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Thomas M. Miovas Jr.

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Sophia, I think your argument can be used against you in the same way. If moral evaluation of an idea IS moral evaluation of a person, then it would not be necessary to ask about an idea's consequences. The volitional cause would be enough to make this judgment.

The identity of an idea, its correspondane to reality, is important because ideas are windows to person's concious mind. One can not evaluate mental process without evaluating ideas.

If you insist that both questions (in the passage from Fact and Value) are necessary to judge the morality of the person, then what happens if you determine that the volitional process was fine but the idea has bad consequences? If you still judge the person as moral or good in that case, then you believe that the second question (about the idea's consequences) is irrelevant.

If someone is rational about what they know, integrating, not evading knowledge, not allowing for contradictions in their ideas then there is no breach of morality if they come up with a wrong idea due to them missing some crucial facts (meaning missing observations). That would be expecting omniscience.

Nothing however is stopping you from saying that their idea is wrong (A=A).

If the answer to the second question is that the idea has good consequences but the answer to the first question is that the person did not rationally involve his mind (and so on) to come up with the idea, and you therefore judge the person negatively, then you have confirmed that the second question (about consequnces) is indeed irrelevant.

I have provided example given by Dr. Peikoff in which he stated that an idea maybe right but if the mental process was faulty (someone accepted a right idea on faith) then you still judge this person negatively. So a mental process is more crucial aspect here when judging people morally and ideas serve as windows into their mind. Notice that if somone is consistently advocating right ideas and shows their understanding - that is a strong indication of virtue (they must be rational and integrating correctly).

The question about volitional process is for judging a person, and the question about consequences is about judging the idea.

Again how would you know anything about their mental process if not by looking at their ideas? Clearly when morally evaluating a person - one must consider both.

When it comes to ideas - the whole point of this essay was that ideas are not separate from people, they are products of man's mind and thus reflect on him. This split is exactly what Dr. Peikoff was arguing against - this notion that ideas are just entities floating someone out there. That is false.

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On what grounds could you possibly say that he was being immoral unless you determine what the consequences of that idea will be? And can't those consequences be judged? And aren't you morally judging him before the fact? I mean, he hasn't committed mass murder, he is only advocating it.

And besides, you are saying that he is "an adult, sane, individual" and yet you are calling him immoral. By what evidence? Wouldn't the evidence be gathered by what he advocated -- i.e. based on the ideas that he advocates? You certainly seem to be implying that certain ideas are immoral, regardless of who advocates them; so long as they are sane adults.

I am taking into consideration all of the context involved - the identity of this idea and its consequences and what kind of mental process could lead this adult, sane, person to advocate this terrible idea. Is it reasonable for me to assume that he could be innocently mistaken in intergration of his observations? Can I reasonably assume that this person was not able to make certain observations (was he living in a cave, in isolation all his life?) My conclusion was NO.

Dr. Peikoff adressed this:

In our century, there have been countless mass movements dedicated to inherently dishonest ideas—e.g., Nazism, Communism, non-objective art, non-Aristotelian logic, egalitarianism, nihilism, the pragmatist cult of compromise, the Shirley MacLaine types, who "channel" with ghosts and recount their previous lives; etc. In all such cases, the ideas are not merely false; in one form or another, they represent an explicit rebellion against reason and reality (and, therefore, against man and values). If the conscientious attempt to perceive reality by the use of one's mind is the essence of honesty, no such rebellion can qualify as "honest."

The originators, leaders and intellectual spokesmen of all such movements are necessarily evaders on a major scale; they are not merely mistaken, but are crusading irrationalists. The mass base of such movements are not evaders of the same kind; but most of the followers are dishonest in their own passive way. They are unthinking, intellectually irresponsible ballast, unconcerned with logic or truth. They go along with corrupt trend-setters because their neighbors demand it, and/or because a given notion satisfies some out-of-context desire they happen to feel. People of this kind are not the helplessly ignorant, but the willfully self-deluded.

There is a certain point beyond which it is no longer reasonable to allow room for honest errors (assuming adult, sane individuals with access to the same observations).

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Is it possible to be a socialist without rejecting quite a few aspects of reality? Or do you mean to say that subconscious evasion of those facts would alleviate their responsibility for their views?

I think I need to nip something in the bud here.

Having a psychological problem (a deeply held premise that might be very difficult to uproot) is not an excuse for advocating ideas that are contrary to man's life as the standard.

For example, had Hank Rearden gone around advocating that sex was evil, like some preachers do, then he would have to be considered immoral by man's life as the standard.

What I was trying to get at is that sex was not good for him. Sex was not experienced as a very joyful union of mind and body to him.

This would be similar to, say, someone wanting to learn how to ski because she has heard about how wonderful and fun it is. But every time she gets up on a set of skis, she has a wreck and breaks an arm or a leg. Skiing is not wonderful and fun to her. And it would take considerable encouragement for her to get back up onto skis and keep trying.

