NationStates Jolt Archive

Lately I've been getting tired of explaining the same one or two things to people who don't understand them, so I just want to clear up a handful of myths regarding my philosophy.

The most common error, once one discovers Objectivism endorses moral absolutism, is to denounce Objectivism as a mutation of Christianity: when I say something about property rights for instance, many people are ready to leap down my throat thinking I'm defending some sort of sweeping commandment. In the Objectivist view, however, virtue does not come from obeying sweeping commandments, but rather by identifying and evaluating moral avenues in the proper context.

Many people like to think that because a fact [even a moral one] relies on context, that makes it subjective or arbitrary; this could not possibly be further from the truth. Water, for example, boils at 212 degrees, but not if you're 30,000 feet above sea level. Does that mean that the boiling point of water is arbitrary; does it mean that water boils when it feels like it or when the person boiling it needs it to boil? No.

Moral fact behaves in much the same fashion. It's wrong to kill, for example, but not if your survival unquestionably depends on it; not in the proper context; like say, if you had been attacked first. This also does not make the underlying facts any less of an absolute; it just means that like everything else in the universe we need to take a look at the things that surround it before making our decision.

Another common misconception is that we believe in 'natural rights' or some such nonsense. This amounts to intrinsicism, which as I told someone in another thread we sort of regard as the Original Sin only the other way around. Any ideology that preaches this in any variant is doomed; for to doom humanity is to doom yourself. In the Objectivist sense, rights are not something we're necessarily born with [leaving aside, of course, the right to life and therefore of property], but something we earn through virtue over time. Rights do not exist as a construct of our society; they are not and have not been determined solely by the caprice of other men, like any other aspect of reality, rights simply are.

Could explain how you connected life and property?

Do you think you'd be able to start a thread without me saying something on it ;)?

The most common error, once one discovers Objectivism endorses moral absolutism, is to denounce Objectivism as a mutation of Christianity: when I say something about property rights for instance, many people are ready to leap down my throat thinking I'm defending some sort of sweeping commandment. In the Objectivist view, however, virtue does not come from obeying sweeping commandments, but rather by identifying and evaluating moral avenues in the proper context.
I mean, that kind of moots the purpose, doesn't it? Context means different things to different people (you'll disagree with me on that, which I'll discuss further down). So either Objectivism is no longer a prescription for particular courses of actions, and Objectivist principles could be used to justify virtually any course of action because one person could interpret context differently than others, or it risks the dogmatism people continually accuse it of having. For example, someone could think the best way to defend property rights as a whole is infringing on them slightly via income tax.

Many people like to think that because a fact [even a moral one] relies on context, that makes it subjective or arbitrary; this could not possibly be further from the truth. Water, for example, boils at 212 degrees, but not if you're 30,000 feet above sea level. Does that mean that the boiling point of water is arbitrary; does it mean that water boils when it feels like it or when the person boiling it needs it to boil? No.
I'll agree with you that there is an objective truth, but in the contexts relevant to political and moral discussion, it's silly to treat it that way. Because events are perceived differently by different people, society almost never has an understanding of what objectively happened. Therefore, we can't pretend to know what that objective fact is, only what my interpretation of other, incontrovertible facts say it is. Example: Country A has a large police force and a substantial welfare program. Country A also has no crime. Some people think that the fact that there's no crime comes from the large number of police; others think it comes from the welfare funding. No one knows for sure that they're right - but they use what they do know for sure to support their conclusion.

Another example (one I've said earlier, but refined): Music. Everyone, when listening to music, hears the same notes. But they don't process those notes the same way, because the same notes can be pleasurable to one person but not to another. How, then, can we say that those people are in any relevant way hearing the same thing?

Moral fact behaves in much the same fashion. It's wrong to kill, for example, but not if your survival unquestionably depends on it; not in the proper context; like say, if you had been attacked first. This also does not make the underlying facts any less of an absolute; it just means that like everything else in the universe we need to take a look at the things that surround it before making our decision.
Moral fact behaves in much the same fashion. To one person, stealing their TV is provocation enough to kill the thief. To another person, it's unjustifiable to kill someone for theft. These people view the world in fundamentally different ways; it's impossible to pretend that there's an absolute moral law that governs all of human behavior.

Another common misconception is that we believe in 'natural rights' or some such nonsense. This amounts to intrinsicism, which as I told someone in another thread we sort of regard as the Original Sin only the other way around. Any ideology that preaches this in any variant is doomed; for to doom humanity is to doom yourself. In the Objectivist sense, rights are not something we're necessarily born with [leaving aside, of course, the right to life and therefore of property], but something we earn through virtue over time. Rights do not exist as a construct of our society; they are not and have not been determined solely by the caprice of other men, like any other aspect of reality, rights simply are.
No argument from me. FYI, many people think that last line you wrote means that you support "natural rights," as they interpret natural to mean something you're born with.

Could explain how you connected life and property?
Well, property [leaving aside objects gained by fraud] is viewed under the Objectivist lens as an extension of the self because your possessions and lifestyle reflect the sum of your labors. When someone in a capitalist country says 'Time is Money,' they're not fooling around. Money [and the things you buy with it] are or should be of great value because they're earned through goal-oriented action.

Since Life is, essentially, goal oriented action, property is a legitimate extension of it.

Deleuze, I'll get to you after work or tomorrow sometime; but I think we've already talked about a lot of this.

I agree with Objectivism's stances on morality, property, and the general human condition; however, I've always had some trouble with its belief in scientific determinism and the theoretical possibility of omniscience.

Objectivism gets a lot harder to believe when there's only one electron in the universe.

Objectivism is too egoist for me. Since when is being selfish ethical? If you ask me, it sounds like an excuse to be a jerk.

I agree with Objectivism's stances on morality, property, and the general human condition; however, I've always had some trouble with its belief in scientific determinism and the theoretical possibility of omniscience.

