Euthyphro Dilemma, revisited

(A follow-up to the earlier posting, Euthyphro Dilemma: metaphysical or epistemological?)

Below I reproduce an email I sent to Maverick Philosopher the other day after having seen his recent posting related to the topic.

To what's below I want to now add a summary/clarificatory note: I think that the metaphysical and epistemological issues hadn't been so clearly distinguished not just for the reasons I note below, but also because what both issues or aspects come down to is this: any grounding for moral knowledge must come from reason(s), meaning that any moral command, to be authoritative (not authoritarian), must be grounded in reason.  In the theistic tradition, God is (the ontological principle of sufficient) reason or logos, and must rule or command accordingly.  This is why the 'naturalism' vs. 'voluntarism' debate among (late) medieval ethical theorists as discussed in the Irwin (The Development of Ethics, vol. 1 [Socrates to the Reformation]) comes down so decisively in the naturalists' favor.  Which is to say, that whatever the ultimate source of morality's authority, the only means we have for discovering any such grounds is via our unaided reason (drawing on the evidence of the senses) - which is why moral philosophers have been at work without any substantive resources (that I can see) being provided by Divine Command theory qua such.  And isn't this a vindication of what many take to be Plato's original point - that "what's favored by the gods" doesn't give a useful answer, and that it is the task specifically of philosophy/reason to discover what merits the gods' favor?

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[To Maverick Philosopher]

I made a blog post last month in which I indicate that one could approach the Dilemma in at least two ways, which I term the metaphysical and the epistemological.

The metaphysical: The question of the origin of morality and its authority.  Does morality('s authority) require the existence of God?  Does this authority depend on God's mere willing as in voluntarist interpretations, or is this authority constrained by the nature of what God created as in naturalist interpretations?  (I find this dispute covered at length in the 'medieval' section of T.H. Irwin's magisterial historical survey 'The Development of Ethics', and the debate seems to come down decidedly in favor of the naturalist view.)

The epistemological: how do we come to discover (the content of) moral truths, whether or not they are brought into existence by God?  Or: How do we come to know what a perfectly benevolent being would command, or what conscientiously virtuous agents would do?

It's not hard to see how these distinct ways of coming at the Dilemma could be conflated throughout the history of addressing it, since they both end up raising the question of the basis for moral authority or goodness.  

And the epistemological question seems like the one that we're actually most interested in, since we need to know how any putative truths have authority for us, and that leads us to inquire in the ways that moral philosophers have inquired (in meta-ethics and normative ethics).

And if the question is how we come to know moral truths via reason, then the metaphysical question drops out of the picture for all practical purposes, since whether or not we have good grounds for thinking there are moral truths (and for what those truths would be) doesn't seem to be settled by the metaphysical issues.  I don't see thinkers such as Aristotle and Kant directing their ethical inquiries in the metaphysical direction (except inasmuch as Kant treats God, freedom and immortality as postulates of practical reason, but these are matters ultimately of faith rather than knowledge; and it's not like he doesn't present some pretty good reasons for behaving morally regardless of these postulates; his argument for the possibility of libertarian freedom is seriously undercut by his phenomenal determinism in any case, when he could have quite readily, sensibly, and plausibly denied that all of nature has to be deterministic in order to be lawful, i.e., the laws applying to human actions would be of a special sort based on our unique organizationally complex makeup, a point about causation that I think Aristotle and Aquinas would accept).

(The Dilemma raises tougher challenges to those who appeal to Scripture as the source of authority, since Scripture appears to contain a lot of genuinely erroneous things that are putatively God's will[*], and at the same time does not to contain moral truths, or ones stated unambiguously, that have come to be widely acknowledged since Scripture appeared (e.g., Lockean natural rights).  I think that perhaps a work like Summa Theologica is better suited for philosophical purposes.)  [* - I had this in mind when writing this sentence.]

Anyway, I will look again/closer at your recent Euthyphro post to see if it covers these points.

The core libertarian principle explained

I'm using the term 'libertarian' in its specifically political sense, not the (indeterminist) free-will sense, as per the following image:

The basic libertarian principle is often phrased in terms of 'self-ownership' - the principle that one is the rightful owner and therefore has exclusive rights of disposal or control over one's own physical person (body-mind; faculties; abilities; energies; time; life-activities) - and, by further reasoning, exclusive rights of disposal or control over the productive fruits of applying one's personal resources in action (property rights, including the right to start and own/control a business of one's own, or pool capital with others, whatever one freely chooses).

Now, in the header I put the word "explained", and in so doing I'm both giving an essential description of the core libertarian principle as well as a why-account, as in why do people possess an exclusive right of 'self-ownership' and classic, essentially Lockean property rights.

The core libertarian 'self-ownership' principle reformulated is provided in the image above: one person's life is not another's (or others', as in a majority/mob) to dispose of.

I take the libertarian principle to be some kind of undeniable moral truism although its precise specification is a matter of controversy.  Is it consistent with any form of welfare or subsistence rights that Rand explicitly denies?  (And for reasons I will get into shortly I regard Rand as preeminent exponent of the libertarian idea.)  If it is undeniable, then it means that whatever other ethical/moral principles we can all reasonably agree upon after due deliberation, they all must occur within the constraints of libertarian 'self-ownership'.

Now, as to the reformulated wording.  The most directly comparable formulation of "one person's life is not another's to dispose of" or "my life is not yours to dispose of" in the literature is Prof. Hospers' "other men's lives are not yours to dispose of," in his early-1970s article, "What Libertarianism Is."  But it's a safe bet that his primary influence in this regard was his series of conversations and correspondence with Ayn Rand in the early '60s.  And the evidence that it originated with Rand is a passage in Atlas Shrugged (1957) where the hero, John Galt, asks the Head of State (heh heh) Mr. Thompson (heh heh), what he has to offer him, and the panicked (heh heh) and account-overdawn (heh heh) Mr. Thompson says, "I'm offering you your life" or words to that effect, and Galt replies, "It's not yours to offer, Mr. Thompson."  (Of course, anyone who has followed these things knows, Hospers, a widely respected figure in his profession, is recognized in particular for his expertise in aesthetic theory, and he's a big fan of Atlas Shrugged.)

Now, the core libertarian self-plus-property ownership principle is often taken by many scholars and interpreters to imply a rejection of any extensive measures of taxation and governance (a really big, powerful armed forces might be required for a period of time to defeat a mortal foreign enemy?), and especially measures that take property/income/wealth from one citizen and give it to another, or, what's usually called redistributive taxation/spending.  (Self-styled anarchist libertarians or 'anarcho-capitalists' say that you don't need any form of government/taxation to have a stable rule of (libertarian) law, national defense, or other 'public goods' functions usually attributed to a 'minimal state' framework.)

Now, the basic libertarian 'self-ownership' is, I believe, best formulated by Rand and (subsequently) Hospers, but Rand gives an explanatory why-account that Hospers doesn't in his article, although the intuitive appeal of the principle is there aplenty even in his telling.  But it's Rand who really gets to the meat of the why-account, which is the whole theoretical & thematic core of Atlas Shrugged and her entire philosophy: the role of the mind in man's (human) existence and all this entails.

Rand boils down the basic principle in dramatic fashion in the Galt-Thompson scene as much as she does throughout pretty much the whole novel.  The basic opposition comes down to this: Is John Galt's mind properly at Mr. Thompson's disposal rather than (exclusively) his own?  By "mind" Rand means a specifically human, conceptual or intellectual faculty which depends on the volitional  (thereby requiring free or uninhibited thought/action) act of focus, and the ultimate measure of the service to one's life, i.e., ethical or moral perfection, is the degree of one's focusing one's mind as opposed to evading or being otherwise frustrated or negated from within or without (by other actors).  
Put another way: A human is, by nature, a volitional/free conceptual-intellectual being who must make judgments about how to act, and this requires a focused process of thinking and this requires an effort (the basic phenomenon that involves active, free, volitional movement as opposed to a relatively or fully passive or restive state), and it means that one must be able to duly consider the reasons for taking a course of action.  So is it Galt's life to determine by how own free judgment how it is disposed of, or does it belong in part or full to Mr. Thompson/the State?  It's an irreconcilable opposition of basic principles.  Miss Rand is often bashed for putting things like this in such starkly "unrealistically black-and-white" terms, but I don't see any way around it.  It's the basic crux of Nozick's rejection of Rawls' theory (and arguably on grounds Rawls concedes as true when he defends the seperateness of persons against utilitarian appropriation-of-persons-for-collective-benefits).

But the fundamentality or primacy or basic-principle-ness of Rand's role-of-the-mind theme is the why of the libertarian principle.  To state again: the human mind (intellect) must operate freely to act/be what it is, and to be appropriated from outside against the action-directives issued by the exercise of its own free judgments weighing the for/against reasons (etc etc?) is to be treated as a mere instrument or means which falls afoul not just of the libertarian principle as presented here but also a 'Kantian' principle widely considered eminently plausible (the Randian version being stated as: "man is an end in himself and not a means to the ends of others" - which I take to be another alterative formulation of the libertarian principle).

