dean – Page 11 – Dean Cook

Objectivism Conference, Day 2

This was “day 2” of OCON. I didn’t take any pictures on this day, so I’m’ just putting it on my blog. “Day One” can be found on my Facebook page, which has pictures: https://www.facebook.com/dean.cook.5011/posts/10156994148213968

My written journal says I went to day 2 of the Logic class and learned about “example”, by which, I mean, the concept of “example” -what you use when you are trying to explain or elucidate a concept. This was done by examples of, well, example. Various principles of what makes a good “example” were gone over. For instance (and by way of example), a good “example” is concrete and specific. I take this as meaning if someone wants an example, of the concept, “love”, you present them with a mother taking care of her child or newlyweds kissing. You don’t start out by telling them “love is compromise” or “love is a change in brain chemistry that creates a positive association about another person”, even though those are probably true statements.

The previous homework was gone over. One example of “Philosophy determines history” that I really liked involved an attempted counter-example of this assertion. Economists will say that the Roman Empire fell because it became a welfare state and the Romans inflated their currency, which destroyed their economy and made them weak militarily. Then, the Gauls and the Visigoths invaded and sacked Rome. This is all true, and I’ve heard Economists say this before. But, it doesn’t disprove that “philosophy determines history”. If you look “behind” this Economic explanation for the fall of the Roman Empire, you ask: “Why did the Romans think they could inflate their currency without bad consequences in the long run?” This had to do with the move away in Roman thinking from the “empiricism” of Aristotle and towards the “other worldliness” of Plato and his “world of forms”. In other words, the Romans turned away from accepting that reality is what it is and has a specific nature, and began to believe that there is a “higher” or “truer” nature that is somehow more “pure”. This means you cannot trust your senses and your logic to tell you that if you inflate your money supply, there will be bad economic consequences and that the barbarians to the North will kill you if they think they can get away with it.

The homework assignment was pretty interesting and really stimulated my thinking. It involved defining certain concepts, including: (1) The number “seven”; (2) “war”; (3) “prize”; (4) “Dignity”; and (5) “Racism”.

According to my journal, the next lecture that day had to do with Burnout and Rational Self-Interest. I believe there were three speakers on this one. Burnout was defined as: (1) Exhaustion; (2) Cynicism; and (3) Diminished sense of self-confidence. There was a discussion of how adopting an other-regarding, altruistic morality will create “burnout” as it had been defined, although external causes of “burnout” were noted as also possible – specifically the fact that the government interferes in some professions to such a degree that it makes it difficult to avoid burnout. (Medicine was given as an example -with its massive amounts of bureaucratic controls and “red tape”.)

There was also an interesting discussion of “selfishness in the moment”, in which you never think “I have to do this.” I’ve heard similar things, and I think it’s basically the idea that if you need to do something to achieve some goal, like studying for a test, but you feel great reluctance to start, you remind yourself that you don’t “have” to do anything, and then ask yourself why you’re feeling this great reluctance, and try to see if there is some other important thing in your life that you might feel like you’re neglecting. Then, you may need to alter or amend your goals, or adjust your work schedule to account for this other important thing.

I will comment on this a little bit, and say that I think the speakers are assuming you’ve got a basic level of wealth and can survive okay in this moment. Sometimes, you may be so impoverished or broke that you just need to work a job you dislike in the short term in order to make money, and it takes an act of pure “will” to get up in the morning, and you hate everything about the job and the people you work with -which I’ve done before. But, that’s not sustainable long-term, and probably will lead to “burn out”. But, over-all, I think what they’re saying makes sense in most situations.

The next lecture was on creativity. The overall argument seemed to be that creativity is really an act of the conscious mind rather than something that comes out of the subconscious. The speaker explicitly said he wasn’t talking about the arts, so I don’t know if he thinks this about fiction writing, music, and painting.

Several examples of highly creative people were given. Steve Jobs being one.

Although the speaker didn’t believe the subconscious was “primary”, it is necessary. Basically, he said when engaged in creative activity, you should engage in active thinking and work, and then take a break periodically as there seems to be something about your mind that will engage in some sort of “mental consolidation” while you’re resting, and then make your next round of work more productive. I’ve noticed this myself in my own work. He also noted this sort of thing works well in collaborative endeavors, where you sit down with colleagues and discuss the problem and solutions, and then you all separate and do some individual thinking and work, and then get back together later, and the next round of collaboration will be better.

He also said expect to fail a lot. Failure was described as a signal to keep moving. He said that geniuses fail a lot because they try so many ideas.

He also noted that the “10,000 hours to competence” assertion you hear sometimes is a myth. I think he said the studies that have been done just don’t support that.

He also noted that “experts” can only be experts about the past, so “experts” aren’t likely to generate new ideas.

The final lecture of the day in my notes wasn’t a lecture per se. It was a panel discussion between Jordan Peterson, a philosophy professor from the Ayn Rand Institute and the Institute’s CEO. A fourth person steered the conversation with questions for all three people.

I’m uncertain of Jordan Peterson’s level of “sympathy” for Ayn Rand and her philosophy, and he said several things that made it clear he wasn’t in line with key aspects of her philosophy. The biggest one had to do with him saying something like religion is necessary in order to give you a basic framework from which to organize the factual data you observe. He basically said the universe is too complex, and you need some sort of “narrative” to have it all make sense, and that for most people that need is fulfilled by religion. I would need to hear more about what Peterson means here than just an hour-long, somewhat “freewheeling” discussion, and I don’t want to misrepresent what he said. He referenced Sam Harris, and said he is having a similar sort of debate with Harris, and that Harris says you can derive “oughts” from “what is”, so I’d like to hear his debate with Harris on this point. (Harris also has explicitly disagreed with key points of Rand’s philosophy, so his view isn’t going to be Rand’s.) I also haven’t read any of Jordan Peterson’s books. I cannot find the complete discussion online, but here is a youtube channel with “outtakes” from it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMEBQJoPumc

Frankly, I’m not sure that the “problem” Peterson is pointing to is a real problem at all. The universe isn’t “complex” or “simple”, these are concepts having to do with human action and the things we create. Also why do you need the universe to “make sense”? Is it in order to live successfully? Then wouldn’t that imply that your own life is your ultimate goal? I think when you start thinking about ethics, you can start from the perspective of a normal adult with a normally functioning mind who has basic knowledge, and who has made the choice to live. I start from this point because you’d have to have basic knowledge and be a normally functioning adult to really be in a position to think about ethics at all. (A child has insufficient knowledge, and a mentally retarded person doesn’t have the intelligence level to even ask the questions, much less find any answers.) Such a person, if he wants to live, is going to have to observe reality, organize his thinking into certain normative concepts like “rationality”, “virtue”, and “ultimate value”, which must have some connection to reality for success, and then he must act on those normative principles. But, maybe I’m missing Peterson’s point.

