These are not worthy fucking adversaries

https://www.google.com/search?q=obama+romney+not+taking+questions+from+media

So Romney has gone 22 days at a time without taking any questions from the press, and Obama has gone six weeks at a time without doing so.  They do not want to be caught in any "gotcha" moments.

This is not accountability or transparency.  This is a sham.

Fuck it, dude, let's write in Glenn Greenwald.

(Oh, snap.)

Now there's a worthy fucking adversary.

I'm pretty Saganized at the moment. :-D

UPDATE: I've heard that the Romney/Ryan ticket is too odious even for some serious long-time students of Objectivism (SLSOs) despite Ryan's professed support for Ayn Rand.  When you get some of those SLSOs migrating to even the "subjectivist, anarchist, and nihilist" Libertarian Party candidate (ze nihilists [not an ethos], zay vote for CHONSON!!!), you know what a joke this whole election is. The serious change can only come intellectually/culturally, as the SLSOs know quite well.  This time around, I'm at least as "apathetic" about a presidential election as I've been since Bush/Gore 2000.

UPDATE: Miguel Cabrera - HOF or no?  (Frank Robinson and Hank Aaron are the most similar through age 29!)

UPDATE: Bigger circle-jerk: FOX News or /r/politics?  The FOX pundits are all working themselves up into a lather in expectation of a Romney upset.  I guess it just makes them and their audience feel better to ignore the statistically-best projections?

Some "desert island" books

[UPDATED below.]

I figured that I would do this sort of thing once in a while, in order to chart a course of progress over time, to reminisce from points in the future, etc.  This is a listing of books that "I'd take with me to a desert island" (a hypothetical that doesn't really tell you what would be most useful for you on a desert island, but rather illustrates something else, namely, the small number of books you'd want on hand over any others).  It does not, at this point, include fiction, since I have yet to really explore that written world.  Also, these are not synonymous with "favorite" books - though there is some overlap - but rather those books which I think I might come back to the most.  Some I have not even gotten to reading but want to have them on hand as much as I can, just in case.  It's not a perfect list; the point is to make it become more perfect over time. ;-)

David L. Norton, Personal Destinies
Alan Gewirth, Self-Fulfillment
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning and Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning
The Essential Plato
The Basic Writings of Kant
A Spinoza Reader
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations
Basic Writings of Nietzsche and The Portable Nietzsche
A Kierkegaard Anthology
The Marx-Engels Reader
Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia
John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement
The Essential Epicurus
Epictetus, The Art of Living
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Saint Augustine, Confessions
Erich Fromm, Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics
Albert Ellis, A New Guide to Rational Living
The Analytic Theist: An Alvin Plantinga Reader
Thomas Jefferson, Writings
Benjamin Franklin, Writings
Thomas Paine, Collected Writings
Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary
Strunk and White, The Elements of Style
The Ayn Rand Lexicon and Letters of Ayn Rand
Leonard Peikoff, Understanding Objectivism
Alan Dershowitz, The Best Defense
Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics
Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty
David Friedman, The Machinery of Freedom
Thomas Karier, Intellectual Capital
The Essential Jung
V.S. Ramachandran, Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind
Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works
Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat & Other Clinical Tales
Morton Hunt, The Story of Psychology
Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel
Douglas Hofstadter, Godel, Escher, Bach
Daniel Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea
Noam Chomsky, Understanding Power
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
The New York Times Guide to Essential Knowledge
Michael Steinberg, The Symphony: A Listener's Guide
Alex Ross, The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century
Ursula Vaughan Williams, R.V.W.: A Biography of Ralph Vaughan Williams
Khalil Gibran, The Prophet
Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie
Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis

Nov. 4, 2012 additions:

The Jefferson Bible
Thoreau, Walden and Other Writings
Ruth Garrett Millikan, Language, Thought and Other Biological Categories
Henry Veatch, Rational Man: A Modern Interpretation of Aristotelian Ethics
Marquis de Sade, Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, and Other Writings
Walter Kaufmann, Critique of Religion and Philosophy
A. John Simmons, The Lockean Theory of Rights and On the Edge of Anarchy: Locke, Consent, and the Limits of Society
Charles Taylor, Hegel, Sources of the Self, and A Secular Age
Robert Nozick, Philosophical Explanations
Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons and On What Matters

Major bargains

Leonard Peikoff lecture courses at the ARI E-store

These used to be priced in the hundreds of dollars each, now marked down by about 95%, give or take.  If I had to guess why, I think it has to do with the idea of sparking intellectual/cultural revolution more swiftly and sweepingly.

Approximate (rounded up or down) prices for the core Oism curriculum (the most essential, among those I've heard so far, in bold):

The Philosophy of Objectivism (1976) (the Official Course, w/Rand Q&A) - $11 (book: OPAR - $15)
Objective Communication (1980) - $9
Principles of Grammar (1982) - $7
Understanding Objectivism (1983) - $10 (book: $12)
Philosophy of Education (1985) - $6
Objectivism: The State of the Art (1987) - $7
Moral Virtue (ca. 1989) - $4
Advanced OPAR seminars parts 1 and 2 (1990) - $14
The Art of Thinking (1992) - $7
Unity in Epistemology and Ethics (1993) - $4
Objectivism Through Induction (1996) - $11
Induction in Physics and Philosophy (2001) - $7
DIM Hypothesis parts 1 and 2 (ca. 2004) - $11 (book: $15)

Grand total: $108 for around 250 hours of lectures, and by the time you're done you have a good chance of actually "getting" the ideas! :-)  Or perhaps being destroyed for life. ;-)

These lecture courses should be coupled with the books listed here as part of any serious, scholarly, comprehensive research program on Objectivism.  Any future works/books covering Objectivism that aren't based on this research probably should not be taken seriously.  The Rand-haters have a lot of catching up to do, with no serious excuses any longer for failing to do so, and when all is said and done, their hate-projects will probably never materialize in any credible form.

Hell, with the prices of these courses now this low, with students of Objectivism that much more inexpensively fortified on college campuses in the years to come - and, let's not forget, let's NOT forget, this fact in conjunction with future widespread responsible (think Aristotelian Mean here) usage of cheap and abundant legalized weed to make cognitive integration that much more fun - I think it's pretty much Game Over.  Aristotelian-tradition philosophy will survive the onslaught (see, e.g.,  the cases of Gotthelf, Miller, Lennox, the Dougs), while the other traditions will have to adapt and embrace that tradition dialectically or die off.  As attrition chips away at the Old Guard, eudaimonism will almost surely triumph in ethics, if not thoroughly fuck up the alternative theories.  (Insert modified Lebowski reference here: "You see what happens?  Do you see what happens, armchair socialists, when you fail in your educational mission!")  It's only a matter of time.  Second Renaissance, baby!

Hey, just trying to be as way-ahead-of-the-curve dead-on right as I can for my advanced-content-assimilation-technology-aided year-2100 readership here.  (Hi there, fellas! :-p )

:-)

The 2012 Presidential Election

I try to write this blog's contents "for the ages," i.e., for audiences at some point in the indefinite future with all the advanced content-assimilation technology at their avail.  As such I don't care to focus much on the short-term, the ephemeral, the insignificant-in-the-long-run.  I don't think the outcome of the 2012 Presidential election - whether it's Obama who wins reelection, or Romney who wins - would make much of a difference to the long-term well-being of Americans or of the world polity.  Life will go on pretty much "as usual" regardless of the outcome.

This wouldn't matter the slightest bit to those of you reading this in the year 2112, but in one of the recent presidential debates there was a verbal gaffe/oddity from Romney when he referred to "binders full of women."  This tiny little unimportant (in the grand scheme of things) event caused several days of fascinated commentary from TV pundits and bloggers (and blog commenters with nothing better to do with their precious time, apparently).  My only interest in this is a socio-cultural one: why would people be so fascinated by something that no one in ten years' time - much less a year's time - will care about?  This verbal whatever-it-was told those folks-who-have-a-clue nothing they didn't already know about Romney or his policies.

This was nothing more than fodder for that curious phenomenon known as the News Cycle, which is a big "thing" in our culture because the majority of viewers have ADD or something, and have little capacity to isolate what is important long-term from the noise - hence the oft-observed short-lived memory among the citizenry.

Then we have this endlessly-fascinated day-to-day focus on Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight blog.  Is Obama's projected chance of winning 70% today, or 73%?  This is a big deal to some people.  The important question is, Why?  How does it affect the living of one's life, one's character, one's destiny, one's sense of meaning and purpose?  What the fuck difference does it make?