Now, if she went around saying that skiing was evil and went around protesting ski resorts as harbingers of evil people, then she would be turning her personal disasters into a philosophy against enjoyment for the sake of enjoyment; which would be evil.

Hank Rearden didn't do that.

For him it was a personal problem that he didn't turn into an anti-life philosophy.

He did say some horrible things to Dagny the morning after, but she just thought it was silly and wanted more!

In short, man's life is the standard even if one does have psychological problems.

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QUOTE(blackdiamond @ May 13 2007, 08:54 AM) post_snapback.gif

Thus, socialism is evil, no matter who started it or how they started it, but every socialist is not necessarily evil. If a socialist has consciously rejected an aspect of reality (for example) in accepting this philosophy, then he is evil.

Is it possible to be a socialist without rejecting quite a few aspects of reality? Or do you mean to say that subconscious evasion of those facts would alleviate their responsibility for their views?

It is possible - consider this passage from Fact and Value:

EVEN IN REGARD to inherently dishonest movements, let me now add, a marginal third category of adherent is possible: the relatively small number who struggle conscientiously, but simply cannot grasp the issues and the monumental corruption involved. These are the handful who become Communists, "channelers," etc. through a truly honest error of knowledge. Leaving aside the retarded and the illiterate, who are effectively helpless in such matters, this third group consists almost exclusively of the very young—and precisely for this reason, these youngsters get out of such movements fast, on their own, without needing lectures from others; they get out as they reach maturity.

Dr. Peikoff gave an example of Andrei from We the Living as the symbol here.

Edited by ~Sophia~
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I think I need to nip something in the bud here.

Having a psychological problem (a deeply held premise that might be very difficult to uproot) is not an excuse for advocating ideas that are contrary to man's life as the standard.

For example, had Hank Rearden gone around advocating that sex was evil, like some preachers do, then he would have to be considered immoral by man's life as the standard.

You continue to assert the same thing despite being repeatedly shown to what kind of unjust effects this leads to.

By you idea of moral judgment (yours because it is not Oism nor it is what Dr. Peikoff argued for) of only considering "man's life as the standard" (meaning ONLY based on its effect and ignoring the cause) anyone who would take another's life is immoral.

In short, instead of making the same assertions - please adress my arguments.

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In short, instead of making the same assertions - please address my arguments.

I've been addressing your arguments, and we keep talking past one another.

It is quite possible to morally condemn an idea that someone is advocating without morally condemning the person advocating it.

It is also possible to morally praise an idea that someone is advocating without morally praising the person advocating it.

That's why there are two sides to a moral appraisal of an idea and its advocate.

Andrea, since you mentioned him, was not only advocating communism, which you have already asserted is an inherently dishonest idea, but he was practicing it -- he was murdering hundreds if not thousands of people just because they disagreed with communism and wouldn't follow the party line.

Now, one can say that up to a point, he fell for communism as an ideal when he was young, but he still retains some moral culpability for accepting an inherently dishonest idea. And I don't think that all those murders on his hands and on his soul can be excused on the grounds that he was young and idealistic. And when he fully realized what communism meant, and that he was continuously putting Kira in jeopardy by his ideaology and by his actions, it destroyed him, which is justice.

A person is morally responsible for the ideas he advocates. If he is young and doesn't know any better, then he shouldn't be advocating ideas that he doesn't understand -- and he most certainly shouldn't be acting on them.

Take your example of a young child and let's say he watched that science program "The Sun" and then went around advocating that we all ought to live like the Hopi Indians. Why any rational parent or any rational teacher would be horrified that he was uttering such things. No, he doesn't know any better, but he is still advocating an evil idea. And he should be corrected for this. Note that I did not say that he was evil, but he is responsible for advocating that idea.

Likewise, Hank Rearden, had he done so, would have had to bear the responsibility of advocating the idea that sex was evil; even if he did arrive at that conclusion mistakenly.

People have to beheld responsible for their conclusions, especially if they advocate them openly.

The first step is to tell them they are advocating an evil idea by man's life as the standard by condemning the idea -- tell them that idea is evil, and explain it to them. If they are only mistaken, then they will change their minds in short order. If they are willfully evasive, they won't; and then one can condemn them for not being rational.

So, no, to answer your allegation, I don't go around condemning people for advocating irrational ideas -- without taking the context into account. But the idea still has to be smashed as being anti-man and anti-life. It is evil and it must be spoken out against by morally condemning it.

You are accusing me of being unjust, but I am not that way. And I am not sundering fact from value, I'm saying that an idea is a fact, and that it must be evaluated. As a man-made fact it is open to moral appraisal.

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And more assertions.

.

It is quite possible to morally condemn an idea that someone is advocating without morally condemning the person advocating it.

It is also possible to morally praise an idea that someone is advocating without morally praising the person advocating it.

According to who's definition of moral judgement - yours?

I have adressed this before starting from a definition of what morality is - that it implies a volitional being facing at least two alternatives. And there are two branches of moral judgement - man's actions and man's concious convictions and ideas. In either case - moral evaluation refers to the actor.

