never presents (and defends) a completely enumerated list of cases and forms an inductive generalization from them, nor states that an induction can only apply to the cases enumerated and not, for instance, presently unobserved cases.

(2) In Posterior Analytics 1.5, Aristotle gives possibly his only example of a complete enumeration. As McCaskey summarizes it:

He says that knowing something to be true of scalene, isosceles, and equilateral triangles is not sufficient for knowing it to be true of triangles qua triangles [as in their essential nature]. It may be known of each triangle taken singly, but not of triangles ‘primitively and universally,’ not ‘of triangles as [triangles].’” [McCaskey, page 46]

Here, there should have been a perfect case for a defense of enumerative induction, which Aristotle supposedly supports according to the conventional interpretation, and yet Aristotle flat out denies that something can truly be known about triangles by considering each individual triangle--the very method that an enumerative inductivist would be forced to use by his own doctrine. Here, he suggests that truly knowing something about triangles has something to do with identifying the essence of triangles, rather than completely enumerating cases. This gives support to the other interpretation of induction, because it is closely related to the inductive arguments in Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Physics, and Eudemian Ethics that strongly suggest that induction is a tool for identifying the essence or nature of something.

McCaskey has several more counter-arguments in his arsenal, but none more powerful than his reinterpretation of PrA 2.23, the key passage cited in support of the enumerative induction interpretation.

The Justification for Induction--Or Lack of It

2009-09-07T05:50:00.000-07:00

‘If we demand a proof for everything, he [Aristotle] had said, ‘we shall never be able to prove anything, since we shall not have a starting point for any proof. Certain things are obviously true and do not require proof.’

‘Prove it,’ his nephew Callisthenes had said. Aristotle was glad Callisthenes had gone off with Alexander. He was not sorry to learn he’d been killed.

Obviously, Aristotle saw, it is impossible to prove that anything is obviously true.

Even that.

He enjoyed the paradox. [Joseph Heller, Picture This, 1988, p. 288]

In my first post, I said that I had two misgivings about whether a theory or method of induction could be successfully presented; the point of this post is to discuss one of these misgivings.

The issue is: does induction need a justification?

A “justification” is a conclusive reason (or a number of such reasons) for believing that something is proper or warranted. So, if there are conclusive reasons for believing that induction (as a cognitive process employed by us) is proper/warranted, does the process of induction need such reasons? Presently, I don’t think that induction needs a justification, and will now explain why.

Perhaps the best way to make my point is through analogy. With that thought in mind, let’s look at a few examples, starting with Aristotle’s “Principle of Non-contradiction.” (Hereafter, “Principle of Non-contradiction” is shortened to PNC.)

Aristotle’s “Principle of Non-Contradiction”

The PNC has several features, among them is that it states that two opposite assertions cannot be true at the same time: that this is impossible. (See Metaphysics Book 4, Chapter 6, 1011b13-20) For instance, one can state that “this bird is looking at me,” and alternatively state that “this bird is not looking at me,” but cannot state both assertions as happening at the same time in some way as to make it true. The combination of both claims would be ascribing a predicate (“looking at a particular person, that is, ‘me’”) and ascribing the very opposite of that predicate (“not looking at me”) to the same subject (the bird) at the same time, which is no different from ascribing nothing at all to a subject; cognitively, it is no different from refraining from making any assertion at all.

Someone, perhaps a skeptic of knowledge or someone unacquainted with Aristotle’s metaphysics or theory of logic, could ask the question: what justifies the PNC? Why is it the case that two contradictory assertions cannot be true at the same time? The attempt to then justify why this is would lead to predicating certain features as belonging to the PNC, like some noteworthy point about “contradictions,” or some fact about the human mind or reason. At the same time, however, in the very attempt of asserting these predicates of the PNC, the person is utilizing the PNC (perhaps unknowingly): in using these predicates to justify the PNC, he does not intend to assert that these predicates are true of the PNC and do not belong to the PNC at the same and in the same respect.

