RoR: Forum

     One of the biggest problems in this whole debate, including your post, Linz, is...no one distinguishing the difference between 'duty' and 'obligations.' I've argued this confusion on another forum-thread, methinks Parenting, though not sure.

     There is a diff. And, don't anyone tell me that just because one is 'single' that one has NO 'obligations' to anyone. Maybe some (few, hermit-survivalists) don't, per se, but, there's still what Rand referred to as 'negative obligations' re rights of others. To ignore this under the rubric of argument-against-the-idea-of-'duty', is asking for not-on-the-same-page debates.

      There CAN be rational arguments for suicide (apart from Galt's statement to Dagny, I suggest catching the made-for-HBO movie with James Stewart and Bette Davis titled Right Of Way, and thinking about such (nm Who's Life Is It, Anyway? with Richard Dreyfuss).

     OTOH, there CAN be arbitrary (feeling-based ONLY) 'reasons' for it; such as pure depression...or, in the case of 'homicidal'-suicide-bombers: hate.

     Either way, not only that one decides TO do it, but also HOW one does it, determines it's worth as being immoral, as well as moral. I might even add, whether 'consequences' on others may be relevent to it's 'morality'-judgeability. At any rate, the 'decision' to do it is NEVER 'amoral' (or, 'pre-'moral). The 'decision' of how to do it is NEVER 'amoral'. Because, to wit...

     One, in making a 'decision' about anything, including this, is already alive and, either rationally-calculating or emotively-indulging-in, the 'worth'whileness of taking the action. In doing such, one has not excluded oneself from being morally judgeable by others (or, by one's self, should one be so inclined to, at the time) in doing such, nor in how one does it.

     To be sure, the decision (or,choice, option, etc) is pre-moral, in the sense that there are no 'guidelines' of 'how to live the moral life' that are (can we say definitionally?) applicable to the choice/decision. --- NTL, it IS, inherently, a bona-fidely 'morally-judgeable'...choice.

     I grant that this seems a bit...paradoxical sounding. I leave the analysis of it's (fuzzy?) logical flaws to others.

LLAP
J:D

Post 41

Thursday, October 13, 2005 - 8:41pm

I don't doubt the Randian authenticity of the "premoral choice to live." Peikoff presents straightforwardly in OPAR, before he undercuts his own exposition with gratuitous moral judgments of anyone who chooses to die. (I don't recall him indulging in the moralizing in his lectures in the 1970s. Besides, if Peikoff is right about the premoral choice to live, these moral judgments are flagrant examples of the stolen concept fallacy.) In any event, the doctrine of the choice to live is already in Galt's speech. But it brings completely unnecessary trouble and perplexity into Objectivism.

How often does any human being make an explicit choice to live? Many of us will never do it. The only obvious cases are when deciding whether or not to commit suicide, or whether or not to fight a serious illness or life-threatening injury. Yet the choice to live is supposed to be an explicit choice, which one must make before one makes any moral choices.

From a developmental point of view, the doctrine of the premoral choice to live is completely unworkable. Young children do not wait to acquire virtues or learn moral principles until they have first made a conscious choice to live. There is no reason to suppose that most children make conscious choices to live, period.

What Rand and Peikoff seem to be doing is taking a philosopher's justification for moral principles (the concept of life is logically prior to the concept of value, etc.) and reading it back into the functioning of all of those human beings who are neither engaged in moral philosophizing, nor had to wait until they got engaged in it to acquire their moral expertise and their moral conceptions. (On Rand and Peikoff's own terms, this is a rather prominent instance of rationalism).

As Lindsay Perigo noted (along with Doug Rasmussen in "Rand on Obligation and Value" and probably a few more commentators whose work I haven't read), an explicit choice to live that must precede any moral choices wouldn't just be immune from moral evaluation. Wouldn't it also have to be exempt from epistemic evaluation, as rational or irrational?

There are ways out of this mess.

(1) Recognize that the choice to live (or its contradictory, the choice to die) are implicit in moral choices--in the selection of goals and values that, in fact, serve to promote the chooser's life or do the opposite. For that matter, that the choice to live is implicit in the choice to think (focus one's attention, notice what one is doing, etc.).