So if Mr. Thompson is to get Galt to willingly cooperate, bother to put forth the effort to act (causally enact an effect, which in human terms is means-ends reasoning), he needs to be shown a reason to do so, and not the muzzle of a gun.  (Oh no, that unbearably black-and-white illustration of the principle, stated for the umpteenth time already in the novel (heh heh - if only the Rand-bashers would just fucking listen for a change, man, they might learn something; Rand's got information, man; not-exactly new shit has come to light (these past 63 years and counting ffs etc. for the umpteenth time)).)

What exactly is a reason for engaging in the effort of an action?  Well, there's a vast literature on that but a lot of it has to do with reconciling the "rational" and the "reasonable," or put another way, between appeals to one's personal preference- or value-set, a so-called egoistic reason-giving or justification for action on the one hand, and what, in arriving at the best principles for governing interpersonal behaviors meet the highest standards of fairness?  (Much of the influence of John Rawls in recent moral-political theory has to do with his understanding of political justice in terms of fairness or what I'm here calling reasonabless.  The idea I'm advancing/advocating here is that the libertarian principle must be able to - and does - satisfy standards of fairness, principles all communicating-in-moral-terms actors can freely and cooperatively agree upon.  Rawls brings in the concept of overlapping consensus to help describe/explain this ideal deliberative-communicative framework.)  The reasonableness-standpoint also suggests something or other about taking a stance of impartiality so that the perspective of all moral deliberators-actors are respected (taken into account).  (Political jab: this is why I loathe today's leftists who constantly caricature their opponents.)  Some sort of principle of human-equality is operative throughout all this ideal, something about equal consideration of all perspectives which means techniques of free, rational, logical persuasion and dialectic.  (Rawls' famous Original Position is a thought-experimenty device for taking the impartial standpoint so that particular circumstances don't affect one's judgments of fairness.)

So, Galt and Rand are saying - or might or ought to say - perhaps not to a slimeball like Mr. Thompson but rather to even an honest interlocutor whom I take Rawls and Nagel (whose 'altruism' or other-person-directed motivation comes from taking an impartial stance) to be, something like the following: "Look, give it your best shot at convincing me to take your so-called impartial stance but it's going to me my own free judgment and not yours that decides, okay?  This constrains you from applying your difference principle and all that stuff in anything other than a voluntary sense, i.e., even then it's not the role of the political to employ physical force in any capacity other than protection from the initiation of force (the introduction of force into human relationships)."

Rand has a lot of very negative things to say about the initiation of physical force.  "Force and mind are opposites" as she would say aplenty.  Then there's the translation of "armed might (of, e.g., the electoral majority)" into "guns and physical force."  Rand ain't fucking around here when she brings up the gun thing, because that's what it comes down to, a tool to threaten you to do things contrary to your own judgment and substitute for that the judgment of others (over how to lead your own life, etc.).  If Rand gets nothing else about her political principles across, it's that all human relationships should be premised on rational persuasion.

Now, there's the introduction of force, and there's the use of force in self-defense in the event that its use is initiated.  So that gives us some idea of when the use of force is ever appropriate.  If one is ever to use force, one should be able to give a damn good reason for doing so.  In the case of self-defense, a life is at stake (we're taking the case of defense against attempted murder here).  Or, we can speak of a portion of one's life (which is one's own to exclusively dispose of, etc.) being defended against less deadly forms of violent assault.  Now, there's also the matter of what are usually termed 'emergency exceptions,' e.g., the shipwreck scenario and breaking into an absent owner's house to obtain food rather than starve - provided compensation is paid to the owner, say.

Some philosophers - James P. Sterba comes to mind - have argued that a combination of reasonableness and libertarianism (or the moral principles that give libertarianism its appeal) leads to subsistence or welfare rights on roughly the 'emergency exception' grounds, although that can probably (surely?) be reformulated in the terms of reasonableness and fairness outlined above.  But there is reasonable disagreement over really (I mean, really, c'mon) how much leeway this gives the government/state to use forcible mechanisms to move resources around on a greater-needs basis.  (Keep in mind that the primary/basic/fundamental/essential productive resource is the human mind/intellect.)  For one thing there is a really large body of economic and political-philosophical literature that speaks of the wisdom of free markets in minimizing human want or suffering across a vast range of goods and services, in raising living standards wherever they're instituted, in making for the development of capital which leads to fewer out-of-resources scenarios, etc.  (Rand famously yet widely-misunderstoodly explains all this in terms of the darn-near-explosive power of the human mind unleashed especially as that has happened in the modern period from the scientific and political Enlightenment and onward, with (in her polemical mode) statist parasites trying to divert all the fruits of that progress to their big-government programs for little or no reason (sic) other than that "the resources are there for the taking [and Rawls tells us that we should go by maximin principles as a justice-as-fairness criterion, so the proper, non-libertarian role for government/force here is to maximally improve the lives of the least advantaged, and that requires about 50% of GDP be government/force-based.]")

(Note, BTW, the implausibility of the Warren/Obama argument that billionaires are created through massive state-created infrastructure - the famously caricatured but still relevant-point-making "You didn't build that" stuff.  So, how do they explain the existence of a billionaire like John D. Rockefeller or an industrialist on the level of a Henry Ford, prior to the rise of post-New Deal big government infrastructure?  Is it the idea that more government-provided infrastructure adds to the per-capta GDP growth rate?  I rather doubt that the data available at ourworldindata.org support such a thesis.  It actually shows a fairly consistent cross-era (pre- and post-New Deal) average growth rate - so doesn't that suggest that all that extra government is just a deadweight-loss superfluity in GDP growth rate terms, thereby recommending a return to a libertarian-ish default government size?

I guess one basic question here, though, is whether the libertarian is conceding as a matter of principle that in the event that misfortune should ever exhaust a person's resources, they have a government/taxpayer-provided safety net, which is in effect conceding that there are welfare or subsistence rights.  Do we get at least this concession on behalf of a "right to well-being" when Gewirth formulates his semi-famous principle of generic consistency (PCG) in terms of rights to freedom and well-being (inasmuch as he's formulating his 'dialectical' moral framework in rights-terms...).  Put differently: is this a principle that even a John Galt could rationally-and-reasonably concede in terms of the value-hierarchy he could rationally endorse, which necesarily includes taking an appropriate stance of impartiality?  What if he's in the shoes of the unfortunate who has exhausted all resource-avenues (somehow)?

I think I'll leave that as an open question for now.  While it is an interesting question whether the kind of subsistence-rights-claim I'm talking about can still be called libertarian in some sense, the more interesting question is whether it's the right position to take.  I happen to think it is, as long as it's properly qualified and constrained.  There is an emergency-exception kind of rationale on the one hand, and then there's the reality of government taxing and spending upwards of 40% of GDP in many advanced economies today on the other hand.  Is there some kind of slippery slope from an emergency-style safety net (what else is "safety net" supposed to connote? it's not supposed to mean a hammock, as many conservatives like to point out) to government taking up half a country's (it's citizens' lives) in GDP?

Okay, to wrap this up: There's a lot of reason to believe that the libertarian principle, widely adopted in all its implications and grounding principles, would be a route to optimal human problem-solving across a vast range of cases (particularly in regard to what I take to be its Randian grounding principles about the free exercise of the human intellect - which adopted/applied universally would meet by definition for an end of history, i.e., a universally or perhaps only near-universally adopted principles of a perfectionistic or 'Aristotelian' approach to human rationality or problem-solving.  I've found the tendency for the most accomplished libertarian theorists (the Aristotelians and Randians) to be barking up that tree quite a bit more than I've been seeing the other libertarians or the non-libertarians doing so.  Communicative rationality, justice-as-fairness, or even the basic libertarian principle itself describe roughly the "form" that human reasoning ought to take on ethical (more specifically, moral or universalistic) grounds - ideas that fall more or less into the Kantian tradition of theorizing.  But the Randian-Aristotelian ground of the libertarian principle is a principle of intellectual perfectionism that applies not only to thinking in terms of mutual deliberative rationality and that cluster of Kantian-ish theories (with reasonabless front and center), but at least as importantly to the issues about how to live one's life and fulfill one's wisely-formed goals, expressed in terms of rationality (preference-satisfaction) and well-being (objective flourishing/actualizing of potentials).  (This is often associated with 'Aristotelian,' teleological, eudaemonist or happiness-oriented, self-actualization (like in David L. Norton's magisterial if not monumental Personal Destinies), perfectionism (the Dougs Den Uyl & Rasmussen; Thomas Hurka), virtue-ethics (a huge field of authors such as Anscombe, Foot, Rand, Veatch, MacIntyre, John M. Cooper, Nussbaum, Annas, and basically a lot of the moral philosophy faculty at places like Arizona and UNC-Chapel Hill.) That is to say, the intellectual perfectionism applies to the content of one's ends over and above applying the proper form of reasoning.  The very interesting question from this point on, explored in places like Gewirth's Self-Fulfillment, is how mutually reinforcing these reasoning-stances are or might be.  We can have Kantian-ish constraints informing us about the reasonableness of ends to adopt as examined from the flourishing-angle - to both reasonably and rationally incorporate such contraints into one's (wisely-formed) preference-set, as it were.  And it seems to me that whatever else intellectual perfectionists ought to be, they ought to be libertarians who also recognize the problem-solving power of human intellect with all this entails.  (And it's hard to see how Rand doesn't earn high philosophical marks on this count, although I would like also to single out Gewirth - a good man, and thorough.)

