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Comments |
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 | Thursday, March 5, 2009 at 12:01:12 mst
Comment ID: #1
Name: Nicholas Provenzo
E-mail: nprovenzo(at)capitalismcenter.org
URL: http://www.capitalismcenter.org
Congratulations to Diana on a successful event and my thanks to Michael Huemer for his participation. What Diana and Noumenalself describe is a great situation and I fully agree that we should be grateful that Objectivist ideas are being engaged on such a level. |
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| Thursday, March 5, 2009 at 12:19:59 mst
Comment ID: #2
Name: PMB
I'm curious: for those who think that Onkar could have blasted MH's examples quickly, what would they have said instead? |
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| Thursday, March 5, 2009 at 12:57:44 mst
Comment ID: #3
Name: Derek
E-mail: t-vc15(at)live.com
I think what Onkar should have said is something similar to the wisdom of Confucius in the analects:
Tsze-Kung asked, saying, “Is there one word which may serve as a rule of practice for all one's life?”
The Master said, “Is not Reciprocity such a word? What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.”
So, when MH asks the question: "if self-interest is our standard, then he doesn't see how, logically speaking, our self-interest alone could rule out exploiting/killing other people."
The Objectivist merely replies that it is in his own self interest not to have it done to himself and, being a Capitalist, no force is to be used in human relationships, etc.
Finally, when MH suggests: "the problem of accounting for how the interests of others fit into our self-interest is probably the hardest problem for the Objectivist ethics."
The answer is reciprocity. In my own self interest I would not do to others that which I do not want done to myself. Reciprocity is in my self-interest. |
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| Thursday, March 5, 2009 at 13:18:20 mst
Comment ID: #4
Name: Kevin Clark
"...if self-interest is our standard, then he doesn't see how, logically speaking, our self-interest alone could rule out exploiting/killing other people."
Isn't our standard *rational* self-interest not just self-interest improperly defined. Rational self-interest has a context to it and that is the long term interest of human being living as a trader in society over the course of his entire lifetime. There is alot built in to that and it needs to be parsed out, which I think Rand mostly did. |
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| Thursday, March 5, 2009 at 13:20:23 mst
Comment ID: #5
Name: Jared Seehafer
E-mail: jared(at)seehafer.net
Thank you, Diana, for putting on this event and posting the recording online. You mention your disagreements with the "epistemological foundation" of Dr. Huemer's criticisms. I was surprised by how much even this short debate revealed the connection between epistemology and ethics. Near the conclusion, when Dr. Huemer mentioned that his standard of what "seems true" applied not only to ethical questions but all knowledge, I saw his argument and the progression of his logic in a much clearer light. Great stuff. |
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| Thursday, March 5, 2009 at 15:18:20 mst
Comment ID: #6
Name: Sidney August Cammeresi IV
E-mail: sac(at)cheesecake.org
I agree with what Mrs Hsieh and Noumenalself said. Dr Huemer was a worthy opponent, and he represented Objectivism honestly. His objections sounded honest, and they are legitimate given that the short amount of time both speakers had did not allow for much explanation. I do not agree with what he said, but I think moral condemnation on philosophic grounds--which I'm not saying occurred as I only skimmed the linked discussion--should be reserved for those certain people who demonstrably know better and choose wrong ideas anyway. I think, as one person said during the question period, that more debates like this would be great. |
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| Thursday, March 5, 2009 at 18:26:14 mst
Comment ID: #7
Name: Kevin Morrill
E-mail: kevin_morrill(at)hotmail.com
URL: http://netprofitmotive.com
I wish I could have been there. I will definitely be checking out the recording. Thank you for putting this together Diana! |
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| Thursday, March 5, 2009 at 19:11:50 mst
Comment ID: #8
Name: Jennifer Snow
E-mail: Snowconic(at)hotmail.com
URL: http://literatrix.blogspot.com
Wow, what a coincidence, a friend of mine posted today on his blog about Objectivism (http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=2385) and I took it upon myself to monitor the comments as well as I could and take a shot at clearing up misunderstanding and point people toward the direction of solving the conflicts they perceive in Objectivism. I think I did a really good job (not a professional one, but it was a really great discussion and lots of good valid points were raised).
I have to agree with Diana that a rational, interested, serious opponent is an absolute TREASURE to any kind of activist or serious thinker. Their willing participation gives you so much more scope for broadening your understanding and for exposing the issues. |
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| Thursday, March 5, 2009 at 19:17:38 mst
Comment ID: #9
Name: Doug A.
URL: http://darkwatersblogs.blogspot.com
Diana, thank you taking the time to organize this wonderful event, especially since you are still finishing your dissertation! In addition, thank you for highlighting Noumenalself's insightful comments.
After listening to the audio, I too agree that Dr. Huemer is an intellectually honest and worthy opponent. Dr. Huemer evidently respected Objectivism enough to challenge it with serious arguments, as opposed to relying on snide dismissals or sarcastic quips. I think it is a very positive sign for the future of the culture that Ayn Rand's ethics is being debated between two respectable intellectuals at a considerable philosophy department. |
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| Thursday, March 5, 2009 at 20:23:41 mst
Comment ID: #10
Name: John F. Schmidley
E-mail: Sarrisan98(at)Gmail.com
I would just like to apologize one last time for my snide remark in the last post about this subject -- I see, after listening to the debate, that I was very wrong about Dr. Huemer. While I think he was very, very wrong, he was certainly not dishonest. He even encouraged the audience members to read more for themselves, both of Ayn Rand and himself.