Objectivism gets a lot harder to believe when there's only one electron in the universe.
Objectivism, interestingly enough, rejects determinism in nearly all of its forms. Determinism, like many philosophies, actually does have no small amount of merit, but the notion that choice doesn't exist is somewhat absurd.

It also does not accept the possibility--even a theoretical one--of omniscience.

Objectivism is too egoist for me. Since when is being selfish ethical? If you ask me, it sounds like an excuse to be a jerk.
Selfishness--or rather rational selfishness [a common mistake is to omit the italics] has always been ethical. We just haven't realized it until this century. Besides, it's too rigorous and well-thought out to amount to an 'excuse' for anything.

I agree with Objectivism's stances on morality, property, and the general human condition; however, I've always had some trouble with its belief in scientific determinism and the theoretical possibility of omniscience.

Objectivism gets a lot harder to believe when there's only one electron in the universe.

Could you substantiate your claim that O'ism advocates scientific determinism and the theoretical possibility of omniscience? As I understand it, Rand rejected determinism (see her reactions to B.F. Skinner and John Rawls) and clearly advocated a belief in human volition. Regarding omniscience, Rand rejected that as well. She argued for using reason precisely because man is *not* omniscient, nor has access to an omniscient source (i.e. "God"). Man can be wrong, hence we need an objective method for validating information before we can call it "knowledge."

One electron in the universe? I have heard of a theoretical notion in quantum mechanics that the mathematics relating to quantum particles works equally well with time going "backward" (i.e. from "future" to "past") as it does going "forward," and that all electrons could be viewed as a single electron that is in many places at once because it's going "forward" and "backward" in time. Is this what you're talking about? So far as I know, this is at most a theoretical speculation more intended to provoke thought (i.e. seek an explanation as to why we experience a 'time's arrow' when we don't seem to find it in our current equations of quantum mechanics) than as a statement of Actual Truth. Also, AFAIK, there is no widespread acceptance of a "one electron theory" among physicists.

And if there were (and it were validated scientifically), how would this affect O'ism, since the very idea of "proven fact" (*objective* truth) is a core tenet of O'ism. IOW, any theory that is objectively validated beyond rational dispute is consistent with the O'ist axioms of Existence, Identity, and Consciousness, and ought to be accepted in any philosophy calling itself "Objectivism," no matter how weird said theory might seem.

However, I think Rand did make one huge error that has ultimately destroyed O'ism's claim to be objective at all: her attempt to own "her" philosophy as a property right.

While one has a property right to things like novels (e.g. Atlas Shrugged), songs, etc., one cannot claim a property right to a generalized operating principle of Universe (e.g. gravity, the rest mass of an electron, the role of DNA in microbiology). One can rightfully claim to be the *discoverer* of said principle(s), but they are by nature un-ownable.

Now, "Objectivism" either represents objective, generalized principles relating to man and his life (e.g. what man is, how he discovers and validates knowledge, how he ought to behave, etc.), or it is a subjective, unique creation of Ayn Rand's consciousness.

If it is a set of generalized principles, then Rand is merely the discoverer, not the creator. Furthermore, apart from a claim of omniscience, Rand could not claim that her proposed set of generalized principles could not be revised and updated in the light of new information in the future. Newton's discovery of calculus, the nature of gravity, inertia, etc. did not confer upon him any sort of special status, nor automatically define some "upstart" such as Einstein as "irrational" for daring to create a more accurate and all-embracing theory. There is no "Isaac Newton Institute" that proclaims that all physics outside of the Principia Mathematic is vile, second-hander irrationality, and therefore beneath contempt.

If "Objectivism" is a unique creation of Ayn Rand's consciousness, and it is possible, even necessary to define her writings as a kind of canon that determines what is, and is not "Objectivism," then we're not dealing with *objective reality* at all, but with the subjectivism of Ayn Rand. One of the things Rand did during her lifetime was to forbid anyone but herself to call themselves an "Objectivist." They were to call themselves "students of Objectivism" instead. This is because she considered O'ism to be "her" philosophy, and that anyone calling themselves an "objectivist" was, in effect, stealing the contents of her brain, and, if they modified her ideas in any way, they were imputing ideas to her that were not her own.

This problem arose only because Rand tried to claim ownership over the contents of "Objectivism" rather than regarding those contents as (possible) discoveries of generalized operating principles of Universe. Had she taken the latter approach, as any proper scientist would, she needn't have worried about such problems. No one accuses Einstein of stealing Newton's intellectual property, nor of imputing his relativity to Newton. Nor does anyone impute the theories of Stephen Hawking or Roger Penrose to Einstein. Physicists can even disagree without having the purges and sect-formation that has happened in Objectivism.

By claiming to own the tenets of O'ism, Rand implicitly claimed to be an oracle of sorts, handing down Revealed Knowledge. Unlike generalized operating principles of Universe, which can be discovered by anyone who puts in the necessary study, experimentation, etc., "Objectivism" could be discovered and elucidated by one, and only one person: Ayn Rand herself. Thus, it ceased to be *objective,* and became a subjective product of Ayn Rand's unique consciousness.

Yet, Rand also claimed it was Truth, with a capital T. Combine a doctrine of Revealed Knowledge emerging from a specially-empowered Prophet with the belief that this Knowledge represents Absolute Truth, and you get Religious Dogma. And so, we get purges of Heresy, rival sects claiming to be the true followers of the Prophet and interpreters of the Canon.

Not to mention the spectacle of Leonoard Peikoff claiming to be Rand's "intellectual heir"--as if one could inherit the intellect of another!--a strikingly blatant example of second-handedness. Try to imagine the reaction of one of Rand's fictional heroes (John Galt, Howard Roark, Dagny Taggart, etc.) to any understudy or Loyal Retainer who presumed to claim to be their "intellectual heir." Then, try to imagine any of these uber-egoists stooping to be *anyone* else's "intellectual heir" rather than boldly asserting the sovereignty of their own reason!

