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Post 20

Saturday, January 12, 2013 - 8:35amSanction this postReply
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Stephen,

Regarding # 18, I appreciate the explanation but want to bring up the point that you can be too charitable with philosophers, substitute your thinking for theirs, and rewrite their philosophy. This is something that it is wrong to do. In a strict sense, we provide charity when people need it -- when we deem them deficient in something. Take one method of dealing with Ayn Rand, for example. You mentioned tension between egoism and individual rights and how one might go about resolving the tension. An altruist may claim:
Well, Rand was clearly talking about psychological egoism (that we cannot help but to be the locus of value in our actions), because real egoism (the savage brute running roughshod over bloody corpses to satisfy his most recent desires) would infringe upon the rights of others -- and Rand also wrote about respecting the rights of others.
What happened there? Well, the altruist was being charitable. But what really happened there? Well, the altruist rewrote Rand's philosophy in order to configure it into their pre-conceived worldview. Notice how this error stultifies the very process of philosophizing in the first place. In philosophic analysis, then, charity may come into play, but it is more important to be literal than to be charitable. If a philosopher made the mistake of using a new term without defining it, or of using an old term in a new way without explaining themselves, then it serves no good purpose to go ahead and provide charity to them by filling in the gaps with our own pre-conceived notions (doing their "thinking" for them).

That's a recipe for self-congratulatory confirmation bias, not philosophic analysis.

Because Rand made it a point to offer up a benevolent view of man -- and because she made it a point to contrast this against the altruist's conception of a murdering, savage, and mindless brute -- she is not in need of such "charity" with regard to how she is interpreted. Instead, she can be taken literally and at her word about this subject -- the subject of what egoism really means. The provision of such a charitable reinterpretation of Ayn Rand would be a tacit admission that you are still stuck in an altruist mentality, as in the quote above.

And that's what happened when Cummiskey attempted to provide a philosophic analysis of the writings of Kant. He presumed himself to be smarter than Kant -- to better understand what it was that Kant was saying than Kant, himself, did -- and then he went ahead and inserted his own foregone conclusions into the reinterpretation, and then he asked for payment or other recognition for his professional "philosophic" analysis of the matter. It's that kind of inferior, almost child-like, thinking that could lead someone to claim that Kant was an egoist (or utilitarian), or that Rand was an altruist.

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 1/12, 8:56am)


Post 21

Saturday, January 12, 2013 - 1:45pmSanction this postReply
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I forgot to mention something in #12, and this is addressed to everyone.

Read Kant first for yourself. Then you can look into the various experts and see what more they can teach you about Kant.

Kant's writings in ethics are available in modern English translation. All are collected in the following single volume. Reading his works is the first step for any serious writing on Kant.

The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant
Practical Philosophy
Mary J. Gregor, translator (1996)


Post 22

Monday, January 14, 2013 - 3:57amSanction this postReply
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There is an important discussion of Kant's ethics, with relation to Objectivist ethics, by Leonard Peikoff in The Ominous Parallels, pages 71–83. It was earlier published in The Objectivist with the heading "Kant and Self-Sacrifice."

Merlin, "largely" does not come to "merely," and in our commercial dealings with people, we never (in normality, in goodness) lose the context that we are dealing with persons who are ends in themselves. Kant concurs pretty sure.

Post 23

Friday, January 18, 2013 - 4:41amSanction this postReply
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I didn't include them in the article, but I can imagine situations in which it is appropriate to exclude one's personal interest in judgment. However, that does not mean everyone's personal interests should be excluded like in Kant's ethics.
1. A rule-maker and umpire for baseball. The rules should be made and enforced without bias. An umpire's only interest should be to be objective and fair, without personal bias such as favoring a particular team or player.
2. A legislator or judge or juror in a court of law. Again, such person's only interest should be to be objective and fair, without personal bias such as favoring particular constituents, the plaintiff or defense.
The legislator example best reflects Kant's manner of thought, since he posited each person as a "moral legislator."

Post 24

Sunday, January 20, 2013 - 10:04amSanction this postReply
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Merlin,

... I can imagine situations in which it is appropriate to exclude one's personal interest in judgment ...

1. A rule-maker and umpire for baseball. The rules should be made and enforced without bias. An umpire's only interest should be to be objective and fair, without personal bias such as favoring a particular team or player.
2. A legislator or judge or juror in a court of law. Again, such person's only interest should be to be objective and fair, without personal bias such as favoring particular constituents, the plaintiff or defense.

