Morality Contingent Upon Choice to Live?

Stuart, as I see it, your question comes down to just how it is against the old man's interest to take other people with him when he commits suicide. On the face of it, it doesn't seem that it is, since he will not be around to suffer any adverse consequences. In other words, what does he have to lose? I think this is a good question.

One possible answer is that such an action will violate a principle of rights which it is in each person's self-interest to follow, not because a respect for other people's rights will have an immediate and direct benefit to the moral agent, but because its general acceptance will. In other words, it is more in one's interest to live in a society in which people's rights are respected than to live in one in which they are not. But the only way in which that value can be realized is if each person chooses independently to respect the rights of others, even in cases in which he can get away with violating them.

Now the old man's situation is one such example. He can in that situation violate the rights of others and get away with it, because he won't suffer any adverse consequences. Does it follow that he should do it? If it does, then there is no argument against anyone else's violating the rights of others when he or she can get away with it. But once that premise is granted, individual rights go out the window, and what you have is a predatory society -- a Hobbsian war of all against all. If the old man can do this to others, then there is no argument against anyone else's having done it to him when he was not suicidal. It's either/or. Either you are obligated to respect the rights of others on principle, or they don't exist. If they are to exist, then you must respect them under all (relevant) circumstances, including those in which you can get away with violating them -- a principle which applies as much to the old man as it does to a predatory thief.

- Bill

Post 21

Monday, March 6, 2006 - 9:24am

Everyone (sorry Aarron),

Excuse me for a parentheses. I really want to pipe Dean down a bit.

The reason MSK wants to pipe me down is because he doesn't want others to know that he is a looter. All he had realized on Feb 23 was that it is against his self interest to allow others to know that he is a looter. Notice he still holds positive rights. All he had decided to do was to stop "clamoring".

MSK, do not make bogus claims like I am performing "childish behavior", or that your "present position completely nullifies [my] complaints" on this thread. I'd prefer that you post such claims on the thread where you revealed to me that you are a looter.

Post 22

Monday, March 6, 2006 - 9:29am

I will try to return to Mr. Hayasha's main issue, of the way in which morality is contingent upon the choice to live, in a separate post below. In the present post, I want to comment on a side-issue that arose in the posts of Bob Mac (#4), Dean Gores (#5), and Robert Malcom (#9).

One definition of sacrifice in my American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language is "the forfeiture of something highly valued . . . for the sake of someone or something considered to have a greater value." In that ordinary sense of the term sacrifice, making a sacrifice need not entail a deviation from the pursuit of one's self-interest. If the thing "considered to have a greater value" is considered by oneself to have that greater value, then sacrifice in the ordinary sense of the term could be an action of self-interest.

Rand gave the term sacrifice a special definition, which is the one Mr. Malcom meant: the forfeiture of something of greater value for something of lesser value. Rand used the term in the way she did, and there is no changing that. In better step with common usage, she could have called it inverted sacrifice. That would have been awkward. And she wanted to attack additional branches in the idea of sacrifice. She wanted to attack homage to supernatural deities that goes with the term sacrifice, and she wanted to attack the sacrifice of individuals to collectives.

Mr. Mac, Rand does not assert that life is the only correct choice. The protagonists in her last two novels are crafted to be morally ideal, by the light of her own theory of morality. Her protagonists Howard Roark and John Galt both leave open the possibility of correctly choosing death, even for the sake of someone else. Roark tells his friend Wynand that he would die to save him, though he would not live for him. John Galt does not say that he would not in any circumstance die for another, only that he would not live for another.

You asked, Bob Mac, whether valuing your life, but just not always at the top, is a non-Objectivist position. I regard Objectivism as nothing but the philosophy of Ayn Rand, as expressed in the writings she chose to publish. If I understand her correctly, she would regard the death-options left open for Roark and Galt as true to their lives as human lives. For humans there is having a life as a whole. That life one has is one's composition upon what is dealt one by nature. Trueness to that composed life might entail a choice of death at some point.

I am delighted by your attitude, when you say "I'm not looking to reconcile or justify my choices within Objectivism." See, further http://rebirthofreason.com/Articles/Boydstun/Pride_of_Place.shtml

Stephen

Post 23

Thursday, May 24, 2012 - 6:39am

Add to preceding post, the following treatise, which looks promising.