Ironically, Ayn Rand's desire to own "Objectivism" as "hers," and prevent any other from usurping "her" cognitive property rights resulted in another person claiming to "inherit" them--with her sanction! I wonder if Peikoff passed the title of Intellectual Heir of Ayn Rand to the new president of the Ayn Rand Institute? Two thousand years from now, will there be a powerful, dogmatic institution whose pontiff bears the title of I.H.A.R., passed down to him or her like the Keys of St. Peter?

Do you think you'd be able to start a thread without me saying something on it ;)?
Always glad to have ya around.

I mean, that kind of moots the purpose, doesn't it? Context means different things to different people (you'll disagree with me on that, which I'll discuss further down).
Well, no not really. It means different things to different people of course--this simply means that what's right for you may or may not be right for me. Objectivism merely contends that we should all act within our value structure, without initiating the use of force on others. The problems it has with Altrusim are not contingent on Altrusim in and of itself, but rather we perceive that once it becomes policy, it relies on the application of force. Granted, it doesn't place any of this force on me physically, rather it's nice enough to take out its effects on my paycheck.

So either Objectivism is no longer a prescription for particular courses of actions, and Objectivist principles could be used to justify virtually any course of action because one person could interpret context differently than others, or it risks the dogmatism people continually accuse it of having.
You're more or less right again; actually one of the problems I have with Ayn Rand was she was fantastically dogmatic. It can't really justify any course of action, only those which respond rationally to the question at hand; the answers to which may be many. There isn't always necessarily only one correct course of action.

For example, someone could think the best way to defend property rights as a whole is infringing on them slightly via income tax.
Yeah, if that tax only paid for a competent police force. I'll admit I'm generally pretty heavy handed in my tax arguments--but that's mostly a funtion of the opposition's determination to justify them in the face of some damn fine arguments if I say so myself. I treat the government just like I treat any other entitiy: if it has something to give me that's worth my money, I've got no problem paying for it. Welfare, for example, would be a more lucrative investment for me if it brought back some manner of benefit.

I'll agree with you that there is an objective truth, but in the contexts relevant to political and moral discussion, it's silly to treat it that way. Because events are perceived differently by different people, society almost never has an understanding of what objectively happened. Therefore, we can't pretend to know what that objective fact is, only what my interpretation of other, incontrovertible facts say it is. Example: Country A has a large police force and a substantial welfare program. Country A also has no crime. Some people think that the fact that there's no crime comes from the large number of police; others think it comes from the welfare funding. No one knows for sure that they're right - but they use what they do know for sure to support their conclusion.
But what you're saying here amounts to the belief that true knowledge is impossible, which is something I would like to avoid. I'll grant you that many act on false information or half-truths: these people aren't necessarily wrong on virtue of these actions since the truth can at times be difficult to ascertain. However, it's difficulty does not render such knowledge impossible, it simply poses an obstacle.

Another example (one I've said earlier, but refined): Music. Everyone, when listening to music, hears the same notes. But they don't process those notes the same way, because the same notes can be pleasurable to one person but not to another. How, then, can we say that those people are in any relevant way hearing the same thing?
We've already been over this, and given what happened to this argument last time, I'm very surprised to see you use it again. Like I said last time, the actual compsition itself does not change from person to person: we're all hearing the same notes. What differs is our reaction to it, or if we have a sensitivity to a particular instrument or range. We can say in a relevant way that they're hearing the same thing because they are. Beethoven's 7th is Beethoven's 7th, whether you love it or hate it. Your [or my] opinions of the piece do not change it.

Moral fact behaves in much the same fashion. To one person, stealing their TV is provocation enough to kill the thief. To another person, it's unjustifiable to kill someone for theft. These people view the world in fundamentally different ways; it's impossible to pretend that there's an absolute moral law that governs all of human behavior.
No, it merely means that these people have different value structures. The first mistakenly equates midlevel electronics with a human consciousness, and the second person recognizes the difference between theft and direct physical harm. Yes, they both have different ideas, but that does not mean that both of them are right.

No argument from me. FYI, many people think that last line you wrote means that you support "natural rights," as they interpret natural to mean something you're born with.
Yeah, that's true. 'Natural' rights comes from the idea that man's rights follows rationally from man's nature, Objectivism contends that man's rights follows rationally from man's existence. If that makes any sense at all.

>snip<
Very well written; certainly an excellent critique of Ms. Rand's rather... curious dogmatism. While there is certainly a great amount of truth to what you say, I find it curious as to why you chose to attack Rand herself rather than the ideas she presented. I agree almost implicitly with everything you say re: her 'ownership' of Objectivism, but given the tenets of the philosophy, it's easy to understand just why she made those kinds of foibles. Ayn Rand was a bitch, make no mistake.

EDIT: and from what I understand, Ms. Rand did declare Peikoff her 'intellectual heir' on virtue of the lectures he hosted around the country on Objectivism. In fact, I'm reading his book on it right now.

Very well written; certainly an excellent critique of Ms. Rand's rather... curious dogmatism. While there is certainly a great amount of truth to what you say, I find it curious as to why you chose to attack Rand herself rather than the ideas she presented. I agree almost implicitly with everything you say re: her 'ownership' of Objectivism, but given the tenets of the philosophy, it's easy to understand just why she made those kinds of foibles. Ayn Rand was a bitch, make no mistake.

EDIT: and from what I understand, Ms. Rand did declare Peikoff her 'intellectual heir' on virtue of the lectures he hosted around the country on Objectivism. In fact, I'm reading his book on it right now.

As to why I chose to "attack Rand herself rather than the ideas she presented," the answer is that I agree with a lot of the ideas she presented. Furthermore, I consider the things she and the "orthodox" ARI "Objectivists" did to turn the philosophy into a cult (that has recently turned quite bloodthirsty, to the point of advocating a nuclear response to 9/11) to be a far greater attack on the ideas she presented (i.e. rationality, individualism, ethics) than anything I, or anyone else, could launch.