Euthyphro dilemma: metaphysical or epistemological?

[Note: follow-up posting here.]

As I read about the topic of the meaning of life at the SEP entry (and in connection with thinking about Tolstoy/Schopenhauer on "the problem of boredom," which may be either the biggest roadblock to better living through philosophy or a book by that name, or the biggest launching-board to such...), the Euthyphro dilemma pops up again.  It's probably been hashed over plenty already, but here's how I conceive the issue:

(1) The 'metaphysical' problem: What grounds goodness (in the context of Divine Command theory)?

(2) The 'epistemological' problem: Assuming that divine command grounds goodness, how do we know what the good is?

The dilemma as typically posed seems to address the 'metaphysical' problem as stated above, but isn't it really addressing the 'epistemological' one?

To explain: The 'metaphysical' problem tends to be concerned with whether God's command alone suffices to ground goodness, or whether God bases commands on some independent standard of goodness, which presumably would itself suffice to ground goodness.  Assuming the latter, does God's explanatory role in this fall afoul of Ockham's Razor?  (I think it does.)  But a Divine Command theorist might still come back and say that God is a perfectly good being (which runs into another problem - I'll call it the Problem of Morally Pointless Suffering - e.g., animal suffering) who creates the world, its laws, and human nature, that last being crucial in grounding human goodness.  Without this Creator, there would be no goodness at all (or evil, or anything at all, for that matter).

What I don't see is how or where this metaphysical grounding of goodness, even if true, answers what I think is the real concern raised by the Euthyphro dilemma, which can be stated in perhaps multiple ways, but perhaps most importantly: How do we discover what it is that God commands, i.e., how do we discover goodness?  For the typical philosopher, simply pointing to some holy book where X is prescribed, or simply claiming as a matter of faith that God commands X, isn't going to cut it.  There's too much disagreement on the contents of these putative commands.

(Does God command that there be a welfare state, or laissez-faire?  And when there is a commandment, "thou shalt not kill," how does that get interpreted and applied?  If we specify that only innocents shall not be killed, then what about killing human shields in wartime, something that many a Southern evangelical finds acceptable while declaring with utmost confidence that even a "morning after pill" is murder?  One might consider how/why they've not had much luck persuading the skeptical of the latter claim.  [On a related, blatantly political note: I hear quite a bit from evangelical types about how Trump was sent by God to "save America."  So how did God allow America to be put in the position of requiring saving in the first place - I'll gladly liken the academic left and its spawn to a cancer that (supposedly?) God both inflicts and then sometimes cures people of - and why Trump of all people?  Lord working in mysterious ways, as usual?  And are the dialectical 'antipodes' of the academic left and the evangelical right in America's best interests?])

What we really want to know is, regardless of how goodness comes about in a metaphysical account, how we determine what's good or not.  In other words, we are tasked with the hard epistemic work of sorting through competing moral claims, something that divine command theorists qua such (i.e., in that capacity, where some theory is appealed to as an account of their ordinary folk-wisdom moral judgments, which are usually quite reliable across a great range of cases [excluding political questions...]) don't seem to be up to doing, which is an acute cause of philosophers' frustration when it comes to people not doing hard epistemic work to support their opinions.  Of course, the Euthyphro dilemma is one way for the philosophers' frustration to be sublimated and the ball put in the court of the epistemically lazy.

(It could also be that the hard epistemic work that philosophers seek to do is too overwhelming for so many "mere" possessors of folk-wisdom; that I can understand.  Perhaps "God commands X" is shorthand more or less for "There is moral truth and it comes from somewhere even if we don't know where, but if there is a God then the morally true is of course what such a being would command."  [The question of ultimate justice in an afterlife, or a setting-right beyond this world of animal suffering in this world, is a further question requiring hard epistemic work if we really want credible answers; all that I can see at this point is that such ultimate justice or setting-right makes a perfectly good-and-powerful God consistent with morally pointless animal suffering, but the morally pointless suffering seems to be consistent with there being no God, as well.])

Another consideration, related surely with the "meaning of life" issue althougly less clearly or directly so with Euthyphro problems: As far as we know, this world and this life is all there is.  The likes of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche seem quite ready to take the implications of this head-on, wherever the argument leads (even if it leads in a very dark or terrible direction, as clearly the case with Schopenhauer).  Do all that many theists have a back-up plan for what to do/think about this life just in case it turns out they don't have a good reason for belief in an afterlife?  (Also: does the question of meaning reduce to the question of reasons, i.e.: What is the reason for life/living; and how does the principle of sufficient reason enter into this?)  And aren't the standard practices of philosophy, as overwhelming as they might end up being to some or at some times, a gateway to better thinking about or formation of such a back-up plan?  Alternatively, if we do indeed have access to ethical and other knowledge independent of our (non-)beliefs about a Creator, does such (non-)belief make any actual difference to how folks tend to lead their lives?

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A couple newly discovered blogs that look interesting (what took so long?...):
https://reasonandmeaning.com/
https://digressionsnimpressions.typepad.com/

Charlottesville fake news, 2+ years later

Scumbag CNN

CONTEXT

The notion that Donald Trump referred to neo-Nazis, white supremacists, white nationalists, skinheads, the KKK, or any related groups who might have been in Charlottesville in 2017 as "very fine people" is false, thoroughly and easily debunked, as perfect an example of fake news as any.  (PHILOSOPHER'S QUESTION: if that isn't fake news, then what is?)  Trump's statement about "very fine people on both sides," stripped of context, would appear to be some sort of dog whistle to these racist groups.  The full context includes not just the entirety of the press conference in which he said "very fine people" but also other statements made within days of that in which he explicitly and unambiguously repudiated - by name - neo-Nazis, white supremacists, the KKK, etc.

In other words, there really is no excuse for spreading what is in essence a fucking lie that Trump called Nazis "very fine people."

It's a notion that took hold in the minds of vast swaths of the American left - Democrats, "progressives," academia, and media such as CNN.  And if you have any doubts that this notion went all the way to the top, just see what Obama said: "How hard is it so say Nazis are bad?"  (How the fuck can Obama not know better than this?  How can he not know that Trump explicitly, repeatedly repudiated Nazis?  This makes Obama a fucking liar, plain and simple.)

But what really pisses me and a ton of people off, is the likes of CNN refusing to own up to their de-contextualized misreporting - the spreading of fake news and lies.  CNN refuses to accept accountability and responsibility, indicating they think they can spread lies with impunity.  (And, yes, had CNN done the right thing and issued a full and clear correction, it would be headline news impossible not to have heard about.  All we have so far, it appears, is a half-assed admission from one if its anchors.)

It's one thing to spread lies and fake news; it's another to refuse to own up to it.  There's only one logical consequence of this: CNN deserves no credibility as a news outlet - certainly not when it comes to its coverage of politics.  The only logical question to raise at this point is: What else might CNN be lying to our faces about, this very day?

Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams (for one) has spent lots of time calling CNN to task for its lies, and CNN has chosen to ignore him.  Well, fuck CNN, then.  If they ignore him, who won't they ignore?  Fake-news motherfuckers.

But as I've proven beyond a shadow of a doubt throughout many blog postings, this is a problem going well beyond CNN and applies pretty much to the entirety of today's American Left and what, to them, passes for decent and responsible discussion about political matters.  The American Left has become chock full of dishonest motherfuckers who think they can smear their opponents (not just politicians like Trump but intellectual figures like Rand) with impunity, and cry "racism" all the time with no consequence, and generally act like scum who have no business wielding power over others.  What's more, if they're not in on this scummy act directly, they are complicit in it.  If they don't actively take measures to hold the likes of CNN to account for its lies (while still rooting out every mistruth stated by their opponents, and screaming bloody murder when they pretend to have found something for sure), then they're partisan pieces of shit who also have no business pretending to act in the name of truth and goodness.

I hardly bother watching CNN any longer; it's quite predictable how its commentators will one-sidedly distort things (i.e., lie through context-omission), exaggerate the misdeeds of their opponents and downplay/ignore their own, etc.; whatever value it might have to offer I can get on another network, anyway; they offer no-value-added.

And that is part of a wider picture which I have also suggested before: the best (not merely good, or okay) minds in politics today have ended up being on the Right broadly speaking.  (Think about it: if someone like Daniel Patrick Moynihan dies and isn't succeeded in Democratic politics by anyone of remotely comparable stature, then where do you suppose the potential successor-minds have gone instead?  Suppose that the very best minds coming of age in, say, the 1990s make lots of attentive effort to sift through competing political ideas.  Such a mind would be carefully observant of the state of the debate, a meta-level observation as it were.  And what if such a mind is not only disappointed by what Democrats and the Left have to offer, but becomes increasingly disappointed over time to the point of being appalled at the intellectual bankruptcy a quarter century later?  What if the so-called minds of the Left nowadays consistently and unaccountably caricature and smear their opponents on the Right (and pat each other on the back for doing so) rather than engage in serious dialectic?  And what if those so-called minds, with increasing regularity, accompany their smears with hubris and contempt for their (imagined) opponents?  At what point does the best and most attentive mind stop giving these intellectual slobs the benefit of the doubt; how obviously slovenly and slothful does their behavior have to get?)  I'll add: those with the more reputable moral character have also ended up on the Right.  The Left has deluded itself with the notion of intellectual and moral superiority, which is belied the moment you get leftists pretending to debate the merits of opposing political views.  The likes of CNN are employing lesser intellects and more morally defective people than their competition.