(2) Recognize that the moral virtues are constituents of the good life for human beings, not just means to the end of survival. (Proponents of this view are said to be adoping the "flourishing" interpretation of the Objectivist ethics, as opposed to the "survivalist" interpretation.)

(3) Recognize that people may, on occasion, decide to commit suicide because, in their best judgment, a good life is no longer possible for them. (Suicide as the direct result of a premoral choice to die appears to be an arational, amoral act.)

Of these, (1) is not consistent with Rand's stated position. She does have a notion of implicitness, though, in my opinion, it is ambiguous and underdeveloped. But an adequate notion of implicitness is going to be needed anway, in epistemology as well as ethics. So my non-Objectivist recommendation would be to bite the bullet, reject Rand's notion of an explicit choice to live, and replace it with a properly explicated implicit choice to live.

I favor (2) as well, and there is some basis for it in Rand's writings--what's "man's life qua man," if not a conception of flourishing? But Rand's commitment to survivalism is strong, and I am not sure that Randians need to give it up on account of the particular issues raised here. The "premoral choice to live" may be avoidable simply by making change (1).

As for (3), I think Randians need something like it regardless of what they decide to do about (1) and (2). Otherwise they will have to embrace a duty to live no matter what. And as Lindsay Perigo notes, that is grossly inconsistent with the Objectivist ethics.

Robert Campbell

(Edited by Robert Campbell on 10/13, 8:55pm)

Post 42

Thursday, October 13, 2005 - 11:49pm

Robert: To live or not to live? If you view your choices, any choices, as important, that is the choice, even the little ones. That is what the broth is reduced to and such are the ultimate consequences, especially if you add them all up.

--Brant
very inebriated, will edit as appropriate tomorrow. Good nite.

Post 43

Thursday, October 13, 2005 - 11:57pm

Robert, I suspect you do not understand what suicide, generally speaking, refers to. Conside how many people would kill themselves absent an audience?

Not nearly as many as those who need and want one as a primary motivation: revenge.

--Brant

Post 44

Friday, October 14, 2005 - 12:43am

Dailey is on to something here, as is Campbell.

Duty & obligation aren't synonomous. A duty to self would be mere moral obligation. The one moral obligation to self -- is attainment of happiness. Think about that, who loses if you fail to attain happiness -- you do! If happiness is unattainable, then suicide "becomes" moral.

===================
I favor (2) as well, and there is some basis for it in Rand's writings--what's "man's life qua man," if not a conception of flourishing? But Rand's commitment to survivalism is strong, and I am not sure that Randians need to give it up on account of the particular issues raised here.
===================

In my view, Rand's commitment to survivalism was an over-reaction to the charge of hedonism. She wanted to make it clear that Objectivism wasn't hedonism. Just look at her wording on this, in light of a reaction against said charge -- and you will see what I mean. If no one had brought up the charge of hedonism -- even a tacit charge -- then Rand would've been championing Aristotelean eudamonia like there's no tomorrow. It's right there -- in her words on life vs. happiness.

And David Kelley's defense of survivalism is a similar reaction -- against ethical relativists. By grounding ethics in survival, Kelley has teflon-coated Objectivism against critics -- at the price of diminishing Objectivist ethics. Think about flourishing for a minute. Flourishing logically depends on surviving. There is no need to fall back onto survivalism, in order to defend Objectivism against an onslaught of ethical relativist pomo wankers. If you champion flourishing, then you champion survival.

Survivalism is bunk. Thrivalism is where it's at. Though the error is understandable considering what they were reacting against, Aristotle was more right than Rand -- or Kelley -- on that.

Ed

Post 45

Friday, October 14, 2005 - 6:43am

For further detailing of 'flourishing', see Tara Smith's Viable Values book... she takes great pains to point out the necessity of and value of flourishing as opposed to mere survivaling.

Post 46

Friday, October 14, 2005 - 8:47am

Brant,

I don't doubt for a minute that people kill themselves for bad motives, such as revenge.

The question was whether there are ever good reasons to commit suicide.

In Atlas Shrugged, there's John Galt's promise to commit suicide if Dagny is imprisoned and tortured: "At the first mention of a threat to you, I will kill myself and stop them right there" (p. 1091, hardcover edition).