If and whenever the American people need a political sanity check on a daily or semi-daily basis, they can always head on over to Glenn Greenwald's column for ongoing reminders that The System is deeply structurally unsound and changes in personnel do little to affect that.  One could point out that the political system has become a corporatocracy (become one? was it ever not one?), but that hardly explains why the bulk of the American citizenry with its partisan in-ground cognitive biases finds the torture of out-group-members acceptable, or why (as Greenwald constantly harps about, hoping some people might get a clue) the current adminstration decided to grant full and final prosecutorial immunity to officials who (merely short of an official acknowledgment of such) murdered detainees under their control.  Not only that, we now have a president who has a secret, unaccountable, due-process-free "kill list" with American citizens on it.  You can be sure as fuck that had Obama campaigned on this rather than "Hope and Change" in 2008, he'd have been electoral toast.  Or perhaps the American electorate wouldn't care and would prefer ignorance.  That appears to be the case now, after all - with a "binders full of women" gaffe commanding so much more enraptured attention.

America doesn't have leading lights such as Franklin and Jefferson these days, no examples of great political leaders to emulate.  We have a crumbling national infrastructure - not just physical infrastructure, but educational, social, cultural, fiscal.  In 300 years, Snooki will be a footnote at best - does anyone remember the name of her equivalent in ancient Rome? - and yet for some reason very foreign to me (maybe I need to prick up my sociological-analysis antennae more?) she is important in enough people's lives to be a "household name" in 2012 USA.  Speaking of ancient Rome, are we repeating that history?  Americans are, on average, so historically ignorant that they couldn't tell you.  So there you go.

Then we have this long-running mythos - it's a myth especially with our McPrepackaged two-party American political system - that voting for candidates neither of which will fix any of the nation's fundamental problems is somehow an important act, even expressively or participatory.  As to how one's activity of casting a statistically-insignificant vote for deeply flawed candidates in a deeply flawed system somehow contributes to one's well-being, sense of meaning, character or destiny, there is no clear answer that I can fathom.  If it were a choice between Jefferson and Franklin in a non-insane polity, I could see the "civic participation" angle carrying some weight; I would be proud to cast a vote in such an election even understanding the statistical-insignificance aspect.

So that leads to the question of the 2012 Presidential Election: just who would I vote for on the assumption I consider this corrupt, cynical and ignorant system worthy of my grudging participation?  Or at the minimum, which candidate would I endorse?  I don't have a good answer there.  I don't even know how to answer whether - if we're limiting the question to the two candidates with a realistic chance of winning - Obama or Romney would be the better choice for president in the next four years.  I really think it all comes down to the public character of the American people, to whom the leaders are still accountable (to the extent that they still have to garner a majority of electoral votes).  Greenwald's column pretty much tells the story, I think.  For the time being, the situation is grim.  It's a good thing that I don't have to vote for or endorse either of the two McCandidates, given the alternatives.  I'd prefer some combination or other of Gary Johnson (Libertarian) and Jill Stein (Green), but that's out of the question practically speaking (if only because it's two persons, not a hypothetical fusion into one; also, I have little idea as to their qualifications).  That basically leaves the write-in option.

Among well-known public figures with the character, ability, and any remote inclination to preside over our executive branch, who is there to write in?  Would Greenwald himself have any such inclination?  Chomsky?  Krauthammer?  Kurzweil?  Dennett?  Wales?  Gates?  Buffett?  Howard Stern?  (Drawing a blank here.)  Assuming I'm eligible for the office, should I just write in myself?  I'm all for self-government, after all.  Given that it would be a symbolic write-in anyway, does it even really matter?

Does it?

In any event, I think the more significant election issue, long-term-wise, concerns the cannabis legalization initiatives on the ballot in a few states. Carl Sagan would be encouraged by that; the American people could use what cognitive boost they can get.  (Being staunchly pro-self-government - this is supposed to be a free country, right? RIGHT? - I have to ask how it is anyone's fucking business whether I choose to toke or not.  Those of you reading this in 2112 realize, of course, how amazingly stupid our drug laws were ca. 2012, but you do realize, I am sure, that some of us did not stand in the way of reaching the technological singularity ASAFP.)  There is hope yet.

UPDATE: This has come to my attention.  It's President Obama saying something about a philosopher, and fucking up with the usual caricature stuff.  I don't know how many times I have to point out how the understanding of Ayn Rand's philosophy you see on display in such (extensively-researched!) works as Peikoff's Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, Sciabarra's Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical, or Smith's Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist, is wildly at odds with the various "understandings" of her core messages you find out there in the popular media (and, evidently, among our political leaders).  So, rather than going on and on about that again, I'll essentialize my observation thus: Thomas Jefferson is one President of the United States whose grasp of philosophical ideas would not have been so superficial and pathetic.  There's just no disputing this point.  If it's any consolation to whomever it may concern, at least he's not a dingbat.  UPDATE #2: That link with Obama's answer about Rand - the whole link - quite perfectly captures current American popular culture in a nutshell, right down to an asinine meme-posterization of Rand in the comments section.  I'll just leave this (UPDATE #3: and this) right here.  Jefferson and Franklin would be deeply saddened.

Eudaimonia, happiness, self-actualization, well-being

It's not out of the question for a moral theory to command universal assent, but the task seems extraordinarily difficult.  Perhaps "meaning of life" questions are equally difficult to resolve, especially where one worldview has God at the center of the picture and another does not.  (The meaning of life presumably is quite different if God is in the picture than if God is not in the picture - or is it?)  One question at the heart of ethics is, What is ethics for?  As one oft-mentioned-on-this-blog person put it, "What are values - and why does man [sic] need them?" and "Ethics or morality is a code of values to guide man's [sic] choices and actions," the choices and actions which determine the course of one's life.  The latter statement sounds like one of perhaps numerous reasonable ways to formulate a basic idea of what ethics is.  We still have the issue of what ethics is for - why we need a code of values.  What is the code of values there to accomplish?

Four possibilities are mentioned in the title of this blog entry.  They are often thought to be synonymous or near-synonyms, but as in many philosophical endeavors we must tread carefully.

We should, first off, know how or whether to distinguish these four concepts.  Second, we should examine whether any of these are very plausibly the purpose of ethical endeavor.  As we might discover, these two questions are very likely closely intertwined.

For one thing, we already have the problem of whether any of these four concepts serve as a basis for ethical conduct.  In a theistic worldview, are they?  In a theistic worldview, the primary source of ethical obligation is behaving in accordance with the divine will.  The divine will may very well be for us to achieve these four things or some combination of them, but the primacy here lies not with what we seek but with what the divinity wills.  That would concern the foundation of ethics (more or less the subject of "meta-ethics" as I understand the term, and which includes the study of the meaning of moral terminology itself), as distinct from the content of ethics (or "normative ethics," i.e., the study of what we should actually do).  In any case, bringing a theistic worldview into the arena of discussion already brings some complications.  The complications probably multiply in enough ways to occupy moral philosophers for a very large amount of time.  Then again, perhaps, the complications arise from barking up the wrong tree and matters could be simplified in some way.  (A debate about this could be yet another complicating factor, etc.)

Another problem is raised by ethical theories in the general vicinity of Kantianism or stoicism, or perhaps a number of non-Western ethical theories.  (My own understanding of non-Western philosophical traditions needs plenty of beefing up.  I be ignorant of some things.)  Such views challenge the notion that it's happiness that is the proper object of moral conduct.  Sure, happiness is a desirable condition of being, but what's the tie to ethics?  Is it what talk of ethical conduct reduces to?  How do we establish that?  Isn't ethics about doing the right thing?  ("What makes a man, Mr. Lebowski?"  "Dude."  "Huh?"  "Uh, I don't know, sir."  "Isn't it being prepared to do what is right, whatever the cost.  Isn't that what makes a man?"  "Sure, that and a pair of testicles."  "You're joking, but perhaps you're right."  "Mind if I smoke a jay?")  If we make ethics something other than about doing the right thing, are we engaged in some fallacy of reasoning?  To perhaps caricature stoicism, should we take virtue to be its own reward?  If being virtuous is satisfying in its own right, does that make virtue or the satisfaction the primary justification for ethics?

Ethics is about doing the right thing, though that's a logical truism, a tautology.  Does it actually tell us anything?  Can we appeal to something other than (what in the end amounts to) an empty truism?  Can the language of pursuit-of-happiness map exactly onto the language of ethics?