Objectivism has had, and still contends with, far worse opponents than this. I think that if everyone gave Objectivism the kind of respect Dr. Huemer displayed here, academics would be in a far better position than it seems to be right now. |
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| Thursday, March 5, 2009 at 20:57:45 mst
Comment ID: #11
Name: Spoudaios
Derek proposed "The Objectivist merely replies that it is in his own self interest not to have it done to himself and, being a Capitalist, no force is to be used in human relationships, etc." and "The answer is reciprocity. In my own self interest I would not do to others that which I do not want done to myself. Reciprocity is in my self-interest. "
This isn't really enough to answer the question. Just because it's not in one's interest to be killed doesn't automatically lead to the conclusion that one shouldn't kill others. Why *shouldn't* I not do to others that which I would not want done to myself? The word "reciprocity" doesn't answer this. |
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| Thursday, March 5, 2009 at 23:10:12 mst
Comment ID: #12
Name: William H Stoddard
E-mail: whswhs(at)mindspring.com
URL: http://whswhs.livejournal.com/profile
I never found Nathaniel Branden's argument appealing to consistency . . . the one that says that you cannot claim a moral right to life or liberty unless you recognize other people as having moral rights to life and liberty . . . to be satisfactory. It looks too Kantian. My situation is that I am a living being, and I have the power to perform certain actions. I do not need a moral principle to justify or legitimize my acting to sustain my own life and pursue my own interests; rather, moral principles are tools that I use to do those things, and they are themselves justified only by being useful and effective tools. So I don't regard reciprocity as a primary value.
At one level, I can lead a better life by living under law than by living under lawlessness, given even a halfway decent legal code. Rights are a part of a legal code; I only have rights because there are legal institutions that define what those rights are and enforce them . . . without such institutions, no one has any rights. But once you start having the legal system treat other people's rights as optional, it's only a matter of time before it treats your rights as optional too. You can't simultaneously ask for the legal system to treat your rights as sacrosanct and ask for it to look the other way while you violate other people's rights; legal authorities who do that will look the other way while other people violate your rights, too. Dictators seldom sleep peacefully, even when they're masters of brutally oppressive states.
But at a different level, a pre-legal level, it's more effective to pursue one's own interests by giving other people incentives to do what you want or need, than by threatening them with penalties for denying you. People working for their own interests are better motivated and more productive than slaves. Even societies that had slaves usually found it advantageous to give slaves rewards for good work, and let them keep those rewards, and even let them save up to buy their freedom; and having all work motivated that way maximizes the benefit. The threat of punishment is useful for negative purposes, such as getting people to back away from harming or threatening you, or otherwise stop doing things; it doesn't work as well for positive purposes. This is visible both in the small, in personal relationships, and in the large, in the superior benefits of living in a market economy. Indeed, it's this very advantageousness of voluntary cooperation that makes it a sensible enterprise to have a legal system at all; if voluntary cooperation were not the most advantageous way to get benefits from other people, there wouldn't be much point to having a legal system in the first place.
This also comes back to Rand's idea that "there are no conflicts of interest among rational men." That's actually an old concept in ethics: ethical harmony, or the harmony of rightly understood interests. My understanding is that Plato's story of the Ring of Gyges was meant to illustrate this idea, showing that having the power to abuse other people with no fear of punishment was not a desirable thing and would not make the possessor happy. |
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| Thursday, March 5, 2009 at 23:19:58 mst
Comment ID: #13
Name: Dan G.
On the issue of why respecting others' rights is moral, there are two reasons that I've come up with. First is security, this one is easy, I think; you don't kill me, I don't kill you. This provides some value, but I think the biggest value comes from a concept that I picked up in my undergraduate economics course (macro, I think). Competitive advantage (i.e. the concept of why trade is valuable, and not a zero sum game). When I was introduced to this concept during a lecture, a rush of connections were made in my mind and it seemed like a good basis of the morality of civil society. I don't think that this is any different that the answers of "trade", I think that it is the concept *behind* how trade is beneficial/moral and how theft/murder is not beneficial/moral.
When I was running a campus club a couple of years ago, this topic came up frequently. I've been working on an essay about it for a little while (currently on hold) and would therefore appreciate any input.
I've yet to listen to the recording. How long will it be available? |
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| Thursday, March 5, 2009 at 23:27:58 mst
Comment ID: #14
Name: Dan G.
Me: "How long will it be available?" --Nevermind, I've downloaded it. |
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| Thursday, March 5, 2009 at 23:41:47 mst
Comment ID: #15
Name: Diana Hsieh
E-mail: diana(at)dianahsieh.com
URL: http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog
Thank you, John! |
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| Friday, March 6, 2009 at 0:41:15 mst
Comment ID: #16
Name: Mike Hardy
E-mail: (my last name) (at) math.umn.edu
> The Objectivist philosopher known
> as "Noumenalself" attended the debate.
What about the Artist Formerly Known As....
Oh, never mind...... |
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| Friday, March 6, 2009 at 8:49:10 mst
Comment ID: #17
Name: Alfred Centauri
E-mail: alfredcentauri(at)bellsouth.net
Diana:
Thanks so much for putting this together, bringing our attention to it, and linking the audio.
It happens that I've perused Dr. Huemer's website in the past and there read some of the points he presented in the debate. So, for some time now, I've been thinking about these issues and had hoped that the debate audio might address some of my questions I have about the arguments he (and others) use to 'show' that ethical egoism is false. Although some of my questions were answered, some were not addressed at all. Maybe you or some of your readers can offer some help.
As I understand it, ethical egoism is the prescription that one ought to do what is in one's self-interest. Now, it seems evident to me that this implies that, of all the actions available to an agent, ethical egoism prescribes that one ought to choose the action that is *most* in his self-interest. That is, if, according to the calculus of self-interest, he determines that action A benefits his interest greatly and that action B barely benefits his interest, it would be *immoral* to choose action B over A even though action B *does* benefit him.
If I understood Dr. Huemer correctly, he believes that we intuitively *know* that it is wrong to kill an innocent person and thus ethical egoism *must* be false if it indeed prescribes such a thing in some admittedly contrived circumstance.
However, if my understanding of ethical egoism is correct, that one ought to act to *maximize* one's self-interest, then Dr. Huemer's example of killing an innocent person for a net benefit of $1 asks us to accept the premise that, of *all* the actions available to the agent, the action of *maximum* benefit to himself is to kill an innocent person.