There is also Eric Starnes' suicide. The chief of police in Durance, Louisiana says, "... there might be forgiveness for a man who kills himself quietly. Who can pass judgment on another man's suffering and on the limit of what he can bear? But the man who kills himself, making a show of his death in order to hurt somebody, the man who gives his life for malice--there's no forgiveness for him, no excuse, he's rotten clear through..." (p. 321).

Robert Campbell

(Edited by Robert Campbell
on 10/14, 1:44pm)

Post 47

Friday, October 14, 2005 - 10:35am

But the man who kills himself, making a show of his death in order to hurt somebody, the man who gives his life for malice--there's no forgiveness for him, no excuse, he's rotten clear through..."

Then one takes this and applies it to the Islamic suicide bombers - or can one if, to the suicider, doing so is moral ?

Post 48

Friday, October 14, 2005 - 12:47pm

Robert Malcom writes, "For further detailing of 'flourishing', see Tara Smith's Viable Values book... she takes great pains to point out the necessity of and value of flourishing as opposed to mere survivaling." Tara also had this to say:

"Life is the standard of value and source of moral obligation ~if~ it is a person's goal, but it is up to the individual whether to embrace that goal." (_Viable Values_ (pp. 143-145).

I believe this statement is false. If I understand Rand correctly, to say that life is the standard of value (for man) means that what is pro-life is the standard for determining what is pro-happiness. According to Objectivism, one's own happiness is one's highest moral purpose as well as a consequence and a concomitant of life-serving actions, which is why life is the standard of moral value: Acting in a pro-life manner furthers one's happiness.

To say, as Smith does, that "Life is the standard of value and source of moral obligation ~if~ it is a person's goal, but [that] it is up to the individual whether to embrace that goal" implies that whether or not he embraces the goal is arbitrary and amoral. But if he has something to live for - if happiness is possible to him - then not to embrace that goal and the potential happiness he could gain from it would be contrary to the Objectivist ethics.

Smith continues, "At a broader level, however, the decision of whether to embrace ends is not a question of rationality. Remember that the choice to live is prerational."

Ultimate values are not chosen; they are a given and are the foundation of ethical choice. The capacity for happiness and its relationship to life-serving action is part of one's nature as a human being; it is not something one chooses. The only question for ethics is, given this natural basis of value, what choices are rational?

To say that the choice to live is "prerational" is a non-sequitur. If one has something to live for - if happiness is possible to one - then the choice to live is rational. If one has ~nothing~ to live for - if life is pure agony with no redeeming value - then the choice to suffer needlessly by prolonging one's life is irrational. In either case, one's choice to live or not to live is subject to the standard of rationality; it is not and cannot be prerational.

Smith continues, "[...] After all the reckoning about likely future scenarios and effects on a person's ends has been completed, a person reaches a picture of what his life might be. The decision of whether to pursue this stands beyond the reach of reason. How a person arrived at his image of his future could be rational or irrational; whether he wants that future can be neither."

Yes, whether he ~wants~ the future can be neither, in the sense that what he wants is not a means to some further end or goal. But what he chooses ~based~ on what he wants is indeed subject to the criterion of rationality. Smith is confusing the prerationality of the desire to live with the prerationality of the ~choice~ to live. The desire is prerational; the choice is not.

This brings me to Peikoff's statement in OPAR to which Linz originally took exception. To cite the passage once again (pp. 247 and 248), Peikoff writes:

"A man who would throw away his life without cause, who would reject the universe on principle and embrace a zero for its own sake -- such a man, according to Objectivism, would belong on the lowest rung of hell."

If we leave out the hyperbole ("lowest rung of hell"), I believe that, unlike Tara Smith's, Peikoff's view is correct. What he is saying, stripped of its religious metaphor, is that there is no justification for throwing away your life when you have something to live for, which is what he means by "without cause."

Nonetheless, David Kelley criticizes Peikoff's remarks in the following article:

http://www.objectivistcenter.org/articles/dkelley_review-objectivism-philosophy-of-ayn-rand.asp

Kelley quotes Rand in Galt's speech, "My morality, the morality of reason, is contained in a single axiom: existence exists—and in a single choice: to live." He then states, "The choice to live therefore precedes all morality, as Peikoff notes. It is the foundation of all normative claims, and so cannot itself be morally evaluated."

