RoR: Forum

Robert, I'm unlear about the "constituent" thing. Did you mean that virtue is conceived of as an end in itself? Or even that flourishing is categorically more conducive to virtue-in-itself than is survivalism? If so, I disagree.

I'm a flourishing-enthusiast (a "thrivalist") who doesn't hold virtue as a constituent of 'happiness' (though it does, barring misfortune, necessitate happiness). Virtue is not an end in itself but a means. I also defend that virtue is the human means to human happiness. If folks want happiness, then folks have to have virtues.

Let me provide an analogous example to help in backing this line of reasoning up: In "The Lord of the Rings," there is a virtue-less character, Gollum, who started out "human." As Gollum has built no character or virtue -- it is not possible that Gollum (who spends all his days longing for the ring) can ever be happy. That is, until and unless his obsession with -- ie. love for -- the ring (which supercedes any hint of a love for self -- by the way) could be somehow extinguished. Now sure, while he has transient possession of the ring, he is satisfied -- but (and please pardon my bluntness) how is that different from the transient satisfaction of a crack-addict?

The only way to happiness, is through the gates of virtue.

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 10/17, 8:21pm)

Post 61

Monday, October 17, 2005 - 8:26pm

I understand human survivalism to include literal biological surviving as a living entity and exercising rational (conceptual) and volitional faculties. (Healthy or ill, and good or poor exercise of such faculties is beside the point for this definition.)

If flourishing means the second part (exercising man's unique mental capacities), then I include flourishing in the concept of surviving qua man. If it only means good meals and recreation, then obviously I do not.

The Terri Schiavo debate highlighted what is proper for man - survival without mental faculties versus survival with them.

I argued back then that her very healthy thriving (not mere surviving) under care was an indication of her "pre-moral" choice to live, since ethics for her meant nothing anymore.

As an aside, for some reason, I get an internal image of growth and full realization of inherent biological capacities when the word "flourish" is brought up.

Michael

Post 62

Monday, October 17, 2005 - 9:36pm

Ed, I don't quite argue that flourishing leads to out right hedonism. The issue I see is that even if you add random attributes to your standard, they're arbitrary unless you can connect them by some more fundamental standard. For instance, why should having friends be a part of "the good life"? If you just state that they are, you're treating them as arbitrary, intrinsic values. But a survivalist would argue that friends actually contribute to one's life in many different ways. They make the process of living easier, whether it's from opportunities to learn, opportunities to share, helping each other out in tough situations, providing psychological visibility, etc. If you just say it's part of the good life, it's arbitrary. Then you may as well go ahead and add any number of other things, like steaks for dinner every night.

More than that, how would you go about making trade-offs between different values. For instance, you might find that spending money on steaks every night improves that aspect of the good life. But it might cost you the money you need to seduce women so you can have sex every night. Which aspect of the good life is more valuable? A survivalist would just say that the sex and steaks are simply values, and you can weigh them on the standard of life. But if you start incorporating these values into that standard, you can't make tradeoffs anymore.

So a survivalist may agree with the flourishers on any particular detail. We would say good food is valuable. We would say friendships are valuable. Etc. But we would look to life as the standard to show us why they're valuable. What specific value do we gain? Or another way, how exactly does this promote my life? I listed some examples above for how friends are important to life. The point is to not stop until you see how it actually benefits you. If you stop part-way and just declare something as part of the good life, you sever its connection with life, and you lose the ability to make tradeoffs.

As for your two examples, I have to object immediately. First, we never know what the future holds. We can't really predict 80 vs 20 years. And friends are a potentially enormous benefit to your life (i.e., they make it easier to survive). You may try going down the 80 year alone path, and die after the first week. If we had to make a prediction of which path would actually make us live longer, the friendship path is more likely.

But I think you're point is trading off length of life for quality of life? Something like that? This was actually the topic of my SOLOC 2 speech. It's a complicated issue. First, because "life", as I wrote in my Meaning of Life speech, is not simply the state of non-death. Life is a process, and so judging it by length itself doesn't make sense. That's like measuring how well a car drove by how many miles it travelled.