Okay, but as an illuminative example, this is someplace where the subjectivity of utilitarianism shows itself. Watch what I can do with your examples by independently modifying the scope and depth of "personal interest" or "self-interest" presented in those examples.


1. In the case of the umpire, it appears he shouldn't pick sides and make calls against the team he doesn't like or doesn't like as much. On one view, we can say that he should exclude his personal interests in the matter, or go against them in order to be fair. Alternatively though, if we draw back the scope and look at an even bigger picture of his long-range, wide-scale interests -- we get this reasoning:

It is in the best personal interests (i.e., rational self-interest) of an umpire to be impartial and fair, because the whole enterprise of "umpire-ship" rests on such a dynamic. Alternatively, if it became common knowledge that umpires were partial and unfair, then the very business of "umpiring" would suffer and people would either choose to go without umpires altogether, or they would pay them less for the work that they do.

In other words, umpires shouldn't play to their favorites, because that would be against their personal interests.

2. A law-maker, judge, or jury could write or interpret laws in a manner that plays to their personal interests in a case. For instance, let's say that you make a law that says that a certain limited number of established banking institutions -- e.g., Wells Fargo, CitiBank, etc. -- will become publicly backstopped so that ramifications of financial errors they make are dispersed over the financial well-being of all US citizens (instead of those banks having to pay for their own mistakes independently). If you have stock in one of the banks, you might "want" to write a law doing such a thing -- but is it in your best interests to do so?

No.

When it is discovered that law is being used in this way, tyrannically (in the fascist, corporatist sense), then respect for the law itself disintegrates -- as law is seen as nothing other than "the interests of the stronger." That is a return to the jungle, metaphorically and eventually literally. People eventually rise up against illuminated corruption, bringing at least temporary chaos and destruction.

It is not in your personal interests to go ahead and take the steps that necessarily lead to such chaos and destruction. Therefore, it is not in the rational self-interest for a law-maker to make a law propping up a bank he has a lot of stock in -- because he benefits more from having a generalized system of law in the first place (and his "too big to fail" law chips away at the very foundation of law, itself). If you asked such a man if he would like to return to the relative lawlessness of the jungle (where he'd very likely be killed), he'd say "no" -- because he is in the position to understand that that would not be in his best interests. Note how this is true even of the strongest man in the world.

Using utilitarianism (a form of subjectivity) I can make a good case for any action whatsoever -- simply by shifting my focus. This is not true of ethical egoism (rational individualism, Objectivism) -- which is grounded in foundational aspects such as identity and causality.

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 1/20, 10:14am)


Post 25

Sunday, January 20, 2013 - 11:59amSanction this postReply
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Watch what I can do with your examples by independently modifying the scope and depth of "personal interest" or "self-interest" presented in those examples.
Oh my, Ed, you are so charitable. NOT.

Using utilitarianism (a form of subjectivity) I can make a good case for any action whatsoever -- simply by shifting my focus. This is not true of ethical egoism (rational individualism, Objectivism) -- which is grounded in foundational aspects such as identity and causality.
Apparently you haven't seen enough of what headstrong critics have done with Ayn Rand's words.

Post 26

Sunday, January 20, 2013 - 3:34pmSanction this postReply
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Merlin,

Oh my, Ed, you are so charitable. NOT.
I'm going to go against my better judgment and take that as a compliment.

:-)

Apparently you haven't seen enough of what headstrong critics have done with Ayn Rand's words.
Aha! Though they may have trashed her words, they didn't trash her concepts. In this case, the relatively-ignorant critics start out with poor, unvalidated concepts for words, such as the word selfishness. Then -- utilizing these poor concepts they have -- they go ahead and trash Ayn Rand's words. This is not different from what McCaskey describes at the end of his induction dissertation:


Yet we should not conclude that induction is inherently prone to being misunderstood. ... It is rather that the acceptance of certain more fundamental premises drives interpreters to force induction into a framework the authors did not share.
What he's describing is how critics -- of induction in general, but this is especially true of critics of Objectivism -- can be relatively ignorant or philosophically deficient in some manner, and that this deficiency on their part allows them to go ahead and attempt to refute things with an unearned confidence (an intellectual arrogance). However, the actual outcome is that they display their own ignorance. An example of this is Scott Ryan's book: Objectivism and the Corruption of Rationality -- where Mr. Ryan attempts to show that Rand was a subjectivist, leaving his ignorance as the only robust, take-away message.