Kelley continues, "Yet Peikoff does not hesitate to condemn a person for failing to choose life. Except for cases of justifiable suicide, he asserts, 'A man who would throw away his life without cause ...would belong on the lowest rung of hell.' (248) The reason for this inconsistency is that he does not really regard the choice to live as a moral primary."

If "morality" simply means a guide for living your life, then, of course, morality presupposes the choice to live. But if "morality" simply means a guide to action or a criterion for choosing between alternatives, then it governs ~all~ our choices, including the choice to live or die. In any case, however, I would say that, contrary to Kelley, the choice to live is not a foundation for all ~normative~ claims, for it is clearly subject to normative evaluation, just as it is to rational evaluation. Just as the choice to live is not prerational, neither is it prenormative or premoral (in the broad sense of "morality.")

It is true that in the broader, normative sense of "morality," Peikoff does not regard the choice to live as a moral primary. And he is correct in not doing so.

Kelley continues to paraphrase Peikoff's position as follows: "Since life is existence, the choice to live is subsumed under the wider principle of adhering to existence, which Peikoff implicitly seems to regard as a kind of higher-order duty."

I don't think this is a correct paraphrase of Peikoff's view. I'm not sure what Kelley means by "adhering to existence" in this context, but despite Peikoff's religious metaphor, I wouldn't accuse him of adhering to a "higher-order duty." What Peikoff is saying, it seems to me, is that it is immoral to sacrifice your life if you have something to live for. Remember, he condemns throwing away your life ~without cause~. If he condemned throwing away your life even if you had nothing to live for, then I ~would~ accuse him of adhering to a higher-order duty. But I think it's clear that that's not his view.

- Bill

Post 49

Friday, October 14, 2005 - 1:15pm

> the choice to live is supposed to be an explicit choice, which one must make before one makes any moral choices.

Robert, do you have a reference, a quote where she said either half of this? It doesn't sound like Rand's position to me - either the need for it to be explicit, or the time sequence.

I also agree with your numbered points 1, 2, and 3 [post 41]. However, they have always seemed to me not only to be common sense, but also what I thought the Objectivist position always was.

Phil

(Edited by Philip Coates
on 10/14, 1:25pm)

Post 50

Friday, October 14, 2005 - 1:45pm

Bill Dwyer's post is long, but very insightful.

With his usual Germanic thoroughness, Bill invaluably provides us with a range of very helpful quotes from Tara Smith and Kelley as well as Peikoff.

He comes to essentially the same conclusion I did -- putting what I called the meta-moral and axiomatic nature of the choice to live [#6] in a slightly different way than I did -- a way which is well-put and precisely phrased:

"Ultimate values are not chosen; they are a given and are the foundation of ethical choice. The capacity for happiness and its relationship to life-serving action is part of one's nature as a human being; it is not something one chooses .... There is no justification for throwing away your life when you have something to live for."

If you don't use precise language as Bill does here...and instead reduce the whole argument to the sloppy idea of being for or against'duty'...you cannot analyze this issue.

Phil

(Edited by Philip Coates
on 10/14, 1:58pm)

Post 51

Friday, October 14, 2005 - 2:07pm

One way to position this is to consider the issue from a biological standpoint - we are living organisms, and as such, like every living organism, have a propensity to live, to extend our 'lifeness' as it were... but, as humans, we have this volitionality about us which requires choosing, but which does not come into play until birth when it is dependent on it to further the 'lifeness' [is why life truly begins at birth, from a human standpoint]... yet while there is this choosing, from a fundamental human standpoint, there is as much an organistic point of furtherance, which evolved from the development into a human - and so long as these systems are functioning in accordance with how they are properly to function, there is incentive to continue, and as such to influence the choosing... while to choose is a moral aspect, it is dependent on information in which to make this choosing, but at this elemental level, there is only the base line in which to choose, and with such influence to 'edge' it on, while it is a choosing, it - for lack of sufficiency to make moral choosing, is as such primal choosing - pre-moral, in other words...

Post 52

Friday, October 14, 2005 - 3:03pm

Bill,

I have not read Tara Smith's Viable Values, so I'm just responding to the passages you quoted. That, in turn, leaves the possibility that something she says elsewhere in her book would make a difference.