My question then is this: is the ethical egoism prescription to kill the innocent person actually *counter* to intuition in this case? That is, if we try to imagine the circumstances in which the maximum (true, long-term) benefit to one's self is to take an innocent life and then we test our intuition for this circumstance, is it true that it would be to *not* take the life? |
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| Friday, March 6, 2009 at 9:13:22 mst
Comment ID: #18
Name: Diana Hsieh
E-mail: diana(at)dianahsieh.com
URL: http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog
Billy, your comment was deleted, just as I said I would in my post. Go post that kind of worthless sniping on your own blog. It's not welcome here. |
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| Friday, March 6, 2009 at 9:23:59 mst
Comment ID: #19
Name: Tony
E-mail: tony.a.wright(at)gmail.com
I am not an Objectivist, but what I really like about this blog post is the openness and honestly with respect to the challenges that confront any philosopher in trying to substantiate his/her claims. It's always annoying when people make claims and then pretend that their truth is obvious to any rational person, and in no need of further support, and that anyone who doesn't accept this is just stupid or lying. And it's always refreshing (and, unfortunately, rare) to hear anyone say "X is a non-obvious point that will be difficult for a person of my persuasion to demonstrate; more work needs to be done." |
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| Friday, March 6, 2009 at 10:08:48 mst
Comment ID: #20
Name: Jeff Montgomery
E-mail: jamontgom(at)hotmail.com
URL: http://funwithgravity.blogspot.com/
That was a good debate (I listened to the MP3); it definitely lived up the name "Think!”
Not surprisingly, I did not find Huemer's case that convincing in terms of premises, or what makes a valid morality, although he was definitely on the ball logically (logical validity while assuming his premises). A few notes I made:
* Huemer seems to miss the role of abstract moral values in egoism. His test cases for egoism therefore inevitably centered on trivial short-term material concerns like whether you would keep your pants clean (!) vs. save a child from drowning. This is surprising because a good deal of The Virtue of Selfishness involves discussion of moral values and the critical role they play. The obvious answer to why an egoist might choose to save the child is that they value life per se, and egoism demands that they uphold that value and all their other values because life requires keeping such values; otherwise they are sacrificing that value (and certainly others) and losing moral integrity. These are things that Huemer did not seem to regard as part egoism. It always seemed to come back down to a trivial level like earning one dollar or having a clean pair of pants, which in the view of Objectivism, is the level of a moral sell-out and coward. Egosim, frankly, is more exalted than that.
* However, the more serious defect is that the test case itself predicates altruism as the standard for determining whether egoism is valid. In other words, it's not whether the adult lives a life of flourishing that mattered, but the child who has been put into an artificial situation waiting to be saved. Why? What warrants this bias? Basically, he has already assumed *his* intuited moral code to be valid before we start, by assuming that a true test of egoism is that it causes you to save people, because "that's what most people would regard as right" (I'm paraphrasing). But I don't think you can use the assumptions of one moral code to test the other; it begs the question of what the proper code should be in the first place, and why.
* I also think Huemer missed Ghate's point about using extreme cases. Ghate was not saying imaginary examples should not be used, but that the focus of morality should not be on emergency cases, and instead on how best to live our lives under normal conditions.
* I agree with Dr. Ghate that intuitionism is basically a way to persist the status quo. Frankly it seems to say little other than "this is what humanity is thinking and deciding about morality", and Huemer did not address Ghate's statement that this amounts to describing what we already believe, not what we should believe. |
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| Friday, March 6, 2009 at 11:44:17 mst
Comment ID: #21
Name: brian0918
E-mail: my handle, through gmail
"Huemer did not address Ghate's statement that this amounts to describing what we already believe, not what we should believe."
I found that confusing as well. Is Huemer saying that "what we already believe" is what we *should* believe? If not, of what does his whole theory consist? He doesn't appear to be interested in examining society or culture in detail, to find the roots of ethics and morality. He just has takes a simply tally, and calls that "what's moral". If that's all there is to it - which is what I took away from his speeches - then how did he write a whole book on that? |
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| Friday, March 6, 2009 at 12:46:44 mst
Comment ID: #22
Name: rrlv_frsh
I haven't had time so far to hear the debate myself, but there is a key point in the excerpt from Noumenalself that I can respond to at the outset.
Noumenalself states: Huemer "knows that Ayn Rand and Objectivists don't think rights-violation is consistent with Objectivism. He made it very clear that he knew this, and so he was not misrepresenting what we think. His point was that we are wrong to think of this as a logical implication of egoism: if self-interest is our standard, then he doesn't see how, logically speaking, our self-interest alone could rule out exploiting/killing other people. That's not a misrepresentation, but a disagreement about whether our view has a particular logical implication. [Self-interest alone??]
"And, it's a hard point to establish that egoism doesn't have this implication. [...]
"To give one last point of credit to Huemer: the problem of accounting for how the interests of others fit into our self-interest is probably the hardest problem for the Objectivist ethics."
This is completely backwards. Objectivism does not say that egoism is the standard of value or the starting point for Objectivist ethics. Objectivism holds that *reason* is man's basic means of cognition and survival, that man must *produce* the values his life requires, guided by reason, and treat others as similarly capable of rationality and productiveness, and *needing* to be rational and productive in order to live. Objectivism also recognizes that rational producers can be of enormous value to each other, not as sacrificial animals competing to see who can sacrifice whom, but as cooperative traders. Indeed, cooperative trade makes the economic division of labor possible, benefiting everyone who chooses to participate in the process of production and trade.
Apparently Dr. Huemer answers his own question. He asks, in effect: would you want to live in a social environment and political system in which humans regard each other as sacrifical animals vying to see who can sacrifice whom before being sacrificed by others? Huemer answers: absolutely not. But any serious defender of reason and the morality of individualsim would give exactly the same answer. It is a fundamental error to start with selfishness and then try to derive rationality from it. Objectivism starts with life, then identifies reason as man's basic means of cognition and survival. Self-interest arises only as a corollary of reason, since reason inherently is an individual process requiring freedom of productive action. Rational beings regard each other as autonomous and sovereign in their own lives, and of vastly greater value to each other as trading partners than as sacrificial animals. I do not see why this necessarily has to be difficult to understand or explain. We can actually see it all around us.
