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,

A Deep Blue of Philosophy?

Just posted this to a reddit r/Objectivism thread:

I often find that when I come to some point of Objectivism (or anything else) that I critique, I employ the methods of Objectivist thinking and I can't think of any way around those methods, which emphasize the concepts of integration, context, and hierarchy. How does one attack those concepts without self-contradiction? Anyway, if I come upon something in Rand's writings that I think falls short, I critique it on the grounds that it isn't a correct application of her own prescribed methods. This is why I'm more comfortable calling myself a perfectivist than an Objectivist; it commits me to no doctrine or practice other than the relentless accumulation and integration of knowledge, like with Aristotle. There are chess grandmasters, and then there's Kasparov, and Aristotle is philosophy's Kasparov. (Which raises a question: could a philosophical "Deep Blue" be developed? Damn...has that question been asked before?)

Just to clear up a thing or two right away: Deep Blue isn't a conscious entity.  As it is there are discussions within philosophy of mind circles whether and how we can determine that a machine with the behavioral characteristics of HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey is conscious.  HAL does display many if not all requisite characteristics of intelligence.  Deep Blue is far from a HAL, but much like HAL, is quite expert at performing the task of playing chess, but that is a rather limited task.

What led me quite quickly to think of HAL is what HAL is short for: Heuristic ALgorithmic.  I'm not an expert on what a heuristic algorithm involves, but I gather Deep Blue relies on such a princple.  (The term "heuristics" appears once in the Deep Blue wikipedia article, so I'm probably onto something.)

Something else to clear up: Where "the highest responsibility of human philosophers is to serve as the guardians and integrators of human knowledge" (Rand, ITOE), a Deep Blue machine wouldn't technically qualify as a philosophical machine because knowledge requires a consciousness.  (I'm pretty sure of that necessary connection but I'll think it through some more.)  What a Deep Blue machine, in the task of integration, would be integrating content without being aware of that content.  (I'm speaking here of the Deep Blue machine as it is now, not an extra-advanced one like HAL.)

But here's the interesting part: Say that scientists could program a machine of Deep Blue's computing power to crawl the web (Google, wikipedia, etc.), integrate its contents, and generate output for humans to work with.  Would that (not) be pretty awesome?  Would the task involve much greater complexity than that involved in playing a chess game while seeing 18 moves ahead?  Could such an algorithm be developed to hone in on what is essential content, and to hone in on connections between items of content, such as what terms in a wikipedia article are hyperlinked?  As has already been discovered, wikipedia has a hierarchical organization demonstrated through a certain pattern of hyperlinking practices, with approximately 95% of wikipedia entries leading to the Philosophy entry.  (This would come as a surprise to a lot of folks, but not the least bit of a surprise to Miss Rand, who, aside from penning endlessly-carictured novels, actually wrote things on the nature and role of philosophy in the human endeavor, and topics connected with that.  If this kind of stuff had already been spelled out in philosophy textbooks, I might have noticed.  Seeing as so few people acknowledge the fundamental role of philosophy in human life, I doubt this message, even if contained in textbooks, got through to the readers as it fucking well should have.)  Wikipedia is quite the example of a system of content, enabled by the development of the internet, that, qua mapping of territory, condenses or essentializes a vast array of territorial concretes.  (I think the term "encyclopedic knowledge" involves the same phenomenon, i.e., systematic essentialization, not necessarily an expertise or familiarity with the mind-boggling number of concretes that an essentialized system necessarily contains.  Encyclopedic knowledge isn't so concrete-bound.)

Hell, what might result if such a machine were set to the task of integrating the contents merely of a high-quality dictionary?

I'll leave the rest to the imagination.

Legalize it, cont'd

From the "Integrate, dammit!" department:

Judge Posner calls for an end to the obvious insanity.

In the philosopher's queue: Nozick's unusual journey from leftist to libertarian; abortion and human rights (and the Ninth Amendment?)

Stupidity: not just a Republican thing

Wow.

The GOP and Crazy - latest episode

Unfuckingbelievable.

A philosopher's intellectual calm and patience can be stretched only so far before insults and/or damnation become the only appropriate response.

This isn't about the morality of abortion, but about a simple, anti-science, anti-reason, anti-fact rewriting of reality.  "Fetal life" in Arizona now begins at a point when fetal life does not - in reality - begin.