But the quoted passages strike me as essentially Peikovian. Smith is positing an explicit choice to live that is "prenormative," to use your term--i.e., prerational and premoral.

Smith and Peikoff seem to differ in two places:

(a) She embroiders Peikoff's treatment by positing a choice among predicted future life courses. That doesn't solve the problems caused by the "premoral choice to live"; it could even make them worse.

(b) She refrains from condemning the person who chooses death. No "lowest rung of hell" rhetoric for her.

I'd never thought about it before, but on checking "The Objectivist Ethics" in preparing my replies to you and Phil, I noted some familiar language on p. 15 (paperback edition).

Whatever else they may disagree about, today's moralists agree that ethics is a subjective issue and that the three things barred from its field are: reason--mind--reality.

If you wonder why the world is now collapsing to a lower and ever lower rung of hell, this is the reason.

If you want to save civilization, it is this premise of modern ethics--and of all ethical history--that you must challenge.

Considering what Peikoff is alluding to (perhaps unconsciously) when he brings out that Dantean language, I am all the more inclined to agree with Kelley that he is committing the fallacy of the stolen concept: bringing moral condemnation to bear on someone who has made an allegedly premoral choice to die.

More broadly, though, I agree with you that positing a premoral choice to live is not necessary for the Objectivist ethics--and that it weakens the arguments for the Objectivist ethics instead of strenghtening them.

Robert Campbell

Post 53

Friday, October 14, 2005 - 3:55pm

Phil,

You've raised an important issue here.

I've relied for so many years on Peikoff's spelled out and signposted version of the argument for the Objectivist ethics (as presented in his early 1970s lectures) that I've assimilated Rand's exposition in "The Objectivist Ethics" to Peikoff's explication. (Even so, in the early 1970s, I don't recall Peikoff isolating a "premoral choice to live" as he would do later on.)

But here's at least an opening to the logically and temporally prior "choice to live."

On p. 29 Rand says:

It is only by accepting "man's life" as one's primary and by pursuing the rational values it requires that one can achieve happiness--not by taking "happiness" as some undefined, irreducible primary and then attempting to live by its guidance.

If you achieve that which is the good by a rational standard of value, it will necessarily make you happy; but that which makes you happy, by some undefined emotional standard, is not necessarily the good.

The first sentence is about justification: judgments about the primary standard in ethics are moral philosophizing. This is advanced adult cognition we're talking about here... and not what enters into most moral decisions made by most people at any point in their lives. Note the apparently temporal structure: first accept "man's life" as the primary, then (identify and) pursue the means to it.

The second sentence is about what will happen (if Rand is correct), whether you are thinking explicitly about moral justification or not. This standard will actually assist you in doing what is actually good for you; that one will not. If you achieve X and X is really good for you, you'll be happy--whether or not you've ever done the philosophy and worked through all the reasons why X is really good for you and Y isn't.

Rand may have intended to differentiate between justification (sentence 1) and normal moral decision making (sentence 2). But she doesn't do it clearly here.

Yet the hints that one conscious choice must precede another conscious choice in time are just hints, in Rand's essay. Most of her dicussion of life and value pertains to the "genetic dependence" of the value-concept on the life-concept. That's a logical dependency, not a claim about the order in which the concepts must be acquired, or the order in which choices must be made.

Indeed, on p. 21, there's a passage that favors the "implicit-choice" interpretation:

Psychologically, the choice "to think or not" is the choice "to focus or not." Existentially, the choice "to focus or not" is the choice "to be conscious or not." Metaphysically, the choice "to be conscious or not" is the choice of life or death.

But Rand never actually talks about implicit choices, in "The Objectivist Ethics" or anywhere else.

So you may be right that Rand herself did not formulate the doctrine of the "premoral choice to live." All the worse for Peikoff and the Peikovians, if that is true.

Robert

PS. Some prominent Randians insist that virtues must be means to end of (human) life, not components or constituents of a (good) human life. I.e., some explicitly reject a "flourishing" interpretation. David Kelley used to, at any rate. I can't comment on Tara Smith without doing some further reading, but since she buys into the premoral choice to live, I'll be quite surprised to find her accepting any relationship between virtues and human life except a relationship of means to end. Because here is the whole logic of the choice to live: first you choose to live, then you choose to adopt moral values or to act virtuously in order to achieve your chosen goal of living.