Is the Male Gender The Reason There is Violence In the World?

A few years back a girl told me she was watching some reality TV show where a guy was being physically confronted by another guy, and, rather than fight, he ran away. She said if that were her boyfriend, she’d break up with him. Recently, while listening to a lecture on the American Civil War, I learned that women would send women’s clothing to men who refused to fight in the war. The implication being that these men were not ‘truly masculine’. There are other instances of this in history. I read at this web site that women would belittle men who refused to fight for their clan in ancient Scotland.

Why am I bringing this up? Because I occasionally hear women say something like: ‘Men are responsible for the violence in the world.’ While I agree that men are the gender more likely to actually initiate physical force (and to commit crimes), I think this completely ignores the social reality of the relationship between the genders. I think plenty of women who would not use violence themselves want their men to do so, and male willingness to use violence is tied to their conception of masculinity. As such, these men feel great social pressure from women to initiate violence. Men who refuse to do so will find they don’t have sexual access to women, which is an enormous penalty to pay. It means no wife, no family, and a great deal of social isolation.

The problem of the initiation of physical force by men is as old as mankind, but I have no doubt that when our Paleolithic ancestors, living in caves and huts, decided to take by force the goods of another tribe, their female mates were there egging them on. Even when a tribe decided to capture women for sexual purposes, I’m sure the mothers of the men in the tribe were there pushing their sons to give them grandchildren by any means necessary. So, I think the notion that men are the only gender responsible for the level of violence in the world is undue self-congratulation by females.

Ayn Rand Institute Article on “Morality Without Religion”

I found this article to be good, and there isn’t anything major I would disagree with. It’s a response to people who say without religion, there would be no prohibition against murder, or other violations of people’s rights. However, I think the author didn’t explicitly state with sufficient “weight” what I think the fundamental Randian response to such an argument would be. If someone says: “Without religion, there could be no prohibition on murder, therefore we need religious faith to keep people from committing murder,” I think the Randian response would be to start with a discussion of why murder is bad. I think this is where Objectivism would start in discussing this because it’s where Rand starts her discussion of morality in general:

“The first question that has to be answered, as a precondition of any attempt to define, to judge or to accept any specific system of ethics, is: Why does man need a code of values?

Let me stress this. The first question is not: What particular code of values should man accept? The first question is: Does man need values at all—and why?” (“The Objectivist Ethics”, _The Virtue of Selfishness_ Ayn Rand, http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/morality.html )

When it comes to a discussion of murder, I think it’s probably socially taboo to even ask this question, which is why I think theists use it. It’s like people are afraid to address the question: “Why is murder bad?” because they’re afraid they won’t be able to come up with a satisfactory explanation other than just: “It’s bad.”

I do, in fact, think murder is bad. But, I also try not to be afraid of any question (or the answer), and I don’t think Rand was either. So, why is murder bad?

If you ask most people, and they are willing to discuss the question with you at all, then I think most of them will say murder is bad for at least one of three reasons: (1) They don’t want to be murdered. (2) They don’t want anyone they care about to be murdered. Probably, a third reason that will be commonly posited is something along the lines of: If murder isn’t prohibited, then the social order will break down. This is also true, although I don’t think it’s fundamental, since I think society exists because it is beneficial for each individual living in that society. So, this really becomes: “Murder is bad because without it, I can’t live in society, which is bad for me.”

Once you have elicited one of these three responses from someone, it becomes fairly easy to explain to them why we don’t need religion to explain why murder is bad. Murder is bad because it isn’t consistent with the requirements of their life. “Man’s life” is the standard of morality for those who choose to live. When you combine this with a discussion of the the fact that “nature to be commanded, must be obeyed”, and with the fact that human beings have a certain nature, which gives rise to the need for long-range principles of action and conduct to live successfully long-term, then virtues, values, and individual rights become fairly easy to explain. Additionally, government can then be explained as the institution that is intended to protect individual rights, and to enforce an absolute prohibition on murder, assault, and property crimes, which must be prohibited for the individual to live in a social environment.

But, note that this explanation is based on the choice to live. It is only because one chooses to live that one needs morality at all. The choice to live was regarded as “basic choice” by Rand, that precedes morality. Murder, and all moral vice, is bad because it is not consistent with man’s life:

“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.” (“Causality Versus Duty,”
Philosophy: Who Needs It, Ayn Rand, http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/morality.html )

Another discussion that would have to be had in conjunction with “Why is murder bad?” is: “What is ‘murder’ and how do we distinguish it from killing in self-defense?” The distinction is: Who initiated or started the use of physical force? There are many complicated scenarios that we can get into in terms of distinguishing a particular set of facts as “murder” or “self-defense”, but in general, it comes down to who initially uses force to gain a value from another person, or to destroy another person’s values. (In the case of murder, that value is one’s life.) A person who acts in self-defense only does so to preserve their own life from being taken, not, primarily, to deprive their attacker of their life -that is just an unfortunate “by-product” of self-defense.