It is also for this VERY reason that non-man made is NOT an object to moral evaluation - only conceptual evaluation. There is no actor involved (violition is an attibute of an actor). Eventhough some of the non-man made things can have very negative consequences for man it is wrong to say that such things are immoral (example saying that a hurricane is immoral - after all isn't hurricane anti-life?).

.Andrea, since you mentioned him, was not only advocating communism, which you have already asserted is an inherently dishonest idea, but he was practicing it -- he was murdering hundreds if not thousands of people just because they disagreed with communism and wouldn't follow the party line.

Now, one can say that up to a point, he fell for communism as an ideal when he was young, but he still retains some moral culpability for accepting an inherently dishonest idea. And I don't think that all those murders on his hands and on his soul can be excused on the grounds that he was young and idealistic. And when he fully realized what communism meant, and that he was continuously putting Kira in jeopardy by his ideaology and by his actions, it destroyed him, which is justice.

Did you miss the fact that Dr. Peikoff used Andrei as an example of - innocent?

In the Cult of Moral Grayness Rand wrote:

If, in a complex moral issue, a man struggles to determine what is right, and fails or makes an honest error, he cannot be regarded as "gray"; morally, he is "white". Errors of knowledge are not breaches of morality; no proper moral code can demand infallibility or omniscience.

.Take your example of a young child and let's say he watched that science program "The Sun" and then went around advocating that we all ought to live like the Hopi Indians. Why any rational parent or any rational teacher would be horrified that he was uttering such things. No, he doesn't know any better, but he is still advocating an evil idea. And he should be corrected for this. Note that I did not say that he was evil, but he is responsible for advocating that idea.

This child should be corrected but not condemned immoral.

.So, no, to answer your allegation, I don't go around condemning people for advocating irrational ideas -- without taking the context into account. But the idea still has to be smashed as being anti-man and anti-life. It is evil and it must be spoken out against by morally condemning it.

You are accusing me of being unjust, but I am not that way. And I am not sundering fact from value, I'm saying that an idea is a fact, and that it must be evaluated. As a man-made fact it is open to moral appraisal.

A strawman. I am not sundering fact from value either. I do not believe in moral neutrality of ideas - I am arguing for performing moral judgment correctly.

Edited by ~Sophia~
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I have also made the distinction in my post #41 between evaluating ideas per se - meaning in the abstract - where there is no actor involved (for example, saying communism is immoral) and evaluating particular man's ideas (for example someone we are in a discussion with) in which case both the cause and effect must be taken into account when passing moral judgment.

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I think her whole approach of not wanting to pass moral judgement on an idea or a set of ideas comes from Truth and Toleration -- unless she came up with the same approach regarding ideas entirely on her own.

There are also these indicators:

Now, it is quite possible that ~Sophia~ read Truth and Toleration a while back and hasn't rooted out all of the mistaken and even evil assertions made in that pamphlet or book; but checking those premises is something she definitely ought to do.

I would respectfully suggest to you that if this is all the evidence you have: "possible" and unsubstantiated (ie not tied back to the relevant work) "indicators" then you have hardly made you case and are in the realm of pure psychologizing as to her state of mind and mental processes. I've read T&T and you need to pull the relevant work before you assign this mental process to Sophia.

By the way, if this is true enough for you to assert it, I'm surprised you haven't morally condemned her already.

Besides, her approach, regardless of where she got it from, can only lead to moral skepticism with regard to ideas. For example, if someone came across an idea that advocated mass murder, one would not be able to condemn that idea until one did research to find out if the person advocating mass murder who wrote that track was being out of focus, mistaken, or willfully evil.

Except that is nothing like what she is advocating. Could you show me where this "waiting period" with regard to the evaluation (as opposed to moral condemnation) of an idea (as opposed to the person) is advocated by Sophia?

Could you also explain to me in the hypothetical case where an advocate publicly advocates

an idea such as communism and two things happen:

a. Sophia stands up and says, "This idea does not correspond with the facts of reality and it will lead to the destruction of all who attempt to practice it (hint: evaluation). I morally condemn the people who explicitly advocate this idea. I do not support it and I will fight against its implementation on my person, and those like me who also do not." (which by the way is exactly the sort of thing she is advocating)

b. You then stand up and say, "I agree with Sophia and I morally condemn this idea!"

What exactly have you added? What is the difference? You're recasting Sophia as some sort of tolerationist when she has a respected history on this board of evaluating ideas and judging people (and not being hesitant about it when the evidence is there). You have little credibility here, and your arguments sail right past Sophia's exact statements which you fail to address.

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Is it possible to be a socialist without rejecting quite a few aspects of reality? Or do you mean to say that subconscious evasion of those facts would alleviate their responsibility for their views?

Sorry for taking long to reply, aequalsa. Yes it's possible. I believe Sophia has already dealt with it.

Now Sophia: the article you quoted above has the term "inherently dishonest ideas". What do you think the "inherently" means there?