Regarding O'ist ideas, I think there's good and bad, rational and silly. I think there's more good/rational than bad/silly, but unfortunately IMO, the latter managed to shipwreck the philosophy, at least as any sort of organized "movement."

The first major problem I already discussed. The second is an aspect of "Mythic" Objectivism that sometimes rears its head in "Philosophic" Objectivism, but does not have the status of an actual teaching.

By "Mythic" O'ism, I mean O'ism in the "mythic" form arising from Rand's novels. By "Philosophic" O'ism, I mean that which is expressed in her nonfiction. IMO they mostly overlap, but there are some significant differences.

The major problem of Mythic O'ism is the implicit concept of a "natural" caste system, where a handful of inherently superior Ubermenchen should rightly be revered by the mere masses, and woe betide any mortal that aspire to Ubermench status.

In Atlas Shrugged (AS), Dagny muses about how the composer Richard Halley rebelled against the various myths of man being punished for pride and ambition, reversing them in his operas, so that the flight of Icarus succeeded, Phaethon was able to tame Apollo's chariot, etc. Dagny agreed with this sentiment, and so do I. However, any Rand character that hoped to grow from "normal" status to Hero status (e.g. Sherryl Taggart, Eddie Willars, the "Wet Nurse") was as metaphysically doomed as any character in a Greek tragedy.

In Rand's fiction, some people are just *born* superior. Dagny, as a 9-year-old girl, is able to stand on the railroad tracks and hold forth on the metaphysical importance of Taggart Transcontinental and her rightful place at the helm. It is obvious, that even as a grade-school child, Dagny would have been a better CEO than anyone else in the whole company. Francisco d'Anconia knows how to expertly pilot a speedboat his very first time at the wheel, while Jim Taggart just can't do it.

You can tell an Ubermench on sight, because their features are "angular," and so are their signatures. Furthermore, there's only a tiny handful of Ubermenschen, enough to fill a small town, and without them, all of civilization will collapse. If one is not an Ubermensch, the best one can do is be a Loyal Retainer to one. This is the role of Eddie Willars, and Hank Rearden's secretary.

Of course, much of this is necessitated by the nature of fiction. It would have been mighty difficult for John Galt to identify, locate, and have an in-depth philosophical discussion with ten million people, then build a city big enough to hold them without being found out. Furthermore, Rand's description of her heroes as "angular" while the villains were "rounded" or "pudgy" derived from her notion that straight lines and angles represented the "man-made" (e.g. New York City, a plotted course with origin and destination) while circles and arcs represented nature (natural cycles, orbits, etc.), so naturally her heroes would have the signature of Man embedded in their features.

However, this reinforces an implicit notion that O'ist Heroism is *inborn,* that the ability to reach the true heights of virtue is something one "just has," like facial features and eye color. This notion is buttressed by the fact that no Rand character ever expanded their capabilities and virtue to go from "normal" to "Heroic," and any that tried met tragic ends.

Cherryl Taggart: She was an ordinary shop-girl who wanted to aspire to greatness, but wasn't *born* with the knowledge and desire to be a railroad tycoon or great industrialist. She didn't know exactly how to get from where she was to where she wanted to be, but she was willing to risk all and work hard to do it. Unfortunately, she ends up meeting and marrying James Taggart, whom she thinks is the genius behind TT.

She does her best to be a good wife to someone she erroneously thinks to be a Hero. But, the Olympian level of Heronine is something she just can't reach, and so she plunges to her death, much like Icarus.

Eddie Willars: Dagny Taggart's Loyal Retainer, he knows even as a child that his "place" is to serve Dagny, as his ancestors served hers. She even goes so far as to point out that corporate logos are the new feudal aristocratic crests, and rightly so. He admits to Dagny that he can run a railroad, but could never build one. Why not? Could he not set out to learn whatever additional knowledge is necessary? If 9-year-old Dagny could do it, why couldn't he, as a grown man? No answer is given, and Dagny makes no suggestion that he could expand his capabilities and virtue beyond this invisible barrier that separates him from her. She's just "a better class of people," period. He meets his grim end attempting to repair a broken locomotive, refusing to abandon his feudal responsibilty to the Railroad.

The "Wet Nurse:" Here is a young government agent sent to enforce regulations and spy on Hank Rearden, but he comes to realize that Rearden is right. He tries to switch sides, and become a disciple of Rearden. However, the invisible metaphysical power that forbids "good" peasants like Cherryl and Eddie from becoming Ubermenscen cannot possibly allow a minor villain to redeem himself and become a Hero, or even a Loyal Retainer. And so, like Phaethon or Prometheus, he is struck down by Fate for aspiring beyond his reach.

Moving on to The Fountainhead, we're offered Gail Wynand, a powerful newspaperman who believes the "right things" in his heart, but doesn't think they can work in the "real world," so he hires Ellsworth Toohey, and caters to the masses. In the end, he "repents of his sin," but true redemption proves impossible. He cannot turn his newspaper into an instrument of rationality (the mob woudn't stand for it, and this part is probably correct), but nor can he do anything else to live a rational and Heroic life. He must immolate himself and leave his fortune to Roark, so that he (Roark) can build the world's tallest skyscraper.

Now, consider the fact that very few first-time readers of Rand's fiction were mighty industrialists, prominent scientists, or renowned Aristotelian philosophers. Most were "ordinary" people alot more like Cherryl, Eddie, or the Wet Nurse than John Galt, Dagny, or Francisco d'Anconia. Some might even be like Gail Wynand (i.e., having held or acted on ideas contrary to O'ism)

This repeated implicit message tells new would-be O'ists that neither redemption or significant self-improvement (i.e. a rise to Hero status) is possible to them. The very best they can do is find a member of the Natural Aristocracy and serve them well. In other words, if you're not *already* an O'ist Hero before you've ever read Rand, you cannot hope to become one.