Aristotle regarded the PNC as axiomatic (as a starting point) for our very thoughts, as inescapable for anyone who chooses to think or use reasoning; as he says it, it is a principle which “is necessary for anyone to have who knows any of the things that are.” (Metaphysics Book 4, Chapter 3, 1005b15) Accordingly, he held that we can’t even engage in an argument without first accepting and relying on the PNC (if only tacitly if not explicitly). This reasoning, I’d like to point out, would apply to our purported justification for the PNC, since it, too, would be an argument.

The Justification of Perception

Another helpful example may be perception, whether or not our senses convey anything about reality, specifically about the external world. (Whether seeing, for instance, gives us any awareness of objects being seen, such as dogs, trees, or houses.)

A justification of perception would amount to a defense of our particular sense organs and sense-activities like seeing, hearing, and feeling. While someone could presumably try this, the resulting defense would contain an underlying fraud: it would assume the validity of the senses, even as it tries to justify them. The defense would argue that we should form our ideas of “touch,” “smell,” etc., from particular cases of touching and smelling, but the point at issue is whether we “touch” or “smell” anything at all.

The reason why a justification would be needed is that, for whatever reason, someone is unsure of whether they even have these senses. What the skeptical person needs is not a conceptual argument, which would be circular reasoning as I explained earlier, but perception. Nothing shows us that our senses are valid, besides the fact that they allow us to perceive; in losing senses, we also lose our ability to perceive, as people with normally functioning eyes discover when their eyes are damaged (through disease or some accident) and they become blind.

Now, let’s return to induction.

Can We Justify Induction?

To answer the question proposed by this section’s title, we need to turn once again to Aristotle. It was Aristotle who once aptly remarked that there are principally two ways of coming to have convictions (beliefs), two ways of reasoning or of argumentation: induction and deduction. If we were to suppose that induction required a justification, then the only two ways to provide such would be through inductive or deductive arguments.

The problem with the first approach--an inductive argument--is that it would consist of building from particular observations to piecemeal generalizations, presumably resulting in a universal, general account of induction. But the very issue at hand is whether such generalizing from particulars is valid in the first place. To utilize inductions to justify induction generally is to commit the “petitio principii,” the fallacy of “begging the question.”

On the other hand, defending induction by means of a deductive argument is impermissible because deductions can only justify non-ampliative inferences. Ampliation is our mental power of extending knowledge we already have to new cases, beyond the ones we originally used to gain that knowledge, and often leads to our possessing universal knowledge about some subject. A non-ampliative inference is one that doesn’t extend our knowledge, so to speak, but merely applies it to a new case or makes explicit something that was implicit in our argument’s premises (or thoughts).

An induction is principally an ampliative inference, and the supposed need to justify induction stems from this ampliative character; what justifies our purported knowledge of the future by means of our past knowledge, or our knowledge of the whole by means of our knowledge of some parts? What is the process of ampliation going on here, and how does it allow us to properly reason from observed cases to unobserved cases, from the past to the future, from particular areas of the world to the entirety of the universe? There is no general account of generalizing or of a universal kind of thinking from which one could produce a deductive argument about ampliation and induction--most likely because an account of induction would have to explain the role of “generalization,” “universal thinking,” and “ampliation” before deductions could be produced, and so would be just as questionable as induction, in this context.

So then what are we supposed to conclude?

I’ve maintained that induction can’t be justified through argument or reasoning, whether inductive or deductive. Rather than becoming an inductive skeptic, I ask that we return to Aristotle, specifically his point that our two ways of gaining conviction and reasoning are done by either induction or deduction. Inductions and deductions, we should come to realize, are our methods of justifying things, of coming to reach conclusions about things. By their peculiar nature, they can’t prove or justify themselves; they can’t be used to prove each other, and they can’t prove themselves (except in a trivial manner, such as “This is a man, therefore this is a man”). Rather, they are the starting points of the whole notion of justification: justification assumes the validity of induction and deduction, as these are the principal ways by which things can be justified at all, and this notion cannot be applied to them without sophistic results, such as circular reasoning. (Indeed, any attempt to prove a starting point or axiom must end in a trivial statement or circular reasoning, as Aristotle was the first to notice, see Posterior Analytics, Book 1, Chapter 3.)