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Very interesting question BD. I'm not speaking for Sophia, but it is too good not to chime in and give you my perspective.

It means that certain ideas are so far divorced from the facts of reality (evaluation) that for any moderately rational person to hold them, requires some form of massive evasion. Therefore, one could morally judge any such person who ventures near the ideas without additional data.

Notice the context of someone holding the idea before you can morally evaluate. That is, there is not some sort of Platonic Form of an idea which is "dishonest", separate from the person holding it.

If a child were to advocate one of these ideas, then it does not mean that they are inherently dishonest.

One can certainly evaluate the said idea and come to significant conclusions about its conformation to reality without anyone holding it, though.

Edited by KendallJ
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Well, it seems I have to just take this up with you, Kendall. I wanted to see Sophia's answer before responding to you. But anyway:

Very interesting question BD.

Thank you.

It means that certain ideas are so far divorced from the facts of reality (evaluation) that for any moderately rational person to hold them, requires some form of massive evasion. Therefore, one could morally judge any such person who ventures near the ideas without additional data.

Hold it. But the same article does give the example of young men and women who could have held such inherently dishonest ideas innocently. These are obviously "moderately rational", otherwise they would not realise their error in the end. So, how can they be innocent if "one could morally judge ANY such person who ventures near the ideas without additional data"?

Notice the context of someone holding the idea before you can morally evaluate. That is, there is not some sort of Platonic Form of an idea which is "dishonest", separate from the person holding it.

Do you believe that if there were no socialists in the world socialism would not be called an evil philosophy? [No, don't say socialism can not be there if there are no socialists; it can. One can easily introduce a negative (or positive) philosophy through his fictitious novel, without himself holding to that idea, and it's possible that people could follow that idea, or everyone could reject it simply because they can all see the negative effects it would lead to. Would it mean that the idea can not be called evil just because it is rejected by everyone (including its author) from the onset?]

One can certainly evaluate the said idea and come to significant conclusions about its conformation to reality without anyone holding it, though.

In other words, the only thing you can say about such an idea that no one holds is whether it is true or false, not good or evil, no matter what its projected effects would be IF it was followed? Look at my question above.

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Well, it seems I have to just take this up with you, Kendall. I wanted to see Sophia's answer before responding to you. But anyway:

Thank you.

I'm sure she'll be along shortly as well.

Hold it. But the same article does give the example of young men and women who could have held such inherently dishonest ideas innocently. These are obviously "moderately rational", otherwise they would not realise their error in the end. So, how can they be innocent if "one could morally judge ANY such person who ventures near the ideas without additional data"?

They are not obviously morally rational, in the context of the idea. We're arguing the same side of the coin. I too said that there were such things as innocents even if they hold supposedly "inherently" dishonest idea. So inherently cannot mean that the holding of the idea immediately confers moral judgement on the person. We agree there. Now if you want to talk about the continuum of context from complete innocent to dishonesty, then we can certainly debate that. My particular view when I say "moderately rational" is the this is not true of people, in general, but particular to the context of the idea specifically. This is why Peikoff saves his immediate moral condemnation of say communism for someone like an academic Marxist. This person has the context to know better and they don't.

In other words, the only thing you can say about such an idea that no one holds is whether it is true or false, not good or evil, no matter what its projected effects would be IF it was followed?

I'm really not sure what you gain here by adding the good/evil distinction of the idea in absence of the context of someone following it? "IF it was followed", presumes "followed by whom". I can say it is completely false. I can say that if it is followed, then it will always lead to bad outcomes, and the people who follow it are evil and immoral. You say that these are the "only" things to be said as if there is something vitally missing. What is left to be said that is of any value?

Do you believe that if there were no socialists in the world socialism would not be called an evil philosophy? [No, don't say socialism can not be there if there are no socialists; it can. One can easily introduce a negative (or positive) philosophy through his fictitious novel, without himself holding to that idea, and it's possible that people could follow that idea, or everyone could reject it simply because they can all see the negative effects it would lead to. Would it mean that the idea can not be called evil just because it is rejected by everyone (including its author) from the onset?]"

The fantastic hypothetical that embeds the error.

You are essentially asking me, "In the case where an idea exists, having never had an advocate..." Ideas are not Platonic forms sitting out there in space. One cannot introduce a completely new idea without ever having formulated it, nor can one introduce such an idea into fiction because it cannot by definition serve a purpose in fiction, without concretization (i.e. without characters experiencing their consequences. Nobody knows what the idea means, and the author himself doesn't advocate it so why would he be motivated to insert it? Even the negative Eutopia genre (if you believe that their authors wouldn't advocate the ideas) are examples of authors taking preexisting ideas or variants thereof and projecting their consequences to illustrate the conflict with reality.

I'm not in this argument to not pass moral judgement. Just to do it correctly. Someone like Movias who wants to believe that calling an idea, as a Platonic form, evil, means something, and that the moral condemnation of this Form is the litmus test for a true moralist vs. a "tolerationist" is simply wrong. It is a subtle distinction but crucial.