(To pile crazy on top of crazy, this new law is titled "The Women's Health and Safety Act.")

I don't know what's more crazy, this, or the notion that Sarah Palin was remotely qualified to be president.

Only ignorance and/or bad faith can explain these phenomena.  One can only hope that these intellectual mutants will be correctly acknowledged as such in the light of history - assuming the mutants don't already destroy us all before we get there.  That's right: fucking mutants.

EDIT: On a more constructive note, perhaps in the coming days I will lay out some thoughts on the abortion matter.  In the meantime, let us note one thing about the goddamned "pro-life" right-wingers in America, who have mutated even well beyond what they were in 1976 when Miss Rand had already called them goddamned so-and-sos: Their fierce defense of "the sanctity of life" in the form of the unborn cannot even come close to be taken as a cognitively unbiased (if not downright hypocritical) position on the sanctity of life - not when they show such stark indifference toward children in poverty (now standing at 22% in America - and rising), toward death-row inmates (who pose no threat to society when locked up, and who may or may not have been wrongfully convicted, or who may be mentally retarded), or toward the many children killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, to which these fucking mutants have decided to turn a blind eye while chanting about how the USA is "the greatest country on earth" because of its nationalism and militarism and anti-intellectualism, i.e., because of mutants like themselves.  I have no doubt that a dedicated individual could come up with instance after instance of the mutants' double-standards on "the sanctity of life."  (Just human life, I suppose, too.  Many of these same mutants don't think twice about scarfing down enormous amounts of factory-farmed meat and diminishing their own health in the process.  And what about the sanctity of the lives of members of future generations who may very well have to suffer the consequences of these mutants' epistemologically-fucked environmental negligence?)  That being said, there are legitimate moral concerns and arguments about abortion that need to be addressed to those of good faith, cognitive balance, and epistemic-intellectual sanity.  It is just too bad that it is not these folks who dominate American political discourse today.  (Speaking of which, how the fuck does presidential hopeful Mitt Romney get away with releasing only two years - tops - of tax returns?  What, am I the crazy one here?)

EDIT #2: Aaaaand yet more insanity from the past couple days.  I wonder how the pro-freedom, small-government Tea Partiers might react to this GOP-platform proposal for gratuitous federal meddling into people's private choices, choices made using their own hard-earned money no less?  Are the feds supposed to be conducting this frivolous meddling before addressing real problems this country faces?  Who are these fucking idiots?  (Note, further, that the Romney campaign has vowed to crack down on the porn menace, in addition to the vow to fight tooth and nail the same-sex marriage menace.  All while not releasing more than two years of tax returns because "it's none of our business."  Words fail at this point.)

Notes on teleology

Off-the-cuff here, but need to get the thoughts down on (digital) paper.

It's hard to imagine how one would become The Ultimate Philosopher without having devoted serious amounts of time and thought over the years to the subject of teleology.  The most famous exponent of a teleological interpretation of (at least some) natural phenomena is Aristotle.  The so-called conventional wisdom is that Aristotle's teleology was abandoned by philosophers after the middle ages and the rise of the scientific age.  It turns out that the subject of teleological concepts in biology is of interest to some philosophical sub-specialists today.

Now, to get to what just now had me to thinking (yet again) on the subject of teleology.

The use of the term "teleology" in Objectivist/Randian circles is not altogether clear(ly consistent).  I'll first take the original statement on the matter from the Lexicon, which appeared in a footnote:

When applied to physical phenomena, such as the automatic functions of an organism, the term “goal-directed” is not to be taken to mean “purposive” (a concept applicable only to the actions of a consciousness) and is not to imply the existence of any teleological principle operating in insentient nature. I use the term “goal-directed,” in this context, to designate the fact that the automatic functions of living organisms are actions whose nature is such that they result in the preservation of an organism’s life.