It's also complicated by the fact that people tend to split quantity of life and quality of life, assuming the two are unconnected. Do you think they are? Do you think that quality of life improves by reducing your quality of life? It makes for an interesting question of what quality would mean in that case. Your question seemed to imply they were unconnected, but I hope my answer made you question that assumption.

It's a big topic, and I've written thousands of words on it elsewhere. But hopefully this gives you a clue of what I think is the major problem with flourishing, and why I think the problems with survival are based on a limited and slightly incorrect view of that position.

Post 63

Monday, October 17, 2005 - 10:06pm

Michael,

=============
If flourishing means the second part (exercising man's unique mental capacities), then I include flourishing in the concept of surviving qua man.
=============

Aargh, Michael! This is so rationally-compelling -- that it upsets me (a shameless Aristotelean eudamoniac). After all, this is the same method I utilized on Roger Bissell's reasoning (ie. that there's survivalism, thrivalism, and "generativity")! I argued that generativity 'ought' to be subsumed under the concept of flourishing -- because flourishing involves whole lives, well lived; and whole lives lived well, includes any core human need (ie. the natural desires; like that for love, etc).

Now, in a fit of rationalism that makes guys like me (the "junior" rationalists) submit to being outmatched -- you've "subsumed" the very argument that I myself (and the greatest classical philosopher that has ever lived!) have been defending lock, stock, and barrel! Aaaiiieee!

;-)

Ed

Post 64

Monday, October 17, 2005 - 10:55pm

Joe, I understand a lot better now (after your response).

==============
The issue I see is that even if you add random attributes to your standard, they're arbitrary unless you can connect them by some more fundamental standard.
==============

Right. My argument was premature -- one of those castles-in-the-sky type of arguments. A thorough, comprehensive vision of human happiness needs to be worked out -- before I can ever, unapologetically, go back to spouting off at the mouth about the inherent and absolute, the unquestionable, inescapable, and undeniable, all bells & whistles included, superiority of flourishing over survivalism -- as the one and only gold standard for the morality of man.

About value trade-offs, I would (like to) think an answer could be found in Maslow -- his magnum opus on values is, after all, a hierarchy; all of it supported by first meeting basic survival needs. Though I admit, more thought is needed there (along with integration of it with a more mature, illuminative idea of "human happiness"--something which I'll try to search for, or to create).

==============
As for your two examples, I have to object immediately. First, we never know what the future holds. We can't really predict 80 vs 20 years.
==============

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know (I should've seen that one coming). From-the-hip analogy is one of my argumentative specialities, but shooting from the hip only scares off the gun-shy folk (it doesn't -- very often -- effectively take out a battle-hardened adversary, such as yourself). Okay, so you got (caught) me. Instead of calling it extreme, I might as well have called it counter-factual (ie. "But if reality wasn't like it really is, then ... "). But Joe, can't I fix the thing (and settle your criticisms), by making it retrospective -- in the following manner?

=======================
Looking back on 2 possible lives, would it have made you happier to have lived 80 years in solitude (say from age 10 to age 90) -- or would it have made you happier to have lived 20 years among friends (from age 10 to age 30)?
=======================

Now that's a lot shinier. It's more refined. It speaks to the idea of a necessary ingredient (friends) to human happiness -- though it is only an analogy, and analogies aren't ever comprehensive or thorough enough to support a theory on anything. Also, if I personally took the second stance literally -- well, I'd be dead now. And that's quite a bitter pill to swallow!

:-\

About the length vs. height of living relation -- I thoroughly enjoyed (and learned from) your great concept of static vs. dynamic survival. One is mere bump-on-a-log death-avoidance, one is what I call: truly living. Perhaps we could agree to an area-under-the-curve standard?