(Edited by Robert Campbell
on 10/14, 3:57pm)

Post 54

Saturday, October 15, 2005 - 1:48pm

Interesting topic, Lindsay. I don't see your claim as very controversial, although it's obvious there are some who do. If there is a premoral choice to live, it should go without saying that it's premoral.

Since this topic has branched off in many different directions, I'll just address a bunch of point without trying to be too systematic.

First, on the survival vs. flourishing debate, I come down on the survival side. Flourishing comes off as subjectivism, allowing people to make claims about what "the good life" should be, without being able to ground it in facts of reality. It's a way of asserting something as part of the good life without having to show how it actually improves one's life.

I've heard a number of reasons why people prefer flourishing to survival. The first is that Rand talked about "life qua man". I see that as being perfectly compatible with the survival view of morality. It doesn't add some kind of extra qualities that a person should pursue, such as eating fine foods or having sex a lot. It emphasizes that not all methods of living are equal, and man has his own requirements and abilities. Thus, reason may be part of "life qua man", but it's not because it's somehow divorced from survival. it's because survival for a man is intimately tied to reason.

Another reason people don't like the survival view of life is that they construe it to be the "static" view of life, vs. the "dynamic" view. I wrote about this in my SOLOC 1 speech.

http://solohq.com/Articles/Rowlands/The_Meaning_Of_Life.shtml

And a third reason is that they think survival being the standard means that mere survival (i.e., the verge of death), is the goal. No it isn't. If all the flourishers are saying is that they don't want to be near-death, then there isn't a disagreement. But if the standard of value is different, it's all the world of difference.

That is a debate that can happen somewhere else, though. The important question here is why did this topic come up in this article? I think Robert Campbell brought it up, so he can tell us his reasons. But I think one reason it can come up is the notion that if survival is the goal, than suicide would always seem to be bad (ignoring the premoral choice stuff for a minute). If flourishing is the goal, than it seems perfectly okay to say that you'll commit suicide when you're in constant pain, etc. That's because you're not living "qua man", or you're not flourishing, or whatever. Since we can all readily understand someone committing suicide under those conditions, flourishing seems to be the only one compatible with this "rational" suicide.

I actually don't agree with that. First I don't believe that flourishing as standard would solve the problem. Surely just because you don't have steaks every night and sex with lots of beautiful women (or whatever you think flourishing involves), doesn't mean you should commit suicide! If it's just a matter of saying "I'm not flourishing enough", then what about the survival view? Can't they say "I'm not surviving enough"? If life is a process of self-generated, self-sustaining action, can't you decide that you're no longer self-generating enough? Or that you're not able to sustain anymore, maybe on a downward spiral towards death? So I don't think the issue of suicide impacts that survival/flourishing debate.

Post 55

Saturday, October 15, 2005 - 2:00pm

Next topic, Robert Campbell suggested the choice to live had to be explicit, and later mentioned that Rand's stated position was that. Perhaps he can cite where that was being claimed?

I bring this up because I think there is a very different interpretation of the "choice to live" than what seems to be accepted by a few people here. The choice to live would be implicit. But let me explain why it's important.

I think it was Phil Coates who brought up "choosing death" vs. choosing life, and gave an example of someone out to murder everyone. I'm sure he'll say I'm distorting his words, but here's my problem with that.

It makes "choosing life" into a choice of what kind of life to live, or maybe what kind of morality to follow. The killer is choosing a life of killing, for instance. In that case, it would be immoral for him to choose that kind of life, and instead it would be moral to choose the good life. That view of choosing life would include things like how much focus you put into visualizing your life and pursuing it, what kind of life you live, etc.

But I think the killer is choosing life, not death. He's choosing to pursue values (regardless of their objective merit). He's choosing to act to pursue his goals. The fact that the kind of life he is pursuing is bad doesn't mean he isn't choosing life.

In the alternative view, the choice is to live, or not. That 'not' may be suicide. It might not be. It may be a complete lack of value-pursuit, even an unwillingness to pursue death. The opposite of choosing life is not choosing death. It's not choosing life.