I hope Dr. Ghate did his best to make this clear to the audience, and that the debate will serve as a valuable learning experience for all involved. |
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| Friday, March 6, 2009 at 13:08:27 mst
Comment ID: #23
Name: Kevin Clark
rrlv_frsh writes:
"Objectivism holds that *reason* is man's basic means of cognition and survival, that man must *produce* the values his life requires, guided by reason, and treat others as similarly capable of rationality and productiveness, and *needing* to be rational and productive in order to live."
I was thinking the same thing. Heumer asks in effect what's to stop an egoist from killing someone for a dollar? But part of egoism is that an individual must produce the values that sustain his life. If he killed someone for them, then he is not producing but destroying. In essence he is living a lie by stealing from others. He is trying to fake reality and is not meeting reality on the terms that success requires, namely productive work. Long term successful human action mandates that a man be rational and productive and thus self-supporting. Initiating force against others to take what they have produced means that a person has not acted in accordance with their nature as a ration being. This would place them in a state of war with other men and, perhaps more importantly, it would place them in a state of war with themselves. |
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| Friday, March 6, 2009 at 13:10:34 mst
Comment ID: #24
Name: Jim May
E-mail: seerak(at)gmail.com
"This isn't really enough to answer the question. Just because it's not in one's interest to be killed doesn't automatically lead to the conclusion that one shouldn't kill others. Why *shouldn't* I not do to others that which I would not want done to myself? The word "reciprocity" doesn't answer this. "
Having not yet listened to the debate, here's my off-the-cuff summary of how I see the "reciprocity" issue.
1. Reason is man's sole means of survival and living.
2. A key part of rationality is *logic* and consistency.
3. Individual rights find their origins in the ***nature of man*** (no "is/ought" dichotomy)
4. The ***nature of man*** is, by definition, common to all men.
5. That which is a derivative of human nature, is therefore also ***necessarily*** common to all men.
6. Logically, to assert rights for oneself on the grounds of that human nature which is common to all men, is therefore to assert the same rights for all men.
7. To assert rights for oneself but deny them for others, is to presuppose that the basis of rights is not human nature, but individual character. This is not consistent with the Objectivist moral basis for individual rights on several levels, not the least of which is that human nature is a metaphysical given, outside anyone's whim -- but an individual's character is completely man-made, and mutable.
8. To assert rights for oneself on the grounds of one's own nature as a human being, but to then deny those rights to other human beings, is a flat contradiction in one's reasoning per #2 -- and there not in one's rational self-interest per #1.
9. The consequences of the contradiction in #8 would be to render any sort of society impossible. Given the benefits of living in society with other human beings, the practical consequences of the contradiction in #8 is clear: it results in the total loss of all the benefits of society.
The related question of how the interests of others fit into our own interests seems to have a simple answer to me; if you value a person, their interests fit into yours according to your hierarchy of values. I value the happiness of my fiance, so I'll spend money on things for her ahead of many things for me -- but not all of them. This is the proper context for determining on a case-by-case basis whether one should help others and/or give to charity. |
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| Friday, March 6, 2009 at 15:45:24 mst
Comment ID: #25
Name: Greg Perkins
E-mail: greg(at)ecosmos.com
URL: http://dianahsieh.com/blog
I think that Onkar was right to emphasize that this is a large and tricky issue, and that he was really smart to focus on the idea that what is in one's interest isn't obvious -- that supposed obviousness is what the appeal of Dr. Huemer's approach depends on. As Onkar said, the mafia boss may eat in the finest restaurants, and may even avoid dying by the sword he "lives" by, yet he is still not obviously acting in his interests. Rand would insist he is not. The explanation would have to involve something more than an appeal to reciprocity in behavior or consistency in respecting rights (as others have noted) -- it won't do to simply rehearse all the practical aspects of seeking to live in a rights-respecting society. That's all fine and good, but it doesn't really illuminate why an Objectivist would absolutely recoil from the idea of even the most "prudent" predation.
Given the limitations in time and audience knowledge, that's just hard... Maybe something along these lines:
"Okay, recall the sketch of Rand's thought on the nature of "value" and how values are what living organisms must pursue to live -- i.e., there are needs they must satisfy to maintain their existence as living organisms. Different kinds of organisms do this in different ways, of course. Look at, say, the need for food: trees grow roots and turn their leaves to the sun, while squirrels climb and scurry to harvest nuts, and lions use their speed and teeth and claws to chase and catch their prey. But we are a bit different, in that there is no particular method we need to use to satisfy our requirement for food: we may grow it on a farm, raise it on a ranch, hunt for it in the plains, trap it in the forest, create it in the lab, and on and on. So it wouldn't make sense to say that we eat by virtue of fangs, claws, or roots like we might say of other organisms -- rather, we must get our food by *some* method, but that method is determined by our *thinking.* It's a long discussion, but the same is true for every need we have and every value we pursue: put simply, our primary or basic means of survival is thinking. We are the rational animal, discovering by reason what is valuable, and determining via reason how to achieve it.
"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed -- and ignoring facts and acting on emotion or whim means courting disaster. So someone really interested in living -- our truly selfish ethical egoist -- will want to internalize the fact that reason is his fundamental means of survival, his basic tool for living, his essential faculty and activity that he needs to cultivate and use and jealously protect as the lifeline it genuinely is. Reliant on the power of his conceptual awareness, he will see the value of working to understand the nature of concepts and the implications for the nature of knowledge; the laws of logic and absolute requirement for objectivity -- because indifference to these things would mean indifference to his lifeline! He will seek to think and act *on principle* because reason demands it as his only hope for methodologically pursuing life over the span of an entire lifetime in the face of an incredibly complicated world.
