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All or Nothing: Philosophy with Degrees (Part 3) - Objectivism's Solution Let's turn our attention now towards how Objectivism avoids these problems. It'll give us a nice comparison point to understand the all or nothing view better, but to also see how we can avoid it for ourselves. Let me start off on the topic of concept formation. Objectivism holds that we form concepts by finding individual things that are similar in a particular way, and by lumping them together based on that line of similarity. So we can take a lot of colored objects, and lump all the blue ones together. The particular measurements are omitted in the process of abstraction. In other words, we don't care what shade of blue we include, as long as it's blue. The important part for this discussion is to understand how the similarity is identified. Taking a bunch of blue objects isn't enough. We have to contrast them to non-blue objects, like red or yellow. Only when we see them contrasted to the other colors can we see how similar the blue ones are. They're really similar when compared to non-blue objects. An important implication of this relative similarity is that there are conceptual borderlines. For instance, although green and blue are different colors, sometimes you see a greenish blue that's difficult to place definitively in one category or another. This is the important point to the all or nothing discussion. The boundaries in concept formation are not arbitrary and definitive. The concepts are formed by noticing a similarity in attributes when compared to other things. This lack of absolutely definitive boundaries is actually a strength of Objectivism. In reality, when attributes are similar, the resulting effects are similar as well. Drawing clean boundaries might make it seem more logical, but it actually distorts your understanding of the concept. The truth is that two instances that sit close to a boundary, but on opposite sides, usually have plenty in common. Drawing a line down the middle of blue and green will just result in someone saying, "Look at that green thing," and someone else smugly shouting "It's blue!" This has an impact on how we define a concept as well. A definition aims at identifying the concept and contrasting it to others. Is there one perfect definition for a concept? No. The first part is the identification of the concept. Usually you try to describe it in a way that provides the most information. When defining a man, you might say he's a "rational animal." That provides plenty of information. But in a different context, you may need to use a different definition. There may be other qualities that are deemed more essential. For instance, in genetics you may define man by certain DNA sequences. The rational aspect of man may not be important to a particular problem. The other half of the definition is contrasting it to other concepts. What happens when we find Martians landing their flying saucers? We modify the definition to make the distinction clear. Sometimes you see the all or nothing perspective show up when it comes to definitions. They try to form rigid boundaries, and perfect definitions. If you find that there's a human who isn't rational, or has his rational faculty damaged, they would simply say "He's not, by definition, human!" You can see how this is the inverse of Objectivism. We start with the concepts and seek to identify them with the definitions. But the rigid boundary definers want it all or nothing. What happens is they overlook obvious similarities just so their definition works. They won't see that bluish green and greenish blue actually have a lot in common. Their method of categorizing their knowledge creates false barriers, blinding them to what's real. Objectivism: Ethics Let's move on to Objectivist ethics. Do we have rules that we have to follow, and if you fail to even slightly live up to them, you're immoral? Not really. The rules-based morality and the intrinsic value have to be all or nothing because there's no way of determining the cost of violating them. You can't make a rational trade-off if you don't know what your costs and benefits are. And remember that intrinsic values have no purpose. That's why you can't quantify the loss. There's nothing gained or lost by them. Objectivism instead has the relative, agent-based morality. Values are valuable to a specific person, and for a particular reason. They serve a purpose, and the purpose is what defines their moral value. By understanding what they seek to accomplish, we can measure that outcome with the outcome of other possible choices. We weigh the ends on a scale of how they improve our lives. It's this purpose, and the benefits derived from pursuing these values, that allow us to make trade-offs. If you work at a job and have an Objectivist organization to run, you can make trade-offs between the two. Putting less time into your career is not an act of immorality. It's an act of value-optimization. By spending less time at work and more time on SOLO, you expect to gain overall. Of course, doing that calculation is outside the scope of this speech, but the point is simply that because there's a benefit and a cost, it isn't a complete write-off. Putting less time into your day job is perfectly fine most of the time. If it were an intrinsic duty, there couldn't be a justification for putting less time into it. The same parallel is true with respect to moral principles in Objectivism. They're not simple rules that you follow in order to be a good person. A rule-based morality requires that you practice them at all times and in all cases. But Objectivist moral principles are true only within certain contexts, and they're aimed at certain kinds of values. You still need to make the tough choices about when to apply them, and to what extent you do. But again, since there's a purpose behind the moral principles, you have the means of making the judgments. A rule-based morality is blind and requires obedience. A principle-based morality allows you to weigh the costs and benefits. A real purpose is a powerful defense against the all or nothing mentality. When you can see what you're trying to accomplish, you can make your own judgments about its ultimate value. Objectivism: Context, context, context! I've hit on the idea of context throughout this speech, with the last mention in regards to Objectivist moral principles. Context is hugely important in Objectivism, and is thoroughly neglected by the all or nothing approach. A context is the situation, or environment, in which something exists. In the field of epistemology, context is the conditions in which the knowledge is valid. If you say, "I read fine without my glasses," it assumes a context of a normal well-lit area. Understanding that knowledge is always contextual is important because it makes you identify the contexts in which your knowledge is applicable. What conditions are you counting on to be true? What happens if the conditions vary? In ethics, on top of the epistemological context already mentioned, context often refers to the many factors that are needed to make a moral judgment. What