Maybe another way of saying this. I think Epistemologically, it doesn't means anything to discuss the morality of an idea outside of its context of application. It is a non-sequitir. As such, there is no real practical distinction between someone who says that an idea is evil, and the position that Sophia and I are advocating. However those who use that epistemological method will inherently make the rest of us into tolerationists which is why I vociferously fight the improper method.

Edited by KendallJ
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It is possible - consider this passage from Fact and Value:

Dr. Peikoff gave an example of Andrei from We the Living as the symbol here.

That third category has never quite seemed right to me. Essentially the young, may honestly believe that something horrid is a good, because they have not been exposed to the reality which those ideas represent. I have experienced this quite often with teenagers who thinks taxes aren't really that bad, because he hasn't made enough to notice how bloody much they take.

So certainly, this is an error of knowledge, but in the same sense, it seems to me that the same lack of first hand knowledge could exonerate someone of any age by this same standard.

The actual qualification I use when judging someone is based on how honestly I believe they are interpreting the information they do have. So if someone of any age says, "communism is good and I love jesus", then through further inquiry I try to find out what they mean by good, what about Jesus they like, and how they think communism is morally justified. If they are honest, it is fairly easy to provide the information they lack to judge the subject properly. If they close up or repeat meaningless bromides or sling ad hominems in my direction without giving consideration to the new data, I judge them appropriately.

A horrible idea believed in is usually a good general indicator of dishonesty, but the actual causation is related to their particular data set. So to judge someone justly in terms of their rationality and honesty and so forth, I think understanding how and why they hold their beliefs is more necessary then what those particular beliefs happen to be.

This is why I think that the categories ought to be those who make an error of knowledge and those who make a moral error. With a possible 3rd category being psychological disfunction or deep-rooted evasion. I say "possible" because people I have met that make real life moral errors are usually evading or disturbed.

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I'm not in this argument to not pass moral judgement. Just to do it correctly. Someone like [Miovas] who wants to believe that calling an idea, as a Platonic form, evil, means something, and that the moral condemnation of this Form is the litmus test for a true moralist vs. a "Tolerationist" is simply wrong. It is a subtle distinction but crucial.

Thank you KendalJ, you just put your finger on the problem.

First of all, I would never consider someone to be immoral if I can see that they are trying to think through an issue. It's obvious that Sophia is thinking through the issue. I think she is wrong in her stance, and I've already said umpteen times that it is possible to morally condemn an idea (i.e. Tolerationism, Truth and Toleration, "Kelleyism") without morally condemning the person advocating it.

However, I think you have pin-pointed the exact nature of the error people are making when they say that an idea cannot be morally evaluated.

A few postings ago, Sophia said that one could not morally evaluate an abstract person doing an abstract action, and yet she is doing just that when she claims that Andrea was morally innocent. Andrea is an abstraction, he's not a real person doing real things. She then later said that communism is immoral. Why, how can you said that about a political system? Isn't the term "communism" an abstraction? Besides, you are saying that a political system is immoral when it is not making any decisions between two alternatives, and being either evasive or rational about that choice; political systems don't do that, only people can do that.

The fact that you can either morally absolve or morally condemn Andrea shows that you can morally evaluate an idea. And the fact that you said that communism is immoral shows that you can morally condemn the man-made.

I think the problem is that some of you do think that I'm saying that when an idea can be morally evaluated I'm saying that I'm holding the idea morally responsible for making an irrational decisions -- i.e. as if it is some sort of conscious being in Form-Space, which is not what I am saying at all.

An idea subsumes all of the particulars under it. So, when one says "communism" it means: people volitionally violating individual rights; people considering the masses as the unit of society; people urging for the willful destruction of innocent Leo's and Kira's; people fully and consciously taking away peoples lives because they won't follow their orders from The State; people gleefully destroying anybody willing and able to stand out above the ignorant masses; etc., etc.

It's not just a floating abstraction. The term "Communism" has all of those people doing all of those things. And those actions and their motivations are grossly irrational and therefore evil.

That is what it means to say that communism is immoral and evil. Another way of phrasing this is to say that the idea of communism is evil. It means the same thing and has the same referents.

So, if I say that democracy is an immoral idea, I am not referring to the word "democracy" getting up and deciding to do anything.

And it is exactly this type of pseudo-reasoning that David Kelley talks about in his writings, Truth and Toleration. He brings up the same issue in the same way.

Check your premises.

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I think ideas can definitely be evaluated morally quite apart from an evaluation of the person who has the idea. It is true that an idea cannot be good or bad outside a human context; however, that just means: good for whom or bad for whom. If an assassin wants to kill me, that's wrong for me (which is the same as saying it is bad for me). It is bad, even if the assassin is honestly convinced that I am a dangerous person who must be killed. So, to that extent, I agree with Thomas.