On Sacrifice
Moshe Halbertal (Princeton 2012)

From the Publisher

Table of Contents

Part I � Sacrificing to

Part II � Sacrificing for

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

Allan Gotthelf tackles the topic of this thread in �The Choice to Value� in Metaethics, Egoism, and Virtue (2011). He references two treatments by Douglas Rasmussen, in 2002 and 2006.

David Kelley has written a good piece on this topic, which I expect he will include in a future book (a, b).

Further thoughts and references are here.

(Edited by Stephen Boydstun on 5/24, 9:08am)

Post 24

Saturday, May 26, 2012 - 1:35pm

Stephen,

In that 2006 link (to the essay by Douglas B. Rasmussen), Rasmussen outlines an observation made by Roderick T. Long that there are 3 fundamental ways to arrive at a moral imperative:

Categorical imperative--regardless of what ends you seek, you must take the following steps. Problematic hypothetical imperative--if you see this end, then you must take the following steps. Assertoric hypothetical imperative--since you seek this end, then you must take the following steps.

As I intuited elsewhere, in agreement with Rasmussen (and Den Uyl and Mack), I think that it is morally right to, at least initially, choose to live. This is because of the kind of creature that we are. If we were rational robots, it wouldn't be morally right to choose to live -- there wouldn't be such an imperative. That said, I agree with the following profound way to view human morality:

The obligatory and the good are merely distinct ways of viewing the same activity, not separate categories of morality.

... which is elaborated upon later [bracketed comment mine]:

Consequently, either the "official doctrine" cannot avoid the charge that it makes ethical obligations ultimately a matter of sheer commitment [this is a contractarian view of morality] or it ends up, despite claims to the contrary, endorsing the neo-Aristotelian view in which living as a flourishing rational animal is the telos of human conduct.

...

Thus, if we are dealing with human beings with the capacity to think, then one can say that they have the moral responsibility to think simply because of what they are--because they have the potentiality for their mature state. If they fail to use their capacity to think and thus fail to have knowledge of what their lives require, this does not free them from the charge of having failed to fulfill a basic moral responsibility.

Of course, this responsibility does not occur as an abstraction but varies with persons and context. One would not, for example, expect the responsibilities of a young teenager to be the same as those of an adult. ... Nonetheless, it is still the case that as long as we are dealing with human beings with the capacity to think, then they have the moral responsibility to exercise the choice to think as it is manifested in the particular situations and contexts of their lives. Only by confusing concepts with realities could it be supposed that human beings do not have an obligation to choose to think.

Post 25

Saturday, May 26, 2012 - 5:51pm

Thus, if we are dealing with human beings with the capacity to think, then one can say that they have the moral responsibility to think simply because of what they are--because they have the potentiality for their mature state. If they fail to use their capacity to think and thus fail to have knowledge of what their lives require, this does not free them from the charge of having failed to fulfill a basic moral responsibility. (Emphasis added)

This is a bad argument, or at least a very misleading one. Human beings don't have the moral responsibility to think simply because they have the potential to do so in their mature state, an argument which sounds ominously Kantian in the way it is presented and phrased. I have the potential to do all sorts of things as a mature human being. That does not by any means obligate me to do them.

Rand railed against the concept of "duty," stressing that a moral obligation, if is to avoid being a categorical imperative, must be based on an antecedent value -- something that the valuer desires for its own sake. One has the "moral responsibility" to choose to think only if and to the extent that one values the consequences of doing so. The proper approach to ethics is teleological, not deontological.

(Edited by William Dwyer on 5/26, 9:11pm)

Post 26

Saturday, May 26, 2012 - 10:25pm

Bill,

Did you read the essay? It is linked as "2006" in Stephen's post 23. In it, Rasmussen attempts to tackle "Objections to the Neo-Aristotlian View" under a heading of the same name. The argument made is teleological and relational -- an argument for a morality based on the concept of "man qua man." When Rasmussen says that you, as a human, should make the initial choice to think or focus -- and that you, as a human, should, in the context of your life, make some ongoing choices to continue to think or continue to focus -- he is echoing the "assertoric hypothetical" moral imperative by Branden (in The Art of Living Consciously) that:

Context determines what state of consciousness is appropriate

Let's say, for instance, that you don't have the responsibility to think simply because you do happen to have the potential to think. That seems logical on its face. For instance, if we all had the responsibility to do everything within our potential, then all of us would be immoral (for failing to 'maximize our moral potentialities'). But insert the concept of a human life into the logical equation. Integrate the notion of "man qua man" and notice the restrictions placed on possibility when you do such a thing. In a vacuum, not all potentialities need be realized. It wouldn't matter one way or the other.