I don’t think this reveals any problems with induction, as if the lack of justification reveals some hidden, underlying arbitrariness at the heart of inductive thinking. I’ve reached the conclusion that this isn’t the kind of thing that can be justified. To make the attempt results in either failing miserably, or in assuming that which one is attempting to prove, which amounts to the same thing as failing.

Conclusion

That said, I obviously don’t think that any and all inductions are therefore valid as a result, just as Aristotle’s thinking that there were “first principles” (starting points) of deductions didn’t lead him to conclude that all deductions were valid. There were proper and improper forms of deductions, and of using the syllogistic forms of demonstrations, he held, and carried out the Herculean task of explicating proper deductive thinking. There are proper and improper forms of inductions, of reaching generalizations, and of conducting the process of ampliation and abstraction, I hold. What we need is not a justification for induction, but a full-scale explication of what exactly induction is.

Concepts from an Objectivist Perspective, Part 3

2009-08-28T14:06:00.000-07:00

Part 1

Part 2

Unit-Economy, Words, and Definitions

In part 1, I said that concepts are typically represented or symbolized by words in a language. In addition, we typically have definitions for the words we use, or seek definitions when we don’t understand or need clarity on some idea or word.

But why is this? Do words and definitions serve some important purpose in our quest for knowledge? Or could we do without them? To answer these questions, we must understand an important fact about concepts, and about the human mind.

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Concepts from an Objectivist Perspective, Part 2

2009-08-25T05:41:00.000-07:00

Part 1

Differences, Similarities, and the Unit-perspective

As far as we know, other animals lack concepts, and even the ability to form them. While they have their own ways to perceive the world (some snakes see through processing infrared light, for instance), as we do, they cannot do anything more with their perceptions than act on them. Using sight and hearing, a lion can hunt and kill its prey, but cannot do something that we do all the time: in general, other animals cannot organize their perceptual field, the objects they deal with every day.

Animals notice that things around them exist and act in certain ways, but they cannot reach the next step: the recognition of similarities and differences among the identities of things. We’re able to notice that some things are completely different from each other. Birds have the characteristic of flight, but trees do not; we see objects in colors and shapes, but our thinking about our own thoughts lack such features; some things in the universe are life-forms, but other things possess no life processes. In observing the world, we can’t help but notice the plethora of features and characteristics that objects have (or don’t have).

However, we’re not restricted to only noting differences amongst things. We can also notice the ways in which things are similar, or are less different, in comparison with other things. In realizing that some things are alive and some things aren’t, we can then relate these living things as having a certain attribute in common, namely “life.” Some animals have legs and can run, making them similar in comparison to, say, snakes or snails that cannot run.

These two facts, our noticing of differences and similarities, points to another significant fact about the human mind: we’re able to group or classify things according to shared characteristics (flying, color, weight, speed, etc.), considering them as units or members of a group of similars. This is the “unit-perspective,” which Rand insists is the key or beginning of the conceptual level of consciousness.

A unit is an “existent regarded as a separate member of a group of two or more similar members.” [ItOE, p. 6] While perception allows us to become aware of certain characteristics of objects around us, such as appearing or feeling like they possess a certain length or a rough surface, the unit-perspective allows us to be aware of things as existing in certain relationships with other things due to their characteristics, whether the things being compared are different from or similar to each other. (I’ll note that the concept unit doesn’t apply only to perceptual objects, such as balls and dogs. Political systems and scientific theories can be units too, in relation to the concept theory for instance, but it’s important to realize here that our first units are of perceptual objects.)

As I said in part 1, concepts are things that relate certain knowledge as applying to a plethora of things that we’ve grouped together. Such a phenomena as a concept would be impossible if we didn’t group things together in the first place, if we didn’t regard things as units. Of special significance is the fact that, without a unit-perspective, we would not be to “count, measure, identify quantitative relationships [such as some object weighing 10 pounds]; [we] could not enter the field of mathematics.” [OPAR, p. 76]

This seeming coincidence is, as Rand argues, actually the means by which we can understand the connection between concept-formation and mathematics, and thus understand the nature of concepts themselves. “The process of concept-formation is, in large part, a mathematical process.” [Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, p. 7]

The point of the next section is to see why that is.