However, the central issue in this thread is the judging of people, not the judging of ideas (though they're related, for sure). To those who object to what Thomas (and, I think, BlackDiamond) is saying, here's a hypothetical: suppose Thomas were agree to say ideas are "right" or 'wrong" rather than "bad" or "good", would that imply that he will change his judgements of the people holding those wrong ideas? I don't see why.

I think that debating whether ideas are right or wrong as against bad or good does not attack the central difference between the two "sides".

Also, everyone, even if you think someone on the other side of this "debate" is not quite moral, please do not say so in this thread. Once one is done with the debate, and wishes to make a final statement, that would be the appropriate time. Else, that too distracts from the central question being discussed. I think we should consider all such accusations retracted, with the understanding that both sides are probably judging the other as wrong or immoral to some extent, but agreeing not to state it publicly just yet.

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Suppose Thomas were [to] agree to say ideas are "right" or 'wrong" rather than "bad" or "good", would that imply that he will change his judgements of the people holding those wrong ideas? I don't see why.

It would all depend on the mental process they went through to arrive at the conclusion to support an idea that was evil. For me to consider them to be mistaken instead of being evasive or evil, there would have to be some reasonable way they could have made that mistake in their context.

I've been thinking more about Andrea, and I can think of a few reasonable things that could have happened that would have led him to think that supporting communism was the best choice in his context. For example, let's say that he knew, without a doubt, that under the Tzar many injustices were occurring. He is led to believe, by his teachers or mentors, that the Tzarist regime is corrupt because power is concentrated into the hands of the few -- the Tzar and his cronies. He comes to accept the idea that the way to insure justice is to put power back into the hands of the people (a standard appeal that communists make). He is led to believe that the only way to do this is to institute communism, which, in theory means all of the people are in charge. He doesn't know about individual rights and that this is the real solution, so it doesn't even enter his radar screen. He helps to overthrow the Tzar, and helps to institute a government that is of all the people. Because those with money were those with political power under the Tzar -- which can easily (in that context) confuse economic power with political power -- he believes that having more money than one's neighbors is a sure case of power being concentrated into the hands of the few, so having money can be made against the law; etc. , etc.

Now, in that kind of detail, I can see where someone young and idealistic might conclude that communism is the best system; especially if he doesn't know about the alternatives.

Unfortunately, Miss Rand did not go into those kinds of details regarding Andrea's choice to become a communist, so this is only a hypothetical position.

I don't know...she did give good grounds for other characters that she created for making mistakes, but not for Andrea. Maybe she considered it to be obvious enough in the historic context that she thought she didn't need to do that for Andrea. But I would contend that she didn't do that, which I think is one reason some Objectivist can be so contentious against Andrea being morally innocent -- i.e. having thought it through the best he could in his context of knowledge and in the context of the choices available to him -- because he isn't shown doing that.

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It would all depend on the mental process they went through to arrive at the conclusion to support an idea that was evil. For me to consider them to be mistaken instead of being evasive or evil, there would have to be some reasonable way they could have made that mistake in their context.
Yes, and I think both sides to this argument would agree that the central issue in judging a person is to understand the person: what observations did they have access to, what help did they receive (e.g., did someone sit them down an explain why thievery or some such thing was wrong), when performing some integration did they evade or did they honestly conceptualize something wrong, and so on.

I think both sides to this argument would actually agree on all that in principle.

So, what then is the source of the disagreement between the two positions? My guess is that one aspect of difference might be the evidence that each side requires. Since we cannot actually get inside someone else's mind, we have to infer their evasion or their honesty from what we really do observe. Part of this evidence is the idea itself, but that is only a part of it. There is so much more.

The thread has not discussed this in much detail, but from the tone it appears that Thomas would be quicker to use the idea to judge a person as evil, than would most others here. To "concretize", if someone said they believed in God, and nothing more, I would not conclude that they were guilty of huge evasions. The idea of God is so commonly taught, with so many rationalizations masquerading as reasons, that I would need to know the actual extent of this belief, and whether the person pays lip-service to it or actually uses it to mess up many other aspects of their life.

I don't know if Thomas would approach it differently, but from the following...

For me to consider them to be mistaken instead of being evasive or evil, there would have to be some reasonable way they could have made that mistake in their context.
...it appears possible that his approach might be to say that the person is guilty of a huge evasion, and are thus extremely evil, unless he can actually find a good reason to think they made an error. As I said, I'm just guessing, and if the two positions are actually closer than I'm projecting, so much the better.
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I've already said umpteen times that it is possible to morally condemn an idea (...) without morally condemning the person advocating it.

You have yet to prove that. Assertion is not an argument.

A few postings ago, Sophia said that one could not morally evaluate an abstract person doing an abstract action,

This is incorrect. What I said was in my post #32:

There is no such thing as morally evaluating an idea as an abstract concept removed from the person who originated it.

Let's be clear - you have been confusing the issue by switching between evaluating ideas in the abstract and evaluating particular man's ideas. This statement refers to the second. When having a discussion with a real person there is no such thing as saying "your ideas are immoral" and this statment NOT being a moral evaluation of this person.