I list the four concepts in the title heading in alphabetical order because I don't know whether any of them should be assigned any obvious priority over the others.  We should be very much prepared to define and distinguish (if need be) these concepts so that we can see what their relation to right conduct (if any) is.  Is ethical conduct aimed at these things?  Are these things not sought directly but rather emerge as a consequence or side-effect of right conduct?  Is one (or more) of these things properly understood upon analysis to be, by its very nature, that in which right conduct consists?

Does virtue lead, necessarily or otherwise, to happiness?  Is it necessary much less sufficient for happiness?

Is all this verbiage simply old wine in a new bottle?

So, what are these four widely-desired and perhaps-synonymous end states?

I'll start the answer-process by noting that Norton does not identify eudaimonia with happiness as is traditionally done, but rather with a condition and feeling attendant upon self-actualization.  It is a distinct condition or feeling in its own right, and intrinsically rewarding in itself, without being reduced to talk of other things save (I think) for self-actualization.  I'm not sure whether Norton precisely identifies eudaimonia with self-actualization but his linking the two concepts so closely raises important issues.  Self-actualization is what it is to actualize one's potentialities; Norton also speaks of the daimon within as being a potentiality to be actualized and in so doing links up ancient ideals of perfection (or telos or completion or wholeness) with modern humanistic psychology which speaks of self-actualization in terms of a hierarchy of needs with the most advanced human-specific needs (aesthetic, spiritual, cognitive - if we are in the mood to echo Hegel's "art, religion, and philosophy" triad) at the apex.  Now, presumably, to actualize one's human (and individually-distinct) potentialities is what it is to satisfy one's needs on the Maslow hierarchy.  But what is the connection if not synonymy here?  Can we imagine someone actualizing his or her potentialities but not fulfilling all human needs in full, or not being happy, or not achieving a condition of well-being?

And what is well-being?  How do we define that, and without hopeless circularity arising somewhere?  In much widespread usage, happiness is defined roughly as an enduring life-satisfaction, which is a qualitative psychological state which "quality of life" measures attempt to capture quantitatively with some measure of success.  But is quality of life what we mean by happiness, or is it more than just psychological satisfaction?  Is quality of life what we mean by well-being?  Is one's quality of life maximized when self-actualization occurs?  Is that what we ultimately mean by eudaimonia?  Is eudaimonia something that can be measured; can we take a quantitative approach with such a concept? Is it about maximization or about something that either is or isn't, with its achievement being non-quantitatively and intrinsically rewarding?

The master dialectician, Aristotle, was cautious about stating the relation between virtue and happiness.  He said that the aim of ethics is happiness (well, eudaimonia, which translators have consistently translated as "happiness," and where happiness involves a full array of goods) and that this is connected in some way with the idea of fulfilling our function (actualizing a potentiality, perhaps, though the meaning of these phrases may be distinct).  He then recognized that virtue is not sufficient for happiness but that happiness requires good fortune, those things which are not within our full control the way our characters are but which affect our happiness nonetheless.  He then also describes how virtue is something sought for its own sake, not merely as a means to happiness, but rather more like something that constitutes happiness at least in the respects we have direct control over.  It would appear, then, that being virtuous in character in Aristotle's sense is that aspect of attaining happiness which is under our control and therefore that which we ought to pursue whatever our fortunes or misfortunes may be.  Is this the right way of lining happiness-talk up with virtue-talk?  Is it the best we can do, as empirically messy as it might sound?  Did Aristotle have something else in mind assuming a more rigorous interpretation?

The empirical messiness about the relation of virtue and happiness (or eudaimonia, or self-actualization, or well-being?) creates intellectual discomfort in many.  It doesn't have the sound of definitive firmness we get from "Ethics is about doing the right thing," as empty as that sounds but as much as it informs "commonsense intuition" about right conduct.  (Here ethical intuitionists jump in with their meta-ethical interpretation.  More on that in due course....)

I think there may be something more to Norton's idea of "the goal of conduct" than to the standard interpretation of Aristotle's.  Norton doesn't concern himself as much with the empirically-contingent or messy (maybe it's not really that messy?) relation between virtue and happiness.  Virtue has to count as sufficient for something in its own right, if we are to non-messily line up virtue-talk with the deliverances of "commonsense intuition."  Under some definition of self-actualization (or eudaimonia, or quality of life, or even of happiness?), is virtue sufficient for it?  Is what we as humans "are meant to do" to actualize ourselves in terms of what we ourselves directly control - our character - such that progressive or ongoing actualization of that potentiality is what constitutes (fill in the term for The Good here)?  Would that explain how eudaimonia in Norton's sense is intrinsically rewarding?  This sounds perhaps like a reconciliation of Aristotle and the stoics on the question of virtue and its reward.  How plausible is it, though, and is it plausible enough to command universal assent from humans of all traditions?  That would be a pretty tall order.  But I think there's something about it that strikes at some deeply important moral truth.  It doesn't commit us to the problem stated more or less as: "Happiness is the aim of ethical conduct but ethical conduct doesn't guarantee happiness, so where does that leave us?"  Self-actualization also means the actualization of all human potentialities - cognitive, emotional, spiritual, etc. - which arguably under a proper interpretation includes - exhaustively - all the things we have to say about right moral conduct.  (We'd have here something like a process of elimination - name something that "commonsense/folk moral wisdom" indicates is right and we end up not finding any counterexamples to what self-actualization entails.  Norton has many of these things covered under such headings as "the social entailments of self-actualization" and "love and congeniality of excellences."  Gewirth in Self-Fulfillment incorporates a principle of generic consistency (or PGC) which he argues arise from a dialectically-necessary process of reasoning about action) which leads to principles of rights and respect for people's freedom/autonomy/self-direction and of their well-being/self-fulfillment.  The moral bases get rather comprehensively covered here.)

What I think is fundamentally Aristotelian in all this, has to do with the primary action involved that constitutes the progressive or ongoing actualization of human potentiality: the utmost exercise of our human capacity for reason and thought, our intellect, in its full implications, as our guiding or regulating principle in living.  I sense a converge with Kantian bases of ethical conduct as well.

If we take these two giants of moral philosophy, Aristotle and Kant, and identify the fundamental similarities they converge upon, it is their deep reverence for the human capacity for reason.  In its full implication, the utmost exercise of our capacity for reason will entail acknowledging the rightful role of emotion (among other important features of the human condition) in our conscious living.  That seems to be of supreme moral importance to right conduct, to human living, to meaning-of-life questions, at least as far as the Western moral tradition goes.  Can it be understood in a more universal way, not exclusive to the West - something that everyone everywhere can relate to intimately?

I think it goes something like this: What it is to be human - understood in terms of human potentiality - is what prompts moral conduct in us, i.e., what motivates us morally speaking to actualize that potentiality (those potentialities common to all humans and those that are individuating and distinctive to the person).  "What it is to be human" determines the sort of conduct appropriate for such.  This raises yet another question: What is it to be human?  What are our human potentialities?  We possess the capacity for reason, for emotion, for love and for hate, for violence and for peace, for health and for sloth, for kindness and for greed, for creativity and for laziness, and on and on.  How do we pick out something like reason, something that is distinctive to humans but also not the only thing about humans? Opposable thumbs are also distinctive to humans, but what does that mean for right conduct?  Exercising one's opposable thumbs can be used for activities traditionally regarded as right as well as for wrong.  Exercising emotion can lead to much sensitivity but also to thoughtlessness and emotionalism.  And how about reason?  What does exercising reason lead to?  Reason can be used as an instrument to construct a nuclear bomb with the aim of flattening a non-threatening city.  But what about reason in its full implication?  Can it say, without begging the relevant questions, that doing so would hinder our own self-actualization?  The argument is that exercising our capacity for reason and/or emotion will instill us with empathy and a sense of respect for the freedom of others to use their own minds for their own ends.  So, how do we show that rather than it being an ad hoc justification for existing beliefs and practices?  How do we determine that people using their intellectual capacities to the utmost will behave as Aristotle did and not as Michael Corleone did?  (And let's not forget that Don Corleone had a code of behavior such that "rats get what's coming to them.")  The intuition is there but the path of justification is not so obvious.