Measurement, and Measurement-omission

To truly understand concepts, we need to understand the mathematical idea of measurement, both what it is and the reason why we measure things.

In Rand‘s definition, measurement, “is the identification of a relationship--a quantitative relationship established by means of a standard that serves as a unit.” [Ayn Rand Lexicon entry: Measurement] Typically, measurement involves two things--the thing being measured, and the other thing which acts as the standard of measurement. By taking a foot as a standard of “length,” for instance, we can compare/measure other objects with it and determine if they are longer or shorter. A foot is itself a unit of length, so it can be used to measure other units of length and give us knowledge about certain attributes, specifically information about the magnitudes of various objects, whether of large or small magnitude. A similar process occurs when measuring weight, density, volume, time, and other units of measurements.

What’s important here is that the real purpose of measurement isn’t to simply relate objects that we deal with in everyday experience, but to expand the range of what we can consider and learn about beyond the perceptual level, beyond individual feet, or seconds which we can count. We can observe something that weighs one gram, for instance, but we can’t comprehend the weight of the Earth by merely looking at it; instead, we need to compare it to other objects that we can weigh and form new standards of measurement, such as a kilogram, which we can relate to a perceptual unit (the gram). Our perceptual field is the foundation and standard, and we relate our more sophisticated and abstract measurements to units that we can perceive with only our senses.

A similar thing happens when dealing with objects classed under a concept; the objects have the same characteristic (as we realize from observation), but differ in the exact quantities of these characteristics. Two birds may have the same characteristic “flight,” but may differ in certain quantities relating to flight, such as how high they can fly, how swift, how fast they can take off from the ground, and so on (for a striking comparison, look at eagles versus flamingos). Correspondingly, this will lead to differences in our measurements of these quantities. The world, we realize, is filled with objects which have the same characteristics, but differ in various ways in regard to the particular quantities of such characteristics or features, and our measurements will differ when relating these objects to our units of measurement.

To form concepts, we retain the characteristic, but omit our measurements of the various quantities of things’ characteristics. To form the concept flight, we specify the relevant characteristics (a self-propulsion through a certain medium, pushing against the force of gravity, etc.), but omit/not specify the particular measurements of these characteristics (for instance, the kind of atmosphere, the speed of propulsion, the instruments being used to fly, the amount of gravity being counter-acted). We must be careful to recognize that in “omitting” measurements, we’re not pretending that they don’t exist: without measurements, there is no one relating the quantities of things, and thus no comparisons which would lay the groundwork for forming a given concept. Instead, the “principle is: the relevant measurements must exist in some quantity, but may exist in any quantity.” [Ayn Rand Lexicon entry: Concept-Formation]

This “some-but-any” principle, known formally in Objectivism as “measurement-omission,” is the process of abstraction. Omitting the particular measurements from our consideration of a given characteristic is the same process as abstracting a feature from the particular circumstances we observed it in (or originally thought about it being in). In omitting measurements, we’re able to determine the characteristics that a group of things have in common (or do not), and thus apply knowledge gained about this characteristic to all the instances or particulars included in the (future) concept, regardless of any irrelevant circumstances or measurements carried out.

Thus, we come to Rand’s definition of the concept concept, and simultaneously a single-sentence summary of her theory of concepts. A concept, in her definition, is “a mental integration of two or more units possessing the same distinguishing characteristic(s), with their particular measurements omitted.” [Ayn Rand Lexicon entry: Concepts]

Now that we’ve discussed the nature of abstraction, we can learn about how concepts are completed, which is the purpose of the third (and final) part of this series.