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 1/20, 3:39pm)


Post 27

Friday, January 24, 2014 - 8:08amSanction this postReply
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To Merlin’s article:

 

An important part of Kant’s concern to have a standard and motive of morality not of itself including interests and happiness was his concern that we be self-determining, that we not behave as puppets of external factors.

 

In Rand’s philosophy, there is a rough parallel to Kant’s universalization criterion in her appeal to Man’s Life and Man’s Nature. She put substance into those, which can be more practically helpful than Kant’s imperative-formulas. Even if one were to dispute what all Rand put into those Man conceptions, one might revise the conception and continue to use her approach of making Man’s Life, as particular in one’s own life, as one’s standard of moral decisions.

 

In Critique of Pure Reason, Kant had claimed we should strive to make ourselves worthy of happiness. In Critique of Practical Reason, (having received criticism on Groundwork) he spelled out that we have an indirect duty to seek happiness.

This distinction of the principle of happiness from that of morality is not, for this reason, at once an opposition between them, and pure practical reason does not require that one should renounce claims to happiness but only that as soon as duty is in question one should take no account of them. It can even in certain respects be a duty to attend to one’s happiness, partly because happiness (to which belong skill, health, wealth) contains means for the fulfillment of one’s duty and partly because lack of it (e.g., poverty) contains temptations to transgress one’s duty. However, it can never be a direct duty to promote one’s happiness, still less can it be a principle of all duty.  (5:93)

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

I am writing a book of philosophy. It is my own philosophy, importantly indebted to Rand’s and extending parts of hers. Yet it is also seriously opposed to hers.

 

This work will be in metaphysics, epistemology (including philosophy of science), and theory of value (including the basic virtues). One thing I will need to come to terms with is the concept of duty and its relation to autonomous personhood. I do not think Rand got things straight about the full nature of social moral obligation in her essay “Causality v. Duty.” She neglected the anthropological origins of our reciprocity norms for one thing. I mention that as tip of the iceberg, tip the reader might expect from my pieces here at RoR on game theory and rights theory. Rand was on a better line when she wrote: “Do you ask what moral obligation I owe to my fellow men? None—except the obligation I owe to myself, to material objects and to all existence: rationality” (AS 1022). I expect to cash that out differently than did Rand, expect to significantly recast from hers the conception of human rationality and of the nature of biological life and, of course, ours.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Of note:

 

Aristotle, Kant, and the Stoics – Rethinking Happiness and Duty

Stephen Engstrom and Jennifer Whiting, editors (Cambridge 1996)

 

Underivative Duty – British Moral Philosophers from Sidgwick to Ewing

Thomas Hurka, editor (Oxford 2011)



Post 28

Friday, January 24, 2014 - 9:12amSanction this postReply
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Stephen,

 

I'm OK with: A person to decide on their own goals, and decide for themselves that they have a duty to do something.  A person to look at a large segment of a population and generalize what those people's most common self-chosen duties are.

 

I'm not OK with: A person telling another what their duties should be (without using reason to come to such a conclusion given premises of another's goals).

 

The former is self determination and observation/generalization.  The later potentially has a contradiction between another's goals and the dictator's suggested goals, which is left unidentified, potentially to the dictator's advantage and another's disadvantage.

 

But given that I haven't read most of the referenced works, and that maybe the above is obvious to you, I wouldn't normally chose to post a post such as this.

 

I am writing a book of philosophy. It is my own philosophy, importantly indebted to Rand’s and extending parts of hers. Yet it is also seriously opposed to hers.

Glad to hear it.  "Differences due to ideas from game theory, rights theory, and the nature of biological life"  I have disagreements with Rand due to these same topics.  Not that I'm saying she is really to blame, because she made great contributions to philosophy.  In my mind instead my philosophy is more like revisional improvements given breakthroughs that occurred during and after her time... of which it can only be expected she would not be able to use these ideas to come to the same conclusions.

 

I'm sure you've seen me link to my philosophy website I'm working on (objectivetranshumanism.org).  I am not as well read as you, but maybe we agree on some things that are in contradiction to Rand.  Honestly I don't really know many who agree with me. I think we are venturing into areas where many new definitions must be created, and each person who does make a new philosophy necessarily invents new terminology, and hence there is a learning curve to learn the terminology before one can start to understand everything a person is saying.