A dedicated Platonist/Religionist won’t be fully satisfied with this explanation, of course. They want a commandment handed down from above saying: “Thou shalt not commit murder,” and they want anyone who violates it to spend eternity in hell. They want a commandment for all moral principles. But, the vast majority of modern-day Americans, I think, will find the Randian explanation perfectly acceptable for living our every-day lives -even some of the more religious ones.

Gun Control: A State-Sponsored Initiation of Physical Force

On July 14, 2016 a terrorist drove a cargo truck into crowds of people celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, France, killing eighty-six people and injuring 458 others. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/14/84-killed-in-nice-by-lorry-during-bastille-day-celebrations—ho/

Mass-murders using a multi-ton vehicle are simply viewed as tragedies for the victims, and acts of viciousness by the perpetrators. Politicians and activists on the left do not attempt to change our attitudes towards trucks and automobiles. There are no calls for criminal background checks before owning a car, no calls for psychological screening before you can get your new Toyota, and anyone seriously suggesting that cargo trucks should be banned would be laughed at.

On the other hand, any time there is a mass-murder involving a firearm in “gun friendly” United States, and not in countries with massive firearms restrictions, like France or Belgium, it becomes time to trot out the “gun control” arguments. The latest mass-shooting in Florida has brought forth the left’s usual call for an “assault weapons” ban. As with any blanket governmental prohibition on the ownership of any device or substance, the problem with “gun control” is this: The only way to enforce it is to turn government into a force-initiator. Although, in our already very un-free society, it means turning our government into an even greater force-initiator.

I’ll start with a discussion of the difference between murder and self-defense. This is primarily a moral and philosophical discussion of the distinction, not a legal one. Laws are made by men, and can be changed or reformed to better reflect moral and philosophical truth, so keep that in mind as I go over this. I am speaking more as a political philosopher than as a lawyer.

First, the use of a weapon to commit murder is bad, while the use of a weapon to defend yourself from murder is good, if you value your life. I doubt there are many who will dispute the notion that you can rightly defend yourself, so I won’t discuss it any further. Most of us seem to understand it on a “gut level”, but what exactly is the difference between murder and killing someone in self-defense?

It’s not the mere use of force that distinguishes murder from self-defense. A murderer uses force, but so does the person who acts in self-defense. The difference lies in the fact that a murderer is the first to act, while a person acting in self-defense reacts to an articulable act of force by another. Another critical distinction between murder and self-defense is: the person who acts in self-defense is not attempting to gain another person’s values nor to deprive another person of their values. The robber starts the use of force against others to gain their property or money -to gain what they have produced through their thought and labor. The person who acts in self-defense is reacting to preserve his values. When someone tries to murder him, the man who acts in self-defense is attempting to preserve what can be considered an important value, and, I think, his ultimate value -the value that all his other values are aimed at achieving and maintaining. The murderer or the robber initiates physical force, while the person who acts in self-defense, or defense of others, uses force in reaction or retaliation to the initiation of physical force.

Next, what are “gun control laws”? They are “preventative law”. They attempt to prohibit a certain action that is innocuous in and of itself -the ownership of a gun. “Preventative law” prohibits actions that, standing alone, are not an initiation of physical force. The mere ownership of a gun doesn’t kill or injure anyone. This blanket prohibition is imposed in order to prevent some evil that can potentially be committed with the gun -murder, robbery, or rape. If everyone who owned a gun were to somehow magically loose the free will to choose to use a gun to commit crimes like murder, then there would be very little talk of “gun control laws”. This is because such laws would be unnecessary.

The problem with “preventative laws” is that they: (1) Legally prohibit actions that are good if you value your life -the ownership of a gun for purposes of self-defense; and (2) They turn government agents into force-initiators. Now police are ordered to go out and initiate physical force against those who have not used force to deprive others of their life or property. In fact, the police are ordered to deprive people of their right to self-defense by arresting anyone who possesses a gun for the purposes of self-defense.

In the last twenty or thirty years, most of the “gun control” debate has centered around so-called “assault weapons”, although this name is a misnomer. What is being described as an “assault weapon”, like an AR-15, is a semi-automatic long gun with a detachable magazine that can hold anywhere from five to 50 rounds. The term “assault weapon” is a cunning choice of wording used by left wing politicians. It implies that semi-automatic long guns with detachable magazines can only be used to commit initiations of physical force, i.e., an “assault”. But, as I will discuss below, these guns can sometimes be the best option for self-defense, and defense of others. (For brevity, I’m going to call a “semi-automatic-long-gun-with-a-detachable-magazine ban” a “semi-auto ban”.)

The calls for a “semi-auto ban” center around the fact that this type of gun tends to be the mass-shooter’s weapon of choice. I question that if these types of guns were to magically disappear, it would prevent any mass-shootings or even significantly reduce casualty rates in such events. Simple pump-action shotguns, holding fewer than six rounds, have been used in mass shootings in recent years. (https://www.scribd.com/document/233531169/Navy-Yard#from_embed) At any rate, the use of a these guns in high-profile, but statistically rare, mass shootings accounts for a lot of the political push for a semi-auto ban. (http://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-myths/mass-shootings/)

People on the political left also tend to call for a semi-auto ban because it seems, at first blush, to be more difficult to justify the ownership of such a weapon. A lot of people might see that you need a handgun for self-defense, but they will ask: “Why does anyone ‘need’ an ‘assault weapon’?”

A concrete example of the utility of semi-automatic long guns for self-defense was demonstrated in the Los Angeles Riots of 1992. (https://www.britannica.com/event/Los-Angeles-Riots-of-1992) The LA Times reported that Koran store owners used “…shotguns and automatic weapons…” to defend their stores from looters. http://articles.latimes.com/1992-05-02/news/mn-1281_1_police-car (Likely the journalist reporting in the old LA Times article didn’t know the difference between a semi-automatic and an automatic, and these guns were likely semi-automatics, the precise type of gun that people push to ban after almost every mass-shooting.)