There's a doctrine of "refined" desire going back to the ancients which speaks in terms of right desire and action as those desires and actions a person would have and take if they are well-informed.  Say that a philistine takes pleasure in base things (we assume a knowledge here of what is base) and so considers him or herself happy.  But are they really happy?  Do they only think they are happy?  Or, to make it more interesting: If they are happy, wouldn't they like to know if there's a way that they could be even more happy?  One would think that, quite naturally, they would like to know that.  And so moral philosophy is (or would appear to be) up and running.  There could be no argument against people wanting to be as well-informed as they can reasonably be (given time constraints, etc.), which therefore requires a life of disciplined inquiry into the true, the good, the beautiful, etc.  A person of refined taste will therefore be in a much better position from which to assess "quality of life," to take pleasure and find happiness in better things, etc.  We should therefore like to seek - as a means that also constitutes the end of the good life - a life of learning, of knowledge, of understanding, etc., i.e., a life of wisdom-loving.  We have here very much a "classical" idea about virtue and the good life.  And if we live "the life of the mind" we are presumably more inclined toward science and less inclined toward violence.  It just goes with the territory, doesn't it?  But how about the Buddhist or some variety or other of Eastern mystic that insists that our aim is best secured by disengaging from attachments and from the ego, with an accompanying vision of human nature or what it is to be human?  How is that reconciled with these considerations about living the life of the mind?  (They do have to use the mind in order to convince us that their route to serenity is right, but the end result they seek isn't one defined by "using one's intellect to the utmost," at least as I quite-inadequately understand it.)  We would, after all, like to know if there are principles of living that command universal appeal.  Perhaps the Buddhists have hit upon some very important truths of the matter but could use some revision, amendment, or fusion with the classical/Aristotelian ideal of intellect-worship.

So where have we gotten with all this?  At the least, I think we have at least a slightly better picture of what considerations we need to deal with and of how to proceed.  We started out with a listing of some key concepts in moral theory centering around "quality of life" and proceeded to a semi-detailed discussion of "what it is to be human," and certainly these things are connected.  (At the very least, how do we know about quality-of-life without knowing what-it-is-to-be-human?  Surely the latter has to have some bearing on the former.)  Is moral theory "about" how we go about tying these ideas together in a non-messy, logically-necessary way?  Logical necessity can be quite the tall order, but it sounds like a challenge worth taking up.  For one thing, we could specify that "quality of life" for humans takes on a distinctly moral meaning, i.e., that we can't separate talk of a person's quality of life from talk of the quality of the person's character.  That would indicate that "happiness" as it is widely understood doesn't give us a logically-compelling association with "doing what is right."  This provides us with at least a couple options:  Enrich our conception of happiness to something other than that which is widely understood (to one more along the lines of the ancients, where virtue is central to the picture and where one takes pleasure in "higher" things), or figure out a different basis or aim, besides happiness, for moral behavior.  And what about this nebulous-sounding concept, "perfection"?

To be continued....

A Lexicon of every philosopher?

In the essentialized comprehensiveness department, couldn't we streamline a lot of shit by creating a lexicon of every philosopher in the vein of the Ayn Rand one?  I'd fucking love an Immanuel Kant Lexicon that saves me and everyone else with precious little time on their hands the tedium of reading the Critique and to be able to go straight to whatever he said about this or that topic.  It would be an awesome corrective to all the intellectually-lazy strawmen that float around out there, too. Why the hell hasn't this been done yet?  If there's one thing the Randians know how to do, it's how to market ideas all capitalistic-like.  Isn't there some germ of truth in this example for philosophers of the world to follow (at least the marketing part if not the capitalism part)?  This can mean only one thing in this philosophers' case: The Ultimate Philosophy Lexicon.  Fuck yeah.  It has to be perfected first....

In the Name of the Best Premises Within Us,

The problem with Andrew Sullivan (and American public culture), Exhibit A

Re: Catholicism and the Romney/Ryan ticket, Sullivan writes:

A small word of thanks to Cardinal Dolan, Robert George and K-Lo for helping shift the Catholic vote massively toward Obama with their summer campaign for religious liberty. And special thanks to Paul Ryan. No actual Catholic could ever find anything but puerile cruelty in the works of Ayn Rand, or rally to the idea that home-care for the elderly should be sacrificed to reduce tax rates for the super-rich. Paul Ryan believes that the basic principles of Rand can be compatible with Catholicism. American Catholics are just not that dumb or confused about their faith.

Hoo boy. Where does one even begin?

It's like he takes pride in being ignorant.

He's not alone.

The outright distortion of Ayn Rand's ideas in our popular culture has become a persistent, pathological pattern.  Are people really this bad at understanding even an accessible philosopher?  Do differences in philosophical viewpoint (namely in regard to her advocacy of capitalism and her concept of egoism) license the non-stop barrage of outrageous and intellectually incompetent smears that have been leveled against Rand and her ideas?  I don't know if I've ever seen anyone else so thoroughly and recklessly smeared as Rand, or ideas so thoroughly smeared as Objectivist ones, and in a manner so insensitive to context in either case.  Even Rand's horrible polemics against Kant hit closer to home than these ridiculous commentaries do.  This is some fucked up shit, there's just no mincing words here.  It is a sadder commentary on the state of our culture, than anything.  A culture of people who thought like Rand did would be way too Aristotelian to come anywhere close to being this fucked-up.

We have a leading public-affairs blogger in Andrew Sullivan, who can't so much as be bothered to get a clue about an intellectual who has become a prominent figure in the American public discourse.  I can't imagine this kind and degree of widespread piss-poor treatment of her ideas happening, were she around to defend herself and speak for herself as she was in the 1960s.  There simply would be no way that these people could get away with it.  In the present day, what accountability will Sullivan face for his blatantly idiotic comment?

How do we expect to have an intelligent discussion of public affairs and move the dialogue forward if standards have fallen this low?

In addition to this here blog, there's intellectually responsible, high-quality Rand-interpretive literature out there, for those who have such considerable shortcomings in reading comprehension skills as not to understand Rand's ideas first-hand.  (I mean, these bloggers, commentators, op-ed writers, et al, don't seem to even minimally grasp what Rand said much less meant, it's that fucking bad.)  Such literature includes:

Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl, eds., The Philosophic Thought of Ayn Rand (University of Illinois Press, 1984)

Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (Dutton, 1991)

Chris Matthew Sciabarra, Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical (Penn State Press, 1995)

The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies - various articles by such authors as Roger Bissell, Stephen Hicks, Lester Hunt, Roderick Long, Douglas Rasmussen, and others (1999-present)

Tara Smith, Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist (Cambridge, 2006)

* Robert Mayhew, ed., Essays on Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead (Lexington Books, 2006)

Robert Mayhew, ed., Essays on Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged (Lexington Books, 2009)

Allan Gotthelf and James Lennox, eds., Metaethics, Egoism, and Virtue: Studies in Ayn Rand's Normative Theory (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011)

Leonard Peikoff, Understanding Objectivism (1983 lecture course edited by Michael Berliner) (New American Library, 2012)

Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy entry (Neera Badhwar and Roderick Long, 2012)

Allan Gotthelf and Gregory Salmieri, eds., Ayn Rand: A Companion to Her Works and Thought (Wiley-Blackwell, forthcoming)

* - One essay in this collection the smear-artists may be especially interested in evading is Andrew Bernstein's "Understanding the 'Rape' Scene in The Fountainhead."

Any respectable, comprehensive, scholarly work on Ayn Rand's ideas in the future will have to engage this secondary literature.  The recent books by Jennifer Burns, Anne Heller, and Gary Weiss hardly (if at all) touch upon this literature in any meaningful way.

(Nearly a dozen works just right there - that's a lot of literature for so many Rand-commentators to be ignoring!  Is it mere coincidence?  Is it sufficient for them to read only the two big novels while skimming the speeches?  Is this how scholarship or journalism is done these days?  Is Rand only of interest because of her influence, not because of what the best interpretative commentaries have to say, and regardless of how well her professed admirers understand and apply her ideas?  Does the fact of her large influence still excuse the shoddiness of their own descriptions of her ideas?  Is Marx's influence on the Soviets the basis on which we should talk about Marx's ideas, while having next to zero grasp of what Marx actually said or meant?  Let's also not forget to ask: How would an Aristotelianized culture approach Rand's ideas?  Better yet, what would our hypothetical present-day Aristotle say about Rand's ideas?  No one seems to want to touch that one with a ten-foot pole.  Why?  Have they just not been imaginative enough to even raise or ponder such a question?  Has it never occurred to them to ask themselves, "What would the great philosophers say on issue X?"  If so, why?  We've got a decadent culture that would make Franklin and Jefferson puke; wouldn't they be interested in the reasons and causes?  I mean, everyone who's given it a moment's thought knows that Jefferson and Franklin would puke if they saw what's become of the Republic.  Would Jefferson and Franklin and Aristotle dare to ignore the secondary Rand literature, or to go out of their way to misinterpret the primary literature?  Would they ever take pride in being ignorant?  What, am I the crazy one here?)