(MSDNC is even more of a fucking joke; I haven't wasted a second of my time on that pitiful excuse for a news/opinion network in well over a month now; its commentators are obviously of a lesser intellectual and moral caliber, and the only point of its "news" is to propagate DNC talking points.  Or maybe it's just that CNN does a better job of disguising itself doing essentially the same thing; in that they would happen to be only more clever, but hardly wise.)

Even if you still wanted or hoped to trust CNN, to give it the benefit of the doubt, how can you?  If what they've done so far isn't enough to have squandered the benefit of the doubt, then what would be?

If "liberal centrist" Jonathan Haidt and his now-4-years-old Heterodox Academy project, with all its commonsense recommendations for how the Academy (and especially the Academic Left) might restore a reputation for honest inquiry, is pretty much ignored by the Academy (and especially the Academic Left), then what more do you need to convict the Academy/Left of peddling the equivalent of fake news and elevating one-sided propaganda over genuine dialogue, and squandering any remaining benefit of the doubt?

One thing the likes of CNN could do to restore at least a shred of credibility is to hire Republican fact-checkers on stories they publish that might so much as remotely suggest President Trump is saying something racist.  (The Academy and Academic Left could take similar measures in relevantly similar contexts, if credibility, contrition and honor are their concern.)  At this point the likes of CNN should want to bend over backwards to remove doubts about their honor and credibility, or else they deserve every negative tweet the president and others direct their way.  At this point, anything less from them suggests ongoing scumminess.

Politics vs. honesty?

Based on a mound of evidence culminating in the shitshow going on these past few days, I think I can safely conclude that American politics right now is too far gone beyond the point of intellectual discipline and honor for anyone reasonably to expect an honest debate about impeachment and other Trump-related matters.  The partisan excuse-making (for their own) and vilifications (of their opponents) pretty much preclude and honest debate at this point.  This is the wages of a national intellectual and moral bankruptcy, becoming more and more distilled over time.

The only main question remaining now, is whether Americans should simply drop the pretense of honesty, respect for the rule of law, extending the benefit of the doubt to opponents, and so forth, and simply admit that their opponents are or must be up to such bad, hypocritical, etc. activities that extraordinary (by moral standards) measures must be taken to stop them.  It's obvious the Democrats and Republicans think these things about one another today; those who don't think it are being drowned out in the media circus.

The people heavily involved in the political process especially should come right out and admit that we've come to the point that politics is akin enough to war by other means, that the normal rules just don't apply any more.

Is this recommendation for transparency of motive a satirical one?  How would one be able to tell, given what a shitshow things have become?

I'm one of those who find the Demorats in particular to be especially vile and dangerous and socialistic and intellectually and morally bankrupt.  (As I've pointed out, gone are the days of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a prominent figure of intellectual seriousness and moral decency, in the Demorat Party.  It makes me fucking angry that I can't think of a Demorat politician today anywhere close to Moynihan's level.  The current political "team" fielded by the American Left is the best that all of its supposed intellectual prowess and university provenance could cultivate?  That should make anyone pissed.)  I think for doing what they did to Brett Kavanaugh, they deserve to lose at least one more SCOTUS seat until they learn a little decency.

If Ruth Bader Ginsburg leaves the Court in calendar year 2020, I expect Mitch McConnell and fellow Republicans (there was a time - during the waning years of the GWB administration and culminating in the nomination of the dolt Sarah Palin for Vice President - when I held Republicans in such low esteem that I adopted the term "Refucklican" to express my disgust, and I may well have to return to using it) to move ahead with confirming another Trump appointee to the Court.  This despite McConnell & Co. saying (when the president was Obama and the nominee was Merrick Garland) that SCOTUS confirmations shouldn't happen during a presidential election year.  (McConnell used this reasoning in 2016, citing Demorats from 1992 [including Uncle Joe Biden] making the same assertions).

So we pit Demorat intellectual and moral bankruptcy as evidenced by (e.g.) their treatment of Kavanaugh, against the expected partisan hypocrisy of McConnell et al.  I'm conflicted about it.  On the one hand, Demorats deserve to lose at least one more SCOTUS seat; on the other, it would be hypocritical Refucklicans lowering themselves closer to the level of the Demorats, squandering what intellectual and moral credibility they have remaining.

At the very least, couldn't McConnell & Co. admit that the moral rules against hypocrisy no longer apply, and that they're basically forced to be partisan pieces of shit in order to prevent Demorats from inflicting even more destruction on the nation's intellectual and moral fabric than they already have (which I, for one, believe they would do if given the chance to run amok; see, for instance, the bang-up job Demorat-dominated universities are doing to destroy good-faith debate).  They might credibly rationalize their hypocrisy by saying that run-amok Demorats would be even worse in the hypocrisy department.

You have Demorats 100% convinced that Trump is some kind of racist, on the basis of obviously suspect lines of reasoning, and this has them believing (if their words and behavior are any sign) that the normal rules have to be bent or broken to keep Trump & Co. from running amok and making America more racist again.  (Any number of Demorats have suggested that by "MAGA" Trump means to return the country to a past involving racial segregation and other evils; obviously this is a suspect line of reasoning to say the least.)

I think what particularly disgusts me about Demorats a lot more than with Republicans, is the thoroughly, utterly discreditable and disgraceful way they (and their allies, enablers, leftist fellow travelers, etc.) attack, belittle, ignore, and smear an intellectual figure whose ideas I've studied in-depth over a long period of time: Ayn Rand.  Here I happen to know pretty much all the ways Demorats are willing to be intellectually lazy and/or reckless, apparently (if their words and behavior are any sign) out of the belief that less- or un-regulated capitalism is evil and dangerous, that the precious welfare state has to be preserved (because of all it's done to reduce poverty levels, right?), that the universities as we know them must be integral institutions of learning (justifying a neglect of the likes of Rand, and a discounting of pro-capitalism arguments generally), and perhaps a number of related ideas and themes within their precious worldview.  So it doesn't really matter to them what Rand actually said about, e.g., the virtue of selfishness; it's the fact that she supports laissez-faire capitalism on such a grounds that motivates how they have chosen to (mis)represent Rand's views on selfishness.  It's not exactly complicated; it's intellectual dishonesty with a lot of clever but twisted rationalizations and a compliant community of university professors.

(Unless one finds a higher road to take, there is no win-win in an Ayn Rand vs. Mainstream Academy face-off.  Either she is (basically) correct that the university culture is corrupted by leftism and bad ethical theories to justify it, and needs some serious overhaul, or the Mainstream Academy is (basically) correct that a figure like Rand is a crank who merits no serious attention/study [except perhaps as a "cultural phenomenon," a "study" about which was published earlier this year under a patently dishonest title, Mean Girl, by a thoroughly dishonest "researcher," and loathsome leftist loser, Scumbag Lisa Duggan].  One side of this Rand/Academy divide can win only by (basically) discrediting the other.  I've already blogged about how the Academy is fast in the process of discrediting itself at least in the eyes of mainstream producing/taxpaying America.  This also goes for perhaps quite a lot of so-called philosophers I simply cannot trust not to be selective about which facts to acknowledge and admit into evidence; in this they are little better than your typical partisan and most likely leftist asshole you'd find in lots of university departments [such as the ones that Scumbags Duggan and Nancy MacLean are in].)

Anyway, I'm one of those who do happen to value (however imperfect the result) intellectual honesty and consistency, and who are disgusted by obvious partisanship.  (Can we at least admit that the partisan hackery going on right now in Congress is obviously partisan?  Is anyone but True Believers in either tribe somehow fooled that it's not obvious, perhaps blatantly so?)  And I happen to have enough experience and examples on hand to spot such blatant hypocrisy when I see it -- and the present political scene is fucking chock full of it.  Nor - absent an overhaul of the nation's current "educational" infrastructure - do I see things improving here.  The "education" system has churned out a shit-ton of people who can't or won't think carefully, thoroughly, or consistently.

I've been proposing philosophical education, beginning at a young age (and with helpful pointers in the Aristotelian, intellectual-perfectionist direction so that they might learn the art of dialectic as an ethical imperative) as a remedy for this situation, for the better part of a year now on this blog.  Not that it really affects my long-term outlook (for which I believe this blog will become legendary, whatever its flaws), but short-term-wise I consider it a major indictment of our nation's media infrastructure that such kick-ass, commonsense-on-steroids recommendations, and this blog generally, have gone almost entirely unnoticed.  I place part of the blame on the authors of (evidently inferior) philosophy blogs who do or should know about this kick-ass remedy and yet fail to act accordingly by speaking out and promoting this epic no-brainer.