"Morality is a set of principles guiding your choices and actions in life. And rationality is our fundamental tool for living. So it makes sense that an egoist will understand moral virtues as expressions or applications of rationality to various aspects of living. Indeed, Rand presented each moral principle as the recognition of a fundamental fact. At this point you should be able to glimpse why Objectivists recoil in horror at someone suggesting even the most "prudent" of predation would be egoistic: seriously considering predation means ignoring or outright rejecting the fundamental facts of life captured in supremely-prudent moral principles -- like productiveness, justice, and honesty. Seriously entertaining their violation means rejecting not just particular principles, but the need to act on principle and rationality as one's basic means of survival. What a real egoist hears is someone suggesting living by actively repudiating their fundamental means of living! That's insanity. And it's certainly not selfish." |
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| Saturday, March 7, 2009 at 7:26:40 mst
Comment ID: #26
Name: Raman Gupta
E-mail: rocketraman(at)fastmail.fm
Diana, thank you for posting the debate audio -- very interesting! The main take-away for me was Onkar Ghate's reminder that self-interest is a complex concept, and we need a science of ethics to continually test and verify what *is* actually in our self-interest and what is not.
I wanted to briefly comment on Dr Huemer's hypothetical situation of the child drowning in the pond. During the QA, he expanded a bit more on his "test" on whether Objectivism is really consistent with egoism -- to paraphrase his test as I understood it: "assume someone who feels just fine that he did *not* save the child". His question is, if that person would have nothing to gain from saving the child, would it be fine and consistently egoistic for that person to not save the child?
Isn't it true, however, that Dr. Huemer's own theory of "intuitive ethics" fails the same test? The same individual who feels absolutely no kinship with his fellow man (or child) in a society of traders, and thus is not willing to save someone at the cost of getting his pants wet, is also not likely to have any ethical intuitions that compel him to save the child. The reason is because this individual is basically a psychopath, and any system of morality is irrelevant for psychopaths, by definition.
Can anyone better versed in Dr. Huemer's theory comment? |
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| Saturday, March 7, 2009 at 7:40:08 mst
Comment ID: #27
Name: Raman Gupta
E-mail: rocketraman(at)fastmail.fm
To follow up on my last point, I would actually argue that Dr. Huemer's "ethical intuition", when considered in the context of a free and objective society of traders, actually has considerable merit. Assuming that we do live in a society of traders with a basic grounding in the concept of rational egoism, our resulting "ethical intuitions" should generally be correct. As I believe Onkar pointed out: "ethical intuition" essentially means people act according to the status quo. But if the status quo is already a free society, that is a good thing!
Note that it is obviously still necessary for people to consciously understand the fundamentals and the reasons for action -- just that "ethical intuition" might be a useful shortcut for considering "emergency situations" where one does not have time to consider all the implications of action. I need to re-read Rand's essay on emergency situations -- but I suspect her thoughts were along the same lines. |
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| Saturday, March 7, 2009 at 14:56:54 mst
Comment ID: #28
Name: NS
E-mail: mail(at)noumenalself.com
rrlv_frsh:
You're correct that egoism is not exactly a starting point in the Objectivist ethics, but you're incorrect that reason *is* the starting point.
Look at Ayn Rand's essay "The Objectivist Ethics." The starting point is a discussion about the meaning and root of the concept "value." We learn first that the concept of "value" presupposes the concept of "life," and Ayn Rand spends significant time explaining how things can be good or bad for non-human living organisms before she even turns to the question of human moral values or reason.
What's clear from the beginning is that it is good for an organism to pursue those values that further its life. It's a mistake to call this "selfishness" or "egoism," since those concepts presuppose the possibility of a non-life based course of action--a possibility that does not hold for non-human beings. But the idea that what's good for us is what's pro- our lives is what forms the foundation for a morality of egoism. The distinctive question for human beings is: *how* do we achieve what's good for us, given that we are rational beings? Reason first enters as a *means to the end* of our life (with one qualification). It is, however, our life that is the end. Anything we characterize as good or bad must fit into that end.
Huemer's objection is that he cannot see how respecting other people fits into that end. He could even recognize that our main means of survival is reason, and still wonder why reason requires respecting other people. After all, if I use reason to calculate how much money I can make by killing a person, wouldn't killing a person be the rational, life-furthering thing to do?
rrlv_frsh, you're right that because Objectivism sees human beings as rational producers, it therefore see people as enormous values to other people. This is the point that Huemer was missing. But it's a point that makes sense only if you begin with the idea that what we ought to pursue is our self-interest, and then go on to explain, using this new observation about the value of other people, that respecting them is included in our self-interest.
Also, rrlv_frsh, I don't know what you mean by saying "Self-interest arises only as a corollary of reason," or how you can oppose this statement to "Objectivism starts with life, then identifies reason as man's basic means of cognition and survival. Self-interest arises only as a corollary of reason, since reason inherently is an individual process requiring freedom of productive action." The two points are contradictory. Starting with life *is* starting with self-interest. Self-interest is just whatever benefits the life of an organism (though understood from the perspective of the possibility of an anti-life course of action).
(Here is one qualification about the idea how reason enters primarily as a means to the end of self-interest in the Objectivist ethics. You'll note that in AR's essay, when she discusses reason, purpose and self-esteem as the cardinal values of the Objectivist ethics, she notes that they are "the means to and *the realization of* one’s ultimate value, one’s own life." I take it that looking at reason as realization of one's life means that it is not *simply* a means to the end of life, it is also part of the end. Part of what the life of a rational being is is a life of reason. Part of what it means to choose to live is just to choose to embrace reality (through use of reason). This means, I think, that there may be cases in which morality demands that we embrace rationality even when there is no additional material benefit that flows from it. Embracing rationality is a spiritual benefit in and of itself. But even here, for evolutionary and other psychological reasons, I think reason would never have come to comprise part of the end of our life if it didn't have enormous instrumental value in the attainment of material values.)
NS |
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| Saturday, March 7, 2009 at 16:56:23 mst
Comment ID: #29
Name: PMB
I agree completely with NS's comments. Just to add to them:
The Objectivist answer to the charge that egoism requires (even in rare cases) predation is complex. It involves:
1. Grasping that what your self-interest consists of is not obvious, that you cannot do so by the seat of your pants, and that to conclude that something is a net benefit requires the use of principles.
2. Grasping that the proper principle governing human relations is trade.
3. Grasping that traders don't gain at each others' expense (even in cases, such as competing for a job, where it seems as if they do).
4. Grasping that interests *can* conflict in unusual, emergency situations--but that this is irrelevant to egoism's validity as a moral theory.