First off, I'd like to indicate what Rand got right: "Goal-directed" should not be taken to imply the existence of any teleological principle operating in insentient nature.  Then the confusion begins: "goal" here is to be understood in terms of the automatic functions of living organisms such that they achieve a "result."  Rand doesn't provide any further explanation of this point, but it's a big one, because it is central to understanding her meta-ethics.  It all has to do with living organisms facing a fundamental life/death alternative and that this alternative makes sense out of speaking of goals; where there are no alternatives, there are no goals.  This last part sounds correct.  However, we also have an apparent conflation of the meanings of "goal" and of "value," a value being that which one acts to gain and/or keep.  Accepting this definition of "value" for the moment (I am not clear on what would compel us to do so, and never really have been), we get concretizations from Rand about, chiefly, the activities of plants and of animals.  In her terms, valuation in plants would involve (for instance) movements to maximize exposure to sunlight, the sunlight being valuable to their photosynthesis activities; or, for another example, valuation would involve the activities of cellular metabolism.  With animals you have obvious examples such as feeding (and the other three F's, the last of which throws a wrench into everything, as I'll address in a moment).  Where the primary "goal" (or value) of the plant, is directed toward gathering energy and nutrients, the alternative is malfunction, disease, death.

So, how do we respond to all this?  Well, in addition to the two statements above which I've indicated make good sense, it also makes sense to say that the activities of (say) a plant are such that they are organizationally and functionally ordered toward the production of a result.  What I don't see that implying is that they are goal-directed.  This gets us to an accounting of "goals," which in my view are related to the term "value" (which has to do with valuing something, which doesn't mean "value" is defined as "that which one acts to gain and/or keep;" rather, value is used here in the sense of actual or potential utility in satisfying a desire, or something close to this idea).  Much as I have tried (and gone back and forth) over the years on understanding "goal" as applied to insentient nature, I think the term "goal" is applicable only to sentient activity.  Likewise, I think "value" has meaning only in application to sentient activity.  What's more, I think the fundamental meta-ethical term "goodness" is applicable only to sentient activity - which is to say, that I do not accept Rand's conception of goodness as applied to living organisms generally.  (N.B.: I do not think that this is fatal to the central thrust of Rand's argument in "The Objectivist Ethics."  I think much the same ethical conclusions could be derived from restricting the concept of "goodness" to the well-being of sentient entities [which for all we know must be biological entities, though that's a philosophy-of-mind issue].)

Here's where we are so far:

"Goal" is applicable only to sentient activity.  (I'll explain this shortly.)

"Value" is applicable only to sentient activity.  (Ditto)

"Result" is applicable to living entities in terms of how their biological organization functionally "directs" their activities.

Something's being a result in the above sense does not make it a goal.

Rand uses "goal-directed" so as not to imply a teleological principle operating in an insentient nature (or "tpoiain," for short).  What is not determined from this statement is how she does apply the concept of teleology.  Apparently "goal-directed"-not-implying-a-tpoiain would indicate that she doesn't think there is any such thing as a tpoiain, but that's not made explicit.

Since this is off-the-cuff, I'll mention Harry Binswanger's work on teleology at this point.  His Columbia doctoral thesis, later turned into a book published by ARI, is titled "The Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts."  On the face of it, such a title does imply the endorsement of the idea of a tpoiain, as it applies not only to humans and other animals, but to plants, to fungi, to amoeba, to bacteria, any biological organism you can name.  At the same time, we would be reasonable to assume that Rand, with whom Binswanger was closely associated, was familiar with this thesis and its contents and agreed that it is consistent with her meta-ethics.  (Peikoff references Binswanger's thesis/book in OPAR, as well.)  And so we're back to the confusions.  We're back to asking whether a bacterium plausibly "pursues goals," "has values," or "faces a life/death alternative," and whether the concept "good" or "bad/evil" apply to the outcomes/results of its activities.  So, to continue . . .