___

There is also the matter of smears of Ayn Rand the person, some of which are so disgusting, so reprehensible, so vicious, so intellectually and morally negligent, that they shouldn't even have to be addressed, but there are a couple smears that keep circulating around the internets which have the potential to mislead some well-meaning people.  (The original propagators of these smears are not committing honest errors in the midst of a spirit of objectivity, accuracy, fairness, context, or anything like these noble things.  They are malicious and shameful characters.)  These smears are:

1. "Ayn Rand, despite espousing a limited government philosophy, accepted Social Security and Medicare benefits in her old age."  This is alleged proof of hypocrisy on her part.  However, there is a publicly-available statement by Miss Rand on the subject of accepting government monies or benefits.  (Her argument is problematic for other reasons - namely as to whether one has a right to accept government benefits depending on the contents of the recipients' beliefs - but not on the grounds she gave for its being morally permissible to accept government benefits.)

Evidence that this smear arises from malicious intent: (A) The smear-propagators didn't do any thorough fact-checking to determine whether Rand was in fact acting against her principles.  They could have at the least contacted the Ayn Rand Institute for comment, as a responsible fact-gatherer would.  (B) The revelation that Rand accepted these benefits was contained in a book, 100 Voices: The Oral History of Ayn Rand.  (This book was released in part to counter some of the negative things said about Rand published in the Burns and Heller books; there are legitimate concerns about the editorial decisions for 100 Voices to "suppress" more negative testimonials given that the testimonials included are almost overwhelmingly positive.  The book is, however, a needed counter-balance to the negative commentaries.  The ARI could hardly anticipate how the content of 100 Voices would be used by unscrupulous assholes to add further to the anti-Rand commentary out there.)  The use of this revelation was highly selective, taken out of the context of the entire book.  The honorable thing to do at the very least would have been to mention the essential content of the rest of the book along with this factoid.  One thing these dishonorable sonsofbitches decided to ignore was testimonial from Allan Gotthelf, a leading Aristotle scholar and student of Rand, who said that attending Rand's epistemology "workshops" was "the equivalent of having Aristotle in the room."  (I suppose one can excuse the sonsofbitches given their ignorance of Gotthelf and his work so as not to realize what an eyebrow-raiser his comment was.  That then makes them ignorant sonsofbitches in addition to being dishonorable ones for the reasons stated above.)

2. Ayn Rand "worshipped a child-murderer, using him as a model for her heroes."  I submit that this smear is malicious on the face of it.  First off, Rand's commentary on Hickman was contained in her journals, published as Journals of Ayn Rand in 1997.  These juicy journal entries were just sitting there for a decade for any intellectual thug to come along and seize upon, and yet no one bothered to notice them.  Well, actually, no.  Serious Rand scholars knew about them.  After all, Sciabarra noticed and made mention of it; this is even footnoted for easy access right there on the Hickman wikipedia page.  Strangely enough, Sciabarra didn't draw the conclusion that Rand modeled her heroes on Hickman.  I wonder why?  Oh, that's right.  It's because Sciabarra is literally obsessed (as is any cognitively healthy thinker or scholar) with the whole notion of context, motherfuckers.  As in, what is the context (historical, literary, whatever factors come to bear on it) of Rand's intellectual development?  Were Rand's later thoughts and writings a reaction to or repudiation of her earlier thoughts?  Hell, did Rand even do anything like "worship" the child-murderer?  I have to admit, the Journals are something I didn't really get into; I think the Letters are much better and more interesting (actually, downright engaging - a rare truly-must-read, literary river of gold, etc.) as a look into Rand's development as a thinker (and her awesomeness as a human being).  All truth be told, I found the Journals boring enough that once I put it down I could hardly pick it up.  But I had to go back and look because this whole Hickman thing didn't really draw me in the first time around ca. '97.  And now I know why: because Hickman's role in her intellectual development was so inconsequential.  And her comments on Hickman couldn't even remotely - not honestly - be considered "worship."  Her journal entries in this regard were ramblings that mainly focused on something she found awry about the society's reaction not simply to his murderous ways but to his defiant ways, namely, that he didn't care what society thought, and that's what made people so much more angry at him.  The "don't care what others think" does show up in the character of Howard Roark but in the best way possible, not in the socio/psychopathic sense that the idiots keep smearing Rand with.

Anyway, these journal entries go unnoticed for over a decade because the lazy idiots never bothered to read any Sciabarra.  But the subject comes up in the Burns book, and all of a sudden they're a big deal. But what's this now?  They focus their attention on the Burns book, but it's a selective and out-of-context focus.  There are other Rand books that have come out in temporal proximity to Burns's.  There's Prof. Smith's 2006 book, there's 100 Voices, there's Peikoff's Understanding Objectivism just recently published, there's all those books listed above.  Are we seriously expected to believe that the smear-mongers just accidentally failed to notice this other literature?

These people would make Socrates and Aristotle just fucking puke their guts out.

Which necessarily calls forth the following question, in the context of this blog entry's original focus: What would Aristotle think of Andrew Sullivan and The Dish?  Would he be all that impressed?  Is "Bias and Balanced" an Aristotelian sort of masthead, whatever the humorous intent?  Would Aristotle appreciate Sullivan's excruciatingly concrete-bound way of filling up his blog with short-range-focused trivia pertaining to the political news cycle, or would he consider that to be a massive waste of time given the long-range focus of philosophy?  At some point a philosopher sees enough concretes to be able to identify the principle involved, and move further up the cognitive ladder integrating those principles, as (abstract) units themselves, with other principles.  It's called unit-economy, motherfuckers, and it's supposed to characterize, as a norm, the specifically human mode of mental functioning.  (How else do you think Rand achieved a river-of-gold writing style as evidenced by these Lexicon entries?  By filling up pages with a large number of intellectually redundant units?  You do realize how the "Perfectivism" book presently in the works aims to condense a lot of useful information into a short amount of space, right?  Why settle for anything less than a page-turner, amiright?)  There was a time when I would learn things from reading The Dish, but that time has passed; I've integrated and essentialized the gist of it and moved on to making broader integrations and essentializations.

Note again that The Dish is a "leading" public-affairs blog - in a broken, proto-dystopian culture in which mainstream debates on "the issues" can be only so intelligent.  But the issue - The Issue - is the broken culture itself.  It is a culture that could really shape up with a generous injection of Aristotelianism in particular and habituated (automatized), unit-economizing, essentialized critical thinking in general.   Ayn Rand wrote that the highest responsibility of philosophers is to serve as the guardians and integrators of human knowledge (ITOE).  Now that sounds right up Aristotle's alley, dunnit?  By contrast, all that Sullivan can seem to muster, at least in regard to Ayn Rand, is puerility.

P.S. Toward the end of my previous blog entry I asked the following: "Ever hear one mention - one fucking mention - of Tara Smith's, or Peikoff's, or Sciabarra's work in the lamestream media?  On the usual "liberal" news sites like the Huffington Post?  Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish?"  We now have our answer: No, of course he wouldn't mention these works; he's proudly ignorant of them.  But he will throw in some gratuitious, arbitrary and vicious remarks about an Ayn Rand that doesn't remotely resemble the Ayn Rand discussed in these works, much less the Ayn Rand as understood by probably a great many of his readers.  I guess he just doesn't give a shit.  What else might he be spouting off ignorantly about?  Hmmm?

Wolff, Romney, Marx, and Rand

First, a little bit of background: About a year and a half ago, in the month or so leading up to the release of the first installment of the Atlas Shrugged movie, I made the not-all-that-wise move of posting a link to a blog entry of mine in the comments section of Robert Paul Wolff's blog, which had the effect of "stealing" a bit of his audience for a bit of time before my posted comment was removed.  For that I apologize.  As I came to realize, blog etiquette tends to involve building up an audience in a more fair-and-square fashion, the exact contours of which are often discovered through a process of trial-and-error, that incident being an error on my part.  (I can only imagine what many bloggers and site admins have to put up with in comments sections; what little experience I had with it led me to turn off comments to this blog and invite feedback by email-only.  But I'm so wonderfully self-correcting, what feedback do I really need? :-)

Okay, that said, let's proceed.  Recently as I was rummaging around for content online (an ever-ongoing process, BTW, not just a recent thing - see this blog's "masthead"), I encountered this blog entry by Prof. Wolff, and I find it (in essence) chillingly spot-on:

There has been a good deal of speculation about the hour-long video that has surfaced of the now truly infamous supposedly private Mitt Romney speech to $50,000 a plate donors.  [I use the adjective "infamous" in its proper meaning, "detestable or shamefully malign," not in its current misusage as simply "widely known."]  Present in  the room were Romney, the fat cats, and servants scurrying about bringing the food and clearing the dirty plates.  The angle of the video makes it clear that it was not recorded by one of the guests, so we can only conclude that one of the wait staff managed to set up a camera and film the proceedings. 