In this respect, a life of total elation, but as such transient of a life, that you miss out on 99% of what others, on average, experience; would not be a value to choose -- not above a more cyclical elation and melancholy; multiplied by a longer, richer, and more variable experience of this planet, and of those who inhabit it. [tongue in cheek now] I consider this view a total-passion-for-total-height type of thing.

You could burn twice as bright, or twice as long -- but the point is to burn, baby; to burn with life.

Ed

Post 65

Tuesday, October 18, 2005 - 12:04am

Robert quotes Rand's essay "Causality Versus Duty":

"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's essay is also reproduced in _Philosophy: Who Needs It_. But I have a problem with the way Rand couches her argument. She writes: "You must if - and the 'if' stands for man's choice: -- if you want to achieve a certain goal."

No, the "if" does not stand for man's choice; it stands for the antecedent condition that determines what choice is appropriate. If you want to achieve a certain goal, then you must choose the means to that goal ~in order~ to achieve it. In other words, you do not choose the "if"; you do not choose the antecedent condition or the goal; the goal is that for the sake of which you make the choice.

Rand appears to be saying here that the ultimate goal is chosen, but if the ultimate goal is chosen, then it is not chosen for the sake any further end or goal, in which case, it is arbitrary, which is the very point that Peikoff is denying. And I think he is right to deny it, but in denying it, he is committed to the view that, rather than being something we choose, the ultimate goal is that for the sake of which we make the choice.

- Bill

Post 66

Tuesday, October 18, 2005 - 12:27am

I read this discussion as assuming "survivalism" and "flourishing" are alternatives. I would like to argue from a third perspective, which is that of Ayn Rand's "barometer argument:" that the human faculty of happiness evolved as a kind of "measuring instrument" which provides the organism with an ongoing scalar measure of how well it is doing at "survival." (If consciousness functions as a teleological control mechanism, then it must have a scalar measure for dynamic optimization of goal-directed choice.) I put "survival" in quotes because, as Ron Merrill points out in TIOAR, evolutionary pressure would favor inclusive fitness rather than "survival" per se - but in most contexts the two are close enough for effective equivalence.

One reason, why I think that Rand made something of a mistake when she restricted the scope of what she considered "philosophy" after 1970 or so, is that it led her to de-emphasize the "barometer argument" for equivalence. Rand's post-1970 thinking would disallow reasoning in ethics from biological data, such as the fact that all human faculties, including happiness, are products of evolution, and serve biological functions. The barometer argument remains a viable alternative to flourishing-versus-survival squabbles.

Post 67

Tuesday, October 18, 2005 - 11:23am

Bill, that was profound.

Thanks for uncovering the ambiguity about choosing the "if" in any given antecedent-consequent argument. You mention that moral agents can't really 'choose' their ultimate goal among several options (that an ultimate goal is what it is that we make all choices by). This is kind of like the socratic argument that man always chooses that which he regards to be to his advantage or benefit. In this respect, many criminals are choosing what they regard as to their benefit -- and they are simply wrong about what really is to their benefit. In short, they want happiness too, but are just working from false premises.

That said, what do you say about the classical view that happiness is a good in itself (an ultimate goal), and not merely a good as a means to something else? I'd be interested in what it is that you have to say about the apparently-impossible completion of the sentence ...

============
I want to be happy because ...
============

Ed

Post 68

Tuesday, October 18, 2005 - 11:25am

Adam,

I really like the barometer argument! Though, I will have to think more (and re-read Merrill), before I say more ...

Ed

Post 69

Tuesday, October 18, 2005 - 1:43pm

Bill,

Are you having your own doubts about Rand's rhetorical style - but in another place?

Interestingly enough, I have no problem where you do, as I see it merely as another form of stating the law of causality and focusing on what volition actually is (accepting reality or rejecting it - to the extent one gets away with it).

But I will think more on this particular "if" rhetorical device, because if you are uncomfortable with it, others also are. Analyzing Rand's context should clean it up. But as with my reservations on using the same word (rights or morals) to mean two different things in the same essay without explicit qualification, demanding this of a reader - especially one new to Objectivism - should not be necessary.