Now, each of those is a difficult point to grasp and to convey to others. Each requires *argument* and, to really truly understand, chewing a number of examples. THEN, to show how they apply to specific "prudent predator"-type objections requires still further elaboration.
This is why I asked how the people who criticized Onkar's answer would themselves have responded to MH's arguments. What astonished me was not how little of the above Onkar was able to convey, but now much. He named and gave at least a little elaboration of each of the above points. Was there a better way to deal with MH's arguments? Perhaps, but if so I haven't heard it. (And believe me, I'd LOVE to hear it since, as NS has stated elsewhere, this is *the* toughest objection to Rand's theory, and it's crucial that we be able to convey the Objectivist answer as clearly and persuasively as possible, even given a format like a debate.) |
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| Sunday, March 8, 2009 at 0:20:37 mst
Comment ID: #30
Name: rrlv-frsh
The main point that I wanted to address, and which I see repeated again in the 3/7/09 comments by NS, is the equating of life-seeking with self-interest, particularly since it is being reported that Dr. Huemer evidently likewise equates them and fails to comprehend Objectivism's full meaning as a result. (I still have not yet had time to confirm these reports about Dr. Huemer's views independently, however.)
In "The Objectivist Ethics" (VOS Chap. 1), Ayn Rand does, indeed, focus on the fundamental nature of living things before explaining how and why the concept "value" arises from the context of living things existing and functioning (i.e., needing to perform internally generated, self-sustaining action in order to survive). This is not yet a discussion of self-interest, however. It is only a discussion of the meaning of the concept "value" and of the *standard* for judging value or disvalue that is implicit in the nature of the concept "value." Self-interest is a concept that depends on the concept "value" and thus is a later topic, separate (initially) from life. That may seem odd and strange when we are focusing on man and human ethics, but Ayn Rand begins rigorously at the beginning, precisely to establish her foundation for later concluding that rational selfishness is the ideal (most efficaciously life-promoting) way for humans to live.
In the process of examining *human* life, Ayn Rand develops the point that *reason* is man's basic means of survival. This still is not self-interest -- not yet. She also makes it clear that she is talking about man's life *qua* man, i.e., the life of man as a specific *type* of living entity. "Value" pertains to what sustains and strengthens the life of instances of "man" as a *type* of living entity, by the fundamental nature that is common to all men. It is only when she begins discussing how individual men apply the abstract standard of value in their own lives that we start to see the begninning of Objectivism's concept of self-interest. The transition from man as a type, to man-the-individual, occurs (as I understand it) with following paragraphs from "The Objectivist Ethics" (VOS Chap. 1, p. 25pb):
"The Objectivist Ethics holds man's life as the *standard* of value -- and *his own life* as the ethical *purpose* of every individual man.
"The difference between 'standard' and 'purpose' in this context is as follows...."
This leads to a discussion of the concept "virtue" and the specific virtues that man's life *qua* man requires. Ayn Rand explains, "Rationality is man's basic virtue, the source of all his other virtues."
The whole focus of Ayn Rand's discussion here is not "be selfish," but rather, "be rational." The concept of selfishness (egoism) arises only after Ayn Rand establishes this entire antecedent context, and only because of the nature of man's rational faculty and how reason operates as man's basic means of survival. Note, also, that the essence of the Enlightenment era in man's actual history was not explicitly self-interest, but exhaltation of the value of *reason* in human life, and especially the widespread view of man's fundamental nature as a type of being who has a rational faculty that enables him to gain vast knowledge of the world (or universe) and everything in it. It is a view of man that modern men have been steadily losing, particularly since Kant, and desperately need to rediscover.
If one is a rational being and regards others as rational beings, then one does not regard them (or oneself) as sacrificial animals. "The Objectivist ethics hold that *human* good does not require human sacrifices and cannot be achieved by the sacrifice of anyone to anyone." [VOS Chap.1, p. 31pb]
In the immediately preceding paragraph in that same essay, Ayn Rand states: "The Objectivist ethics proudly advocates and upholds *rational selfishness* -- which means: the values required for man's survival *qua* man...." This discussion occurs much later in that essay than her discussion of life, value, standard of value, virtue, rationality, productiveness, etc. To repeat, Objectivism says first and foremost, "Be rational." The self-interest aspect is merely a consequence of being rational. (And, yes, being rational is a consequence of life as the standard of value. I do not equate "life as the standard" with "self-interest," nor does Objectivism, in my understanding of Ayn Rand's discussion.)
For example, very early in the discussion, Ayn Rand writes: "Since everything man needs has to be discovered by his own mind and produced by his own effort, the two essetials of the method of survival proper [by the standard of life as the test of value] to a rational being are: thinking and productive work." [VOS Chap. 1, p. 23 pb] The fact that a particular form of selfishness is implicit in this formulation is not developed explicitly until many pages later (p. 31pb).
See also "Self-Interest" and "Selfishness" in The_Ayn_Rand_Lexicon. Note also that in OPAR, the issue of who should be the *beneficiary* of the values that man produces appears in Chap. 7, well after Dr. Peikoff has developed the metaphysical nature of man (Chap. 6), "Life" as the Essential Root of "Value," "Man's Life as the Standard of Moral Value," and "Rationality as the Primary Virtue." Thus, again, I maintain that it is vital to understand and hold this context and hierarchical relationship. Without it, one can far too easily slip into trying to derive rationality as a virtue from self-interest as a more fundamental premise, rather than vice versa.