Upper classes always ignore the presence of their servants, a fact that gave rise to an entire genre of eighteenth century French comedy.  [Think "The Marriage of Figaro" without the immortal music.]  Despite all the evidence to the contrary, they seem constitutionally incapable of remembering that the working class is populated by actual human beings with eyes and ears and fully functional intelligence.  This failure is ideological, not personal, in nature.  Were the rich and powerful of the world to acknowledge the full humanity of those they exploit, they would find it difficult to sustain the easy air of superiority that they consider their birthright.
...
At Romney's rich donor dinner, it is a virtual certainty that the wait staff consisted of men [and perhaps women -- one cannot tell from the video] who make too little money to pay federal income taxes, and hence are among the 47% whom Romney says are dependent moochers who cannot take personal responsibility for their lives.  These people were obviously in full view of Romney as he stood at the podium and spoke for more than an hour.  The fact that it obviously never occurred to him that he was talking about people present in the room says more about Romney than any formal biography or hatchet job expose possibly can.

First off, I'll take issue mainly with some things in the middle paragraph here.  "This failure is ideological, not personal, in nature."  I'm not quite sure how to take this statement.  Is it that a capitalistic ideology (which Romney & Co. do buy into in some form or other) causes people like Romney to be oblivious to the humanity of waitstaff at his gatherings, or is it a moral failing, or is it something like a cognitive bias, a problem that besets just about everyone (and which philosophers see as their duty responsibility to correct as best they can, as part of the knowledge-guarding-and-integrating process)?  Is it part of the Romney ideology that the "servants" don't possess full humanity?  Is it part of capitalistic ideology?  Is it some process by which Romney's or anyone else's having adopted a capitalistic ideology leads to ignoring the full humanity of the "servants"?  I think it is more of a personal failing, in the cognitive-bias sense rather than in a moral sense (though I won't rule out the moral sense).  Anyway, that's nitpicking one sentence.  The other sentence is the very ideologically-contentious one that there's "exploiting" going on.

But first, let's say that my idea of a much better (utopian?) society is one that is capitalistic (as Wolff's other blog posts make clear, he'd endorse markets but not capitalism) while at the same time intellectually-enlightened, philosophically-imbued.  (Would Plato, Aristotle, and Kant be capitalists [ideologically speaking, not "moneybags"] today, assuming they got together with all data available to intellectually-diligent middle-aged folks today and hashed things out among them, perhaps with Jefferson and Franklin and a bud-sharing Carl Sagan thrown in the mix?  I'll get to this more in a bit.)  So, assuming some uncorrect biases don't creep in too much, you wouldn't have Romney-types being so oblivious to the waitstaff-types.  (This is where Wolff gets it spot-on, although for all we know some of the waitstaff may be putting themselves through business school so that they can jump class-ranks. ;-)  So what we do know is that Romney is great with money (making it, minimizing tax liabilities, etc.), kind of a boring douchebag, and big on Mormonism, while his supposedly heavily-Rand-influenced running mate is also a douchebag (if only for his views on medical - medical! - marijuana and, now, same-sex marriage).

I want to also say that Prof. Wolff and I are coming from quite-different contexts.  In his "about me" section, he writes: "As I observed in one of my books, in politics I am an anarchist, in religion I am an atheist, and in economics I am a Marxist. I am also, rather more importantly, a husband, a father, a grandfather, and a violist."  I'm not any of these things; in fact I once made the observation when reading this that anarchism is the opposite of politics and atheism the opposite of religion, so what does that make Marxism with respect to economics?  Of course things are more complicated than that; he clarifies that he's an anarchist in the sense that we aren't obligated to obey the law just because it is the law (quite sensible, though what if it isn't "just a law," but a law integrally decided-upon within a separation-of-powers system? complications...).  Many people mean many different things by "atheism"; I don't identify as such but I might be one according to some folks or definitions.  (How would we know if there's a God or gods?  Haven't found a satisfactory answer yet.)  But most significantly, as far as ideological things go, is our very different context when it comes to Marxism and capitalism.  I've been ideologically a capitalist since just about the time I ever got interested in politics, which is before adulthood, and have yet to seriously entertain Marxism or socialism.  (I've had to seriously entertain anarchism in its David Friedmanite manifestation.  But still far removed from socialism.)

My intellectual context?  At this point it's been influenced by Ayn Rand well more than anyone.  It's not so much that I think Rand is so much more the be-all and end-all than everyone else out there; it's just a matter of biographical fact that I've been exposed to her ideas quite a bit more than those of any other philosopher out there.  Some folks - like a certain leading philosopher blogger I'd rather not name, but who's a complete douchebag and imbecile whenever the subject of Rand comes up - might say that this is so much philosophical time wasted.  My response to that is: you have to know my context.  There's a lot in Rand to be inspired by, though my immersion in Objectivist thought was quite extensive and thorough: I listened to well over 100 hours of Peikoff lecture courses, including the crucial, now-published-in-paperback Understanding Objectivism.  I had much exposure to Objectivist internet forums, including Jimmy Wales's Moderated Discussion of Objectivist Philosophy (MDOP) back in the day.  I've interacted with real, live Advanced Students of Objectivism who are perfectly normal and fun people.  (I've had online interactions with ASO's who weren't so great, cognitively biased partisans and dogmatists a lot of them.)  I've read abundant amounts of the secondary literature - the intensively researched Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical by Sciabarra, The Philosophic Thought of Ayn Rand edited by "Dougs" Ramussen and Den Uyl, to name a couple - and have spent thousands of hours thinking about these ideas.  I would say that the most pivotal secondary literature is Understanding Objectivism; without that absorbed into the fiber of your being, you don't really have Objectivism as Rand meant it to be understood - not just as a doctrine, but as a way - a method - of thinking (which in turn affects one's way of living).  And I've come to the conclusion that this way of thinking is neo-Aristotelian, perfectivist (hence what's in my own "about me" section).  And you just can't refute perfectivism. :-)

Now, my understanding of Rand probably parallels Wolff's understanding of Marx.  By much the same token, my understanding of Marx is probably comparable to his understanding of Rand, i.e., I wouldn't go to him as a source on what Rand said and meant.  Also by the same token, it's evident that he has built up an impressive edifice of thought surrounding Marx's economic doctrines.  I'd have to spend thousands of hours of integration to know what he knows; this is simply the nature of specialized expertise, just like Romney has his own specialized expertise requiring thousands of hours of integration of knowledge.  As Rand said, integration is the cardinal function of human consciousness.  It's right there in the Lexicon. :-)  I have no idea if Marx said something similar.  But this gets to another point I want to make: the nature of dialectic.  Could there be a productive dialectic between a Rand and a Marx, despite their clashing contexts?  ("Clashing contexts" is a phrase that may be recognizable to ASO's.  But it would be applicable in the context of Sciabarra's treatment as well, dialectics being "the art of context-keeping" in his phrasing).  If Rand and Marx could adequately grasp each other's context - which is an aim of dialectic if not a simple matter of empathy - if they could be set walking in the same direction rather than arguing at cross-purposes, what kind of "synthesis" might emerge?  I ask this as a perfectivist.  We all have the same set of empirical facts in front of us; how do we go about integrating them in a commonly-accepted way?

Above I asked what the result of Plato, Aristotle, and Kant dialecticizing might be.  Would they support capitalism?  Socialism?  Something else?  Before we even get to that question, though, what are things they would agree about?  Being philosophers, they would (I'm pretty sure) agree that using our powers of reasoning to the utmost would be most desirable as a policy of living.  Guess what - Rand agrees with that.  Would they agree about ethics being eudaimonistic in a more or less strictly Aristotelian sense?  A perfectivist sense, which I think Aristotle was?  (Perfectivism says: If Aristotelian eudaimonism is found faulty, let's find something better; indeed, let's find the best thing we can possibly find within the limits of our cognitive abilities.  But isn't that perfectivist attitude that of Aristotelian eudaimonism?  Can it be refuted?  Put another way, aren't philosophers qua philosophers cognitive perfectivists?  Is perfectivism different from a most rigorous application of dialectical ability, or is it synonymous with it?  If the latter, how do you refute that?)  Anyway, I'm big on eudaimonism, which I take to be a practical (from praxis) corollary of cognitive perfectivism.  I think Rand would agree on that as well.