Before anybody of the Randroid persuasion goes off and thinks that I am on a crusade to "fix" Rand's philosophy, let me state a the outset that this is not my intention. I agree with the content, but I have reservations on Rand's form of saying it in a few cases.

My intent is the following: (1) understand Rand correctly, (2) be able to communicate that understanding to others, with emphasis on those who are not familiar with Objectivism, and (3) where appropriate, come to my own conclusions.

Michael

Post 70

Tuesday, October 18, 2005 - 5:44pm

Adam,

I would like to argue from a third perspective, which is that of Ayn Rand's "barometer argument:" that the human faculty of happiness evolved as a kind of "measuring instrument" which provides the organism with an ongoing scalar measure of how well it is doing at "survival." (If consciousness functions as a teleological control mechanism, then it must have a scalar measure for dynamic optimization of goal-directed choice.)

But do the high-level control systems in an organism (including those whose operations are constitutive of human mental functioning) require scalar measures of happiness or well-being? As per a previous discussion of ours on SOLO, my response is that they may--but I would need to see empirical evidence before concluding that they do, and further argument to be persuaded that they must make use of scalar meaures. A barometer supplies ratio-scale measurements of air pressure, but Rand's reference to the "emotional barometer" may have been loosely metaphorical--as was apparently the case with her and Nathaniel Branden's reference to the subconscious mind as being like a computer.

Of course, I agree with your broader point that attempts to ground moral standards in facts about human survival or human flourishing will be successful only if they take evolution into account. Some aspects of inclusive fitness would not have been acceptable to Rand, in her quest to limit "family values" and put a sharp curb on kinship-related considerations. I wonder, though, whether Rand was completely comfortable with evolutionary thinking even before her post-1968 retreat from psychology and her subsequent insistence on a sharp demarcation between philosophy and science.

A couple of questions:

(1) Do you think that Binswanger's book The Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts is of any help in these discussions?

(2) Do you think it matters whether virtues are related to human life strictly as means to an end? In your view, is there in fact a correspondence between survivalism and means-end relationships, and between flourishing and relationships of instantiation? And if so, is the correspondence interesting, or relevant to these discussions?

Robert Campbell

Post 71

Tuesday, October 18, 2005 - 8:45pm

Joe,

In your #62 you make an argument against the flourishing interpretation of Rand's ethics:

More than that, [on the flourishing interpretation] how would you go about making trade-offs between different values. For instance, you might find that spending money on steaks every night improves that aspect of the good life. But it might cost you the money you need to seduce women so you can have sex every night. Which aspect of the good life is more valuable? A survivalist would just say that the sex and steaks are simply values, and you can weigh them on the standard of life. But if you start incorporating these values into that standard, you can't make tradeoffs anymore.

So a survivalist may agree with the flourishers on any particular detail. We would say good food is valuable. We would say friendships are valuable. Etc. But we would look to life as the standard to show us why they're valuable. What specific value do we gain? Or another way, how exactly does this promote my life? I listed some examples above for how friends are important to life. The point is to not stop until you see how it actually benefits you. If you stop part-way and just declare something as part of the good life, you sever its connection with life, and you lose the ability to make tradeoffs.

The Ancients (meaning not just Aristotle, but also the Epicureans and the Stoics) would have said that you need practical wisdom to make correct judgments, in context, about the relative weight to give to competing values (or competing "goods").

They were all "flourishers."

So a survivalist may agree with the flourishers on any particular detail. We would say good food is valuable. We would say friendships are valuable. Etc. But we would look to life as the standard to show us why they're valuable. What specific value do we gain? Or another way, how exactly does this promote my life? I listed some examples above for how friends are important to life. The point is to not stop until you see how it actually benefits you. If you stop part-way and just declare something as part of the good life, you sever its connection with life, and you lose the ability to make tradeoffs.

Suppose that you are correct, and survivalism justifies the value of having friends in a way that a flourishing position cannot. (I'm inclined to dispute that, but it's a separate issue.)