During the LA riots, Korean shop owners were targeted, and their small businesses were often destroyed. They were an immigrant minority group singled out because of the color of their skin by members of other racial minority groups engaged in mayhem and destruction. But, more fundamentally, rioters went after them because they were successful property owners. The Korean small businessmen were everything the rioters weren’t: hard working, ambitious, and devoted to making something of their lives. The store owners were the “producers”, as Ayn Rand would say, and the rioters were, literally, “the looters”. Rather than have their life’s work destroyed, many of these shop owners armed themselves when the police and the government abandoned them. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCYT9Hew9ZU)

Now, at this point an advocate of a semi-auto ban will say that riots like the one in LA are statistically rare. That is probably true, but, then again, so are shootings that involve the use of a semi-automatic long gun. Far more people are killed with handguns than long-guns of any type. https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-2012/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded-homicide/expanded_homicide_data_table_8_murder_victims_by_weapon_2008-2012.xls (For instance, in 2012 6,371 people were murdered by handguns, versus 232 people killed by rifles, whether semi-automatic or not.)

Now, lets turn to the consequences of a law prohibiting the ownership of semi-automatic long guns. The first thing to note is that the passage of a law is not like waving a magic wand that makes the outlawed thing go away. The drug laws have been on the books for over a hundred years now, but cocaine, heroin, meth, and marijuana are still readily available. Most people could acquire any drug they want in about 24 hours if they have enough money to pay for it. Furthermore, a semi-auto ban isn’t simply a law that says people can’t use guns to deprive others of their lives because we already have that: It’s called a murder statute. As already discussed, a semi-auto ban is what is known as “preventative law”. It involves the government threatening to use force against those who have not initiated physical force, and never would, because they possess the weapons for self-defense.

A semi-auto ban means that people who possess such weapons for morally legitimate reasons like self-defense will be threated with jail time if they continue to possess them. Like all laws, when the police come to arrest violators, if they resist, the state is authorized to use anything up to and including deadly force to subdue them. In other words, the state will use its guns to kill those who want to have the capacity to defend their lives. The initiation of physical force by the state will be required to enforce a semi-auto ban. Government agents become authorized, and ordered, to commit the moral-equivalent of murder to enforce preventative laws such as this.

Is what I’m saying here just “hypothetical”? Are there any concrete examples of how “preventative” gun laws lead to the killing of those who have not initiated physical force? I think the incident at Ruby Ridge is an example of this. Ruby Ridge is an illustration of the fact that gun-prohibitions have life and death consequences. (The facts I outline here are all found in a britanica.com article called “Ruby Ridge Incident” https://www.britannica.com/event/Ruby-Ridge-incident)

Randy Weaver was a white separatist who moved to Idaho in the 1980’s. While attending an Aryan Nations meeting in the late 1980’s he was approached by what turned out to be an ATF informant, who convinced Weaver to saw off two shotguns. A shotgun with a barrel below a certain length is illegal under Federal law. The ATF then threatened Weaver with arrest for possessing a short-barreled shotgun. They told him he could either face prosecution, or he too could become an informant for the ATF. Weaver refused to become an informant, so the ATF pursued the prosecution on the Federal weapons charge. Weaver was arrested, and after his trial was set, he was released.

Originally, Weaver’s trial was set for February 19, 1991, but the trial was then moved to February 20th. Weaver’s probation officer sent him a letter incorrectly stating that the new trial date was March 20. (Similar to the latest mass-shooting in Florida, Federal Government Officials demonstrated their incompetence. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5401101/FBI-knew-Nikolas-Cruz-stockpiling-weapons.html)

When Weaver failed to appear on February 20, the court issued a bench warrant for his arrest. Weaver was then indicted by a Federal grand jury for failing to appear at his trial. The US Marshal’s service was then tasked with arresting Weaver. On August 21, 1992, six heavily-armed Marshals entered Weaver’s property. The Weaver family dog discovered the Marshals in hiding, and one of the Marshals shot the dog. Weaver’s 14-year-old son, Sammy had been walking the dog, and he then got into a gunfight with the Marshals. The Marshals shot Sammy Weaver in the back, killing him. One of Weaver’s friends, Kevin Harris, who had also been with Sammy, then shot and killed US Marshal William Degan.

At that point, the FBI was brought in to assist the Marshals, and there was a standoff centering around Randy Weaver’s house. On August 22, 1992, an FBI sniper shot Weaver in the arm, and accidentally shot his wife, Viki Weaver, in the face, killing her while she held the Weaver’s infant daughter behind the front door of the cabin.

Weaver and Harris eventually surrendered. Weaver was charged with numerous crimes, including murder, conspiracy, and assault. Kevin Harris, who had shot US Marshal, Degan, was acquitted of murder. Weaver was found not guilty on all charges, except the original failure to appear for the original firearms charge.

To sum up: Viki Weaver, Sammy Weaver, and a US Marshal were killed because, back in the 1930’s, Congress arbitrarily decided that a shotgun was okay, but having a sawed-off shotgun was so bad that the Federal Government should be free to initiate physical force against anyone who was found to be in possession of one.

I doubt that the law against possessing a sawed off shotgun has ever saved a single life -although I obviously don’t know that for certain. What I do know is that Viki Weaver and her son Sammy are dead because the government saw fit to initiate physical force to prohibit the mere possession of device whose only difference from a legal device is a shorter barrel. Randy Weaver hadn’t initiated physical force against anyone, and whatever one thinks of some of his odious political views, I don’t think that justifies what I consider to be the moral-equivalent of the murder of his wife and son by agents of the state.

The death of Viki and Sammy Weaver is the price we pay when we direct government agents to initiate physical force in an attempt to ban the mere possession of a device. The death of innocent people who cannot defend themselves from criminals because guns are banned is another price we pay. Mass murders are horrible. But, then again, all initiations of physical force are horrible, especially when they are committed by armed agents of the state against a disarmed population.