But if we are not talking about empty space -- if we are talking about a kind of creature that has a choice to live a certain way or not (a choice that is life-promoting or not) -- then all of a sudden we can look at potentiality differently. Some things for which we have a potentiality might be so crucial that the whole enterprise of morality rests on them as on a foundation. It might be impossible to even have any kind of morality without one of the crucial legs of such a foundation. In the absolute sense, it's absurd to hypothesize about a human creature who has chosen to not ever think. A built-up moral code (where values were seen as ends and actions were seen as means) would certainly be impossible for such a creature. The only possible action plan for such a creature is passive reaction to visceral urges (the "morality" of a slug).

Without thinking, there is no deliberation. Without deliberation, there is no choice (in the human sense of the term). Rasmussen might as well have said that you have a moral imperative to breathe air and drink water -- even if you had not previously explicitly gotten yourself into the epistemological position to have chosen to do so (your natural need of air and water precedes your conceptualization of your need of air and water). This is because oxygen and water are naturally good for human beings. You couldn't build-up a moral code of action without them. You would only last about 90 seconds without air. In the same way, you can't have a moral code without thinking. No air, no morality (for humans). No water, no morality (for humans). No thinking, no morality (for humans).

Ed
(Edited by Ed Thompson on 5/26, 10:28pm)

Post 27

Sunday, May 27, 2012 - 12:07am

Ed,

So you're saying that Rasmussen really is arguing from a teleological framework. Okay, but that wasn't clear from what you had quoted.

I want to address something else that you said. You wrote,

Without thinking, there is no deliberation. Without deliberation, there is no choice (in the human sense of the term).

So you're saying that before you can choose, you have to engage in a process of deliberation, and before you can do that, you have to engage in a process of thinking. But in that case, there is no moral imperative to choose to think, because before you can have moral imperatives, you must already be thinking. So is the choice to think an amoral choice, one that you're not morally responsible for making?

Post 28

Sunday, May 27, 2012 - 8:12am

Good points, Ed and Bill.

One of the links that will be found within the final link of #23 is to Tibor Machan�s �Rand and Choice� in JARS V7N2.

From that paper:

arbitrary,

arbitrary

That is all true. (Cf. To Think and Choice to Live.) It is also consonant with Rand�s texts. It is consonant as well with the Gotthelf 1990 treatment (included in the 2011 ARS volume [MEV] mentioned in #23) and with the treatments by Peikoff and by Kelley.

Rasmussen responds, on pages 315�22 of his 2006 paper, to the portion of Machan�s paper quoted above. That response is inadequate to show Machan�s view in the quoted portion incorrect.

Darryl Wright responds, in �Reasoning about Ends� in MEV, to the view and arguments of Rasmussen 2002 and 2006. Rasmussen maintains that choosing life as objectively valuable entails the condition that life has directive power independently of one�s choices. Independently of our choice, life is worthy of our choice. Therefore, we ought to choose life.

Wright observes that, at least in other value choices, the fact that an option is one worth choosing does not establish that it is the one to be chosen over alternatives. I imagine this is not something that undermines the fundamental choice at hand because, as Machan, Gotthelf, and Miller* have stressed, there is fundamentally only one alternative to the choice under consideration, and that alternative is only a negation of life and without worth in the usual course of making one�s life.