When Dr. Peikoff talks about what goes into a moral evaluation of an idea - about the importance of both evaluating the cause (mental process) and the effect (idea's relation to reality) - he is refering to this scenario - evaluating particular man's ideas. It is obvious that if you ought to consider person's mental process when morally evaluating his idea - that this evaluation is a moral evaluation of him. There is NO separation between the two.

Then I have said this in my post #40:

I think this is where your mistake originates from. You apply the concept of morality to both 'things' (actions or ideas) and to people where in fact morality is ONLY an attribute of men.

A statment which I later clarified in my post #41 and later again in my post #58. You can not pretend that you don't know what I ment.

and yet she is doing just that when she claims that Andrea was morally innocent. Andrea is an abstraction, he's not a real person doing real things. She then later said that communism is immoral. Why, how can you said that about a political system? Isn't the term "communism" an abstraction? Besides, you are saying that a political system is immoral when it is not making any decisions between two alternatives, and being either evasive or rational about that choice; political systems don't do that, only people can do that.

I will re-state this again:

In my post #58 I clearly made a distinction between:

1) talking about ideas in the abstract - when there is no real actor (it is when we say communism is immoral - which is a form of grading the choices and actions open to us.).

2) evaluating particular man's ideas - when we are faced with a real person. In this case there is no such thing as calling their ideas immoral without it reflecting on them.

You are trying to blur the two because (I think) what you would like to be able to do it to call someone's idea immoral ONLY based on on the fact that it is wrong/false - WITHOUT evaluting this person's mental process - and then pretend that you just did not call this man IMMORAL - quite possibly unjustly.

You are trying to gain support here for your ideas of ignoring if someone is a child or a philosopher when evaluating their ideas.

This is what I am arguing against. It is wrong and absolutely contradictory to Fact and Value.

I think ideas can definitely be evaluated morally quite apart from an evaluation of the person who has the idea. It is true that an idea cannot be good or bad outside a human context; however, that just means: good for whom or bad for whom.

If only "good for whom" was relevant then we could properly call many non-man made things which are bad/destructive for us (and there are many) - immoral.

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That third category has never quite seemed right to me. Essentially the young, may honestly believe that something horrid is a good, because they have not been exposed to the reality which those ideas represent. I have experienced this quite often with teenagers who thinks taxes aren't really that bad, because he hasn't made enough to notice how bloody much they take.

So certainly, this is an error of knowledge, but in the same sense, it seems to me that the same lack of first hand knowledge could exonerate someone of any age by this same standard.

Personally, I agree with you and with your methods of evaluation.

I keep in mind this statment of Rand which refers to any man:

If, in a complex moral issue, a man struggles to determine what is right, and fails or makes an honest error, he cannot be regarded as "gray"; morally, he is "white". Errors of knowledge are not breaches of morality; no proper moral code can demand infallibility or omniscience.

How complex is the subject matter? It this person a layman, an intelectual, or a philosopher? Those are relevant to me when I am considering the possiblity of honest errors.

Edited by ~Sophia~
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If only "good for whom" was relevant then we could properly call many non-man made things which are bad/destructive for us (and there are many) - immoral.
While I disagree, I think this is a distraction, and would personally prefer to address it in a separate thread, once this one is done.

Let's say Thomas concedes that it's incorrect to make a statement such as "communism is an evil idea". Do you think that will close the gap between your position and his? Or, will you assume he's implying something along the lines of: "communism is wrong, not evil; but all communists necessarily are evil"?

I think that keeping the argument on "is communism evil" is distracting from the underlying question "are communists necessarily evil". In a sense, it is prompting Thomas to focus on a side-issue, and -- from the perspective of those who'd disagree with him -- letting him off the hook.

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Let's say Thomas concedes that it's incorrect to make a statement such as "communism is an evil idea". Do you think that will close the gap between your position and his? Or, will you assume he's implying something along the lines of: "communism is wrong, not evil; but all communists necessarily are evil"?

I think that keeping the argument on "is communism evil" is distracting from the underlying question "are communists necessarily evil". In a sense, it is prompting Thomas to focus on a side-issue, and -- from the perspective of those who'd disagree with him -- letting him off the hook.

I think it would be helpful if all of us kept as close as possible to what is in essence being debated here. We are not discussing "how ideas can/can not be evaluated in the abstract"- what is a proper terminology ect. Our disagreement is about evaluating particular man's ideas - someone who is perhaps not an Oist - someone we know is wrong about something.

It is obvious that the answer to the general question "are...(insert an ideology)ists..... necessarily evil" is NO. It would be collectivism. People ought to be morally evaluated on individual bases.

Edited by ~Sophia~
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Yes, and I think both sides to this argument would agree that the central issue in judging a person is to understand the person: what observations did they have access to, what help did they receive (e.g., did someone sit them down an explain why thievery or some such thing was wrong), when performing some integration did they evade or did they honestly conceptualize something wrong, and so on.