I’ve heard death penalty opponents say something like: “How can the state say that killing is immoral by killing people?” They are noting an apparent contradiction, although it isn’t a genuine contradiction, since the death penalty is actually the state saying murder is immoral -and it is killing the murderer to demonstrate that. “Murder” and “killing” are different things. “Murder” is killing by the initiation of physical force. It is starting the use of force to deprive another of their most important value, which is their own life. However, this slogan by death-penalty critics can be repurposed when it comes to gun control into a true statement: How can we say that the initiation of physical force is immoral by initiating physical force against those who own a gun to protect their lives? Because that’s what “gun control” is.

Affirmative Action Penalizes The Rational

When I discuss the injustice of affirmative action programs, some will retort that such programs are necessary because not everyone is as rational as I am. The assertion seems to be that there are people out there who will make decisions on school admissions or job hiring based on racial discrimination, so the affirmative action programs are necessary to counter-act that.

But, do affirmative action programs in hiring and educational admissions encourage or discourage rationality? In actuality, they discourage people from acting rationally by destroying the benefit of behaving rationally.

First, I will start with some definitions:

Affirmative action– are policies by private employers, government employers, or universities in which individuals are admitted or hired over more-qualified persons because of the less qualified individual’s race.

Rationality– is the act of conforming one’s actions to the goal of promoting and sustaining one’s life. Such conformance of one’s actions to that goal requires one to recognize the facts of reality and then act accordingly. Reality, to be commanded, must be obeyed. Ayn Rand summed up the purpose of rationality:

“My morality, the morality of reason, is contained in a single axiom: existence exists—and in a single choice: to live. The rest proceeds from these. To live, man must hold three things as the supreme and ruling values of his life: Reason—Purpose—Self-esteem. Reason, as his only tool of knowledge…These three values imply and require all of man’s virtues, and all his virtues pertain to the relation of existence and consciousness: rationality, independence, integrity, honesty, justice, productiveness, pride.” Galt’s Speach, _For The New Intellectual_ Pg. 128, http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/morality.html)

Justice– is the virtue of judging people in accordance with a rational standard and then treating them accordingly. For example, in a fully free society, a criminal is put in jail because he is judged to have violated the rights of some other person to live and act in accordance with their rational thinking. The criminal is put in jail to restrain him from violating the rights of others going forward into the future. An employer hires the most productive employee he can at a given wage because such an employee will maximize the profitability of his business. The profitability of his business is the rational standard by which the employer judges employees. His act of hiring the most productive employee is treating someone in accordance with that standard.

The best way to see that affirmative action programs discourage rational behavior is by looking at some concrete examples:

(1) Affirmative action in college admissions. There are a limited number of spots for students in each freshman class per year. Affirmative action means a less qualified student will be admitted over a more-qualified student based on the less qualified student’s race. This isn’t necessarily a less-qualified non-white being admitted over a white in the United States. Asians would probably have greater admissions rates at some universities if affirmative action were done away with -which I am fine with. If they are the ones that have the best grades and SAT scores, then they are the ones that deserve to be there. https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/jeff-sessions-justice-department-goes-after-affirmative-actions

Such race-based admissions mean students and their parents are going to be forced to pay for universities through their taxes, and then their children are going to be denied admission based on their race, even though they have studied harder and done things to cultivate their rationality and expand their knowledge. (Leaving aside the fact that many public schools often seem to do the opposite of encouraging knowledge and rationality in their students.)

Students that are more rational will be penalized in favor of students that are less rational. Furthermore, to the extent a four-year degree is required to obtain a professional license for many areas of work, such as lawyers and doctors, those of us in the public will be forced to use the services of less-qualified minority doctors and lawyers who were admitted not because they were the most intelligent or qualified to work in those professions, but because of their race. This means our rational choice as consumers of things like medical services and legal services is thwarted by affirmative action programs in university admissions.

(2) Affirmative action in hiring. This involves a business hiring or retaining a less-qualified employee over another more-qualified employee based on the less qualified employee’s race. Since any one employer only has a set number of employees at a time, it means some people who are harder-working, more diligent, more productive, and, in a word, more rational, will be excluded from employment based on their race.

This doesn’t just hurt the employee who was not hired, but should have been hired if the business went on the basis of productivity of employees exclusively. Business customers will receive a sub-standard product over what they could have had. Investors in the business will receive a lower return on their investment than they could have obtained. Managers at the business who insist on hiring on the basis of productive ability, i.e., the more rational managers, will be penalized for doing so. The affirmative action program in hiring penalizes rationality and rewards irrationality.

Furthermore, if the business is a government contractor producing goods and services for governmental functions, then the taxpayers are being forced to not only pay taxes, but to pay taxes to employ people who are less competent at their jobs than other job candidates, and getting a substandard product in return. A funny consequence of affirmative action programs would be some of the employees at the United States Post Office. A less funny example would be what happens when less qualified people work on things like military equipment, where the lives of soldiers are at stake, as well as the ability of our country to defend itself from enemy attack. Our free and good society’s very existence is put at risk by affirmative action programs in military equipment contracts. Our continued ability to exercise our freedoms and liberties guaranteed under the constitution is contingent on our military’s ability to protect us from invasion by people who would not respect our right to be rational. Affirmative action programs in defense contracts are therefore a huge threat to those of us who want to be rational in order to sustain and maintain our lives.

If you look around, you can see other examples of treating less qualified people better than they deserve because of their race. Some are more subtle than the above and get into complex social dynamics. For instance, what happens when you invite someone to a party because of their race –you don’t want to be perceived as racist- but they are an obnoxious boor? I won’t go through the details, but the party is less fun.

These examples illustrate my overall point. Affirmative action programs discourage and penalize rationality. To claim that affirmative action programs are necessary because “everyone isn’t rational” is the opposite of the truth. In reality, affirmative action programs destroy incentives to be rational because they destroy the principle of justice -of judging people in accordance with a rational standard and then treating them accordingly.

The Left Is Making A “Mountain Out of a Molehill” Regarding Neo-Nazism

My Facebook feed is currently full of people declaring their opposition to National Socialism (Nazism). This is presumably arising out of the rioting and protests currently going on in Charlottesville, Virginia.