Wright reaches deeper:

In a rather different sense than Rasmussen intends, we might even describe Rand as holding that it is possible to experience one�s life as �choiceworthy� and thereby to have a reason for choosing to live. But, importantly, when one finds life to be something choiceworthy, it is from the perspective of one who is already actively involved in it, and in part it is that active involvement that makes it choiceworthy. One comes to find life choiceworthy as a result of having sought out and achieved values within it. It is thus choiceworthy�to use that terminology�qua already chosen. Similarly, one chooses to live while already engaged in that process. In each case, one is ratifying�and making conscious, consistent, and comprehensive�one�s commitment to a value or an activity that one has already to some extent embraced in a less reflective way. This seems like quite a different thing from grasping that it is one�s telos to live and then doing so on that account. In any event, on the view I have sketched, one�s less reflectively attained narrower values�the disparate kinds of values a person normally develops in the course of growing up�enable one to experience one�s life as being a value. At a later stage of moral reflection (assuming one reaches it), one is in a position to make a choice to strive fully and consistently to maintain and fulfill one�s life as an ultimate end. And one�s reasons for doing so at this point would be threefold: . . . (32)
Ed remarked (#24): �I think that it is morally right to, at least initially, choose to live. This is because of the kind of creature that we are. If we were rational robots, it wouldn't be morally right to choose to live -- there wouldn't be such an imperative.� I think the dispute will be over only the first sentence, specifically concerning whether the setting should be conceived as one in which there is not only a consciously articulated choice to live, but one in which there are prior implicit choices for life in one�s choices of life-conducing action and in one�s choices to identify and integrate one�s perceptions and feelings.

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

arbitrary

optional.

she

arbitrary,

(Edited by Stephen Boydstun on 5/27, 8:22am)

Post 29

Sunday, May 27, 2012 - 8:33am

Bill,

[Note: This post was cross-posted with Stephen's post above]

It can be hard to understand moral argumentation in the abstract. One of the things that hampers understanding is the assumption of beginning in a vacuum -- an action arena where there are no limitations or inclinations, besides the explicit limitations and inclinations stipulated by the logical propositions entertained. This is a common theme in physics. You start at time = 0, you specify and stipulate environmental conditions, you specify and stipulate entity-potentiality, and you look for what it is that could give rise to an effect or event, from that explicitly stipulated baseline of possibility. In such a scenario, the baseline is everything. Make one wrong assumption about the baseline, and the whole enterprise of physics is thrown off of the rails. It's how you arrived at the conclusion that the proposition "humans should think" is false.

One way past this difficulty is through the proliferation of concrete examples (the use of analogy). Let's switch from thinking for a moment and talk about breathing. Making the switch, your line of argument looks like this:

So you're saying that before you can choose, you have to engage in a process of deliberation, and before you can do that, you have to engage in a process of breathing. But in that case, there is no moral imperative to choose to breathe, because before you can have moral imperatives, you must already be breathing. So is the choice to breathe an amoral choice, one that you're not morally responsible for making?

Now the answer becomes clear, and it is: "No." The choice to breathe (or at least to continue to breathe) is not amoral. Morality is about life-furthering actions. It's when there's a choice, and when one of them furthers your life, and when the other one doesn't (or it doesn't as much as the first choice). In short, it's when there's a choice that matters (that makes a difference for a living being). The choice to continue breathing matters in the moral sense: it is a real choice, and it really affects your life. The same is true of thinking, though it doesn't fit neatly into a physics-friendly thought experiment where you start at time, t = 0, and you stipulate environmental possibility and entity-potentiality, and then deduce what will happen.

To recap, this is a normative and principled argument about "man qua man." Now, you may have the ability to imagine scenarios wherein it will not hold true (e.g., a man under water should not try to "breathe" -- but rather, should try to hold his breath), but that reaction to this argument is improper. It would be a form of the 'life-boat fallacy' that Rand had called attention to regarding sloppy moral argumentation. If you specify conditions so that you begin in a vacuum of stipulated possibility, and you miss out on some of the action-potential of an entity, then it can appear that the proposition "humans should think" is false.

And, by the same logic, it can appear that the proposition "humans should breathe" is false. Another proposition that can be made to appear false under such a use of logic is: "humans should try to be happy."

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 5/27, 8:42am)

Post 30

Sunday, May 27, 2012 - 9:14am

Stephen,

You quoted Darryl Wright:

Similarly, one chooses to live while already engaged in that process. In each case, one is ratifying�and making conscious, consistent, and comprehensive�one�s commitment to a value or an activity that one has already to some extent embraced in a less reflective way. This seems like quite a different thing from grasping that it is one�s telos to live and then doing so on that account. In any event, on the view I have sketched, one�s less reflectively attained narrower values�the disparate kinds of values a person normally develops in the course of growing up�enable one to experience one�s life as being a value. At a later stage of moral reflection (assuming one reaches it), one is in a position to make a choice to strive fully and consistently to maintain and fulfill one�s life as an ultimate end.