How does consulting life as the standard enable you to decide how many friends it would be best to have? Or what kinds of friendships, in what balance, are best? Or what to do when Friend A is in a conflict with Friend B, and A demands that you stop being friends with B, on account of B's unforgivable offense against A? Or whether to spend less time with Friends A, B, C, and D in order to spend more time enjoying steak, or pursuing seduction? And so on and so forth... Won't you need practical wisdom to handle these tradeoffs?

In other words, in the "flourishing" tradition an "intellectual virtue" called practical wisdom plays a key role in handling tradeoffs. Can a survivalist do any better without practical wisdom?

There is much talk, in Rand's writings on ethics, about the importance of priorities (the value hierarchy) and of context. But there is not a single word about practical wisdom.

Robert Campbell

Post 72

Tuesday, October 18, 2005 - 8:58pm

Ed,

In response to your #59, I agree that Aristotle and Epicurus went to a lot of trouble to establish "guardrails around flourishing." So, in their own way, did the Stoics. There would be less ambiguity about certain features of the Objectivist ethics had Rand made closer comparisons between it and these Ancient systems--but that wasn't her way.

Maslow's hierarchy of human needs is a significant contribution from psychology. But it comes out of humanistic psychology; some of the tools of science were suspect to Maslow, who was limited to the kinds of data that are readily available to a practicing clinicians. A lot more work remains to be done. The Positive Psychology movement is prompting more investigation of these questions, though the solutions that have been offered so far vary tremendously in quality.

On to your post #60 tomorrow.

Robert Campbell

Post 73

Tuesday, October 18, 2005 - 11:31pm

Ed, Adam, and Robert,

Ed, I'm not sure you solved the problem. Now that you're looking backwards at the end of a life, does it really matter how you lived it? If you were about to die, it probably doesn't matter. If you were still able to live for a few years, you'd probably want the path that put you in the best current situation.

I'm partly messing with you, but partly making what I think is an important point. This kind of hypothetical divorces means from ends, and then asks what kind of means did you prefer? It's hard to give a real answer because there's no known reason for the severing of means from ends. How about if I ask you a question. Would you like to have friends if they just stole from you, insulted you, lied to you, and provided no benefit, and were actually intending to kill you at age 30? Would you rather be left alone and live till 90?

Also, I don't think it's correct to say that you first meet basic survival needs, and then you can start working on flourishing. There's no fundamental distinction as far as I see. As you work on second-order values, those values allow you to better meeting those basic survival needs. Getting food for the day may be basic survival, but isn't getting a job and the skills necessary to do the job still aimed at survival? I wrote an article "Human Needs" I think it was called. It makes my point.

Adam, I'm a little confused by your statement. Are you suggesting that surviving and flourishing are not alternatives (they're the same)? Or are you suggesting there's a third alternative? I think the barometer argument ties in with the "survival" position, connecting happiness to how well you are living.

Robert, if practical wisdom means learning the science/art of putting your principles into action in an effective way, I don't see it as incompatible with survival. But if it's intended to somehow solve the epistemological issues related to having a vague standard of morality, or worse, a way to solve the problem of multiple intrinsic values (like the components of the good life), I think it fails.

The issue is how do you compare/contrast different values. It's fine to say that there's a virtue in being good at that, but the question is whether it's possible to be good at that. If you judge them all by a single standard of evaluation, you can compare and contrast. It may not be simple and straightforward, but there's a way to do it. Practical wisdom in this case would be being good at making these comparisons. It would involve being able to quickly see the benefits a value has to your life, and then comparing the total costs and benefits of the values.

But my argument is that flourishing isn't a single standard. It has multiple components (values), which would need to be compared and contrasted as well. It's impossible to rationally compare intrinsic values. To compare values at all, they need to have a single standard by which they can be compared. If it doesn't exist, there is no way to rationally compare the values. Practical wisdom would then be a matter of giving the costs or benefits an emotional value, and going with whichever one feels right. It might be a rough approximation since even a flourisher would have some sense of how important the various constituent elements are with respect to one another. They would know keeping the job that you like is more important than that one night stand, even though a healthy sex life is also part of the good life. But that comparison is just a vague and implicit acknowledgement of life as the standard.

