A Second Proof that "Reason is Man's Means of Survival"

[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 fields 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 unite 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"

[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

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

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.

Part 6: Tolerance

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

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

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.