Post 29

Friday, January 24, 2014 - 1:59pmSanction this postReply
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Dean, I'm wary of the introduction of new words in philosophy. The problem is that it is easy to slip into thinking one has solved some problem simply by coining some sort of bridging word, or by extending the application of a term peculiar to biology or consciousness, say, to inanimate objects, and then think: "There. I've solved that old problem." (The name you've chosen seems fine; it suggests somewhat what will be found and defended in the philosophy, and it invites entry for clarification of the name and content of the philosophy.) I'm more open to giving special definitions to old terms (being up front about that, of course), as Newton did with force or Rand did with reason. And it's certainly alright to pick a set of words and put them into a dynamic with each other, which had not been salient before, such as Rand did with entity, identity, and identification. She had to be explicit about the exact way she meant those terms, the first narrower than in common usage, the second broader than in common usage.

 

Getting others to accept one's own special theoretical vocabulary goes with persuading them that your philosophy is getting things right. To some extent, we are impressed if a set of concepts mesh together in a cool way, but substantial concurrence would come only when we become persuaded that the concepts and the way they fit together fit the world they claim to fit.

 

I'll take a look at your site and let you know any quick impressions I have.

 

Concerning the Kant part of your post, I think you would like to hear of the answers Adolf Eichmann gave for his heinous crimes against Jews in the Nazi era. At first he said he was doing his duty, and he tried to bolster his case by the high reputation of Kant, appealing to Kant's doctrines concerning duty. But then the prosecutor asked him how he could have possibly thought he was treating people as ends in themselves in his murderous acts. He admitted that by the time he had gotten to that stage, he knew he was not following Kant.

 

The culture of duty to serve one's country, including by war service, was of course already in place in Europe and in England, before Kant. From a writing project I don't expect to get back to until after finishing my book:

As the sun rose at Cape Trafalgar on 21 October 1805, the British fleet was arranged in two successive lines for battle. The Franco-Spanish fleets were silhouettes against the eastern sky. With the two opposing fleets closing for the fury, Admiral Nelson made a signal to all his ships: “England expects every man to do his duty.” This duty was nothing new in human history, and it had no dependence on ideas of the late sage of Königsberg (d. 1804).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

Follow-up from peek into your site:

 

Well, as you would have already surmised, I'm a no-go on life whereever there is information in the thermodynamic sense of information.

 

On your front page, you mentioned ability as a virtue. I think it could be interesting to think through the ways in which that is a virtue in contrast and continuity with the way efficiency and ambition are virtues. Attractiveness is a virtue too, in a sense, a sense like when we say scent is a virtue of a rose, but relation of that sort of virtue to volitionally acquired virtues needs to be set out eventually. 

 

Hope you never stop learning. The vista can become better and better. For me, still is expanding at 65.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

 

(Edited by Stephen Boydstun on 1/24, 7:09pm)



Post 30

Wednesday, January 29, 2014 - 1:18pmSanction this postReply
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Merlin, Stephen and Ed,

 

Two quick points and a question, please...

 

Kant is not saying that you should live by The Categorical. Rather, he is saying that the categorical offers one a sense of duty (dein) that should count in any life-decision.  To this end, kindly remember that Kant wrote that ethics dwell within the realm of practical reason (Crit#2).

 

In this sense, yes, we use a  compendium method by which we choose to make ethical decisions; the conastant in all, again, is the deontological-categorical.

 

I suppose, moreover, that the various combinations that one employs (including the strict bibilico-southernoid either/or) defines one's character..or lack thereof.

 

To this end, the working out of a unified theory of ethics that would utilize all major sources still demands to be done. Having more or less finished my research into Rand's epistemology, my next os reading project will be Derik Parfit, who claims to have done just that.

 

Lastly, I do believe that RoR is a good place to answer campus-based questions, as smart-ass collegiate as they might sound. So if i start a Rand club here on campus, this is what I'll be dealing with:

 

Bob crushes up puppies and makes lots of money by selling the juice as an energy drink.

Joe gives money to feed the homeless.

So who is more ethical?

 

Eva

 



Post 31

Wednesday, January 29, 2014 - 2:41pmSanction this postReply
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Bob crushes up puppies and makes lots of money by selling the juice as an energy drink. Joe gives money to feed the homeless. So who is more ethical?