"Goal" is only applicable to a sentient being.  (I may be stipulating word-usage here, but it's hard to see how Rand/Objectivists aren't doing the same.)  Here's how I think that's plausible: It does not make sense to speak of having a goal unless there is an awareness of an alternative.  Now, "awareness of an alternative" might be thought to involve considerable foresight, planning, and so forth.  Here, I'll mention something that Rand herself brings up: the pleasure/pain mechanism.  Even in that very basic form - as it obtains even at the level of mentally primitive animals - there is some basic awareness of the alternative involved here.  The goal, then, for such non-cognitively-advanced beings is to pursue that which provides an automatic guide to . . . well, to what?  For Rand, the automatic pleasure-pain mechanism directs an animal to that which "sustains, furthers, and promotes its life."  For contemporary biology, however, the automatic guide directs animals toward something called "inclusive fitness" - and hence why the last of the four F's is so highly related to pleasure.  Rand is at odds with contemporary biology; I don't know any other way to put it.  This means that Rand is almost surely mistaken as to what the basic functions (or "natural ends") of living organisms are.  She cannot derive her (plausible) ethical conclusions from her (implausible) biological claims.  (Her "man's life qua man" modification on "life as the standard of value" - rather than, well, psychological well-being as the standard of value - can be converted quite simply to: "the activities based on principles required for the proper functioning of a rational being," which translates both conceptually and causally to: eudaimonia.)

So, what's the point, then, of bringing up the pleasure/pain mechanism?  It's to make a less ambitious but more plausible claim than Rand does: that the pleasure/pain mechanism provides automatic guidance to animals as to what promotes their good, i.e., their psychological well-being.  I think it's necessary to add in here: "Other things being equal."  However, it's basically only cognitively-advanced beings such as humans that are able to grasp the "other things being equal" part and to take that into deliberative account.

So "goal," at the very minimum, involves an awareness-in-mind of an alternative.  It also makes sense to say that an animal pursues goals in the sense that the animal has desires, drives, etc. that can be satisfied or frustrated.

I think "value" basically operates in the same fashion.  The concept  "value" is based on the phenomenon of having desires, drives, etc. that can be satisfied or frustrated.  This needn't involve conflating the meanings of "goal" and of "value," even though they are obviously very closely related.

So, now we have:

"Result" is present where there are functional life-processes.

Biological "function" is defined in terms of inclusive fitness.

"Goal" and "value" are defined in terms of what is pursued by a sentient being.  (Binswanger's term "value-significance" applies at this level.)

"Teleology" pertains to goal-directedness, which operates only in sentient parts of nature.

The specifically human form of goal-directedness is defined in terms of purpose or end, or something indicating the rational and deliberative element in human goal-pursuit or valuation.

"Standard of value" pertains to successful goal-directed action, success being defined in terms of what is good for the valuer.

"Good" is that which promotes psychological well-being.

"Well-being" may very well apply to the health and successful life activities of non-sentient organisms, but that doesn't imply "goodness," "value," "goal."

Psychological well-being in humans translates (at least closely) to eudaimonia.  Or more precisely: psychological well-being exists on a (teleologically?) measurable continuum, represented by some variant or other of the Maslow hierarchy of needs (beginning with the vegetative, then animal, then human-specific needs with their own ordering), with maximal well-being or self-actualization being concurrent with eudaimonia.

Or something along these lines.  (If I've left some strands hanging in the above, I'll leave that as an exercise for myself and the reader.)

Whew.  Glad to get all that cleared up.  What next? :-)

UPDATE: A dialecticizing of all the items here just came under consideration.  It'd be time-consuming as fuck, but the payoff might well be worth it.  Or maybe not.  Better things to do?

An Aristotelian Utopia?

While the most prominent economist on today's public scene spends his scarce time going apeshit over the Paul Ryan-Ayn Rand connection, complete with laughable commentary on Rand/Galt/Atlas, my thoughts turn more toward the long-term and to subjects of the greatest and furthest-reaching scope.  That's what I do, see.  That's all I do.  And I absolutely will not stop, ever, until I am dead.

So, without further ado, I direct your attention to a blog commentary (Part 1) (Part 2) on Prof. Marcia Homiak's essay, "An Aristotelian Life" (a chapter in the collection Philosophers Without Gods [Louise M. Antony, ed., OUP, 2007]).  The collection as a whole is okay, but the one essay that stuck in my mind was this one.  The basic idea of her essay is that a society built along essentially Aristotelian lines would fulfill all the needs that many human beings think requires belief in a god or gods to fulfill. It wouldn't be an atheistic or secular society by necessity or default - for all we know, a rigorously-philosophically-informed theism may be a prominent feature in such a society - but the point would be that belief in god(s) would not be necessary for the society to function in a, well, pretty fucking awesome manner.