It is also important not to equate self-interest with self-preservation (remaining alive). They are not the same. The nature of life, how to preserve it, and whether or not it "ought" to be preserved (by what standard of "ought") are more fundamental topics than whether an individual's life is best sustained by his own focus primarily on his own values, or by merging with a larger group or "collective" of humans as a "member" of "society," to serve "society" in whatever way the "society" deems "necessary" for the "welfare" of the "society." Rationality precludes the collectivist view; but one cannot reach rationality as the primary virtue by starting with a more generalized view of self-interest. One must reach it by focusing on the existence of living entities, including man; on the concept "value" that man forms by observing living entities and identifying their fundamental nature; and on man's basic means of survival. Self-interest, to repeat again, is merely a consequence of the nature and role of reason. OPAR discusses reason as an aspect of man's nature in Chap. 6 in the sections titled, "Reason as Man's Basic Means of Survival," and especially "Reason as an Attribute of the Individual." This is an entire chapter before any discussion of values, ethics, and ethical self-interest (Chap. 7). |
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| Sunday, March 8, 2009 at 14:03:07 mst
Comment ID: #31
Name: NS
E-mail: mail(at)noumenalself.com
rrlv-frsh,
Much of what you say is true, but I don't see how your point follows from it. Here is my view: self-interest and life as the standard of value are concepts that refer to the same fact, though from a different perspective. It's true that discussion of self-interest as a moral concept comes up later in "The Objectivist Ethics" than the concept of life as the standard of value, though whether this means it is later in a logical hierarchy is not clear.
It's true that the reason self-interest comes up later in the essay is because, as a moral concept, it presupposes the possibility of choosing self-sacrifice as an alternative. You'll find that the same is true, historically. Aristotle (basically) knew that life was the standard of value for any living organism, including man. But he didn't speak in terms of self-interest, because no one at the time argued for self-sacrifice, so there was no issue of an alternate course of life. (This is actually a point that medieval philosophers used against Aristotle, because he spoke of happiness as the goal towards which all men directed their actions, which seemed to imply that they had no choice about it, making it questionable as a moral standard. Aristotle had so little regard for the possibility of self-sacrifice that he even seemed to *speak* as if men pursued their lives automatically!) Perhaps this suggests that life as the standard is logically, hierarchically prior to self-interest, but I'm not sure. It's surely prior in some sense.
You're also correct that the focus of the later part of "The Objectivist Ethics" is on "be rational" rather than "be selfish." And it's true that she speaks of selfishness only after that development. Again, I don't see why that means that rationality is logically prior to selfishness in any important way. Just because the terms get used later in the essay doesn't mean that the issue of selfishness isn't logically implicit early on. Selfishness just means seeking to live your own life. It means pursuing one's own life as one's ultimate value. Rationality is *how* we pursue our own life. Ayn Rand could easily have dropped the entire discussion of rationality and virtue, and she could still have told us that we should be selfish *just* by considering life as the standard of value. That is the point that rules out altruism, fundamentally speaking. This is why she says the following, very early on, before she even gets to the discussion of rationality and virtue:
"To speak of 'value' as apart from 'life' is worse than a contradiction in terms. 'It is only the concept of 'life' that makes the concept of 'value' possible.'"
Altruism attempts to speak of value that exists apart from life: the "value" of giving up your life for another without any benefit to your life. The rejection of altruism and the validation of self-interest needs only this point. The reason Ayn Rand needs to present her discussion of rationality and virtue is not to defend self-interest, but to give self-interest an *ethical* content, to show that it implies virtues that are recognizable as moral virtues, as defining the course of our entire lives rather than the immediate moment.
Once again, you're right that understanding the rational nature of man implies the rejection of the sacrifice of others. And you're right that Huemer did not appreciate this point. But his mistake was not that he viewed Rand's system as starting from self-interest rather than rationality. Insofar as she sees *all* value as dependent upon an organism's life, her rejection of altruism can begin with that point. Of course she also goes on to say that rejecting altruism doesn't mean the sacrifice of others, because of the rational nature of man. But this is an additional point.
You'll note that historically, Rand herself didn't identify the virtue of rationality until Atlas Shrugged, though she rejected altruism as early as We The Living and The Fountainhead without much reference to rationality. This explains her sometime-affinity to Nietzsche, who was also capable of affirming self-interest and rejecting altruism, without yet rejecting predatory egoism (because he didn't recognize the virtue of rationality).
You're probably right that you need rationality to reject certain forms of collectivism. It might be plausible that we would live best as individuals, by staying close to the herd to protect us (as, in fact, it probably *is* beneficial to many animals to do this). But you don't need rationality to reject the most blatant form of collectivism, the kind that calls for snuffing out the life of the individual for the sake of the whole. If it's true that there is no value apart from the life of an individual organism, all you need is life as the standard to show that there is no value in snuffing out the life of an individual for the sake of the "value" of the life of the collective--there is no such life and there is no such value. In other words, rejecting collectivism is not the same as rejecting altruism, and it's the latter that what we're talking about.
To summarize: You're right that life as the standard of value and self-interest are not the exact same concept. You're also right that life as the standard of value is, in some sense, prior to the concept of self-interest. Nevertheless, when applied to man, these concepts refer to the same fact, though from a different perspective. Once we recognize that life is the standard of value and the only standard of value, and once we are offered the choice to live a self-sacrificing life, we can immediately reject that choice by showing that there is no "value" in this course. We don't need to consider the value of rationality in order to do this (and this is, in fact, what Nietzsche did, and for precisely the life-based reasons that Rand considered). In that sense, one can affirm the "virtue of selfishness" before embracing rationality.
NS |
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| Sunday, March 8, 2009 at 22:46:28 mst
Comment ID: #32
Name: rrlv_frsh
I don't want to belabor the discussion between NS and myself any further than necessary, but I would like to offer a few additional comments that may be of value to those seeking to understand Objectivism more fully.
NS writes:
---------->
Selfishness just means seeking to live your own life. It means pursuing one's own life as one's ultimate value. [Actually, Ayn Rand defined "selfishness" as "concern with one's own interests," and added, "This concept does *not* include a moral evaluation; it does not tell us whether concern with one's own interests is good or evil; nor does it tell us what constitutes man's actual interests." -- From VOS, Introduction, p. vii pb.] Rationality is *how* we pursue our own life. Ayn Rand could easily have dropped the entire discussion of rationality and virtue, and she could still have told us that we should be selfish *just* by considering life as the standard of value. That is the point that rules out altruism, fundamentally speaking. [I still don't see that it necessarily rules out individual sacrifice in species that are dependent by their nature on a colony, hive, pack, den, etc.]
[...]