IMO, this puts a huge damper on the spread of Objectivism. Compare it with Christianity, which offers anyone, no matter what they've done, a chance to be "redeemed" and become a genuine Christian. Furthermore, Christianity offers a "technology of personal transformation" (repentance, Baptism ceremony, prayer, Bible-reading, church attendance, sometimes mystical experiences as in Charismatic Christianity). While its effectiveness can definitely be debated it is at least *there,* so a new convert to Christianity can at least hope or imagine that they can become a "great" Christian. Christianity has virtually conquered the world, while O'ism remains an odd little cult.

Furthermore, this implicit "Ubermensch/untermensch" divide is IMO a major factor in creating O'ism's cultish tendancies. For new O'ists (er, "students of Objectivism") joining the movement, particularly during Rand's lifetime, the first order of business would be to find an Ubermensch and become their Retainer, since again, very few of these "students" could claim to have dreamed of running a railroad, or copper mine, or steel mill, since childhood and known exactly how they wanted to go about it. IOW, they would recognize themselves as possible Loyal Retainers, not possible Heroes.

So, where to go looking for an Ubermensch? Since even the great industrialists often had lousy politics or metaphysics (e.g. J.P. Morgan, Henry Ford), there was really only one person who could be recognized as an Ubermensch without doubt: Ayn Rand herself.

Consider: as a 9-year-old, she knew she wanted to be a writer. And, having been exposed to a heroic adventure story called The Mysterious Valley, she knew exactly what kind of writer she wanted to be--one who wrote stories of The Ideal Man. Furthermore, if Rand were to have described an ideal woman novelist/philosopher in one of her books, she would have had little choice but to look in the mirror. She was a slender, angular woman with piercing brown eyes that immediately sieze the attention of anyone who looks at a photograph of her. They must have been even more arresting in life.

She was a woman who, it seemed, could be compressed entirely into the faculty of *sight.* "Ayn," BTW, is a Hebrew letter that looks something like a Y, but with very noticable brush-strokes at the upper tips, and is symbolic of the eyes (Rand, aka Alyssa Rosenbaum, was Jewish). Rand's implicit notion of the Ubermensch probably resulted largely from her own life, and from introspection. She probably really couldn't understand how someone could *not* know exactly what they wanted to be from childhood, and be able to verify their proper role by looking in a mirror.

Peikoff himself fit into this model perfectly. Like Eddie Willars, he could not become a Philosopher in his own right. Instead, he could serve as a Loyal Retainer, interpreter, and later, "intellectual heir" to Ayn Rand.

And so, as "students of Objectivism" flooded into the movement, there was basically only one Ubermensch they could clearly and unequivocally identify: Ayn Rand. And, qua Ubermensch, she, and only she, could truly undersand and elucidate Objectivism. However, she could only have so many Loyal Retainers (the group that mockingly called itself The Collective).

This left all these SoO's adrift. They could not become Heroes, and their new philosophy offered them no method of raising themselves to such heights anyway. They could not become Retainers, for lack of Ubermenschen. The Good was (and is) implicitly out of reach. Yet, O'ism is a highly moralistic philosophy, and does not brook any sort of compromise or mediocrity in the moral sphere. One could either have Virtue, or none at all, A, or Non-A.

So, what is a SoO to do? If actual attainment of Virtue is out of reach, there's only one way left to unambiguously align oneself with the Good: condemn the Evil.

This is why so much of Objectivist commentary revolves around attacking "irrationality" "altruism" "whim-worship" and other forms of evil. Now, given that Philosophic Objectivism holds that Evil is metaphysically impotent (has no power of its own) and will collapse as soon as the Good withdraws its sanction and aid, it would seem odd that O'ists (or "students of O'ism") even give evil the time of day. Likewise, in its Philosophic incarnation, O'ism hails individual Reason, adherence to Reality, and rejects any sort of intellectual authoritarianism, Revealed Knowledge, special Prophets, and the like.

The flaws inherent in Rand's claim of ownership over O'ism, combined with the flaws of Mythic Objectivism, resulted, IMO, in the transformation of what should have been a philosophy of individualism and rationality into a cult of Rand-worship, dogmatism, and hate. The "hate" here, is for the Evil. Since the Good is out of reach, unless one already has a skyscraper with one's name on it, the closest a new SoO can get to Goodness is to hate and lash out at Evil. Result: Evil takes on enormous importance, and O'ists seek and find it everywhere.

And since Evil is Evil, there is no place for mercy, or considering Evil people (i.e. anyone who is not an O'ist) as potentially valuable, or redeemable as individuals. So, if 19 Muslims hijack some airplanes and bring down a couple of the holy skyscrapers of New York (!), it is perfectly "rational" to nuke Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Mecca, exterminating hundreds of thousands, or even tens of millions of other Muslims who had nothing to do with 9/11. They are irrational Mystics, not individuals, and probably don't have an angular bone in their bodies.

They must be taught not to attack the holy land of America! Never mind that the U.S. has been bombing Muslim countries for decades (Iraq in particular), propping up corrupt military and even theocratic (Saudi Arabia) dictatorships, and supporting Israel's brutal occupation of Palestine (which is perfectly justifyable, because Israel's theocracy is a little more capitalistic and "democratic" than Palestinian theocracy).

This is *not* to say that the 9/11 hijackers or any other Islamic terrorists are moral in what they're doing (though they certainly think so). But, if the West were to be invaded by some foreign power with vastly superior technology (a la War of the Worlds) do you think we would hesitate to dust off all those chemical and biological weapons we've got, and use whatever means necessary, no matter how nasty, to drive them off? You bet your bippy we wouldn't. I bet we'd even resort to suicide bombing. Tom Cruise's character would have suicide-bombed that alien machine, if the other people hadn't pulled him out, making it possible for him to avoid the "suicide" part.