Part 3

Concepts from an Objectivist Perspective, Part 1

2009-08-24T03:14:00.000-07:00

As I said in my first post, I’m an Objectivist interested in understanding induction, and in sharing what I find out with others. I’m aware that there’s a connection between induction and concepts, as I discussed in my post The Importance of Concepts for Bacon. So I’d like to briefly discuss concepts as they are presented in my philosophy, Objectivism. In doing so, I hope to show that it is a persuasive account that others should adopt (if they haven’t already), and that it has important implications for the subject of induction. (Implications that may have to wait for another time, unfortunately.)

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The Importance of Concepts for Bacon

2009-08-10T14:20:00.000-07:00

Though Bacon adopted the term notion, he took discussion of it in a new direction. [McCaskey, “Regula Socratis,” 239]

Since about April of this year, if someone had asked what was Francis Bacon’s most important concept in his philosophy, I would’ve replied “‘induction’ , of course.” It wasn’t until reading Dr. John McCaskey’s Regula Socratis that I decided to change my mind. I’ve decided that the word “notion” is the most important for Bacon. The following is my summary of Bacon’s approach to knowledge in light of reading McCaskey’s dissertation.

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Aristotle's "Two" Views of Induction: McCaskey's Resolution (Part 1)

2009-08-03T12:45:00.000-07:00

In my studies of Objectivism and Aristotle, I’ve always thought that I understood what I was reading about and contemplating afterward. One of the exceptions to that understanding was my extended reading of Aristotle’s concept of “induction.”

My earlier note, “Aristotle on Induction,” was really one interpretation of his position, supported by the vast majority of Aristotle’s use of the term “induction” (epagōgē) in his known works. What I didn’t include in that note was the alternative view, the contemporary and dominant view, defended chiefly by citing Prior Analytics, book 2, chapter 23 (PrA 2.23); an account which seemingly presents an entirely different, even contradictory, view of induction than what is presented in Aristotle’s other works (and even the understanding of induction presented within the first paragraph of that 23rd chapter ). Upon reading this chapter, I wrote in my MS Word document for Aristotle notes: “I have problems with the view that Aristotle thought induction required ‘complete enumeration of instances’; it only definitely shows up twice, and isn’t consistent with his other statements on induction.” I simply could not connect this position on induction with, for instance, the views of induction presented in his Topics or Rhetoric.

Philosopher John McCaskey, in the first chapter of his unpublished dissertation “Regula Socratis: The Rediscovery of Ancient Induction in Early Modern England,” attempts to reconcile these two conflicting views by arguing that one position is actually Aristotle‘s position, and that the other position is simply a misunderstanding and misreading of Aristotle.

Before discussing the resolution, let’s review the details of these differing views on induction.

The Two Interpretations

McCaskey notes that the term “epagōgē” (induction) appears 96 times in Aristotle’s known works. The first interpretation, the one McCaskey accepts (along with a very few others in the history of philosophy, including myself), can be understood by reading the majority of those 96 uses of “induction.” It is primarily presented in the Topics, Rhetoric, and Posterior Analytics 2.19. This interpretation is summarized as follows:

Induction is a form of reasoning that moves from particular instances and rises to general and universal knowledge. It is founded on sense-perception and memory: from our senses and memories we gain experience, and from these experiences we gain universal knowledge via induction. The application of an induction extends beyond the particulars that were used in its formation, meaning that induction is an open-ended process, rather than limited to the two or three particulars that were used to form the inductive generalization. It is different from deduction, and a counterpart to that other form of reasoning. More precisely, induction is the fundamental method of reasoning in comparison to deduction, because it supplies the premises for deductions. Induction gets its force or legitimacy from the similarity of particulars, not their number. Lastly, induction is a tool for making conceptual generalizations by identifying the essential nature of things (this last from McCaskey, page 35 of the PDF).

A great example in support of this interpretation of induction is Aristotle’s comment on goodness (aretē), in the Eudemian Ethics. There, he states that it is “the best disposition or state or faculty of each class of things that have some use or work.” He then gives us reason to believe that he has identified the nature of goodness by using the example of a coat’s goodness, which belongs to a coat in virtue of it carrying out its particular function or use. The inductive generalization about goodness states the essence of the subject: what makes “goodness” the kind of thing it is; is open-ended in that it extends to all kinds of particulars that have uses (not simply the one coat or house that could be used to form this induction); points out the element of similarity which justifies the induction (things having particular functions or uses); and is related to sensory data and memories about things having various functions.