Once we recognize that life is the standard of value and the only standard of value, and once we are offered [by whom?] the choice to live a self-sacrificing life, we can immediately reject that choice by showing that there is no "value" in this course. We don't need to consider the value of rationality in order to do this (and this is, in fact, what Nietzsche did, and for precisely the life-based reasons that Rand considered). In that sense, one can affirm the "virtue of selfishness" before embracing rationality.
----------<
Nietzsche, to my limited understanding, rejected sacrifice of oneself in preference to sacrificing others (attaining power over others). How can one objectively reject *both* sacrifice of oneself to others, and sacrifice of others to oneself, without considering man's metaphysical nature, with man's rational capacity as his most fundamental distinguishing characteristic? Ayn Rand, of course (as NS explicitly points out), didn't fully realize this before writing Atlas_Shrugged.
But NS actually seems to agree regarding sacrificing others to oneself:
"Once again, you're right that understanding the rational nature of man implies the rejection of the sacrifice of others. And you're right that Huemer did not appreciate this point.... Insofar as she [Ayn Rand] sees *all* value as dependent upon an organism's life, her rejection of altruism can begin with that point. [But see my earlier remark about other living species.] Of course she also goes on to say that rejecting altruism doesn't mean the sacrifice of others, because of the rational nature of man. But this is an additional point [referring to the rational nature of man]."
The whole issue of hierarchy regarding selfishness and rationality came up because Dr. Huemer is reported as not understanding why Objectivism's view of selfishness would necessarily (logically) rule out sacrificing others to oneself. (I wonder what Dr. Huemer's view of Nietzsche is -- the paradigm of selfishness, perhaps?) The answer, as the above quote by NS seems to acknowledge, is that Objectivism does not advocate selfishness unconditionally, but only in a specific form, namely, *rational* selfishenss. And that presupposes an understanding of rationality -- what it is, man's capacity for it, and the significance of that human capacity for life in human form -- as a precondition for understanding Objectivism's view of selfishness.
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| Monday, March 9, 2009 at 6:39:29 mst
Comment ID: #33
Name: Billy Beck
E-mail: wjbiii(at)frontiernet.net
URL: http://www.two--four.net/weblog.php
"Go post that kind of worthless sniping on your own blog."
Call it what you want, Diana, but it's the truth. I've been familiar with his work for a long time, and my judgment is complete. |
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| Monday, March 9, 2009 at 7:23:54 mst
Comment ID: #34
Name: PMB
"The whole issue of hierarchy regarding selfishness and rationality came up because Dr. Huemer is reported as not understanding why Objectivism's view of selfishness would necessarily (logically) rule out sacrificing others to oneself. (I wonder what Dr. Huemer's view of Nietzsche is -- the paradigm of selfishness, perhaps?) The answer, as the above quote by NS seems to acknowledge, is that Objectivism does not advocate selfishness unconditionally, but only in a specific form, namely, *rational* selfishenss."
Wait, are you saying that it *could* be in someone's self-interest to sacrifice others, but that rationality somehow trumps that? What do you take "advocat[ing] selfishness unconditionally" to mean? |
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| Monday, March 9, 2009 at 11:59:36 mst
Comment ID: #35
Name: Anthony
Michael Huemer uses the example of a proof by contradiction to justify his use of an impossible premise (a person who derives a small net benefit from killing an innocent person).
This is not the proper application of a proof by contradiction. In a proof by contradiction, you assume the logical negation of the result you wish to prove, and then you show that this assumption leads to a contradiction. You *do not* choose any old impossible situation and then show that this leads to the negation of a hypothesis you with to disprove.
There are two other problems with the hypothetical situation which weren't addressed in the debate. What is meant by the term "net benefit", and what is meant by the term "innocent"? From my understanding of a proper definition of these terms, the situation is impossible by definition. An "innocent person" is a person who is not initiating force against you, and if a person is not initiating force against you, then you could not derive a "net benefit" from killing them. Of course, this doesn't define what it means to "initiate force", but it doesn't seem intuitive that such a definition is impossible (and, in fact, Objectivism shows that such a definition is possible).
Huemer chooses a hypothetical situation which contradicts one of the fundamental principles of that which he is trying to disprove. In doing so, he commits the fallacy of begging the question. |
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| Wednesday, March 11, 2009 at 5:24:27 mst
Comment ID: #36
Name: Kevin McAllister
E-mail: kevin(at)mcallister.ws
URL: http://logicaldisconnect.org/
I just finished listening last night, and first thank you Diana for your work on this. It was excellent to hear.
I think Dr. Ghate did a great job presenting an indication of the Objectivist ethics in just 15 minutes. And actually I liked his response to Dr. Huemer even more than his first part.
I have inferred from the Q&A and from some of the other comments I have read on this debate that people wish Dr. Ghate would have directly attacked the bizarre examples used to show why egoism can't be taken as proper ethical guidance, but I think he cut right to the heart of the matter.
Rather than talking past Dr. Huemer on points where they could clearly play word games to debate the concretes of an example he went to the source of their disagreement and attacked Dr. Huemer's weak point, and a critical foundation on which any ethical system rests, epistemology.
Dr. Ghate then went on to indicate that, yes, Objectivism does give guidance for social relationships, the trader principle. And finally he discussed how self-interest is actually a very high level abstraction, and that to properly understand it takes hard mental work.
I would like to thank Dr. Huemer and, echo the sentiment of Noumenalself. Huemer is clearly someone who has spent much honest thought on ethics and his misunderstanding of the Objectivist view of self-interested and selfish action is quite common.
Yes of course it is in your self interest to save the child, and not murder the man. But you can't just toss that off and assume that it is self-evident how that action ties into the ethical guidance to be selfish. This is a point where Objectivist intellectuals have and will continue to be challenged and the more we can understand, and make these points understandable the more traction we will be able to make in educating and ultimately changing the culture. |
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| Thursday, March 12, 2009 at 14:29:17 mst
Comment ID: #37
Name: Rational Jenn
E-mail: rationaljenn(at)gmail.com
URL: http://rationaljenn.blogspot.com
Thanks for sending this post to the Objectivist Round Up this week! |
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