To reformulate a point Rand made about the role of philosophy in society/culture/politics:

A nation's culture is, on the most thorough analysis, the result of the state of the nation's philosophy profession.  We have come to the nakedly partisan shitshow we are currently witnessing because of what the philosophers have done or failed to do.  There's only one philosopher I know of currently who is working on a book project with the theme and working title of 'Better Living Through Philosophy,' and this philosopher has been rigorously and self-consciously pursuing a policy of intellectual perfectionism (inspired by the examples of Aristotle and Rand) long enough for 'Better Living Through Philosophy' to be a more or less natural and inevitable thematic outcome of that pursuit.  Pulled off right, it will be revolutionary.  Pitting the greatest ancient Greek philosophers against (the anthropological "truths" of) Christianity in what may very well be a kick-ass way, is a pretty big fucking deal IMO (whether or not anyone else ever gives due credit for doing so).  There isn't academic hyper-specialization here, as that is described by one of the better philosophy blogs besides this one.

(In some way this here blog is pitted against the Academic-Philosophy model.  Isn't it?  As with the Rand vs. Mainstream Academy dichotomy, is there no win-win to be had here?  Or . . . are we each just taking different specialized-expertise paths, each with their own useful fruits?  I'm no polymath, and have next to no expertise (yet) in such areas as metaphysics, and yet I don't see any other philosophers out there calling out the nation's evident intellectual bankruptcy and political shitshow for what it is.  If the collected wisdom of the Academic Experts can't bring about such an uncompromising, chock-full-of-evidence call-out, then someone has to step in to do the job, right?)

So here we are, headed into Impeachment Season, with an angst-ridden populace ill-equipped to resolve crucial key issues and where so many cannot even get on the same page when it comes to basic facts.  (See the comment thread here, for example.  I discovered this link via a left-Dem facebook friend [somehow I still manage to have one or two of these :-o ] who I don't have any good reason to think had ever consulted or referenced the American Conservative website on any other topic, ever.  See the problem?)  At some point I might end up having to experiment with "channeling" Rand given what I know about her style of cultural and political commentary.  Certain phrases she would use, such as "I told you so," come readily to mind.  The root cause of this shitshow is intellectual bankruptcy, and the root cause of that is the collective output of the community of philosophers.  This, Rand already told America decades ago when she went out to diagnose the intellectual bankruptcy that resulted in her novel Atlas Shrugged being so badly smeared.  (Few of the nation's intellectuals were of the caliber of Hospers, apparently.)  That Rand's root-level diagnosis has gone disregarded by those very intellectuals for decades only reinforces her point.  Again, it's hard to see a win-win here.  (The higher road would be for the Academy to improve its practices to avoid such obvious fuck-ups as Rand and Mises going so badly disregarded, and also for Randians to clean up their own double-standard polemical practices so that we stop getting such obvious, gone-off-the-rails-somewhere horseshit as Kant being "evil.")

I really don't see anyway around this.  There wouldn't be a partisan shitshow populated by obvious scumbags if genuine philosophical practices (the most reliably productive being Aristotelian-style dialectic, according to both my well-honed hunches and apparent historical application) were to become widespread.  Barring that, we can't rationally expect the upcoming Impeachment Season to be much of anything but destructive.

An "optimistic" take on all this dishonest-shitshow stuff is that we're at a point in human historical development somewhere between primitive ignorance and brutishness and the end-of-history ideal alluded to by the likes of Hegel, Nietzsche, and Rand in which unbreached excellence of mind (and body and spirit) is the cultural norm.  And we'd have to also concede that there can be stalls, regressions, and other failures along this path of big-history-scale development.  And so we can have such phenomena as the United States of America being founded by seriously philosophical people, followed some 240 years later by a shitshow run by philosophically-vacuous people (remember the point above about Moynihan), where dolts like Palin and AOC have dedicated and fierce defenders and critics, all depending on party affiliation.

The 2020 election year is shaping up quite nicely to be a fucking circus.  More and more people caught in the abject fools' partisan crossfire will become dismayed and disgusted by what their fellow humans are willing to reduce themselves to, the policy preferences which these fools seek to force on everyone (none of which include philosophical education, BTW) being so preciously important to them that all considerations of honor, decency and dignity must go by the wayside.  We will be hearing a lot about how saving the country from immanent destruction requires their own side to win this next election cycle.  (No matter how what they're willing to do for such short-term political advantage stands a good chance of making things worse long-term.)  You will surely see a lot of political operatives behaving one minute as we might expect normal, decent, likeable people to behave, only to turn around and - shouting all along about their righteousness - partake in the most despicable behaviors.  (See, again: Kavanaugh confirmation/smear process.  Sen. Hirono pretends at the "Ford" portion of the hearing to be interested in the truth, playing nice with Kavanaugh, perhaps smiling and cracking a joke, just days after wickedly and maliciously telling America that Ford is to be believed automatically.  Actually, there is a term for such "nice and decent one day and scumbag the next" behavior: scumbag behavior.)

You'll hear every which conspiracy theory about the other, "bad" side, every which effort to explain away malicious behavior by the "good" side, every which immediate hysterical reaction to some "fact" that common sense already suspects is fake news . . . in other words, what we're pretty much getting already, only more extreme and appalling.  I expect it to be bad enough that even a great many so-called philosophers will get it on the act.  Heck, just witnessing how Objectivists (Randians) - much better on average than the typical political arguers - argue with one another about Trump is enough to call into some question the abilities of humans to reliably meet a higher intellectual standard.  (Criticize Trump strongly enough and you're likely to be called an 'Obleftivist.'  I can't remember right off what happens if it's the other way around and it's someone bashing Demorats, perhaps strongly enough to be a Trump supporter by default.  Almost surely, whatever "side" you take in this shitshow, you will be accused of not having a true and proper grasp of Objectivist principles.)

From an Objectivist/Randian here is an interesting episode in American electoral history that may inform one's best analyses of 2020.  In 1972 - Nixon vs. McGovern - it was basically Rand supporting Nixon's reelection by default because the alternative (the far-left McGovern) was dreadful.  She saw Nixon as a "me-too" statist who grew the government at more or less the same pace as his Democratic predecessors - but in this case, she was an "anti-Nixonite for Nixon."  That's more or less my view of Trump vs. the Demorats, although it simply doesn't sit well with me to say that whatever Trump says or (much more importantly) does, he should get away with it if the alternative means Demorats getting back in power.  It would be a short-term patch with bad long-term consequences for such things as moral credibility and respect for the rule of law.  Whether it's Trump or Demorats winning in '20, neither will foster greater philosophical education for the republic, which is the long-term ball I have my eye on.  I was going to write, "I don't expect either Trumpists or Demorats to take loss well," but I can't truthfully say that; based on all I've been able to witness and determine, it's definitely the Demorats who won't take loss well by any stretch.  Politics is basically their substitute religion, after all.  Plus, they really haven't taken their 2016 loss well, either, have they.  Up until the aftermath of the July 25 Trump-Zelensky phone call, the shitshow was all on the Demorat side, with them basically getting nothing right about Trump.  And they're still untrustworthy, unscrupulous motherfuckers regardless of what you think about Trump's Ukraine actions.  (Again, see the Kavanaugh "confirmation"/smear process for incontrovertible evidence of their unscrupulousness and wickedness.)

I'll try to tone it down a bit for my next point, although I might not be able to do so given the facts.  But let's say that political cognition poisons the mind, destroys objectivity, etc.: you could have loving, decent people who, qua political thinkers/actors, turn into obvious scumbags.  (I've conceded such a point about those I term loathsome leftist losers - qua leftists, leftism being a thought-cancer overtaking otherwise honest and rational thinking.)  But how do I done my point down after the one I made above about behaving decently one day and like a scumbag the next?  How is that duality not itself scummy?  And what if it's not even true that political cognition per se poisons the mind, etc.?  I don't see Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Rawls or Nozick getting all scummy once they move from non-political theory to political theory.

So what if the truth is more like the following instead: entering the realm of political activism, in an intellectually-bankrupt cultural-political environment, tends to stimulate scummy thought/speech/behavior.  This entails that heightened character-scrutiny of those drawn to political activism in such an environment is eminently warranted.  In such an environment, politics becomes more and more about how to force your preferences on others, not about how to rationally justify them.  This becomes a worse problem - Hayek's "why the worst get on top" phrasing comes to mind - in a polity infected by statism.  The politicians in the American Framers' day were at each other's throats a lot, with lots of slander and whatnot, in spite of the philosophical inclinations of the Framers.  But the government's share of GDP was a mere fraction of what it is today, so how much damage could possibly be inflicted on a people via the levers of power?  (Demorats on their better days are fine with people acting democratically to seize wealth created by others, as long as there's "checks and balances" that include a Court selectively reading into or out of the Constitution whatever it needs to in order to justify such legalized theft; see Wickard v Filburn for one such dubious legal interpretation - of the Interstate Commerce clause, in this case, and after Court-packing threats by FDR/Demorats - with its granting of nearly a blank check to the exercise of Federal power.)