Let's take a couple key statements by Rand, indicating her approach to philosophical hierarchy ("hierarchy" being another term well-known to ASO's seeing as it's a central focus of Understanding Objectivism, after all, and further indicative of cognitive perfectivism).  First, there is her statement about the theme of Atlas Shrugged.  (Hold on, I've got to review/refresh, spiral-like - oh there's another UO term - my understanding of Rand's ideas about literary theme.  You're invited to join me here; that link should help you.  I might have to click on some of the cross-referenced links for integration purposes, so this could take a bit of time.  You do realize that Rand put forth formulations of her philosophy in more than novels, right, newbies?  What, did you already know what the theme of Atlas Shrugged was?  That it isn't "The superman gets to prosper, while the weak can rot"?)


"Its theme is: the role of the mind in man’s existence—and, as corollary, the demonstration of a new moral philosophy: the morality of rational self-interest."  --For the New Intellectual, 88


Now, the morality of rational self-interest as a corollary.  See above about eudaimonism as a corollary of cognitive perfectivism.

So, we have "the role of mind in man's existence."  Now, another quote: "My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."  (Heroism or nobility - didn't Rand approvingly quote something from Nietzsche about nobility - see the 1968 introduction to the 25th anniversary edition of The Fountainhead - and didn't Kaufmann in a footnote to that and another aphorism direct our attention to . . . Aristotle?  Damn.  [Integration, see.])  And then there's this: "I am not primarily an advocate of capitalism, but of egoism; and I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason. If one recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it consistently, all the rest follows.  This—the supremacy of reason—was, is and will be the primary concern of my work, and the essence of Objectivism."  And what - in full - does Rand mean by "reason"?  It's spelled out in detail - well, in outline form - in the chapters on epistemology in Peikoff's Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand ("OPAR"), and in fuller detail (i.e., with respect to cognitive integration, hierarchy, and context) in Understanding Objectivism.  (Noticing a pattern here?)  Then we get Rand's statement on the basic virtue of her ethical system, the virtue of rationality.  (What, she didn't say that man's basic virtue is selfishness?  But but, but but but, what about the title to her book?  Consider the context of her titling her book that way, such as the time period she did so, and then consider what she actually says in the introduction and the lead essay, "The Objectivist Ethics," where the first selection in the Lexicon entry on rationality comes from.)

Now comes something ostensibly more controversial in substance: Individualism.  If one bothers to pay attention to Galt's radio address, one encounters this: "By the grace of reality and the nature of life, man - every man - is an end in himself, he exists for his own sake, and the achievement of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose."  In full context, is there something - anything - objectionable here?  Do we go out of our way, as intellectually mediocre Rand critics often do, to misunderstand "for his own sake"?  (Personally I construe it to be the same in meaning as the title of chapter 1 (along with the substance of the book's essential theme) of paradigmatic eudaimonist David L. Norton's Personal Destinies: A Philosophy of Ethical Individualism: "The ethical priority of self-actualization."  But maybe that's just me, reading too charitably into Rand's "new concept of egoism."  Hah!)  In any case, we have in Rand's philosophical hierarchy an individualistic ethics, prior to her advocacy of capitalism in politics and economics.

Is capitalism the logical extension of individualism to politics?  Is political libertarianism (in the usual sense - e.g., the political philosophy of Nozick or Eric Mack or, indeed, of Rand herself) genuinely expressive of individualism, or of respecting the humanity of persons, or treating persons as ends in themselves?  Would Marxism as an alternative value individualism?  I would have to ask someone, like Prof. Wolff, who has studied Marx very indepth.  On a charitable reading, I would guess that Marx thought that capitalism produced an "alienated individuality," an atomistic individuality, one that undermined sociability and community, one that is ahistorical, perhaps (supposedly) a "Stirnerite" version Marx is famous for critiquing.  But isn't it most fortunate that Rand did not endorse such an "individualism"!  Need I post the Lexicon entry for "altruism" as Rand actually meant it?  (I'm kind of tired out with posting links at this point.)  Need I quote and re-quote Rand's statement about man being a social being but not in the sense that the moral cannibals (see We the Living) mean?  Need I refer to Sciabarra for the appropriate context-keeping treatment of the subject?  And of course, if we have a perfectivistic eudaimonism, we have to take into account Aristotle on sociability.

Anyway, I don't know if Prof. Wolff would object to a proper individualism; but let's say that he does.  We then come to the question of whether capitalism is expressive of, or instead undermines, individualism.  This is a very serious and important question.  On the question of the proper socio-political system for human beings, many (individual, invaluable, potentially-flourishing) lives hang in the balance.  If capitalism is inherently exploitative, it means some humans treating others merely as means, not respecting their humanity fully (whether they intend it or not), it means individuals to that extent alienated from one another, it means a suppression of human flourishing.  For all the appearance of capitalist acts between adults being consented-to, do the relations involve presuppose an unjust power-dynamic?  This requires a serious answer without begging important questions or dismissing "Marxists" in the unforgiving (and arguably quite context-insensitive) fashion that some Objectivists have recommended.  There is a dialectical tension here crying out for resolution.  And let's make it clear: Rand advocated reason and individualism as primaries.  If capitalism is somehow shown to undermine these, then it's capitalism that has to go.  I take Rand at her word; individualism is primary to her normative philosophy, and not some post-hoc rationalization for capitalist politics (as many of her intellectually-mediocre and suspiciously projective-sounding opponents charge).

At this point in time I do not have a knock-down argument (by which I mean one that could convince someone like Prof. Wolff) showing that capitalism is the only right social-political system on individualist grounds - or, as Rand would put it, the only system proper to humans given their requirements for living as rational beings, given "the role of the mind in man's existence."  I do think that an intellectually-enlightened "Aristotelian utopia" would have the resources to deal voluntarily and charitably with people's safety-net needs should (capitalistic) institutions based on private ownership of the means of production fail to meet those people's flourishing-based needs.  (When I hear socialists describe their own views, I tend to hear "worker ownership of the means of production," but really haven't given that idea much thought given my context of reading Mises and Nozick: "What if a worker saves enough money and decides to open and direct his own business, using entrepreneurial skill?"  Where does it go from there?  Is that okay, but corporate-forms of ownership not?  Do we need to distinguish private property or capitalism from corporatism?  In an intellectually-advanced society, do people become their own independent bosses anyway, making the corporate form obsolete?  Can the corporate-form realistically be reformed for the better?  Etc....)  But, thinking in more comprehensive terms than that, such a "utopia" would also have the intellectual resources by which to resolve disputes concerning whether capitalism is indeed the best system for human beings.*  I really don't know how Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Jefferson, Franklin, and Sagan (and Marx and Nozick and Rawls and Rand and Chomsky and Mises and...), after giving all sides a full and fair hearing would resolve these existing disputes to everyone's high standards of satisfaction.

I'd like to think that eudaimonistic individualism, however, is not so much open to dispute.  (And understood in perfectivist terms, how would it be?)  One thing that needs to happen in any event for a productive debate on politics to happen is for people to adequately understand their opponents' viewpoints to the opponents' satisfaction.  I've seen misunderstandings from opponents of other people's ideas (not just of Rand's ideas, though perhaps especially of her ideas) happen way too much and to too ridiculous an extent for there to be much of a productive debate as things stand now.  That's why hierarchy matters: what we need, first, is a (perfective) betterment of people's cognitive faculties so that such misunderstanding becomes one less (major) obstacle we have to deal with in the pursuit of what is true and right.

* - The intellectual resources in such a scenario would be put to use addressing a lot of challenges - perhaps most importantly scientific ones, perhaps most importantly spiritual ones - and not just this one.