The point here is that these flaws in O'ism have made it possible for "rational individualists" to adopt a blatantly cultish mentality that bares fangs of brutality as bad or worse than Christianity or 20th-century State-worship (Communism, Nazism, Fascism). If "orthodox" (A.R.I.) O'ism had the power and influence of the Christian Right, Baghdad and Tehran would probably be radioactive ruins today, because a handful of fellows from Saudi Arabia and Egypt murdered Americans on September 11th.

Thus, the danger of a couple Really Bad Ideas mixed in with what would otherwise be a largely good (IMO) philosophy...

Always glad to have ya around.
And you.

Well, no not really. It means different things to different people of course--this simply means that what's right for you may or may not be right for me. Objectivism merely contends that we should all act within our value structure, without initiating the use of force on others. The problems it has with Altrusim are not contingent on Altrusim in and of itself, but rather we perceive that once it becomes policy, it relies on the application of force. Granted, it doesn't place any of this force on me physically, rather it's nice enough to take out its effects on my paycheck.
That force is, in my mind, justified. We know where that's going to lead.

You're more or less right again; actually one of the problems I have with Ayn Rand was she was fantastically dogmatic. It can't really justify any course of action, only those which respond rationally to the question at hand; the answers to which may be many. There isn't always necessarily only one correct course of action.
That makes for a quite unlimited philosophy of action. We act in whatever manner we think to be rational? So if I think it to be rational to take someone else's property to feed my family, is that OK? That seems perfectly rational to a lot of people. I assume you'll say no, because property rights would trump. So, in essence, you need to create a complicated hierarchy of rules to figure out which action to take when - and it has to account for every single situation. That's a monumental, almost impossible, task.

Yeah, if that tax only paid for a competent police force. I'll admit I'm generally pretty heavy handed in my tax arguments--but that's mostly a funtion of the opposition's determination to justify them in the face of some damn fine arguments if I say so myself. I treat the government just like I treat any other entitiy: if it has something to give me that's worth my money, I've got no problem paying for it. Welfare, for example, would be a more lucrative investment for me if it brought back some manner of benefit.
But then objectivism really boils down to a question of which actions create the best return on your investment, which is really a sort of consequentialism. Which course of action betters the world you live in the best? And the distinction between Objectivist ethics and certain forms of utilitarianism vanishes.

But what you're saying here amounts to the belief that true knowledge is impossible, which is something I would like to avoid. I'll grant you that many act on false information or half-truths: these people aren't necessarily wrong on virtue of these actions since the truth can at times be difficult to ascertain. However, it's difficulty does not render such knowledge impossible, it simply poses an obstacle.
My point is that it's impossible to know if you're understanding is the true one. Perhaps I have true knowledge, and believe that I have true knowledge, but someone else disputes it. I can never be 100% that I'm correct. I can only advocate my viewpoint based on what I know. Because knowing whether you possess absolute truth is impossible, it doesn't make much sense to treat that truth as total objective fact.

We've already been over this, and given what happened to this argument last time, I'm very surprised to see you use it again. Like I said last time, the actual compsition itself does not change from person to person: we're all hearing the same notes. What differs is our reaction to it, or if we have a sensitivity to a particular instrument or range. We can say in a relevant way that they're hearing the same thing because they are. Beethoven's 7th is Beethoven's 7th, whether you love it or hate it. Your [or my] opinions of the piece do not change it.
You missed the change in context. Before, I used it to say there's no absolute truth. Here, I'm using it to say that it's stupid to treat facts as objective. The distinction is important. The different manners in which people process music indicate that they're not hearing the music in the same manner, even if it's the same music. If that's the case, then it makes little sense to treat that music as something which is the same to everyone (objective fact).

No, it merely means that these people have different value structures. The first mistakenly equates midlevel electronics with a human consciousness, and the second person recognizes the difference between theft and direct physical harm. Yes, they both have different ideas, but that does not mean that both of them are right.
But how do you know that? They still could be right. There may be an objective moral fact, but you can never be sure that it's yours. Because that's true, you can advocate your moral position, but can never assume that it's absolutely true until you manage to persuade almost everyone that you're correct.

One of my earlier posts applies to this just as much.

Yeah, that's true. 'Natural' rights comes from the idea that man's rights follows rationally from man's nature, Objectivism contends that man's rights follows rationally from man's existence. If that makes any sense at all.
That does make sense. And I tend to agree more with Objectivism here.

supporting Israel's brutal occupation of Palestine (which is perfectly justifyable, because Israel's theocracy is a little more capitalistic and "democratic" than Palestinian theocracy).
GAK! In what was otherwise perhaps the most intelligent post I've ever seen on NationStates, you make the ghastly mistake of mischaracterizing and overly simplifying the Israel/Palestine situation, while at the same time lionizing one side and demonizing the other. I'm not going to make this into an Israel thread; there are plenty of those. But please, don't say inflammatory things like that if you don't want people to snap at you (and rightly so).

GAK! In what was otherwise perhaps the most intelligent post I've ever seen on NationStates, you make the ghastly mistake of mischaracterizing and overly simplifying the Israel/Palestine situation, while at the same time lionizing one side and demonizing the other. I'm not going to make this into an Israel thread; there are plenty of those. But please, don't say inflammatory things like that if you don't want people to snap at you (and rightly so).

Thank you on the first part, point taken on the second. You're right that this should not become an Israel/Palestine thread. I did not mean to "lionize" the Palestinians. There's no doubt they (the militant ones) get in as much brutality as they can. My comment "...Israel's theocracy is a little more capitalistic and "democratic" than Palestinian theocracy" does not, IMO qualify as "lionizing" the Palestinians. They're both gangs of brutal religious fanatics, IMO. The "brutal Israeli occupation" part...well, they are the ones with the tanks and helicopter gunships. Frankly, I don't have a high opinion of either side.