To me, this is like declaring your opposition to people who go around randomly shooting strangers for no reason, or just for the thrill of it. The number of people that engage in thrill killing is incredibly small. Furthermore, there is zero academic, cultural, or media support for thrill killing.

The same is largely true of National Socialism or white supremacy ideas in general. If you include white supremacists with all National Socialists, I think they are an incredibly small number of people. Furthermore, in modern America, National Socialism and white supremacist ideas have no academic, cultural, or media support. There are no university professors advocating National Socialism, and there are no major or local newspapers advocating it.

So why all of the opposition on Facebook to something that, like thrill killing, has no political, moral, or social legitimacy, and is not likely to become a political force in America? There are probably a variety of reasons. I have a few theories, all of which, I admit, are just theories. Partly it may be “virtue signaling”, although publicly proclaiming your opposition to Nazism doesn’t take that much courage, because no one is likely to disagree with you. Part of it may be because the left has so completely conflated Donald Trump and his supporters with Hitler and Nazism, that they can see no difference. In which case, they need to study the history of Germany more. A more ominous possibility is that the left wants to use the activities of an extremely fringe group -neo-Nazi’s and white supremacists- to advance their own political agenda of things like more injustices in the form of affirmative action programs and racial quotas in jobs and university admissions. The left may use the activities of a very small and unimportant group of people, white supremacists, to push for more government power, especially more Federal Government power, in an effort to further erode Federalism and the Constitution.

Hume, Rand, and The “Is-Ought Problem”

I want to take a look at a well-known assertion regarding ethics, or the foundations of ethics, made by philosopher David Hume. It is presented as a sort of “problem”, that seems fairly intractable for those of us who are secularist, and also assert that there are certain “shoulds” or principles of morality that one should follow. This is David Hume’s “Is-Ought Problem”. After I look at what Hume said, I will compare his approach on this subject to that taken by Ayn Rand. My goal is to show why I think the logic of her philosophy would largely regard the “is-ought gap” as a product of Hume’s mistaken view of both reason and his misunderstanding of the fact that the rational IS the moral and the moral IS the rational.

Hume says:

“In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remarked, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surprised to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, ’tis necessary that it should be observed and explained; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it. But as authors do not commonly use this precaution, I shall presume to recommend it to the readers; and am persuaded, that this small attention would subvert all the vulgar systems of morality, and let us see, that the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on the relations of objects, nor is perceived by reason.” (Book III “Of Morals”, part I “Of Virtue and Vice In General”, section I “Moral Distinctions Not Derived From Reason”, A Treatise of Human Nature (1739))

In essence, Hume says morality is not based in what he calls “reason”. What is “reason” for Hume?:

“Those who affirm that virtue is nothing but a conformity to reason; that there are eternal fitnesses and unfitnesses of things, which are the same to every rational being that considers them; that the immutable measures of right and wrong impose an obligation, not only on human creatures, but also on the Deity himself: All these systems concur in the opinion, that morality, like truth, is discerned merely by ideas, and by their juxta-position and comparison.” (Book III “Of Morals”, part I “Of Virtue and Vice In General”, section I “Moral Distinctions Not Derived From Reason”, A Treatise of Human Nature (1739))

Lets contrast this view “morality” and “reason” with the same concepts of Ayn Rand:

“If I were to speak your kind of language, I would say that man’s only moral commandment is: Thou shalt think. But a “moral commandment” is a contradiction in terms. The moral is the chosen, not the forced; the understood, not the obeyed. The moral is the rational, and reason accepts no commandments. My morality, the morality of reason, is contained in a single axiom: existence exists—and in a single choice: to live. The rest proceeds from these.

To live, man must hold three things as the supreme and ruling values of his life: Reason—Purpose—Self-esteem. Reason, as his only tool of knowledge—Purpose, as his choice of the happiness which that tool must proceed to achieve—Self-esteem, as his inviolate certainty that his mind is competent to think and his person is worthy of happiness, which means: is worthy of living. These three values imply and require all of man’s virtues, and all his virtues pertain to the relation of existence and consciousness: rationality, independence, integrity, honesty, justice, productiveness, pride.” (Galt’s Speach, emphasis added, For the New Intellectual, pg. 128, http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/morality.html)

So, I think that Rand would say in response to Hume:

You say that we cannot find an “ought” from an “is”, where an “is” is based in “…the ordinary way of reasoning…” that an “ought” is not “…founded merely on the relations of objects nor is perceived by reason…”. But, WHY do you make the “…usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not…”? WHY do you make is-statements at all? In other words, to what END do you aim when you REASON (make “is statements” based on your observation and thinking)? Hume makes a distinction between REASON on the one hand (so-called “usual copulations of propositions, is and is not”) and moral directives. But, he never discusses WHY one should reason at all? What is the “reason for reasoning”?

To recap, Ayn Rand says:

“If I were to speak your kind of language, I would say that man’s only moral commandment is: Thou shalt think. But a ‘moral commandment’ is a contradiction in terms…My morality, the morality of reason, is contained in a single axiom: existence exists—and in a single choice: to live. The rest proceeds from these….” (Galt’s Speach, For the New Intellectual, pg. 128, http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/morality.html)

In other words, as I see it, the difference between Rand and Hume on this point is Rand doesn’t just ASSUME that one should go about reasoning -making “is-statements” as a sort of axiom. She says: IF you want to live, THEN you must recognize reality, which is what it is, regardless of human choice to the contrary. Similarly, Rand asks why you should follow ANY “oughts” at all?:

“The proper approach to ethics, the start from a metaphysically clean slate, untainted by any touch of Kantianism, can best be illustrated by the following story. In answer to a man who was telling her that she’s got to do something or other, a wise old Negro woman said: ‘Mister, there’s nothing I’ve got to do except die.’…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.’ You must eat, if you want to survive. You must work, if you want to eat. You must think, if you want to work. You must look at reality, if you want to think—if you want to know what to do—if you want to know what goals to choose—if you want to know how to achieve them.” (“Causality versus Duty”, Philosophy Who Needs It, emphasis added, http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/responsibility-obligation.html)