What that means is that when people decide to commit suicide, they very well may be "choosing life". Imagine a teenager depressed over a breakup. She may decide she wants to kill herself. Her goal is to remove her suffering, and she thinks that's the only fix. She's acting on her value judgments, even if she's doing it poorly. It's not that she's changed her premoral choice from 'live' to 'not live'. She's just pursuing her values in a really bad way. If this view is right, it makes sense that people would try to stop her from killing herself. She's acting irrationally within the context of choosing life. She's just making a bad choice.

So choosing life, in this view, is a fundamental alternative. Either you're focusing and pursuing values, or you're not. It doesn't need an explicit statement. It's an objective fact. And the morality stems from that.

Suicide is really an interesting topic in the context of choosing life. An older person who needs very expensive medical treatment in order to stay alive for a little longer, may decide he wants to die. His motivation may be to not bankrupt his children. It's obvious he's still valuing, and that he's acting to pursue his values. He probably wants to die in a way that doesn't traumatize his children as well. He's still pursuing his values, and still cares about the results. We can still judge him by his actions, and say whether they were appropriate or not, or even judge whether his values are proper or not. If he was no longer "choosing life", then we shouldn't be able to make those kind of moral statements. Things like rationality or productiveness shouldn't matter to him, as life is not his goal. But they clearly do.

Post 56

Monday, October 17, 2005 - 1:55am

Robert, you wrote,

"Considering what Peikoff is alluding to (perhaps unconsciously) when he brings out that Dantean language, I am all the more inclined to agree with Kelley that he is committing the fallacy of the stolen concept: bringing moral condemnation to bear on someone who has made an allegedly premoral choice to die."

After looking at this a bit more carefully, Robert, I think that you (and Kelley) are correct here.

You continue, "More broadly, though, I agree with you that positing a premoral choice to live is not necessary for the Objectivist ethics--and that it weakens the arguments for the Objectivist ethics instead of strengthening them."

I will go further and say that a premoral choice to live is not ~consistent~ with the Objectivist ethics. And while I agree with Peikoff's conclusion, I now see that Kelley has a point: Peikoff himself is being inconsistent. For example, consider Peikoff's discussion in OPAR: "Existence, therefore, does demand of man a certain course, it does include the fact that he must act in a certain way - ~if~; if, that is, he chooses a certain goal... Morality is no more than a means to an end; it defines the causes we must enact if we are to attain a certain effect. Thus Ayn Rand's statement that the principle replacing duty in the Objectivist ethics is causality, in the form of the memorable Spanish proverb "God said: Take what you want and pay for it." He then adds, "If life is what you want, you must pay for ~it~, by accepting and practicing a code of rational behavior. Morality, too, is a must ;- if; it is the price of the choice to live. That choice itself, therefore, is not a moral choice; it precedes morality."

Later, Peikoff addresses the following objection to this view: "If the choice to live precedes morality...what is the status of someone who chooses ~not~ to live? Isn't the choice of suicide as legitimate as any other, so long as one acts on it? And if so, doesn't that mean that for Rand, too, as for Hume and Neitzsche, ethics, being the consequence of an arbitrary decision, is itself arbitrary?" His answer is as follows:

"[This objection seeks] to prove that values are arbitrary by citing a person who would commit suicide, not because of any tragic cause, but as a primary and an end-in-itself. The answer to this one is: no.

"A primary choice does not mean an "arbitrary," "whimsical," or "groundless" choice. There ~are~ grounds for a (certain) primary choice, and those grounds are reality..." He then goes on to say, "A man who would throw away his life without cause...would belong on the lowest rung of Hell. (p. 248)

I must apologize for not being sufficiently sensitive in my previous post to the full context of Peikoff's remarks, for it is now quite clear that he does indeed contradict himself, a contradiction which, unfortunately, no amount of exegetical parsing can resolve. To say that there "~are~ grounds for a (certain) primary choice," that "those grounds are reality" and that "a man who would throw away his life without cause...would belong on the lowest rung of Hell" is simply another way of saying that the primary choice ~is~ a moral choice, after all. There is no justification whatsoever for consigning a person who makes a pre-moral choice to the lowest rung of Hell, which is a moralistic metaphor if I ever heard one! I now see that Kelley was absolutely right in his criticism of Peikoff, and that Linz's original article made a valid and insightful point, after all.