are the needs of the person involved? What skills do they have? What choices are open to them now and in the future? The point here is that you can't go around making moral claims that are independent of the context. You can't, for instance, demand some action as the only moral choice when it isn't one of the possible choices. Objectivist ethics seeks to provide guidance for making choices between the options that are available. Anything else is just talk. The all or nothing approach really doesn't fit well with context for a number of reasons. In ethics, the intrinsic values are context-free rules to live by. Since there is no underlying purpose behind them, the context doesn't affect the so-called value. So it can be brushed off as irrelevant. In the field of knowledge, we get back to the rationalism. Once again, arguing the context moves to weaker ground. You start putting into question the validity of the initial premises again, this time whether they're true in a particular context. And rationalists hate going in that direction. They would like to just assume the premises, and move on. Logically, that's a huge problem. The methods of logical deduction are based on the Law of Identity. The "rules" of deduction are necessarily true, or you'd run into contradictions between the initial premises. But the rules are only applicable if the premises are all consistent and within the same context. If one premise is true only in context A, and the next premise is true in a different context, the rationalist is really just emulating the form of logical deduction. Also, as I mentioned earlier, the quest for the perfect definition is also the quest for a context-free definition. Again the desire for really easy, clear answers leads to a willing ignorance of critical factors. It is a desire to have perfect boundaries and to treat everything as one or the other. Objectivism: Certainty Since we've discussed the idea of 'certain' as an attractive feature of rationalism, even though it doesn't really apply there, I think it's important to give a brief comment on the Objectivist position. We obviously don't uphold deductive reasoning as the method of acquiring certainty, since it's a house of cards resting on the inductive foundation. A theory of certainty would have to be solidly based on the process of induction. When we talk about certainty, we talk about an epistemological certainty. Which means it has to be consistent with our method of identifying reality. We don't uphold omniscience as a standard. Instead, certainty, if it is to have any practical meaning, must involve having properly arrived at the knowledge without any indications that it might not be true. It needs to properly apply reason, and be thorough in the investigation. And of course, context is important. All knowledge is contextual, so certainty is going to have to take into account the contextual nature of that knowledge. The point here isn't to go into detail of what certainty is, but to point out that the semblance of certainty that rationalists seek is not at all the same. They seek an illusion, ignoring the possible opportunities for doubt, instead of addressing those possibilities. The Extent to Which It's True Let's recap. I started by identifying the problem I call "all or nothing." I gave an example of people equating the United States with a police state. The fundamental problem is an inability to see thing in terms of degrees. The problem has many philosophical roots and examples. Some take legitimate methods of reasoning, like dichotomous thinking and deductive reasoning, and pervert them. Rationalism ignores the foundations of deductive reasoning, induction and context, and focuses on the deductive rules in a quest for certainty. Dichotomous thinking, or the "in principle" problem, attempts to treat every element within a category as identical to every other. In ethics, the all or nothing perspective tries to formulate moral rules and uphold values as intrinsic. It severs the connection between the actions and the outcomes, and demands that they be performed for no reason. Or what amounts to the same thing, "to be a good person." We went through some reasons for the attractiveness of the all or nothing approach. It's easy to learn, easy to use, and easy to communicate. It also provides you with the semblance of 100 percent certainty. Those make it very inviting. The downside is that it's easy to use because it's simplistic, it's easy to learn because it's rote memorization and no understanding, it's easy to communicate because you can scream, "Evil! Evil! You're being Evil!" instead of putting real thought into the ethical situation. And as I've already noted, the certainty they have is an illusion. We've also seen how Objectivism gets around some of these problems. Concepts are formed from a relative perspective and measurement omission, signifying that there are degrees within concepts and that the boundaries of a concept are usually not rigid. In ethics, values have purpose that allows for gradations in importance. And Objectivism upholds the importance of context. Final Words If there is one thing I really want to get across in this speech, it's that often our knowledge represents relationships, instead of all or nothing alternatives. When a factor varies in the input, the output varies as well. For instance, when we argue for a capitalist society, it doesn't matter that there's never been an existing fully free society. We can still gather empirical data by noticing that there are degrees of freedom, and noticing the effects of those degrees. As most of you know, there's a strong correlation between freedom and prosperity in the nations of the world. It's disingenuous to dismiss that evidence because it's not fully free or fully enslaved. We don't blindly assert that a free society magically produces prosperity. We say that freedom has a number of effects that encourage prosperity. Over and over I see this all or nothing point of view ignoring the causal relationship behind a statement, and dismissing it as not a perfect example. On one thread on SOLO, I argued the important of independence to a person's life. One answer I got back was that since nobody could be fully independent, it doesn't really matter. Don't get caught up on the weird definition of independence there. It's really just a product of not seeing why it is that independence is valuable to the extent it's practiced. The all or nothing view turns it into some kind of platonic ideal and then rejects it for being impossible. But if they had just grasped that we're dealing with a causal relationship, and not an all or nothing approach, the confusion would have gone away. How prevalent is the all or nothing approach? Keep your eyes open and you'll see plenty of examples. But the important point to take away is that degrees really matter. They may require more thinking. They may be more difficult to explain or to utilize. But they're a basic part of comprehension and you can't avoid them without sinking into blind ignorance. Thank you. If you enjoyed this, why not subscribe to The Free Radical?
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