The second interpretation on Aristotelian induction has been supported by the majority of philosophers who have commented on Aristotle, including contemporaries such as philosopher of science John D. Norton. (Norton has originated a “material theory of induction,” and thinks that Aristotle supports the enumerative induction viewpoint (page 3 of the PDF).) It is supported by eight of the 12 uses of the term “induction” in the two-book Prior Analytics, specifically (PrA 2.23).

In this interpretation, induction is a kind of deduction that is validated by complete enumeration of cases. It cannot extend beyond the particulars used in forming the generalization, and if it does not include all of them then it is invalid. It is primarily a matter of deducing a property (major extreme) or feature to belong to all the particulars of a class (middle term) by arguing that the same property belongs to one or some of the class’s particulars (the minor extreme). This is then perfected by adding “etc.” or “and these are all the particulars.”

PrA 2.23 has baffled students of Aristotle and commentators alike, while at the same time it has been regarded as the chief chapter on Aristotelian induction. In the first paragraph, Aristotle states his often-repeated claim that there are two kinds of ways of having convictions: induction and deduction. In the very next sentence, the start of the second paragraph, he seems to contradict this by claiming that induction really is just a type of deduction.

McCaskey’s resolution of this dilemma not only clears Aristotle’s name from the list of enumerative inductivists, but also teaches us the process by which induction supplies the premises for deductions.

I’ll cover the approach of McCaskey’s resolution in Part 2.

Rand on Concepts, Relation to Induction (Part 1)

2009-07-27T04:11:00.000-07:00

In her Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (ItOE), Rand presents a theory of concepts, which describes what concepts are (as opposed to what they are not) and how they are properly formed (and how they are improperly formed). A concept, Rand maintains, is a “mental integration of two or more units possessing the same distinguishing characteristic(s), with their particular measurements omitted.” (ItOE, 2nd Edition, p. 13)

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Bacon's "More Certain and Guarded Method" of Induction

2009-07-12T18:33:00.000-07:00

"[...]our determination is that of trying, whether we can lay a firmer foundation, and extend to a greater distance the boundaries of human power and dignity."[Bacon, New Instrument, Book 1, Aphorism 116]

"Our only hope, then, is in genuine induction."[ibid., Aphorism 14. See here: The Ideas that Have Influenced Civilization, in the Original Documents]

Francis Bacon (1561-1626) was the first modern philosopher of science, and was instrumental in the development of what we now call the “scientific method.” Here are the essentials of his method of induction, which unfortunately was never completed.

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Induction's Bad Reputation

2009-07-12T18:25:00.000-07:00

[Originally posted on Facebook]

In my note "Aristotle on Induction," commenter Brian Tinker raised a good question:

Given what you and [Edwin] Locke [in this paper] have said about induction, why does it have such a bad reputation?

I think some of its bad reputation is earned: a very small part, that is. Let me explain.

Most people understand induction to be "by enumeration." Something like: "All the enumerated cases of swans I've observed are white, therefore all of them are white," or "the sun has always risen, therefore it will rise tomorrow (and the next day, etc.)."

Philosopher Bertrand Russell gives another example, through parable, of "induction by enumeration" in his book The History of Western Philosophy, page 543. The parable begins: A census officer is questioning homeowners in a village, all of whom seemed to have the same name, William Williams. Finally, the officer decides that every homeowner in the village is named William Williams (an enumerative induction), records the names, and takes a holiday. But he was mistaken: there was one man named John Jones who owned a home there, but the officer had missed him.

This means that the induction is faulty, and illustrates the problem--that inductions by enumeration are never certain; one counter-example can ruin even the strongest of inductive generalizations.