For Rand, the concept of “ought” or “should” or “must” only makes sense IF you ultimately CHOOSE to live. For Rand, both an “IS” statement and an “OUGHT” statement only makes sense if you’ve chosen to live. An “is” without the choice to live is purposeless, and an “ought” without the choice to live is unintelligible. I think that for Rand, the distinction between “IS” and “OUGHT” is not so great. Every “it is” implies an “I should”, IF you want to live. For instance: “Certain strains of fungus kill bacteria” (An “it is”.) Implies “I must try to isolate the substances involved to cure human diseases.” (An “I should.” or “I ought”.) “Plants grow more when they’ve received certain chemical substances in their soil” (An “it is”). I must put these chemicals, called fertilizer, into the soil to increase my crop yields” (An “I should” or “I ought”.)

For Rand, the only “oughts” are those that are based in the choice to live and the nature of reality. Any “oughts” not based in this are to be swept aside. Therefore, most of the “oughts” found in the Bible, are either to be rejected, or only accepted within certain contexts. “Though shalt not steal.” Becomes “Don’t violate the property rights of others.” But, this doesn’t mean you cannot take the property of another in an emergency situation so long as you can recompense them. This is because the “ought” of “respect for property rights” is, like all “oughts” based in the choice to live and the particular facts confronting you in reality.

Hume, and others, get into trouble because they accept “systems of morality” that have innumerable oughts not based in the axiom of “existence exists” and the choice to live. Some religions have ridiculous dietary restrictions that have no basis in principles of health or nutrition -or at least do not in modern times with modern food handling techniques. (Keeping Kosher, or not eating pork.) Some religions have restrictions on what kind of clothing women can wear. (Muslims require women to wear head covers or full-body covers, despite the fact that the Middle East is mostly a hot arid desert, and we have sunscreen today.) One of the Ten Commandments says “Honor your mother and father,” and makes no exception for being raised by psychotic narcissist. All of these “oughts” have no basis in the needs of man’s life, and, rather than simply brushing them aside, or delimiting them to certain factual contexts, Hume and others try to find “is statements” that can justify these commandments from some supernatural realm. This is where I think they get into trouble. They have a mental habit or “mind-set” of assuming we should have morality while never asking why be moral at all? Then that mind-set is combined with the post-Enlightenment mental habit of wanting to be rational and reality-oriented, and that gets them into trouble.

An example of this is someone I used to know who was quite sincerely interested in Ayn Rand’s philosophy, but he had real trouble with her ethics. He had been a fundamentalist Christian in his younger years, but subsequently had become an atheist in young-adulthood. He would find the following statement by Rand very problematic as a result:

“Man must choose his actions, values and goals by the standard of that which is proper to man—in order to achieve, maintain, fulfill and enjoy that ultimate value, that end in itself, which is his own life.” (“The Objectivist Ethics”, emphasis added, The Virtue of Selfishness, http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/standard_of_value.html )

He routinely asked questions like: “But why is life the *ultimate* value?” He could see that it was “a” value, but not the “ultimate value”. He decided that propagating your genes was the actual “ultimate value” and that your life was just your “penultimate value” -the value that you achieve in order to achieve the goal of reproduction. The reason I think he found the idea of gene propagation more satisfactory was because he could see that genes are these sort of small “information vehicles”, and he thought, at least on a sub-conscious level:

“Ah ha! Here is my ‘secular commandment’. Here, at last, is something that I am being commanded to do -by my genes. They are saying: ‘Though shalt reproduce.’”

The remnants of his fundamentalist Christian “mindset” found this very satisfying. Of course, he never asked, if he does find a ‘commandment’, it doesn’t answer the question of *why* he ‘should’ follow the commandment. He would then need an “ought statement” that tells him he is supposed to follow the commandment -as opposed to ignoring it.

The choice to live is a ‘basic choice’, but it’s a choice, not a commandment. *If* you choose to live, then you must do certain things because of the nature of reality. If you don’t want to live, then there’s nothing in particular that you have to do. Furthermore, it’s “either-or”: Either you want to live, or…you don’t. There is no in-between -at least for those who want to live.

My theory on Hume is this: He was a post-Newton Enlightenment thinker. He respected reason and observation, but he was still a Christian when it came to his system of morality. He found certain moral principles to be very emotionally satisfying. He couldn’t justify his morality by anything he observed in reality or any reasoning from such observation. But, he never thought to ask: “Why do I reason?” Without the basic choice to live, reasoning serves no purpose. Once this is understood, then all principles of action that are not based in the choice to live and the nature of reality can be mentally swept aside. At that point the concept of “morality” is salvaged and converted to a completely secular format: Reason as a fundamental *ethical* principle, or guide to action, the purpose of which is the choice to live.

Three Views of The Concept of “Individual Rights”

There are essentially two views on individual rights today:

(1) They are provided by positive law, by a majority or super-majority. So, for instance, you have rights because a super-majority of people ratified the Constitution and that is respected down to today.

(2) They are based in some sort of “transcendent morality”. Provided by god or something like that. Without a supreme being there would be no rights.

Group 2 will criticize group 1 by saying that they don’t actaully advocate rights since they are just permissions granted by a majority (or super-majority) of people. Group 1 will criticize group 2 by saying that there is no scientific evidence for this “transcendent morality” that supposedly establishes rights.

The criticism that both of these groups make of the other has some merit. Since there is no evidence of god and it must be accepted on faith, which is nothing more than somebody’s feelings, then this view of rights seems to have no basis other than in one’s feelings. If rights have no basis other than in the majority’s feelings, then they are only necessary so long as the majority feels that way.