You ask some specifics about how life as the standard would apply to friendships. How many friends would it be best to have, for instance. I won't resort to rationalism, but I can identify some of the factors. The more friends you have, the more time it takes to maintain those friendships. Too many friends will absorb so much of your time you won't be able to concentrate on romance, career, Objectivism, etc. What benefits do the friends provide? Maybe you learn from some, but then you weigh that against how little time you have to actually study topics on your own. They provide entertainment, but you only need so much entertainment to relax/unwind from work. They provide a level of intimacy where you can talk about very personal issues with them and know they'll care enough to listen and/or help. But too many friends would limit the level of intimacy. They may be useful contacts for work, which would mean you want many. But the cost of maintaining them as friends might be higher than the expected value you get from the contacts. A few friends may be more intimate, but you run the risk of getting on each other's nerves. You also run the risk of ending a friendship and not having the means to create new ones (you don't know anyone). If your friends all interact with one another, some schism might come in between them all, or between you and them.

Each of these discusses the actual benefits a friend may provide you in living your life. There may be other more specific ones. I have a friend who knows how to fix cars, for instance. But the benefits can be seen as enhancing your ability to live. Same with the costs. Ultimately you have to try to figure out which values are more important to your life.

We see it in real life. At some point in college, for instance, you may decide you spend too much time hanging out with friends and not enough time studying. You have some expectation of how the two courses of action will affect your future. Studying will get you a better job, open up lots of possibilities, provide means of finding new friends and romances, etc. Partying will be fun for awhile, but will leave you off in a worse position, perhaps a far worse one. These are comparisons made by a standard of life.

Now the question is, by what means does "practical wisdom" manage a rational comparison of values in the flourishing view? If there is a specific means of comparing these values, then there's no problem, and practical wisdom is just getting better at it. If there isn't a cognitive means of comparing the values, then you're epistemologically screwed, and there isn't a way to get out of it. That's why the standard of value is so critical from my perspective. If you don't have it, you can't claim anything more than an emotional bias. I haven't seen anything from the flourishing perspective to convince me they can resolve that problem, but I freely admit I haven't done an exhaustive search. If you have insights on the topic, I'd be interested to hear them.

(Edited by Joseph Rowlands on 10/18, 11:54pm)

Post 74

Wednesday, October 19, 2005 - 12:52am

Joe,

I suggest, as Rand did, a practical equivalence between the two: one is a practical measure of the other. They are not identical, as Ron Merrill noted, but one consequence of the "barometer" relation is that in most normal contexts the consequences of acting on "primacy of survival" and "primacy of happiness" will be identical.

Robert,

You write, "But do the high-level control systems in an organism (including those whose operations are constitutive of human mental functioning) require scalar measures of happiness or well-being? As per a previous discussion of ours on SOLO, my response is that they may--but I would need to see empirical evidence before concluding that they do, and further argument to be persuaded that they must make use of scalar measures."

Control theory, which was known as "cybernetics" back when Ayn Rand's collaborator Robert Efron introduced me to the work of W. Ross Ashby, is a mathematical science, and therefore "empirical" evidence is not required for validation of its theorems. One of those - and I apologize, but I lent my copy of "Introduction to Cybernetics" to a friend decades ago, and I don't remember the name of the theorem - is that a scalar "figure of merit" is required for any self-optimizing control system. This, according to Robert Efron at the time, was the reason for Rand's definition of "standard," in the context of her ethical theory, as a number. Nathaniel Branden did not like mathematics, so this aspect of Rand's thinking is missing from his lectures. Rand was conversant with optimization theory both from Efron and from economists Martin Anderson and Alan Greenspan. My conjecture is that the "survivalism versus flourishing" debate started with philosophers who were ignorant of cybernetics, and simply did not understand Rand's definition of "standard" as a number. Rand's position, as I understood it from Robert Efron, was that "standard" in "life as a standard" is a number - a quantitative criterion to be optimized - and happiness is the faculty that provides the organism with an ongoing measurement of this number for its optimization. There is nothing "metaphorical" about it.