So take an intellectually bankrupt culture and a statist mentality and you have a double-whammy of toxicity that leads the political participants inexorably to hate and distrust one another, and to behave in ugly/nasty ways considered by all of them to be beyond the pale in private life.  How can this not put current political practice fundamentally at odds with intellectual honesty?  Fuck, it's like a no-brainer at this point, with an obvious no-brainer solution in sight.  Right?

How to criticize Ayn Rand effectively

[This post might serve as a proto-version or background material for a planned future posting or writing on "Rand and philosophy," which would be Part 2 of such a project (a full version of which would involve a comparison/contrast, i.e., integration/differentiation, of Rand with numerous canonical figures in the history of philosophy, and that requires lots of research); Part 1, "Background timeline/players," is already available here.  As if Part 1 weren't enough on its own to give a strong indication of what a bunch of intellectual malefactors Rand-bashers are....]

Perhaps the only way a decent critical commentator on Rand might get some serious traction is to argue that this or that position or argument or claim of hers violates the methodological strictures that she and especially Peikoff (her hand-picked heir) promoted, especially in Peikoff's Rand-authorized 1976 Philosophy of Objectivism course (later adapted into his 1991 book, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand or OPAR [seminar course]; either the course or the book are pretty definitive statements of the Objectivist philosophy).  (Peikoff's later courses, after Rand's death - especially his Understanding Objectivism, OPAR Seminars, The Art of Thinking, Unity in Epistemology and Ethics, and Objectivism Through Induction get more into the meat of Objectivist method, and are invaluable whether or not Rand was around to authorize them.)

Now, key terms of method in Objectivism are context, integration and hierarchy.  Now, it would be nice to helpfully summarize in the space of a blog post what these concepts are all about, but I don't know how to do such a summary at this point.  But these concepts have (more or less) to do with how to discipline one's mind to arrive at a thoroughly validated picture of the world.  In fact, I can't think of any serious criticism of these disciplinary strictures to be found, anywhere, ever, and the reason for this is a little secret that (unfortunately) few are in on:

The Objectivist methodological strictures are philosophic method proper.

Establishing the proper context for one's concepts, to establish the relationship of that concept within a system of concepts, and to establish the place of a concept within a hierarchy of concepts, and doing this in a fully systematic and disciplined way . . . how does this differ from philosophic method as such?

All I know is, by adhering to the methodological strictures involved here, I've developed the ideas as they've appeared on this blog, covering a rather vast range of subject matter under a relatively few number of philosophical principles.  Indeed, I've come to the rock-bottom, can't-go-any-further stuff, as it were, as it pertains to philosophical education of a citizenry as a major remedy for the ills it faces.  I've arrived at a theme of fundamental importance: Better Living Through Philosophy.  I've developed a sensibility about the study of the history of philosophy that respects the principle of charity and/or Dennett/Rapoport Rules.  (I consider such things a matter of proper application of context-keeping: what, e.g., was the intellectual context within which, say, Spinoza or Kant was operating, and how does that relate to, or integrate with, the intellectual context of other thinkers such as Aristotle or Rand?  And how does one properly differentiate and integrate such concrete particulars as these four thinkers along various axes of measurement?)  I've also arrived at the idea that both philosophic method proper and the Rand-Peikoff themes about method are ways of expressing an intellectual perfectionism, and that such a perfectionist theme is at the core of the philosophical vision of the good life (whatever else is included in or subsumed under this vision).

Now, if the things that Rand and Peikoff say about method are another way of formulating what it is to engage in the method of philosophy as such - in a way that hasn't been explicated by other philosophers in history (else we'd be hearing all about context, integration and hierarchy when studying the history of philosophy) - then acknowledging such a point puts Rand-bashers in a bit of a bind: How can such philosophically negligible figures arrive at such sound methodological principles that are virtually synonymous with philosophic method?

But let's say that Rand-bashers can exercise enough good faith to figure out that these thinkers aren't the philosophically negligible lightweights the bashers pretend them to be, and they're still interested in criticizing Rand.  Well, what better way to put Rand and her defenders on their heels than to show that something Rand said or argued fails to properly adhere to her own methodological advice?  Then they would be effective in doing so.  But note here that if "A is A" - that if Objectivist method and philosophic method are one and the same thing - then all they're really saying is that Rand, in failing to adhere to her own stated methods, is also failing to do philosophy properly (or as well as she could do it).

My advice would be for the Rand-bashers to give up their bad-faith anti-Rand position and go right for the jugular - that, e.g., Rand's argument for a standard of value or a system of virtues doesn't comport with her stated method.  They would be doing the more productive thing which is to acknowledge (a la the Dennett/Rapoport Rules) where Rand is strong (indeed, very strong) before getting to their criticism.  They would also have before them the task of figuring out how it is that, if philosophic thought is indeed properly all about keeping context and respecting hierarchy, philosophers other than Rand/Peikoff hadn't formulated philosophic method in those terms.  (All I know is, framing one's thinking methods in those terms has been very helpful to me in thinking philosophically.  This is a genuine experience that no amount of Rand-bashing from someone else can erase.  So to hell with the bashers, they haven't a clue, although they have it within themselves to get one.)

So basically to criticize Rand effectively you also have to concede that there's something about her/Peikoff's thought and writing that's unassailable, and that this something is very fundamental to her thought.  This is an example of going where the argument leads, even if one initially thinks that where the argument leads (that Rand/Peikoff are right on philosophically fundamental matters) would be a real bummer, a blow to one's low estimate of Rand.  So, whether or not the Rand-bashers are prepared now to follow the argument here where it leads, one can raise the legitimate question: would they ever be prepared to follow the argument here where it leads, as intellectual honesty would require?  Are they seriously prepared to entertain the suggestion that they simply got it very wrong about Rand?  Are they seriously prepared to acknowledge that intellectual perfectionism leads them to recognize that Rand endorsed intellectual perfectionism as a way of life?

And, heck, once they grasp in basic form the idea that Rand's entire ethical system - her concept of egoism - basically has this intellectual perfectionism as its formal characteristic, where does this leave them qua Rand-bashers and qua intellectually credible commentators?  (An alternative route in which they attack the principle of intellectual perfectionism itself doesn't sound viable; how would such an attack not be self-defeating?  Put another way, philosophy always buries its undertakers.  As anyone who's thought this through carefully knows, philosophy is foundational to the hierarchy of knowledge which is why the conceptual hierarchy of wikipedia leads one ultimately to philosophy.  We also have Rand herself emphasizing this point in her own discussions of philosophy itself, and in releasing a lecture/article as well as a book under the title/theme "Philosophy: Who Needs It."  Why the f isn't a critical mass of philosophers writing books and articles along these lines, as is arguably their moral imperative to do given the implications for human flourishing and/or respect for humanity?)

On the merits, the prospects for Rand-bashing at any time in the future are exceedingly slim to none.  (This says something not so good about the intellectual character of Rand-bashers.)  This leaves room only for the usual ordinary give-and-take forms of criticism, but even there, given what I'm saying above, it vindicates Rand/Peikoff on fundamentals and necessarily narrows the scope of what can be criticized (since we already saw above that you can't coherently attack intellectual perfectionism, context-keeping, etc., which cannot be separated from Rand's egoism as understood the way a Dennett/Rapoport-caliber critic would understood it, i.e., as she understood it).

I take issue with Rand's largely polemical approach to the history of philosophy, and I'd say this is a very ripe area where one can take issue with Rand using all the proper tools of philosophy and/or her own method.  What I'm not clear on is how one could prove that her case against Kant is lousy and also have this be a critique of her own, intellectual-perfectionist egoism.  It really strikes me as an area where the things she says are not tied inherently to the fundamentals of her system, the way (e.g.) her new concept of egoism is tied to its intellectual-perfectionist fundamentals.