I agree with Wright (I think Wright is right) but reading me may not lead others to that conclusion. The reason for this is that I've been less than perfectly clear. If my agreement with Wright can be considered a 'problem', then I think that a 'solution' is found in Eric Mack's essay: The Fundamental Moral Elements of Rand's Theory of Rights (found in the book: The Philosophic Thought of Ayn Rand; edited by Douglas J. Den Uyl and Douglas B. Rasmussen). In the essay, Mack contrasts 2 views of values

1) the promulgation view
2) the validation view

Under the promulgation view, in order to have a value, you have to explicitly derive or deduce it from prior propositions. Everything is pre-rationalized and there is no room for natural inclinations. But under the validation view, in order to have a value, all that you have to do is to retroactively validate it. You do not have to start in a vacuum of inclination (what Rasmussen refers to as the spectrum extreme of "radical freedom"), and then deduce what it is that is good and what it is that is bad from some personal choice or from another set of propositions that is akin to -- or that stands for -- having made such a personal choice beforehand. Instead of starting in a moral vacuum, you start with a real human who has some real and natural desires, inclinations, or propensities (because of being a certain type of creature).

Like Mack, I take the validation view of values. It's where you start with your wheels already turning (where you are already engaged in the process of living), and then you can look back and reflect and fine-tune your route through the journey of life by utilizing real-life feedback rather than through sheer promulgation. On the validation view of values, you can see that breathing, drinking, and thinking are objective values for humans -- actions included in the moral responsibilities of being a human.

Ed

Post 31

Sunday, May 27, 2012 - 10:42am

Ed,

So you're saying that thinking is a choice that you're morally responsible for making. But how can that be if "without thinking, there is no deliberation," and "without deliberation, there is no choice (in the human sense of the term)"? Remember, to "think" in the Objectivist sense of that term means to "focus" -- to raise one's awareness from a lower level to a higher level. But if, as you say, one already has to be thinking -- already has to be in focus -- before one can make a choice, then focusing itself cannot be a choice that one is morally responsible for making.

(Edited by William Dwyer on 5/27, 10:58am)

Post 32

Sunday, May 27, 2012 - 10:52am

In this thread that Mr. Hayashi started, he states his understanding of Ayn Rand's position where he says: "... the field of morality is contingent upon the choice to live."

And the examples from Rand are as follows:

My morality, the morality of reason, is contained in a single axiom: existence exists -- and in a single choice: to live.

and

Life or 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 for realistic necessity is: "You must, if--"and "if" stands for man's choice: "--if you want to achieve a certain goal." You must eat, if you want to survive."

Mr. Hayashi posits his dilemma for us - a dilemma which comes from Rasmussen, who "...interprets this as saying that morality is contingent upon the choice to live. You must be moral if you choose to live."
------------------------------

I see a flaw in the way this position is being structured. Let me approach it grammatically and start with listing the components.

"The field" - What field? The field of knowledge we refer to as morality - that is the subject in its context (morality as seen as a field of knowledge).

"...is contingent upon" - is the heart of the predicate - and it's telling us about the conceptual geneology of a particular field of knowledge, "morality." We can tell this by noticing that "contingent" when applied to an entire field of knowledge is talking about what makes the entire field contingent (and should be making us think, "what does contingent mean when applied to fields of knowledge?".)

But the understanding of "contingent" in the context of this statement is that the subject's existence is dependent, or conditioned, by something else - which in this statement is the phrase modifying the predicate: "the choice to live."

Too me, the first isse to sort out is an agreement between subject and predicate. A field of knowledge is not dependent upon an action, but rather on a more fundamental piece of knowledge, or a piece of knowledge that enters a common context prior to the field in the subject.

If the assertion were that the field of morality is contingent upon the field of metaphysics, that would be different assertion, but one that clearly has a subject and predicate agreement. If the assertion were that the field of morality is contingent upon human nature, that would be an agreement because it would make sense to say that one field of knowledge can be contingent upon another.