As for your questions:

(1) There isn't enough in the ARI edition of Binswanger's thesis to say. Binswanger withdrew the original text from distribution by University Microfilms, so I have not seen it. I suspect that the barometer argument motivated Binswanger's interest in evolution and teleology, and that Binswanger made significant changes after Rand revised her position on the scope of philosophy, but of course without having read the original text of his dissertation I cannot say for sure.

(2) A virtue is the exercise of a faculty, and human faculties have natural (in the sense of evolved) instrumental functions for inclusive fitness. In other words, virtues are ontologically instrumental. As you put it in the question, virtues are ontologically (and in that sense "strictly") related to human life as means to an end. This strikes some people as not Aristotelian (not Thomist) enough, or maybe too "consequentialist," but I do not see in such objections a good reason to ignore either control theory or evolutionary teleology.

Post 75

Wednesday, October 19, 2005 - 12:15pm

I quoted Rand, "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]"

And replied, "No, the 'if' does not stand for man's choice; it stands for the antecedent condition that determines what choice is appropriate. If you want to achieve a certain goal, then you must choose the means to that goal ~in order~ to achieve it. In other words, you do not choose the "if"; you do not choose the antecedent condition or the goal; the goal is that for the sake of which you make the choice.

"Rand appears to be saying here that the ultimate goal is chosen, but if the ultimate goal is chosen, then it is not chosen for the sake any further end or goal, in which case, it is arbitrary, which is the very point that Peikoff is denying. And I think he is right to deny it, but in denying it, he is committed to the view that, rather than being something we choose, the ultimate goal is that for the sake of which we make the choice."

Ed Thompson replied, "Bill, that was profound."

Thanks, Ed. What a compliment! Now I know where to get my daily strokes! :)

You continued, "Thanks for uncovering the ambiguity about choosing the 'if' in any given antecedent-consequent argument. You mention that moral agents can't really 'choose' their ultimate goal among several options (that an ultimate goal is what it is that we make all choices by). This is kind of like the socratic argument that man always chooses that which he regards to be to his advantage or benefit. In this respect, many criminals are choosing what they regard as to their benefit -- and they are simply wrong about what really is to their benefit. In short, they want happiness too, but are just working from false premises."

I would say that we do not and cannot choose our ultimate value. We cannot help valuing happiness and disvaluing pain or suffering; these are part of our nature as sentient organisms. But I wouldn't say that we always choose what we regard as to our benefit, because we can mistakenly believe that we ought to sacrifice our benefit for the sake of others, and proceed to act on that belief. In so doing, we are pursuing not our values but the sacrifice of our values. Of course, we can also choose actions that we think are to our benefit but which in fact are not, by sacrificing others to ourselves. In both these examples - self-sacrifice and the sacrifice of others - we can still be said to value happiness, but, as you say, are simply working from false premises.

You continue, "That said, what do you say about the classical view that happiness is a good in itself (an ultimate goal), and not merely a good as a means to something else? I'd be interested in what it is that you have to say about the apparently-impossible completion of the sentence ...

============
I want to be happy because ...
============

Oh, I agree with the classical view that happiness is a good in itself and not merely a good as a means to something else. To say, "I want to be happy, because..." implies that there is a value beyond happiness - a goal that is more important than happiness and for the sake of which we ought to pursue our happiness. Now a "survivalist" might argue this - that survival is the end and happiness good only insofar as it provides an incentive to further our survival. But if he did, he would be missing the point that survival is good for us only because and to the extent that it furthers our happiness. What are you living for, if the not the enjoyment of life! As Rand put it, "His own happiness is man's highest moral purpose." In this respect, I am a "flourisher," but I don't consider flourishing incompatible with survival, properly understood. Injury and disease are inimical to our happiness as well as to our survival.