(This parenthetical turned into a lengthy digression: Follow the argument where it leads?  That's an egoistic attitude in Rand's framework.  It's in one's rightly-understood interests - one's right desires - to have right opinion about the world.  Does such a concept of egoism turn out to be vacuous or uninteresting?  Is that the best critique we might arrive at?  Why not call the intellectual-perfectionist philosopher who experiences no conflict between feeling or inclination/desire and virtue (this harmonious condition would be virtue proper, and not incontinence or continence or akrasia) a shmegoist?  How does egoism/schmegoism not then line up with morality proper, thereby making the "egoism" concept superfluous, not explanatory of anything, or something like that?  What work does the concept of egoism do here?  IOW: why not just call it "schmegoism" instead, and define a schmegoist as anyone who fulfills his rightly understood interests?  I think it has to do with Rand's tight formal connection between actor and beneficiary in the sense that the actor is the rightful beneficiary of activity directed toward the good life.  So if universalizability (Kantian or otherwise) is a formal constraint on good-life-directed activity, then acting in accordance with such constraints would fulfill the actor's rightly-understood interests and the actor would be the beneficiary (in some non-vacuous sense) of this universalizability-respecting action.  Now, I've made a published case that Rand's argument for rights involves a form of universalizability-reasoning; she employed it in her own writings as a matter of what a logically consistent actor does.  At the same time, the case I made also holds that Rand's egoism itself involves such universalizability reasoning, as a matter of context-keeping - what are the requirements for life qua man, any individual man and not just John G., say - and that the common grounding requirement for life qua man - something about the ability to direct one's own intellect in the characteristically human act of thinking, free of external compulsion - points to both egoism (Randian form) and to rights.  This all becomes very tightly bound up: egoism grounds rights and respect for rights informs what it is to be a (Randian) egoist, and to escape any circularity here we need to acknowledge something about formal characteristics of a good human life (namely, freedom) that is fundamental to the case for both (Randian) egoism and rights.  The very point of a code of values is to achieve happiness and to achieve happiness you need to life according to the requirements of life qua man, and both happiness and life-qua-man are roughly synonymous with rational self-interest, but when we fill this in with substantive content we get (among other things) rights, which philosophers had traditionally said is not an outcome of egoism (traditionally construed).  If we use Aristotelian notions of eudaimonia or self-actualizing, the social component of one's individual flourishing becomes integral to the good-life picture.  In any event, it seems of crucial importance to understanding why Rand uses the term "egoism" that it specifies the individual actor as the proper beneficiary of that actor's efforts - that the social components of the flourishing life redound to the benefit of the actor.  It's just that this flourishing life not only doesn't look like egoism traditionally construed (and it definitely doesn't, otherwise Aristotelian ethics would traditionally be identified as an egoism and not just a eudaimonism) but it also incorporates others' interests in such a way that it becomes something of an issue why one would bother to use the term "egoism" where such putatively egoistic behavior involves taking a great interest in the self-actualizing of others.  Rand would probably put in terms of there being a community grounded in virtue (and virtue in essence is, or is expressive of, intellectual perfection).  Galt's Gulch might be such a society.  But then we're rather far removed from any of the usual lines of strawman-like criticisms of Rand as an advocate of some sort of asocial or atomized "individualism."  We basically have an Aristotelian ethics updated to specify the proper beneficiary of eudaimonic activity as ultimately the actor herself and in which the actor makes free judgments based on her own unique and individualized hierarchy of values as to how to "fit" the (eudaimonic) interests of others into her value-scheme.  The objectivity of human values requires that values be freely chosen based on the actor's hierarchy of values, which excludes the "altruistic" alternative in which some alien set of values is demanded or imposed (by force) on the individual irrespective of how those values are supposed to integrate with the actor's own.  The "altruistic" alternative is a form of intrinsicism where the "values" to be acted upon are imposed from without, i.e., without respect for the context of the individual's own knowledge and decision-making.  Here we are back to that basic methodological concept, context.  This stuff really is all tightly interconnected in Rand and its appeal should be plenty clear to those who do their homework and think this through.  Just from this post there are leads to any number of closely interconnected concepts: context, life qua man, judgment, intellectual perfection, interests, objectivity, virtue.  It just rings to me at this point that without some well-developed understanding of the interrelationship of all these concepts, one is unlikely to understand what Rand was really up to in her philosophical writings.  You might as well glide your eyes over the pages of her writings without integrating any of it.  I'm coming to think - with the aid of some secondary scholarship - that Hegel's system has a similar feature whereby the web of (perhaps mutually-supporting) conceptual interrelations in his system can't be approached in a casual manner with any expectation of serious grasp or understanding.  The further complication in Hegel's case is his abstruse presentation - its needless abstruseness is in evidence by the fact that secondary scholars seem to be able to translate his verbiage into more accessible terms.  So . . . can someone like Hegel much less Aristotle be construed as an egoist in Rand's terms?  I guess it all comes down to whether or not one understands egoism in terms of the beneficiary-criterion spelled out above with reference to the individual's own rationally- and hence freely-integrated hierarchy of values.  So applying the "schmegoism?" challenge and pursuing that where the argument leads, do we still get anything like a serious critique of Rand that should lead to some kind of dismissive attitude toward her work?  We certainly don't seem to be going down any line of careful argument or critique that we'd expect from a Rand-basher, and we certainly seem to end up tying a lot of Rand's ethical concepts back to formal characteristics like intellectual perfectionism and context-keeping, which no one can coherently reject.)

So, to sum up, I think to criticize Rand effectively one must by necessity make a number of concessions about Rand's greatness as a thinker, in such a way that she enters squarely into the conversation with the likes of Aristotle and Hegel (would that she weren't such a shallow Hegel-basher?) and with the rest of the philosophical canon on some issues of fundamental philosophical importance.  As opposed to the usual criticisms of Rand of downright terrible quality that are all over the internet, what we should end up with instead is a treatment of Rand by philosophers much as they treat the other philosophers in the canon: with careful, context-respecting, principle-of-charity commentary.  In other words, the kind of effective criticism of Rand that might be made is almost nonexistent to date.  Nozick and Huemer deserve credit for proceeding as philosophers should proceed.  (Note a key feature in common here: they're libertarians, assessing the strengths of various different arguments for libertarian ideas.  So they have a motivation that is probably not to be found all that widely among non-libertarian philosophers.)  Rand-bashers typically will cite Nozick and Huemer without acknowledging the responses to their arguments.  (Huemer's "Objectivist in a hurry" doesn't address the way actual Objectivists reason about things, so there's a rather glaring problem there as far as criticism goes.  As things I've said above indicate, Rand's egoism entails, among other things, universalizability constraints and even empathy, if you can believe it.  The Rand-basher will take Huemer's "Objectivist in a hurry" argument as the final word, as though Objectivists haven't come up with any kind of rebuttal in over 20 years.  The Rand-basher will also "somehow" fail to recognize the existence of the Den Uyl and Rasmussen rebuttal to Nozick, which is quite effective as pushback goes.)  But at the very least the Nozick argument and the published rebuttal to it are an example of how people of a philosophical sensibility can argue about the merits of Rand's ideas, and that's even without touching upon the methodological core of Objectivism (distilled more or less in chapter 4 of OPAR, if a single published resource is what you're looking for).

Rand's writings stand outside of the philosophical "tradition" or "canon" in certain ways; they stand especially outside of the academic mode of philosophical writing with its abundant footnotes and whatnot.  (I readily imagine referees calling Rand to task for her controversial yet undocumented characterization of, e.g., Aristotle's view about value-justification in "The Objectivist Ethics."  But as a paper delivered at an academic symposium - which it was - it does overall the job it's supposed to do, and it presents a serious alternative to the dominant ethical positions of the time (1961), enough so as to place "The Objectivist Ethics" within the neo-Aristotelian, virtue-ethical canon that was nearly nonexistent in 1961.  I can understand the professionals at the time not taking up Rand on her virtue-ethical alternative, given the relative unfamiliarity to them of the conceptual structure of virtue ethics.  And while Anscombe's "Modern Moral Philosophy" (1958) gets plenty of acknowledgment and credit for being a seminal virtue-ethical essay, I don't get the impression that Anscombe's essay was widely credited or embraced at the time.  (Did Veatch's Rational Man: A Modern Interpretation of Aristotelian Ethics (1962) get much traction either?)  But now it is canonized after the philosophical community has had time to come to grips with it.  Well, the philosophical community has had plenty of time (given the three-year proximity of the two essays, although the essentials of Rand's argument were originally published before Anscombe's, in a 1957 fiction book) to come to grips with Rand's argument as well.  Those in the community don't seem to have come up with a compelling refutation of it, or a reason to dismiss it as unserious.  But there are a relatively few of those in the community (again, listed here) who have come to analyze Rand's argument and find merits in it, and even to debate its merits in published forums such as the first volume of the Ayn Rand Society Philosophical Studies series.  So the attention and discussion is happening, just not all that much.  But this notion that there's some vast divide between the respective merits of Anscombe's and Rand's articles is little other than a myth peddled by people with anti-Rand biases.  The differing amounts of serious attention paid to these two articles among academic philosophers might have to be explained by something other than their respective merits.)  Rand was by an large hostile to how the academy was doing philosophy, the main exception being her relationship to Hospers.  (Whatever exactly the academy was doing wrong in Rand's view, I don't really have a good idea - my best guess is that it supposedly indulges in methodologically-inferior "rationalism" or play with concepts not rooted in concrete, readily accessible and practical reality -  but evidently she didn't think Hospers was part of that problem.)  So for a philosophical community not already committed to Rand or even the Aristotelian tradition to take up a figure such as Rand would require overcoming certain barriers, to communication or otherwise.  Time and priorities might even dictate more or less the course of action many philosophers are on already, such that they're more inclined to focus their energies and interests on Aristotle's own writings.  The Aristotelian virtue-ethical tradition has seen a revival in academia, after all, which is all for the (ahem) good.  It just seems to me (and to many Rand-fans who are academic philosophers) that this revival can be further sped up and enhanced by incorporating Randian insights into the virtue-ethical framework - e.g., her emphatic intellectual perfectionism which ties into her core methodological commitments; or, the specific virtues (e.g., independence, integrity, productiveness) Rand sets forth as essential.  But the wheels of research turn slowly; how exactly does a philosopher go about setting the virtue-ethics tradition in relation to, say, the themes of Parfit's On What Matters?