Francis Bacon, the first modern philosopher of science, points out the basic problems with enumerative induction (criticism which I agree wholeheartedly with):

The induction which proceeds by simple enumeration is puerile, leads to uncertain conclusions, and is exposed to danger from one contradictory instance, deciding generally from too small a number of facts, and those only the most obvious. [Bacon, Novum Organum (New Instrument), Book 1, Aphorism 105.]

Bacon summarizes why most philosophers (in my opinion) denigrate induction, and why it has a bad reputation. Since what he points out about enumerative induction is true, it is my reason for thinking some of induction's bad reputation is earned.

Also, I agree with Dr. Leonard Peikoff's comments on enumerative induction:

Induction in my judgment is not in any sense a matter of quantity. There's a type of induction called induction by simple enumeration, which means induction simply by enumerating or counting instances. [...]Now, I regard quantity as such as insignificant. It entirely depends on what happens to that quantity, which can be a good suggestive beginning if you see something happening. What happens when you integrate it with everything else you know that's relevant? (Art of Thinking, Lecture 2)

While enumerating cases can be instructive in forming ideas, noting similarities and differences, and in figuring out how rare or widespread a certain phenomena may be (say, meteoroid impacts), I think it's a poor candidate for valid inductive thinking.

Aristotle on Induction

2009-07-12T18:15:00.000-07:00

[I'll reference any relevant Aristotle material at the bottom of this note, as it took a bit of digging through his works to find what I managed to find here.]

According to Aristotle, Socrates is the first person known to discuss induction and general definitions:

...for two things may be fairly ascribed to Socrates—inductive arguments and universal definition, both of which are concerned with the starting-point of science [knowledge])...[Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book XIII, Chapter 4, 1078b25-30]

Induction is the foundational reasoning activity, and is built upon sense-perception. More specifically, induction is (following Socrates's practice) reasoning from particular cases or individuals to general or universal knowledge.

An example would be forming the concept "animal": we can observe with our senses the similarities among individual species (humans, dogs, mules, etc.) and how different they are from both inanimate objects and other life-forms which don't seem to be conscious (plants would largely be our data for this conclusion)--all of this could eventually lead to forming the concept "animal" through induction. (In addition, it might lead to concepts such as "consciousness," "awareness" "life," "mobility" and concepts of particular animal species.)

Relatedly, he thought that induction is part of the means of forming general concepts ("genus") and, from there, building even more generalized concepts utilizing the knowledge gained from the earlier-formed ones. An example Aristotle gives is the inductive forming of the genus "animal" from the various animal species, and this kind of reasoning being the first leads to the formation of an even wider generalization; in our current case, we can integrate plants and microscopic lifeforms with our knowledge of the "animal" genus into a wider genus "organism." Regarding induction and concept-formation, Edwin Locke summarizes Aristotle's position this way:

His view was that one groups entities according to their perceived similarities and identifies their essential characteristics, the essence of a kind ... [t]his included the formulation of definitions based on genus and differentia [a genus--integrating the concept into a wider category—and a differentia—differentiating the concept from other existents in that genus, namely, man is the rational animal—meaning he is the animal who has the capacity to reason].

[Edwin Locke, The Case for Inductive Theory Building, Journal of Management, Vol. 33, No. 6, page 870 and 881 in brackets (2007)]

Lastly, as I noted earlier, Aristotle believed that induction was the basic or founding rational activity; the other main reasoning process, deductive thinking, was held to be a product of inductive thinking. Induction was thus logically prior to deduction, as it supplied the premises from which one could deduce.

References

On perception as validly giving knowledge/experience of reality:
On the Soul (Latin: De Anima), Book II, Chapters 6-12, and Book III, chapter 3, 427b27-428a18.
In the latter chapter, Aristotle even notes: "for perception of the special objects of sense [like "color" for the sense of sight] is always free from error, and is found in all animals..." (427b11-13) Also, his biological treatises, such as History of Animals (Historia Animalium) and Parts of Animals (De Partibus Animalium), are filled with evidence that he affirmed sense-perception as a means of knowing reality.

Induction as the foundational form of reasoning:
Rhetoric (Ars Rhetorica), Book II, chapter 20, 1939a25-27.