- Bill

Post 76

Wednesday, October 19, 2005 - 3:35pm

Thanks for the clear response, Bill.

I'm in full agreement. You quoted Rand:

=============
"His own happiness is man's highest moral purpose."
=============

... and I would add:

=============
"The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live."
=============

Ed

Post 77

Wednesday, October 19, 2005 - 5:31pm

Robert,

==========
There would be less ambiguity about certain features of the Objectivist ethics had Rand made closer comparisons between it and these Ancient systems--but that wasn't her way.
==========

Agreed.

==========
... some of the tools of science were suspect to Maslow, who was limited to the kinds of data that are readily available to a practicing clinicians. A lot more work remains to be done.
==========

Agreed. And I also think that myself and yourself, Roger Bissell and Joe Maurone (to name some others), and perhaps half a dozen other SOLOists, have the capacity do some of this work. In other words, I'm hoping for an article -- perhaps I'll even get up on the soapbox and write one. Right after posting this, I will start a thread in the SOLO Psych forum -- on this very topic.

Ed

Post 78

Wednesday, October 19, 2005 - 6:07pm

Joe,

**Caution: Tiger-stripe Warning**

===========
Ed, I'm not sure you solved the problem.
===========

I do agree, if you mean that I don't have answers yet. But if you think I'm looking in the wrong place -- ie. that no matter what I find about human happiness, I'm back at square one -- then I disagree. I don't yet know what the answer is -- but something inside (yes, I know it's dangerous to listen to your "insides") something inside me says that happiness is pivotal to the answer. And I'll be the first to say it -- this bias stems, admittedly, from my fascination with Aristotle.

===========
Now that you're looking backwards at the end of a life, does it really matter how you lived it? If you were about to die, it probably doesn't matter. If you were still able to live for a few years, you'd probably want the path that put you in the best current situation.
===========

I do think it would matter (to you) how you lived. I think that this stems from the inherent value of self-esteem -- and I'm speaking in terms of the second-to-second psychological continuity of awareness here. How you judge yourself in your last days -- hell, anytime -- is really important to your psychological well-being. Having lived a really good life is something of which to be proud (to feel good, or elated about), there would be profound pleasure in that.

=========
I'm partly messing with you ...
=========

Well, you've already shown that you can take it -- it's your right to dish it back out!

=========
This kind of hypothetical divorces means from ends, and then asks what kind of means did you prefer?
=========

Joe, in my own final-end-is-happiness view it doesn't -- but this just means I tried to cross a bridge before I got there. If you don't adopt my view, then I ought not try to argue from second- and third-order premises of my view (because you wouldn't agree with those premises anyway). That would be like trying to argue with an altruist about compassion. You can't just clip the leaves (they'll grow back) of an intellectual opponent, you have to uproot their argument -- and I, admittedly, haven't been able to uproot your argument.

=========
Would you like to have friends if they just stole from you, insulted you, lied to you, and provided no benefit, and were actually intending to kill you at age 30? Would you rather be left alone and live till 90?
=========

Joe, if you think that you can just turn my analogy around, juxtapose a few key things, and then spit it back at me as a form of argumentation ... well, that's where you're right! (he/he -- just messing with you). I started the argument from analogy -- now analogies are fair game. But to pick a nit, so to speak, real friends don't steal from you. This (analogy-bashing) is only a very minor point, however. As I said above, analogies can't underwrite a theory on anything.

=========
I don't think it's correct to say that you first meet basic survival needs, and then you can start working on flourishing.
=========

Point conceded. Meeting basic needs makes you feel fit for reality -- there is pleasure in that, there is esteem in that.

=========
I wrote an article "Human Needs" I think it was called. It makes my point.
=========

Thanks Joe, I'll try to find your article.

Ed
(Edited by Ed Thompson
on 10/19, 6:14pm)

Post 79

Thursday, October 20, 2005 - 9:54pm