I wish to go a step or so beyond the envisioned social order outlined by Prof. Homiak and consider certain questions.  These include: (1) How realistic is it that such a society might be actualized?  (2) Were such a society to be actualized, wouldn't the benefits of a philosophically-enriched citizenry have a snowball effect, leading to ever-better social discourse and, in turn, to ever-better solutions to major challenges facing humanity?  (3) Would this not hasten the onset of the technological singularity?  (4) Is such a social order, properly speaking, utopian?  Breaking that question down further: Is the society envisioned by Homiak already utopian, or would we need the aforementioned snowballing effect to reach utopia?  (5) What exactly is the difference between perfection (in this context, a utopian society) and excellence (an awesome society), anyway?

Well, I think the chief question here is (1).  I think once such a society were realized, the snowball effect and the rest follow quite logically - that is, unless humanity is already doomed.  Is humanity doomed?  I don't know.  But what's a pretty fucking awesome way to hedge our bets on that?  Or go out with a bang if the end really is near?  Could it get any better - could we do any better - than an Aristotelian society (be it to stave off extinction, or just because that's the best way to go regardless)?  If we could do better, that's what the Man himself would recommend we do, of course!  (You can't refute perfectivism. :-)  So, now: what about (1).  Is such a society a realistic goal?  Let me turn the tables here: Is it not a realistic goal, and if not, why?

The strategy here isn't difficult to figure out.  (It's tactics used to carry out the strategy that need some big-time investigation, I think.  How are memes optimally propagated in this day and age?)  The strategy is to get as many people turned on to this Aristotelian idea as soon as possible.  This has a number of things going for it.  For one thing, Aristotle is canonized.  Ayn Rand, on the other hand, deservedly or not, is not canonized.  Even though I think Aristotle and Rand would converge on support for the Aristotelian program, using Rand's ideas as the vehicle for such a social change would be something of a non-starter.  I think that comes after the Aristotelianization (great word!), which would enable the folks to actually understand what the hell Rand has been getting at all this time.  Or, perhaps, the Aristotelianized citizenry would tear Objectivism apart (if not ignore/scoff at it), as the current genius-packed academy-consensus would believe.  (I'd be happy to take bets on that.  But one philosopher against a million; what chance do I stand?)  But that's really quite beside the point.  The point is to have a citizenry that is maximally intellectually tutored and let the chips fall where they may.  (Again, I'm happy to take bets on how well Rand pans out in such a scenario.  But hell, we'd all be winners in that scenario.  I'd just want to be a bigger winner. ;-)

So, a maximally intellectually-tutored citizenry.  How can that be achieved?  Well, I said the strategy would be fairly simple and straightforward: Get as many people as possible understanding Aristotelianism as soon as possible.  Especially rationality as the highest virtue, and the progressive activity that is eudaimonia (involving self-actualization) the good life.  A citizenry devoted to learning and growing and deriving enjoyment from doing so.  Higher aesthetic standards in the public sphere.  Stupidity in politics scorned rather than celebrated.  A people "conditioned" to think eudaimonically and therefore looking down on lying, cheating, and stealing as purported means of getting ahead in life. Growing bonds of trust.  Capitalism with businesspeople actually of the character of Randian heroes, rather than the sociopathic unprincipled cutthroat philistinic cronyist assholes that dominate the business scene too much today. Violence scorned rather than celebrated.  And on and on and on.  Like I said, fucking awesome.

So how does that ball get rolling?  Is it realistic for the ball just to get rolling?  Well, is it not realistic, and if not, why?  How does a people concerned with their survival and well-being reject Aristotle?

Say that it's achievable in principle.  Better yet, say that it's at least plausible.  (If not, why not?)  In that case, it comes down to a matter of time: just how long would it take before Prof. Homiak's (admittedly ambitious) vision is achieved?  And why not sooner rather than later?

A couple other twists to the narrative above:

(1) Jesus of Nazareth can still play a key role in all this.  Think of this combination as the possible citizen-ideal: Having the head of Aristotle and the heart of Jesus.  (Do keep in mind what Aristotle had to say about intellectual activity as expressing what is "divine" in man, and ask yourself how Jesus could possibly object to the maximal use of one's cognitive faculty.)

(2) Cannabis legalization would speed all of the above way up, for the reasons Carl Sagan explained.

More to come, of course . . .