However, all of this is in response to the way "Orthodox" O'ism, as characterized by the Ayn Rand Institute, views the struggle. They do, quite clearly lionize the Israelis, and excuse everything they do. A rational, individualistic philosophy, as O'ism was presumably supposed to represent, would not take sides in a savage war between two religious/ethnic collectivisms, treating one as if it were the incarnation of Virtue, the other as the manifestation of Evil, because the former has shopping malls and looks like us, i.e. the West. That is not rationality or individualism, IMO.

GAK! In what was otherwise perhaps the most intelligent post I've ever seen on NationStates, you make the ghastly mistake of mischaracterizing and overly simplifying the Israel/Palestine situation, while at the same time lionizing one side and demonizing the other. I'm not going to make this into an Israel thread; there are plenty of those. But please, don't say inflammatory things like that if you don't want people to snap at you (and rightly so).

Thank you on the first part, point taken on the second. You're right that this should not become an Israel/Palestine thread. I did not mean to "lionize" the Palestinians. There's no doubt they (the militant ones) get in as much brutality as they can. My comment "...Israel's theocracy is a little more capitalistic and "democratic" than Palestinian theocracy" does not, IMO qualify as "lionizing" the Palestinians. They're both gangs of brutal religious fanatics, IMO. The "brutal Israeli occupation" part...well, they are the ones with the tanks and helicopter gunships. Frankly, I don't have a high opinion of either side.

However, all of this is in response to the way "Orthodox" O'ism, as characterized by the Ayn Rand Institute, views the struggle. They do, quite clearly lionize the Israelis, and excuse everything they do. A rational, individualistic philosophy, as O'ism was presumably supposed to represent, would not take sides in a savage war between two religious/ethnic collectivisms, treating one as if it were the incarnation of Virtue, the other as the manifestation of Evil, because the former has shopping malls and looks like us, i.e. the West. That is not rationality or individualism, IMO.

Lots of stuff
I'm afraid to read this because it has numerous references to her fiction, most of which I have yet to read. Suffice to say I'm not fantastically impressed with her writing skills, excepting, of course, her adept use of the English language.

From what I've skimmed, most of the character flaws you critique are accurate, as well as your issues with Objectivism. Have you read Peikoff's book, or is your information coming from Rand's fiction and essays?

Also, those of us who advocated a nuclear response to 9/11 are idiots. Objectivists more than nearly any other ideology I've seen [excepting Socialism] are rather prone to disagreement.

EDIT: Deleuze, I'll get to you tomorrow. Right now my bed is looking mighty tempting.

Could you say that again? I did not hear you the first time.

That force is, in my mind, justified. We know where that's going to lead.
I just read about this actually;

"This vice [the initiation of force against men] represents the antithesis and destruction of the virtue of rationality--and therefore of every other virtue and every (nonautomatic) value as well.

To refrain from force is not necessarily a mark of good character. One can be thoroughly evil, yet recoil from wielding a fist or club oneself (e.g. the coward who tries to destroy other by psychological or ideological, not physical means). But to initiate force is to commit a major evil. In the long run, this evil is an inevitable result of irrationality.

Physical force is coercion excersized by a physical agency, such as, among many other examples, by punching a man in the face, incarcerating him, shooting him, or seizing his property. [Emphasis mine] "Initiation" means starting the use of force against an innocent individual(s), one who has not himself started its use against others.

Since men do not automatically come to the same conclusions, no code of ethics can escape the present issue. The moralist has to tell men how to act when they disagree (assuming they do not simply go their separate ways). In essence, there are only two viewpoints on this issue, because there are only two basic methods by which one can deal with a dispute. The methods are reason or force; seeking to persuade others to share one's ideas voluntarily--or coercing others into doing what one wishes regardless of their ideas. Objectivism countenances only the method of persuasion.


...

To order a man to accept a conclusion against his own judgement is to order him to accept as true something that, according to everything he knows, is [i]not true (is either arbitrary or false). This amounts to ordering him to believe a contradiction; it is like demanding his agreement that red is green or that 2 plus 2 equals 5. One can torture an individual, force him to mouth any words one says, even drive him insane, but one cannot make him believe such mouthings. Volition pertains to the act of initiating and sustaining the process of thought. If a man does choose to think, however, he has no choice in regard to the conclusions he reaches. No matter what the bribes danlged before him or the threats, a thinker has to follow the evidence wherever it leads. Even if he tries, he cannot will himself to accept as true that which he sees to be baseless or mistaken.

It is impossible for a man to engage in a cognitive undertaking or to reach a cognitive result, such as an idea, while brushing aside logic and reality. Yet this is what the criminal who seeks to force a mind demands of his victim. The victim, therefore, has only one recourse (if he cannot escape): to cease functioning as a cognitive entity. When reality is decreed, at gunpoint, to be out of bounds, a rational man has no way to proceed.

...

The victim need not give his inner consent to the forcers' evil demands; he need not agree to start lying to himself. But there is one mental penalty he cannot avoid: if and to the extent that someone's gun becomes a man's epistemological court of final appeal, replacing the law of identity, then the man cannot think. This is not a matter of moral integrity on the victim's part, but of philosophical necessity. The point is not that a slave should choose to defy his captors (he should, if he can). The point is that, qua enslaved, he cannot perform the processes essential to human cognition; he cannot think. "

--Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand by Leonard Peikoff; pages 310-312, paraphrased.

Generally I don't quote massive amounts of texts from someone else's work, but I just read this chapter the other day and it seemed quite pertinent. The underlying premise of this passage is that rationality and force are opposites in a moral context.

That makes for a quite unlimited philosophy of action. We act in whatever manner we think to be rational? So if I think it to be rational to take someone else's property to feed my family, is that OK? That seems perfectly rational to a lot of people.
Again, many things seem right but arent; the Nazis thought they were right every bit as much as you or I. Throw rationality out the window and one can reach nearly any conclusion one wishes. Objectivism doesn't ask us to act on any impulse that we 'think' is rational, it asks us to act only once it can be rationally justified.