Ayn Rand proposed a different approach. She presents rights as an aspect of her overall system of morality. Moral principles are essential according to Rand because: (1) “Existence exists”. In other words reality is what it is, and has a certain nature. (2) Human beings also have a certain nature, and *if* they want to live, they need to take certain actions. (Grow crops, hunt for animals, build shelter, make clothing, etc.) Human beings must adopt certain “mental strategies” or “guides to action” that will generally lead them to obtain the things they need to live. These “guides to action” are necessary because the human mind has trouble dealing with numerous concrete things in reality without tying them together mentally and recognizing that they are sufficiently similar to other concrete things to be treated the same. For instance, if you have no concept of, “tiger”, then you will treat every such animal you encounter as behaviorally and physically unrelated to the previous tigers you’ve encountered, and you will fail to recognize the benefits and dangers of being around such an animal, and will tend not to deal with tigers succesfully.

Such “mental strategies” or “guides to action” can be called “virtues”. The dictionary has various definitions of “virtue”, but the closest one to what is meant here is “a good or useful quality of a thing.” A human being has a “good or useful quality” if he adopts these guides to action because they will help him to live. For instance, human beings must judge others to determine if they are a benefit or a danger to their survival. This is the virtue (the guide to action) of justice. Human beings must generally refrain from lying when dealing with others in order to maintain their trust so that they will want to deal with them in the future. (This is the principle/virtue of honesty.) Human beings must act in accordance with these principles because simply holding them as ideals without taking action in accordance with them will cause your mind to slowly become disconnected from reality and will make rational thought more difficult. (The principle/virtue of integrity.)

Similarly, the principle of “individual rights” is a guide to action when dealing with other human beings. Since other human beings can be assumed to want to live just as much as you do, then you must give them an “initial presumption” that they will take action to maintain their lives. They will produce the material values necessary for their survival -property. Just as you must not have your property taken from you by means of physical force without your permission, so must they. As such, you must adopt a sort of baseline guide to action when dealing with all other human beings. This is the principle of individual rights, and the specific right that encompases property is the right to private property. (More generally, all rights are subsumed under “the right to life”, which means the right to live the life of a rational being.) If individual human beings are going to live in a social environment and gain the benefits of living together, they must have their individual rights respected:

“‘Rights’ are a moral concept — the concept that provides a logical transition from the principles guiding an individual’s actions to the principles guiding his relationship with others — the concept that preserves and protects individual morality in a social context — the link between the moral code of a man and the legal code of a society, between ethics and politics. Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.” (Man’s Rights, by Ayn Rand)

As an aside, the concept of “government” comes in because there is a temptation to “cheat”, and violate the rights of others while hoping that they will still respect yours. For instance, there is the temptation to rob someone at gunpoint and take their property, or just to pilfer it while they aren’t looking. If you are suspected of this, though, then others will use force in retaliation to stop your initial use of force. Government helps keep people honest by promulgating a list of prohibited acts that are widely-recognized as rights violations. Additionally, it isn’t always easy for others to tell who the aggressor is and who the victim is in a given situation. For instance, if you come upon someone with a gun held on him, is he the victim or the aggressor? Perhaps the person holding the gun on him was just robbed, but perhaps he is the robber? Government is created to provide for an orderly protection of individual rights by a recognized central authority that everybody generally trusts to be a rights-protector.

Going back to where we started: How is this view of individual rights different from groups 1 and 2? Both group 1 and 2 tend to present the concept of “rights” as something that is “nice to have”, but as unessential to the task of living one’s life. Both group 1 and 2 tend to think that a working social order is somehow possible even without respect for individual rights. They generally see rights as “altruistic” -a restraint from complete self-interest. Group 2 says rights are a gift from god, but if they are violated by persons here on Earth, there won’t be any consequences for doing so. (You might go to hell when you die, is all.) Group 1 says that the majority of people just feel that rights are nice to have, but think that a functioning society is possible without rights, and might even be more “efficient”. Ayn Rand says that “society” is nothing more than a number of individuals, and if the individual cannot live in society, then there can be no society. Ayn Rand’s concept of individual rights holds that they are necessary for the individual person to live in a social context, and that that “society” is only good to the extent that it is beneficial for the individual to live in it.

In essence, both groups today are partly right and partly wrong. Group 2 is right that group 1 seems to have no basis for rights other than the whim of the majority. Rand’s conception of rights isn’t “whim”, but the “law of nature”, i.e., the law of identity. Human beings are what they are -they have a certain nature. If they are going to live in a social environment, then others must respect their life and property by refraining from the use of force “as an initial matter”. I say “as an initial matter” because once a specific individual has demonstrated with a sufficient level of certainty that he will not refrain from the use of force to deprive others of their life or property, then force can and should be used in retaliation.

A society that tends not to respect rights will not exist for long because the individuals that comprise it cannot survive. Rights have a functional basis in the facts of reality.

Group 1’s criticisms of Group 2 has merit insofar as group 2 can present no evidence for their “transcendent” basis for individual rights. I’d also note that regardless of whether Group 2 is right about the existence of god, if they believe that reality has a certain nature, and to the extent that they want to live, then Rand’s conception of rights should also be persuasive to them, and can form the basic intellectual foundation upon which a government can be constructed, regardless of whether we all agree about the existence of a creator.

“Intermediates: A Cuckoo For Mankind” by D.W. Cook

They co-evolved with us. They are unknown to mankind, and have our external physical appearance, with one difference: They phase from one gender to the other, as part of their reproductive cycle, seducing unwitting humans of both genders. Their continued survival as a species depends on taking their offspring from duped human mothers and in regarding mankind as a useful tool. They call themselves “Intermediates”. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XB7RKSS/

intermediates-novel.com

Zygote Wrangle Down In Texas: A Novellette

When Toby and Laura decided that only one of them wanted children, divorce seemed like the only answer. But, current technology provided another solution. Toby’s older and old-fashioned sister, Jennie, never liked it. Ten years later, Laura’s career has changed, bringing her closer to her husband -but can Jennie accept the change when she barely accepted their decision to separate marriage from parenthood in the first place? (About 16,000 words.) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XCS41PT

zygotewrangle.com