Induction as based on sense-perception, and as reasoning from "particulars" to "general":
Topics (Topica), Book I, chapter 12.

Induction and concept-formation:
Posterior Analytics (Analytica Posteriora), Book II, chapter 19, 100b1-5.

Induction, as supplying premises used in deductive thinking and argument:
Posterior Analytics, Book 2, chapter 19, 100b3-5, when compared with Book I, chapter 3, 72b23-29.

P.S. Chapter 1 of McCaskey's dissertation goes in-depth into Aristotle's conception of induction, so my summary here may be expanded in the future if I learn of anything significant in this different account.

First Suggestion for Induction

2009-07-12T17:59:00.000-07:00

In a dissertation by Dr. John McCaskey that I'm currently reading, it is noted that Aristotle appears to know exactly what induction is whenever he discusses it in his works. Aristotle,

never suggests that his theory of induction is problematic, complicated, or controversial. He never presents a catalog of competing theories of induction (as he frequently does for other matters), never says there are multiple ways of understanding induction, never says he will consider a kind of induction different from that usually discussed, never even explains fully what induction is." (Page 17 of "Regula Socratis: The Rediscovery of Ancient Induction in Early Modern England." Available for free viewing here: http://johnmccaskey.com/Dissertation.pdf

In short, Aristotle was neither confounded by induction nor ignorant as to what its practice consisted of. On the contrary, readers of Aristotle are told in his work Topics that "[w]hat sort of thing induction is, is obvious."

One day, I would like to have that level of confidence in my understanding of induction, even if it will probably differ from that of Aristotle's. In fact, we should all strive to achieve his level of understanding.

My first suggestion then for induction is to gain some basic knowledge of it from everyday life, and use this knowledge to become more familiar with its basic method, to make it more obvious. Taking an alternative approach, such as immersing oneself in the heated philosophical controversies over the issues of induction, might leave one bewildered by--and unprepared for--the many variants of the method that now exist.

To conclude, I suppose I'll give a rough definition of what induction basically is, the very one that Aristotle thought was obvious: a kind of reasoning that moves from particular cases or instances to general or universal knowledge about those kind of particulars.

Next, I offer what I think Aristotle says on induction.

First Post

2009-07-12T17:42:00.000-07:00

I suppose introductions are in order.

I'm Roderick Fitts, and this is my blog, Inductive Quest.

As far as personal info:

I'm an Airman First Class (E-3) in the U.S. Air Force, and before that I attended (and dropped out of) the University of Michigan. I was formerly a philosophy major and am still very interested in the field; in fact, philosophy is my main motivation for creating this blog.

I consider myself an Objectivist, meaning that I understand and agree with the principles articulated in Ayn Rand's philosophy. My other philosophical influences are Aristotle, Francis Bacon, and John Locke.

I've studied the philosophy for about 3 years now, and I'm a sophomore student of the Objectivist Academic Center (currently on hiatus). The OAC has been a great place to enhance my understanding of the philosophy, and I highly recommend it for others who would like to learn about it (and other philosophies) from highly trained professors.

Why the title "Inductive Quest":

I named my blog "Inductive Quest" because I'm determined to understand induction, both its proper and improper forms, as much as possible--even to the point of developing my own theory. I have two misgivings about whether or not a theory of induction can successfully be presented, which I plan to discuss sometime in a future post.

For now, I want to know the features of induction. This has led me to read a number of philosophers in ways I haven't done previously, and I think most of my posts will be my reflections on what I've learned.

Also, expect posts pertaining to the philosophy of Objectivism, since I'm still learning about the philosophy (though I do consider myself somewhat advanced) and will want to discuss some elements of it every once in a while. I'll also write about the philosophy because understanding it regularly involves implementing inductive thinking; though I haven't listened to it yet, this seems to be the main point of Dr. Leonard Peikoff's "Objectivism Through Induction" series of lectures.

Lastly, I'll probably post anything I have in mind about rationalism and empiricism, and other topics in epistemology, as I've been more interested in that branch of philosophy than any other field.

I hope you, the reader, enjoy!