I assume you'll say no, because property rights would trump. So, in essence, you need to create a complicated hierarchy of rules to figure out which action to take when - and it has to account for every single situation. That's a monumental, almost impossible, task.
Monumental? Yes. Almost impossible? Yes. Impossible? No. Knowledge is complex and hierachial too, but it is not impossible to attain either.

But then objectivism really boils down to a question of which actions create the best return on your investment, which is really a sort of consequentialism. Which course of action betters the world you live in the best? And the distinction between Objectivist ethics and certain forms of utilitarianism vanishes.
Trade, by its very nature, is consequential. One cannot measure whether or not a trade is worth it until he is informed of the terms of the trade. In some cases, we don't get to find out until after. Here you've alluded to the starting point of one of our previous arguments; that the 'Greatest Good' mindset applies to almost every philosophy. The real bone of contention here, is just what constitutes 'The Good.'

My point is that it's impossible to know if you're understanding is the true one. Perhaps I have true knowledge, and believe that I have true knowledge, but someone else disputes it. I can never be 100% that I'm correct. I can only advocate my viewpoint based on what I know. Because knowing whether you possess absolute truth is impossible, it doesn't make much sense to treat that truth as total objective fact.
Well, it's difficult, but it's not impossible. When evaluating a situation, of course, one is often faced with many different accounts and still more possible outcomes; this does not make it impossible for him to acheive clarity of the situation or to make the appropriate decision. To most people, however, it is simply too daunting.

People who make incorrect decisions or come to a bad conclusion based on false data frequently do so of no moral fault of their own; but that does not absolve them from correcting their mistake when the consequences of their decision or action are made manifest. You're correct when you say that 'I can only advocate my viewpoint based on what I know,' but the point here is that one should always strive to know more.

You missed the change in context. Before, I used it to say there's no absolute truth. Here, I'm using it to say that it's stupid to treat facts as objective. The distinction is important. The different manners in which people process music indicate that they're not hearing the music in the same manner, even if it's the same music. If that's the case, then it makes little sense to treat that music as something which is the same to everyone (objective fact).
You're still using a bad example; a better way to put it might be something that actually exists in a moral context, like say: A car bomb goes off at an Iraqi checkpoint; one person sees this as evidence that we need to get more troops over there and crack down on the bastards, and another might see it as evidence that our actions aren't accomplishing anything. This does not negate the existence of a correct deduction of the situation.


But how do you know that? They still could be right. There may be an objective moral fact, but you can never be sure that it's yours. Because that's true, you can advocate your moral position, but can never assume that it's absolutely true until you manage to persuade almost everyone that you're correct.
But by that logic, every action a man takes in response to physical force is correct; it enshrines as subjective and arbitrary every moral conclusion one comes to. Killing someone over a TV is senseless because a human life does not have monetary worth; since the implication that you're making when you kill someone over a TV is that a human life is worth somewhere between $50 and $1500 [if it was a plasma screen]. It places on life a value which doesn't exist; a monetary one with no grounding in reality.

That does make sense. And I tend to agree more with Objectivism here.
There is hope for you yet! :p

Selfishness--or rather rational selfishness [a common mistake is to omit the italics] has always been ethical. We just haven't realized it until this century. Besides, it's too rigorous and well-thought out to amount to an 'excuse' for anything.

I disagree. Narcissism, no matter how "rational", is narcissism. If it is possible for me to rape a little girl with no fear of getting caught and I happen to be a pædophile, it is perfectly "rational" for me to rape her and doing so is indeed quite selfish. Any ethical system that allows pædophilic rape so long as it's "rational" is not fine by me.

I disagree. Narcissism, no matter how "rational", is narcissism. If it is possible for me to rape a little girl with no fear of getting caught and I happen to be a pædophile, it is perfectly "rational" for me to rape her and doing so is indeed quite selfish. Any ethical system that allows pædophilic rape so long as it's "rational" is not fine by me.
What....the...hell....?

Again, many things seem right but arent; the Nazis thought they were right every bit as much as you or I. Throw rationality out the window and one can reach nearly any conclusion one wishes. Objectivism doesn't ask us to act on any impulse that we 'think' is rational, it asks us to act only once it can be rationally justified.


That's exactly the problem: the Nazis were extremely, ruthlessly rational. They had polished, rational arguments for their brutality, which is why they were so able to convince themselves they were right. Anything can be justified rationally (i.e. rationalized) as long as the logic is consistent and the intial premises and goals remain unchallenged. Almost nobody ever thinks they're being irrational (except maybe in retrospect), even when the rest of us think they are positively insane.

That's why rationality alone is not enough for morality--we need emotional, human factors as well, despite their icky resistance to "rational" evaluation and their occasional double edged quality.

[edit: spelling]

That's exactly the problem: the Nazis were extremely, ruthlessly rational. They had polished, rational arguments for their brutality, which is why they were so able to convince themselves they were right. Anything can be justified rationally (i.e. rationalized) as long as the logic is consistent and the intial premises and goals remain unchallenged. Almost nobody ever thinks they're being irrational (except maybe in retrospect), even when the rest of us think they are positively insane.
Uhhh... no. The idea that you can justify wiping out an entire race of people using 'well reasoned arguments' is depressing at best. They had reasons, yes--they had bad reasons. Their logic was far from consistent, and their goals were challenged plenty of times. This has to be the weakest argument against reason I've ever read.

That's why rationality alone is not enough for morality--we need emotional, human factors as well, despite their icky resistance to "rational" evaluation and their occasional double edged quality.
This disturbs me on a number of levels. Emotion should not be introduced to morality [at least not on a society-spanning scale--i.e., legislation] simply because emotional responses vary wildly from person to person. You can't have consistency with 280 million different emotional responses.

Once you start making laws based on one [or fifty] people's emotions, you're going to start running into problems pretty fast.