EDIT: This article just crossed my field of vision.  "Gee, what's this whole Ayn Rand thing all about in American political discussion?"  From the perspective of someone who thinks in terms of "spiral progression of knowledge," "sense of life," "psycho-epistemology," "measurement-omission," "rule of fundamentality," "rationality as the primary virtue," and other such Objectivism-isms, I find a major clashing of contexts going on here.  Right now we've got a bunch of ordinary citizens and Randophobes (the author's term, I like it!), many of them on the MSNBC-watching Left, running around like chickens with their heads cut off trying to come to grips with "the Rand thing."  ("She espouses such monstrously hateful things, how can anyone take her seriously?  Premises have to be checked here!"  Indeed.)  So how does one "present Ayn Rand" (interpretively, that is) to folks who are only superficially intellectual - perhaps having read only the novels - who get a lot of their ideas from op-eds and cable news and soundbites and whatnot?  You can't exactly point them to Sciabarra, Peikoff, Tara Smith, or Gotthelf books and say, "Read them, will you, please?  Then we'll talk."  But then what do you do exactly?  Give televised lectures on C-SPAN (who watches that?) which don't - can't - go into philosophical depth?  Go on cable news and have the usual talking-head shouting matches?  What do you do?  I suppose you can throw 30,000 darts at a wall (the Fountainhead high-school essay contests) and get one or two Objectivists into a possible tenure-track position at a well-ranked university every few years, but that's been done and these people still ignore the output.  (Ever hear one mention - one fucking mention - of Tara Smith's, or Peikoff's, or Sciabarra's work in the lamestream media?  On the usual "liberal" news sites like the Huffington Post?  Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish?  The political blogosphere?  Hell, the "leading" "philosophical" blogs?  I think the total count here is approximately zippo, nada, rien, nicht.  I think once, maybe twice, there was a mention of the Ayn Rand Society somewhere.  Barring a fucking miracle, would we expect something different to happen after Wiley publishes the forthcoming Gotthelf-edited book?  In short, it's really, really pathetic what's going on here, folks.)  This actually points to a wider problem: how do you present philosophically-imbued ideas, period, in an intellectually-dysfunctional culture?  How do you make it an intelligent discussion about things like integration and virtue and not just about politics and economics?  I mean, shit, philosophers - any of them that you could name; Rand is hardly an exception - are bound to be misunderstood by a large segment of the public.  How does one raise the standard, other than a (commonsensical?) approach to educational reform with emphasis on critical thinking skills?  How fucking hard could it be, really?  Can't we at least begin at the margins and work from there?  Wh- wh- what, has the whole world gone crazy? ;-)

Question(s)

Had Aristotle's dialogues survived, would we as a species be dealing with 1/10th the shit we're having to deal with?  Would the technological singularity and therefore indefinite bio-life-extension have been reached centuries ago?  Would Averroes be tons more famous and influential than Osama bin Laden?  Would modern scientists have figured out long ago that it's Aristotle's method and not his conclusions that are essential to understanding him, thereby cementing his status yet further as an Atlas of the Western world?  Would Sam Harris dare not incorporate Aristotelianism into his recent best-selling layperson-accessible treatise on ethics?  Would the young intellectual rebels not be so enchanted with Nietzsche to the exclusion of the Big A?  Would Nietzsche already have been Aristotelianized?  Would MacIntyre's After Virtue be necessary?  Would Rand's extant writings be necessary?  How might the Thomistic synthesis have otherwise proceeded, assuming it were necessary?  Would Jesus of Nazareth already have been Aristotelianized?  Would Marcus Aurelius merely represent the norm in political leadership?  Would "cognitive integration" be a commonsense lay-term describing the norm of human living?  Wouldn't Jefferson, Franklin, et al, obviously have been Aristotelianized, thereby saving America a ton of hurt in the long run?  Would every president be the intellectual caliber of a Jefferson?  Would John Cooper and Jonathan Lear, and not Snooki and Paris Hilton, be celebrities? Would Snooki be Aristotelianized?  Would Sarah Palin be Aristotelianized?  Who wouldn't be Aristotelianized, except for maybe a few stubborn asshole holdouts?  Would Jerry Falwell be a holdout?  Would Falwell be a celebrity by any stretch? Would Falwell as we knew him so much as exist, or would religious folk all be following the examples set by Aquinas, Averroes, and Maimonides, thereby saving the world a ton of hurt?  Would there be assholes?  Criminals?  Dictators?  Warmongers?  Would Mahlerian music be more or less the norm?  Kubrickian films more or less the norm?  Etc.

Would the surviving dialogues prove not all that effective at changing the human condition?  Are people incorrigibly corrupt or intellectually lazy?  Is free will an illusion?  What has kept philosophy from becoming the dominant force in humans' mental lives, anyway?  How do people manage to ignore the wisdom of the ages and keep on going as they've been going?  Does it have anything to do with "leading ethical philosophers" in the ivory tower leaving Aristotle pretty much completely out of their treatises?  (Did these ethicists not learn jackshit from MacIntyre?)  Have the philosophers themselves failed to connect with the layfolk (assuming Rand doesn't count as a philosopher, as many of the ivory-tower ethicists would have it)?  Is human history really just a byproduct of the material productive forces of each era, as many of the same ivory-tower folks have entertained?  How exactly is "dialectical materialism" supposed to be influenced by Aristotle, anyway?  Would Aristotle, were he around today, have spoken only to ivory-tower folks in only their terms, or would he have been a staunch popularizer?  Would he fall head-over-heels for socialism, or would he be more or less a hard-headed capitalist with a soft heart (h/t Alan Blinder) and a broader moral and intellectual message?  Would that still not prove effective at changing the human condition?  What if Plato and Kant, with the benefit of historical hindsight, got on board with that message all dialectical-like; would that still do any good?  What if the "stylistic river of gold" dialogues were all we had to work with instead?  Etc.

Does Aristotle matter?

An observation: The 'Draft of December 4 2008' version of Derek Parfit's recent magnum opus, On What Matters, contains all of four mentions of Aristotle in its many hundreds of pages.  Any words beginning with "euda" appear all of once.  The rest of the treatise is focused on (the?) three major ethical theories: Kantianism, contractualism, and consequentialism.  Parfit's project is to provide a synthesis of these theories, with Parfit "using the metaphor of the theories as 'climbing the same mountain on different sides.'" (wikipedia)

I suppose Aristotle and eudaimonia don't matter much?

WTF?

(Have I been barking up the wrong, er, uh, mountain all this time?  Here I was, thinking that it was Aristotelianism, with its own highly assimilationist character - the most important things assimilated being concretes in everyday practical reality, not so much abstract theories - that provided a most satisfactory dialectical resolution of the other theories in addition to being essentially correct in its own right.  Well, shit.  Parfit 1, UP 0?)

The science of dumbing-down politics (even further)

Steven Hill writes:

Veteran reporter Howard Kurtz reported how the Obama campaign extensively pre-tested the president's speech last Thursday night using a ghastly-sounding technology known as "dial metre groups". Dial metre groups also were used to pre-test Obama's "State of the Union" speech last January. What is a dial metre group? It's a type of focus group where voters twist dials to register approval or disapproval of specific passages in a speech.

You can imagine where it goes from there.  (The rest of the op-ed explains, if you couldn't already guess it.)  The messages that today's politicians formulate toward voters are based on this most cynical of stimulus-and-response technologies; soulless, corporatist, philistine-oriented advertising strategy has taken over politics to extremes not possible given earlier technologies.  But what else would you expect?  There almost surely has to be parallels between the stimulus-and-response-crafted, super-unhealthy Standard American Diet and Lifestyle with the resulting obesity epidemic on the one hand, and the ever-falling quality of the American intellectual diet with its inevitable consequences on the other.  This is some dystopian shit right here.  The American public's ignorance of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle's recommendations for citizen-education is (of course) devolving into a vicious cycle.  Hell, take the ancient Greeks out of it, and just look at the United States's own founding generation to get an idea of what the American McCitizenry have methodically become oblivious to.  Franklin and Jefferson are rolling in their graves; they would be absolutely fucking disgusted by that which is the leading cause of empire-decline, metastasizing throughout this land of ours.

(Jefferson was well-versed in many of the ancient Greeks, by the way.  He was, after all, President of the American Philosophical Society.  It's a tad unfortunate that he hadn't been familiar with Aristotle, though.)

There's no way to sugar-coat what's going on here; given what American politics is now, it is "politically incorrect" to name and face these damning facts.  Right now, average American citizens are unorganized grabasstic pieces of amphibian shit, built like Private Pyle, and headed directly into a world of shit.  They have not been given the proper motivation.  Dial meters only feed into their bad cognitive habits; it is the habits that need to be changed.  That is all for now.

Sheesh!

Pondering the Logistics of Intellectual Revolution

Please kindly direct your attention to the entirety of my posting here.

Best of Premises,