But, could we make this assertion work: The field of morality is contingent upon "...my choosing to live?" or, "...this man's choice to live?" No. Who is choosing? How can an entire field become contingent upon each such choice? Doesn't that imply that a field of knowledge could be subjective in its very principles and roots to what some future person chooses?

How could it make sense to say that a thing is a choice but it is always made by all or is never made by any? Because that would be the alternative to the subjectivity of saying that a field of knowledge is contingent upon any individual's choice to live.

If it had been stated differently, like, "For a man to be moral, he must first choose to live," then a more fruitful argument could be enjoined. We would get to start with subject and predicate happily in agreement.

I have always understood Rand as saying that man's capacity to choose, which is a key component of his human nature, and the fact of the need to make choice to survive, and that he is confronted, at the deepest level of choosing, with the fundamental choice of to live or to die, then - and in no other context, do we have moral value. (To say that we are each confronted with the choice to live or die is not implying that each individual has concious thoughts or explicit awareness of this on the conceptual level - another mistake we sometimes see.)

Morality as a field, is not contingent upon individuals, this individual or that one, or all of them, choosing to live. Morality as a field is contingent upon the fact that human nature gives us a capacity to choice and the most fundamental choice is to live, and that those things that exist or could exist that support that choice should be deemed 'good' - and if the most fundamental choice in some strange universe could only be death (for an individual, or for all individuals) then there would be no issue of good versus bad, or priorities of good, since it would be moot. also, if choice itself wasn't possible, then the concept of morality as such would not exist.

Mr. Hayashi says, "But what if someone does not choose to live? If morality only applies to someone who chooses to perpetuate his or her own life, then suicide is outside the realm of morality, as you cannot offer a rational reason why someone must choose to live in the first place." Here again I look at subject-predicate agreement. Is morality a field of knowledge that is independent of one individuals actions or understandings or motivations? Yes. Example: The field of math will continue to exist even though there might people who make very strange choices. And, will math still apply to that person (as observed, lets say, from the outside)? Yes. We can quantify thing about that person and his two arms even if all of his actions, thoughts, motivations and understandings dismiss, discard, or fail to affirm or enter into the field in question.

In the next paragraph is the sentence, "...morality is contingent upon the choice to live, and there really is no duty or obligation for someone to live. Morality applies to him of her if he or she chooses to live." Here is that confusion of subject-predicate. The field exists with its assertions/knowledge as true or false and as applicable for this or that context quite independent of an individual's choice, but never independent of the fact that the field is contingent upon the capacity to choose, and the fact that, in general, the most fundamental choice is to live or to die.

Hopefully, this overly wordy and poorly contructed post, despite it's awkwardness, makes clear Rasmussen's fallacy when he said, "...a suicidal person has no reason to be moral." If morality is field of knowledge independent of this or that individual's actions, then because a person chooses suicide doesn't mean that field of knowledge doesn't apply to them. It is the fact that we as a type of entity have the capacity to choose that makes us (all who fit that description) subject to the application of morality. If I were to ponder suicide, the decision that followed would certainly be examinable from the perspective of morality, by me or anyone else. And a decision would judged moral or not moral on the individual context as per the general principles. If I had cancer that was incurable and painful and would never permit any form of joy, then it would be moral to commit suicide. That is, morality applies because there is choice (if I were a robot, we would be talking programming, not choice), and a code of values would still exist and choices would be about priorities, and the value of my life, in that context, would have fallen into negative value territory with no possibility of improvement. It would be a case of minimizing the negative values in my life. No where in that formulation do we see that I have left morality, or that if I had left morality it would mean that immoral acts would be moral. Morality is still there, objective and universal, independent of the given individual and contingent upon human nature (the capacity to choose, and the fundamental choice of life or death).

Context really is king. When an old man wants to kill himself (rationally, let us say, because his cancer is so life-diminishing) but he decides to go out with a bang and kill others as he dies, we look at the context of the actions from the outside, and we establish the various contexts that apply. His quality of life the immpossibility of improvement is the context that says, Yes, it is in his rational, moral self-interest to kill himself. But we look at the intent to kill others and we judge that it is never in anyone's self-interest to violate the moral basis of their right to choose. If we choose to examine the morality of an issue, we will never logically find ourselves saying, in effect, Yeah, it is not wrong for him to do wrong. We can't have part of the sentence living in the realm of moral questions, and the other part of the same sentence living in a kind of moral anarchyville.