I think both sides to this argument would actually agree on all that in principle.

I agree.

but I don't think Mr. Miovas does:

So, if someone says that 2+2=22, one has to morally condemn that idea (and the implicit incorrect methodology), regardless if it is said by a two year old or a world class mathematician. The same holds true for incorrect understandings of Objectivism, whether these are said by those new to Objectivism or by someone who has been studying it all of his life.

Morally condemn regardless if it is said by a two year old? Implicit incorrect methodology? (what about lack of necessary observations and perhaps mental capacity?)

Moral condemnation for incorrect understandings of a complex system of ideas by someone who is still learning (and integrating new to them knowledge)?

Based on his responses, my take on it is that Mr. Miovas is much more willing to consider full context when it comes to Rand's fictional characters/heroes (because they are Rand's characters) than he is when it comes to real people.

As a side note:

This maybe a difference between us on a much larger scale - on a 'sense of life' level. I see people as generally good with exceptions. Mr. Miovas perhaps (I am speculating) sees people as generally bad with exceptions.

Edited by ~Sophia~
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This is why Peikoff saves his immediate moral condemnation of say communism for someone like an academic Marxist. This person has the context to know better and they don't.

Dr. Peikoff gives moral condemnation of communism, period. How? By calling it an inherently dishonest idea.

You have still not explained to me how an honest person can hold an "inherently dishonest idea". For me it's simple because judging an idea is *not* judging a person, and judging a person is not judging an idea. But for you, how will you explain this fact (that an honest person can hold an inherently dishonest idea) without contradicting yourself? [Remember that you said an inherently dishonest idea is one which is so far removed from reality that one can not hold it without massive evasions, which means without being dishonest. So, again: how do you reconcile this with your position that it is possible for an honest person to be a communist?]

You are essentially asking me, "In the case where an idea exists, having never had an advocate..." Ideas are not Platonic forms sitting out there in space. One cannot introduce a completely new idea without ever having formulated it, nor can one introduce such an idea into fiction because it cannot by definition serve a purpose in fiction, without concretization (i.e. without characters experiencing their consequences. Nobody knows what the idea means, and the author himself doesn't advocate it so why would he be motivated to insert it?

Just. Are you saying it's impossible for an author to insert an idea into his novel that he himself does not advocate? Why can't an author have one of his characters believe in having sex with fish? If after this book someone gave a name to the idea espoused by this *character*, why can't it be called an evil idea? (It won't help arguing about why a writer would not do this or that because there are too many writers out there and not all of them are totally rational; the fact is that a writer can formulate an idea that he does not believe in, perhaps through a minor character in his postmodernist novel.)

I'm not in this argument to not pass moral judgement. Just to do it correctly. Someone like Movias who wants to believe that calling an idea, as a Platonic form, evil, means something, and that the moral condemnation of this Form is the litmus test for a true moralist vs. a "tolerationist" is simply wrong. It is a subtle distinction but crucial.

I'm not that deep into the argument yet and I haven't understood that part of the disagreement between Thomas and Sophia. My only position is that an idea can be morally evaluated, distinctly from any evaluation of the person holding it. I don't know that those who disagree with me on this particular point are necessarily immoral; I don't understand why that would be a necessary or rational conclusion.

Maybe another way of saying this. I think Epistemologically, it doesn't mean anything to discuss the morality of an idea outside of its context of application. It is a non-sequitir. As such, there is no real practical distinction between someone who says that an idea is evil, and the position that Sophia and I are advocating.

I think there is a difference between wrong and evil and it is an important one. A person in my boardroom can give a wrong idea (like, "I think we should put all our money into this new product because of x,y,z) and I will call it wrong because I know x,y,z does not logically justify his idea. That's a wrong idea, not an evil one. Another person in the same boardroom can give an idea that is evil (like, why don't we just pirate the software of our competitors and make billions from it since the law in our country is a bit vague on that issue.). I will not tell that person that he has a wrong idea, I will say he has an *evil* (or immoral) idea. It would be unjust to call the first idea evil (even if it is wrong); it would be unjust to call the second idea anything but evil.

I do not need to know the processes going on in the head of this second board member, or how he arrived at his idea, before i judge his idea as evil or immoral. And he will know right there and then that evil ideas are not permitted in the company. Evil people may be employed, but evil ideas are not permitted - from innocent or evil people.

Don't be evil. :P

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Dr. Peikoff gives moral condemnation of communism, period. How? By calling it an inherently dishonest idea.

You have still not explained to me how an honest person can hold an "inherently dishonest idea".

Dr. Peikoff did not define what he ment by inherently dishonest ideas aside form giving examples of such.

I think it is possible for an honest person to hold (at some point in their life - for some time) an inherently dishonest idea (perhaps NOT of any kind) because massive evasion is not the only way this can happen. It can happen due to an error of knowledge, error in thinking, failing to make a crucial intergration, just to name a few.

Edited by ~Sophia~
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