And here I was supposed to be getting back to the Oxford Handbook of Spinoza already.  I've done written enough in this one post as it is.  Long story short, you basically have to invoke Rand's greatness in order to deny it, so you might as well affirm it (and then, if you want to critique her, make a case showing in effect that she might have been greater, although that opens up another can of worms; let's just say for now that if Rand had had a Plato-caliber teacher, for purposes of perfecting the art of dialectic, of course, she may well have been as great as Aristotle; given what she did have to work with as teachers/associates and circumstances go, what good reason is there to think she didn't do her very best?).

Applied philosophy for children: An NFL do-over? (you know, for the kids)

This is part of a new series of blog posts on philosophy for children - far and away the biggest no-brainer in history - and I can't think of a better time for kid-accessible applied philosophy at the present time than the case of the worst no-call of all-time.  It has raised important ethical questions as to whether the Super Bowl is tainted.

In my earlier post I gave my reasons for regarding a Rams-[AFC Team] Super Bowl tainted due to the horrible officiating, and that the Rams in the name of honor and fair play should agree to a quick and easy do-over like the kids could figure out so easily in their street games.  They even admitted to cheating, so why not own up to that in action?  (Just resume it from where the game was assuming the play was called correctly, if the Saints score a touchdown they go the Super Bowl and if the Rams stop them they go.  The poor referee [I know, I've been there, but come on, man, ffs] even gets to save face.)

I mean, let's say the NFL asked the kids - their most important fan base, currently and long term (this sport is like pro wrestling but not all scripted; I liked both as a kid but outgrew only one of the two...), what they think the fair thing would be to do.  A do-over, right?

Should honor require the Rams to admit what getting away with a really significant cheat entails ethically, and to accept a do-over?  What do principles of justice and virtue (honor being among them) require here?  That would be a great exercise in getting the ball rolling in getting the kids to think philosophically.  Yes? :)

Oh, and wouldn't that be a lot better for the ratings (you know, for the adults)?  Not just the do-over, but the Super Bowl itself, which I and many others are planning as of now to avoid....

[In the posting queue: 'Ultimate Blogging tips: for Philosophers' ^_^ ]

Credit where it's due: Leiter lays the smackdown on academic identity politics (and related mischief)

A case in point for why people should be paying a lot more attention to philosophy blogs and a lot less attention to nitwits and trolls on twitter.

Some context: As anyone who's been observant of such things knows, Brian Leiter, U. of Chicago Law Professor, founder of the Philosophical Gourmet Report for industry-standard ranking of leading university philosophy programs (NYU, Oxford, Rutgers, et al), also runs Leiter Reports, billed as the "world's most popular philosophy blog since 2003."  (Nevertheless, he's a loathsome leftist loser of the neo-Marxoid variety, and reckless Rand-basher.)  He is a keen observer of who's who in academic philosophy.  The Ladder Man, as Maverick Philosopher eruditely dubs him (for "his obsession with rankings and status. (One of the meanings of the German Leiter is ladder; another is leader as in Gauleiter.)"), knows whereof he speaks in this area (just not on Rand or capitalism, though; but on Nietzsche, jurisprudence and academic politics he speaks with authority).  Finally, he had to step down as lead editor of the Gourmet Report a few years ago after having acted in a notoriously combative, divisive, rude and unpleasant manner toward a number of his colleagues.  He seems to be an expert in the less appealing aspects of academic politics, then.

His recent commentary on the seemingly extraordinary American Academy of Arts and Sciences selection process merits some notice and honest facing-up-to by all concerned:

Elections to the Academy follow certain patterns.   For example, in 2012, MIT's Stephen Yablo was elected to the Academy.  The following year, his MIT colleague Rae Langton (now at Cambridge) was elected.  Two years later, Langton's friend and former colleague, and Yablo's spouse, Sally Haslanger at MIT was elected.  Haslanger (well-known, of course, for her commitment to diversity [vide Reed for an explanation]), quickly joined the selection committee for Philosophy, and that year only one white man (in his 70s) was elected while two prominent feminist philosophers were among the small number of honorees.  The latter is hardly suspicious:  I've observed the same patterns over the years with formal philosophers, with epistemologists, and with Kant scholars--once one gets in, others in that sub-field are admitted in the subsequent years.  As one AAAS member wrote to me a couple of years ago:  "newly admitted members are often energized to make nominations," and, unsurprisngly, they invest that effort in their friends and colleagues.  

But if there was ever a "popularity contest," it would be the AAAS, in which existing members vote on possible new members on a scale of 1-5 (just like the PGR scale for whole faculties!).  Ballotting proceeds in two stages.  Any two members can nominate someone for election to the Academy of Friends, and after an initial round of voting, 8-10 candidates are submitted to the membership for final votes.  The "panel" is, I'm told, bound by the votes of the existing members, except when there are "diversity" considerations. The current panel consists of Susan Wolf (North Carolina, the chair), Julia Annas (Arizona) Sally Haslanger (MIT), Dan Hausman (Wisconsin), Beatrice Longuenesse (NYU), and Stephen Stich (Rutgers).  The Chair of the panel must ultimately negotiate with chairs of other humanities committees over how many philosophers get to be put forward for membership.

A current Academy of Friends member sent me the list of the current first-round candidates.  This was against the rules, but I suspect that s/he was concerned about the way things have been going.  I will not name any of the nominees.

Understand that most faculty who are elected to the Academy are 60 or older; in philosophy, faculty who are elected around age 50 or younger are few and far between (examples would include, in recent years, David Chalmers [NYU] and John MacFarlane [Berkeley], and, in years past, David Lewis and Martha Nussbaum).   Excluding faculty who were clearly nominated in cognate disciplines, and then put on the philosophy ballot for possible "interdisciplinary" inclusion, there were 31 pure philosophy candidates. 

15 of those candidates were women, 16 were men.  That's already remarkable given that only about 20% of senior philosophy faculty are women.  Of those 15 women, two were also racial or ethnic minorities, and a remarkable 9 of the 15 were feminist philosophers and "friends of Sally," as it were.  Of the 16 men, 3 were also racial or ethnic minorities.  Out of 31 nominated candidates, there were 13 white men.  Of the nominated women, 9 of the 15 were faculty members at top 50 PhD programs.  Of the nominated men, 16 of 16 were at top 50 PhD programs.  Of the nominated women, two were over the age of 70; of the nominated white men, three were over 70.  Of the nominated women, five, maybe six, are under 60; of the nominated white men, two, maybe three, are under 60.

The academic PC (sic!) cohort can run but it cannot hide.  The Ladder Man knows whereof he speaks here.  When even a rabid leftist of his academia-related knowledge says that this shit has gone too far, that's a good sign it has.  If this is happening in the most rigorous of academic disciplines like philosophy, can you imagine where it's headed in the less demanding disciplines, especially the ones with tons of politically-left inbreeding?

In any case, why should philosophers of greater merit be sacrificed on the altar of "diversity" and political connections?

(Gee, ya think libertarians and conservatives could use some friends in academia to enhance their status and therefore influence there?  For the students' sake, of course.  The wasting of intellectual potential for all concerned here [for now] is a bit sickening to watch.)

As illustrated previously, this is what happens when corrupt institutional practices clash with philosophy.  Philosophy can and will lay the smackdown.

[I note that Kolakowski's (Oxford) academic status as a Marx-interpreter(/debunker) far exceeds that of Leiter (a mere PGR top-25 program -- WAIT, HOLD ON A SEC, he's not even in the PGR-ranked philosophy department, but rather the law school there -- ) and he seems not to have learned a bit of good social (ultimately, intellectual) graces from his Aristotelian colleague at Chicago, Martha Nussbaum, among other character faults.  Should the Ladder Man shoot back that Oxford also had "the greatest Marxoid thinker of recent times" in G.A. Cohen, author of Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defense (OUP, 1978), I guess the answer lies there?  How odd that would be, as I see no evidence of some subsequent dialectic between these two on the intellectual credibility of Marxism.  Mises' monumental Socialism book (Eng: Yale U Press, 1951 [1922]) settled the question of the intellectual credibility of socialism nearly a century ago now, and the socialists didn't do anything adequate to respond to that (they did make an ultimately-failed attempt to answer Mises on the 'economic calculation' problem but didn't address the deeper structural folly of traditionally socialist thought which manifests in its intellectual-lightweight tendencies toward cultural destructionism and generally flouting the accumulated wisdom of tradition), or to Mises' subsequent demolition of Marxoid historical materialism.  Students of the debate like Hayek had it figured out early; socialism is an intellectual basket case, the opiate of the 'intelligentsia.'  It seems like a pattern of debate-avoidance among leftist losers might best explain what the Cohen-Kolakowski relationship looks like to me, and that Kolakowski is - despite shared institutional affiliations (see the parallel there at Chicago) - a dialectically superior philosopher.  Never mind the demonstrably intellectually inferior character of socialism as shown here.  Aristotelians are better philosophers than Marxoids, so I suggest the in-denial Ladder Man and his currently-loathsome leftoid ilk do a better job to take after his Chicago colleague.  Maybe there's more nobiity to be found on Leiter's Nietzsche side of things?  And, leftoids/Marxoids, if you really wanna do your homework thoroughly, with due dialectical completeness, take a lead from neo-Aristotelian 'dialectical-libertarian' Sciabarra, why don't you, ASAFP. To be continued? . . .]