Would the old man still be as eager to kill his neighbors if we explain that since he has no right to violate a right, his attempt has proven to be not just immoral, but criminal and that's why we will take over his life, preventing that rights violation, and we are sorry, but he may even be denied the right to kill himself for a while.... until we can work the wheels of justice to decide for him, since he will be incarcerated, forfeit some of his rights to choose for the time being.

Post 33

Sunday, May 27, 2012 - 1:54pm

"Choice" is a word that can easily be used in different ways.

Choice as volition - this, to me is free will. This is where we will ourselves to focus or not, to start thinking or not. It isn't thinking, but a necessarey gateway. This is a process of shifting the focus of our consciousness regarding the kind of focus. "I want to grasp this" - not as a thought but as an mental exertion - doing for the mind what is done in the eyes when trying to focus the sight. (Or performing that operation rand referred to as "blanking")

"Choice" can also mean the selected alternative from a deliberation. That's a totally different usage, one that refers to a specific goal or value or plan that was selected from alternatives by cogitating or weighing the alternatives. E.g., "I thought about it, and my choice was to buy rather than to lease."

Choice also exists as a process, as "Choosing" which can mean deliberating on alternatives. Stimulus (internal or external or some combination) put something in front of me and I exercise will power to focus, or not. If I choose to focus, and the focus chosen resolves into deliberation, then I can say I am deliberating. I am in the process of choosing.

We can talk about "Choices" as good or bad, as smart or stupid, and as emotional reactions, neuroic, or rational. These are examples of us choosing to think, and then judging the particular alternative selected in a given context (of ourslves or of others). Some people who make a lot of bad choices have developed patterns where they first ignore the stimuli that calls for a shift in focus, or select to give in to a whim or a defensive emotion instead of opening the focus to reasoning. Then when bad things happen to them it feels like it was from the outside world (because their choosing self wasn't fully there - but they can't escape awareness on some level that they chose not to focus.)

Exercising our volition to think or not on an issue that pops up is a statement about how we work as entities with our kind of consciousness. The mechanism is clearly determined as part of our nature, but in the exercise it we make ourselves the agent of latter effects.

The individual responses are more attuned to the psychological practices we cultivate in given areas.

Part of that psychological mechanism has a built-in feedback mechanism. We hover for an instant in a mental place where we are offered alternatives but in a fuzzy, superficial way ("Hey, there's something here!"). One alternative might be powered by a psychological urge to avoid a painful issue. Another alternative might be powered by a psychological urge to do the work of thinking on the current stimuli because it might be in our self-interest. They get mixed together, put on a plate, and offered to the volitional routine to focus or not focus.

We are morally responsible to do whatever thinking is needed to decide what items need more thinking and which don't. (I.e., we are responsible for exercising our means of survival adequate to our survival, or better... our flourishing). We reach an adequate level of deliberations before selecting the alternative or we don't. We can't avoid the automatic scoring of that process by our self-esteem as having done the job well, or not.

Consider all of this in light of Branden's 6 pillars of self-esteem:

living consciously which starts with adequate initial focus before moving on,
self-acceptance which vastly reduces the emotional drive to move focus away from anything that might feel like an attack,
self-responsibility which in this context says the focus needed for context has to relate to the choices that one needs to make,
self-assertiveness in this context would be not allowing 'choices' to be defaults, flowing from non-involvement or from not challenging negative emotions that are attempting to drive a person away from focusing on an issue. The self has many parts, the first one is this relationship to the use of volition - nothing is more assertive than choosing to think in the face of fear or doubt,
living purposefully starts with finding if a stimuli relates to your set of major or minor purposes, and that doesn't happen without focusing,
Personal integrity can not be in play if a person doesn't focus on an issue well enough to relate it their principles. The loss of personal integrity will nearly always come from choices made in the choice of how to focus - that is where defense mechanisms and unfortunate prior reasonings will oppose things 'they' feel might hurt and will encourage a person to "move on... don't worry, no integrity issue here, honest."

Post 34

Sunday, May 27, 2012 - 5:31pm

Bill,

So you're saying that thinking is a choice that you're morally responsible for making. But how can that be if "without thinking, there is no deliberation," and "without deliberation, there is no choice (in the human sense of the term)"? Remember, to "think" in the Objectivist sense of that term means to "focus" -- to raise one's awareness from a lower level to a higher level. But if, as you say, one already has to be thinking -- already has to be in focus -- before one can make a choice, then focusing itself cannot be a choice that one is morally responsible for making.