I think that this contradiction stems in part from the fact that Rand wasn't as clear as she could have been in her article, "Causality versus Duty" wherein she makes her point about the conditional nature of morality. As I say, I do think that Peikoff is right about the wrongness of throwing away your life without cause, but this simply means that, contrary to his earlier remarks, the choice to live is not premoral.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that the concept of a premoral or pre-normative choice is incoherent. A choice presupposes a standard, which is an end or goal that the choice is intended to serve. One always chooses for a reason or a purpose. In that respect, one's choice is a means to an end. Insofar as the end is not an ultimate value, it can be evaluated by one that is an ultimate value. In the case of Objectivism, a person's ultimate end or "standard of value" in this context is his highest moral purpose, namely his own happiness. It is for the sake of that end or goal that he "ought" to make his choices. If he chooses death without a good reason - if he decides to commit suicide when happiness is still possible to him - then he has made an irrational or immoral choice. This is what Peikoff ends up saying in so many words without actually acknowledging it, because, of course, to acknowledge it would contradict his earlier point that the choice to live is not a moral choice on the grounds that it precedes morality. Well, if the choice to live is not a moral choice, then the choice to die cannot be immoral; it cannot be a choice that defies reality and merits consignment to the lowest rung of Hell.

- Bill

Post 57

Monday, October 17, 2005 - 9:51am

Bill,

Of Peikoff's contradiction in OPAR, you say:

I think that this contradiction stems in part from the fact that Rand wasn't as clear as she could have been in her article, "Causality versus Duty" wherein she makes her point about the conditional nature of morality.

Indeed, it's "Causality versus Duty," and not "The Objectivist Ethics," where Rand gets closest to the doctrine of the "premoral" choice.

Life and death is man's only fundamental alternative. To live is his basic act of choice. If he chooses to live, a rational ethics will tell him what principles of action are required to implement his choice. If he does not choose to live, nature will take its course.

Reality confronts man with a great many "musts," but all of them are conditional; the formula of realistic necessity is: "You must if --" and the "if" stands for man's choice: "-- if you want to achieve a certain goal." [The Objectivist, 9(7), July 1970, p. 4]

Rand could have kept out of a bunch of trouble here had she indicated that the choice to live is normally implicit in other, less basic choices--and that she is talking about a logical dependency, not proposing an account of anyone's moral development or giving a description of anyone's actual decision.

Joe,

I hope this passage from "Causality versus Duty" will at least show where Peikoff and co. think that Rand is endorsing a premoral choice. It's a good deal closer to their views than anything she says in "The Objectivist Ethics."

I agree with you that people can decide to commit suicide in a way that is consistent with a "life premise," rather than a "death premise." Your example of the old man who prefers to die rather than prolong his life for a little while with extremely expensive medical treatment is a good one. He decides to die, but the values that matter to him are consistent with a "life premise."

Meanwhile, the dedicated killer, while pursuing a life of killing, could then be understood as adopting values and making choices (not every value or every choice, but a lot of them) that are consistent with a "death premise."

Whether this is the best way to understand what either of them is doing would lead us into a somewhat different discussion; my point here is that the "life premise" or the "death premise" is implied.

Robert Campbell

Post 58

Monday, October 17, 2005 - 10:00am

Joe,

In response to your #54, I wasn't proposing, as some others have done, that suicide has a direct bearing on survival vs. flourishing interpretations of Rand's ethics.

Rather, my concern about "survivalism" was a more technical one.

Are rationality, independence, productiveness, honesty, and the other virtues worth cultivating because they are means to the end of survival? (Survivalists insist on this.)

Or are they worth cultivating because they are constituents or instantiations of a good human life? (Flourishers allow this.)

The doctrine of the "premoral choice to live" seems to assume that morality is related to life, and virtues to survival, strictly as means to an end.

Of course, it also assumes that the relevant choices must be explicit and that logical orders are also temporal or developmental orders.

So the doctrine could be fatally flawed even if the insistence on strict means-end relationships is OK.

Robert Campbell

Post 59

Monday, October 17, 2005 - 8:01pm