Where does Joe get the money? Did Bob give it to him?



Post 32

Wednesday, January 29, 2014 - 3:02pmSanction this postReply
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Thanks, dearly, for a lucid response. This is precisely the sort of answer I need to fend off the Rand detractors, and to present a coherent explanation of objectivism.

 

Eva



Post 33

Wednesday, January 29, 2014 - 3:26pmSanction this postReply
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Why not compare apples to apples, and take the emotionality of lovable puppies out of the question?
-------------

Bob crushes up poisnous spiders and makes lots of money by selling the juice as an energy drink.
Joe gives money to save the poisnous spiders.

Who is the more ethical
--------------


(Good one Merlin!)



Post 34

Wednesday, January 29, 2014 - 4:05pmSanction this postReply
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Precisely because morality does involve a dose of emotion with the people of whom I'm speaking.

Randian morality, as implied and portrayed, lacks that.

So if you were to exchange 'spiders' for 'puppies', you'd simply be trying to remove that emotive element. It won't wash.



Post 35

Wednesday, January 29, 2014 - 9:39pmSanction this postReply
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Eva,

 

You are correct.  I tried to remove emotion.   Because I assume that you want people to make reasoned ethical arguments and not just follow their feelings.  Why cast that as a moral dilemma if you only want to have it be an emotional issue?

 

If you just want to know that people are upset at the thought of killing puppies, you don't have to cast it as an ethical question.  (Although, there are parts of Asia where they still eat puppies.... you could ask them :-)

 

You did notice that I tried to balance the the two sides by putting the spiders in both sides?  



Post 36

Wednesday, January 29, 2014 - 10:18pmSanction this postReply
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Steve,

 

The suggestion that's made by my classmates in reference to killing puppies is that Rand's ethics is sentiment-free.

 

Not to prejudge rightness, but this stands in starlk contrast to Aristotle as read in Philo 101: 'ethos pathein.'

 

For him, ethics is, ultimately, an expression of feeling; the virtuous person is taught to feel the right things...for puppies, not spiders, perhaps, at least in our culture.

 

Eva



Post 37

Wednesday, January 29, 2014 - 11:19pmSanction this postReply
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Eva,

 

I'm not clear about where you are going with this? The question, with puppies or even with spiders, doesn't seem to provide much substance to chew on. And that it is supposed to an anti-Rand kind of thing with your classmates - do you think it is anything to be taken seriously?
----------------------

 

For him [Aristotle], ethics is, ultimately, an expression of feeling; the virtuous person is taught to feel the right things

My understanding is that Aristotle's ethics is about virtue and character and they were examples of acting excellently to move from a potential to an actual in area of human flourishing.   Exhibiting bravery, and showing moderation in appetites, for example.  But the statement that it is, in effect, a call for hedonism ("an expression of feeling") that doesn't match what I know of Aristotle's ethics.  The pleasure that he says comes from being ethical isn't the standard or guide. Rather it is the after-effect of being virtuous, but not the driving motivation. He saw virtue as practical - not sacrificial.

 

People usually aren't taught to feel things, but rather are taught to believe things, and if they do - strongly - the feelings come from that. Aristotle was someone who encouraged thinking, not emotionalism.

 

In any case, I don't know that Rand bases her ethics on Aristotle's.



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Post 38

Thursday, January 30, 2014 - 2:54amSanction this postReply
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Not to prejudge rightness, but this stands in starlk contrast to Aristotle as read in Philo 101: 'ethos pathein.'

For him, ethics is, ultimately, an expression of feeling; the virtuous person is taught to feel the right things.

 

This strikes me as a bizarre interpretation of Aristotle's ethics. See here. The distinctive features of Nichomachean Ethics are eudaimonia and the doctrine of the mean.



Post 39

Thursday, January 30, 2014 - 7:55amSanction this postReply
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Ethos pathein means 'ethics='feelings'. This is what he wrote.

It stands, by intent, in contradistinction to Aristotle's view of law: "Nomos oud'pathein"

'

Eudaimonia' is what all classic philosophy wanted to achieve, not just Aristotle.

 

In Nicomachius, 'mean behavior' is an important concept, too.

It's not bizarre for Aristotle to have two thoughts going within a large tract-- any particular declaration by fiat as to 'what's important' not withstanding.

 

EM



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