Okay, but this line of reasoning is guilty of what I characterized as the 'physics-thought-experiment fallacy', or PTEF (for short). If you start at time, t = 0, and you have to decide what to do about living a human life -- it seems like you have to start out by making a pre-moral choice to think. After making that initial choice to think (and then to purposefully act) in the world, morality follows contingently. As long as you make that completely-optional, contextually-arbitrary choice -- you're on-the-hook for living well as a human being. However, if you don't start out by making that pre-moral choice, then you are not on-the-hook for living well as a human being.

But don't you see a problem with that?

Because of our natural needs, we are on-the-hook for living well whether we know it or not; whether we like it or not. Let's move away from time, t = 0 and enter into the actual realm of human living. Let's hit the ground running rather than starting off from a stand-still (and trying to promulgate a morality from the mere conceptual analysis of entity-potentiality). If we do that, your quote above can be altered to something like this:

So you're saying that thinking (achieving an elevated state of consciousness) is a choice that you're morally responsible for making every now and again, depending on the life circumstance, on the context, in which you find yourself. But how can that be if "without thinking, there is no deliberation," and "without deliberation, there is no choice (in the human sense of the term)"? Remember, to "think" in the Objectivist sense of that term means to "focus" -- to raise one's awareness from a lower level to a higher level. But if, as you say, one already has to be thinking -- already has to be in focus -- before one can make a choice, then focusing itself cannot be a choice that one is morally responsible for making.

Now you can see the cyclical character of human life. In the beginning at least, there will be some things that you do more-or-less thoughtlessly. You may, for instance, put your pants on backwards one day, or drink heavily at an important business outing, or shout at someone you love. In going through that experience, where your level of consciousness did not track, lock-step, with the context -- you will likely learn to think more or better. This learning is, in fact, a moral enterprise. It's not all-at-once, so that you have to start out totally unfocused and then choose to literally will yourself into a heightened focus -- in order to have morality apply to you. You are going to get the consequences of thinking or not whether you know it or not; whether you like it or not.

Morality, even if you do not choose to focus, is going to apply to you. In fact, this hypothetical talk about a human individual who makes the consistent choice to not ever focus (and who is therefore completely outside of the bounds of morality) is actually a castle-in-the-sky rationalization. There aren't any examples of such a person, and there will not ever be any examples of such a person. Any creature with a capacity for pleasure and pain -- and especially the human creature, with a broadened capacity for such (including worry and anguish and humor) -- will eventually exercise a capacity to focus. Reality will impinge on you, and you will "wake-up" to find yourself in a world where things can go right or wrong for you -- and you accidentally, if not purposefully, discover that it matters whether you focus or not.

Now, sure, some folks try to stay in as grey of a mental fog as possible. They try to unfocus. But even this effort is situational. The notion of a general mental haze (where nothing is ever focused on) is a floating abstraction. We can imagine it, but it is a physical impossibility for a human being who is awake. So you might not start out the process by thinking or focusing. Maybe you just get up and stub your toe on the chest-of-drawers.

Bam! [pain shoots into your toe]

Immediately, you are in focus. You discover that it is probably better for you to actively remember where the chest-of-drawers is. You discover, because of the pain of reality impinging on you, that it is going to be useful for you to think. So you didn't start out with a code of action -- you didn't start out with a morality -- but then life happened to you and, in bits and pieces, you developed into a moral being (a being for whom choice matters). All humans do this.

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 5/28, 3:04pm)

Post 35

Sunday, May 27, 2012 - 5:39pm

We are morally responsible to do whatever thinking is needed to decide what items need more thinking and which don't. (I.e., we are responsible for exercising our means of survival adequate to our survival, or better... our flourishing). We reach an adequate level of deliberations before selecting the alternative or we don't. We can't avoid the automatic scoring of that process by our self-esteem as having done the job well, or not.

What a great paragraph, Steve!

Ed

Post 36

Sunday, May 27, 2012 - 10:02pm

Thank, Ed!

Monday, May 28, 2012 - 9:04am