Black & White

[denoir]

I've just finished reading The Virtue of Selfishness after having read Atlas and Fountainhead and there is one argument that I keep coming back to that doesn't make sense to me. It is her concept of a necessary "black" and "white" dichotomy that I think is an extremely oversimplified model. She equates "gray" morality with an arbitrary one which seems very odd to me.

In "The Cult of Moral Grayness" Rand writes:

"There may be “gray” men, but there can be no “gray” moral principles. Morality is a code of black and white."

My objections are as follows:

1) Yes, there is an objective reality but men do not operate directly on its premises but on their internal model of it. Not only do we operate with incomplete information, reality is a very complex non-linear thing and we can only make educated guesses about the actual consequences of our actions. Making radically different choices may lead to indistinguishable results while indistinguishable choices may lead to radically different results. Rand seems to agree with that, at least in part as she says:

“Errors of knowledge are not breaches of morality; no proper moral code can demand infallibility or omniscience.”

As such a rational “white” moral choice that has bad consequences cannot be as “white” as a choice that apart from the right motivation also has good consequences. Hence shades of gray. It isn’t moral relativism or the rejection of the concept of values to have shades of gray and no black and white. On the contrary, I’d say that the relevant thing is the relation between choices – it’s seldom “good” or “bad” but rather “better” and “worse”.

2) Since we are operating with unknowns and have limits on our predictive capabilities there are obviously cases where we really can’t distinguish between two choices. But there is more to it – there are an infinite number of situations where there is truly no way of evaluating a choice. We may agree that it is a moral necessity to do things based on our self-interest. But what when we don’t know what our self-interest is? Suppose you have several choices with different risk/reward ratios. If you don’t know the ratios you can’t evaluate which choice to make. Rand says:

“Just as, in epistemology, the cult of uncertainty is a revolt against reason—so, in ethics, the cult of moral grayness is a revolt against moral values. Both are a revolt against the absolutism of reality.”

Uncertainty is part of reality and reason that is incapable of taking account of uncertainty is not worth much. And the absolutism of reality is never the final word as we are not omniscient. The consequences of one’s actions will be according to an absolute reality, but the choices that we make will be made on an incomplete and simplified model of that reality.

3) Interactivity limits our ability to evaluate the validity of our choices. We are not just reactive creatures – we make predictions, plan ahead and make choices based on those plans and predictions. Once a choice is made it both limits future choices and prevents us to see the consequences of having taken some other action. Having a reason for doing something is not enough – it has to be evaluated against reality (otherwise anything goes) and once we take a pre-emptive action (which we do all the time) we can no longer say (with differing degrees of reasonable uncertainty) what another choice would have led to.

[KendallJ]

My objections are as follows:

1) Yes, there is an objective reality but men do not operate directly on its premises but on their internal model of it. Not only do we operate with incomplete information, reality is a very complex non-linear thing and we can only make educated guesses about the actual consequences of our actions. Making radically different choices may lead to indistinguishable results while indistinguishable choices may lead to radically different results. Rand seems to agree with that, at least in part as she says:

Yes, so all of this falls under the category of errors in knowlege. They are not up for moral evaluation.

As such a rational “white” moral choice that has bad consequences cannot be as “white” as a choice that apart from the right motivation also has good consequences. Hence shades of gray. It isn’t moral relativism or the rejection of the concept of values to have shades of gray and no black and white. On the contrary, I’d say that the relevant thing is the relation between choices – it’s seldom “good” or “bad” but rather “better” and “worse”.

But one doesn't evaluate the "whiteness" of a choice based upon the concsequences if those consequences are due to aspects that were unkown at the time. Don't mistake "shades of grey" with the idea of complexity or unknowns going into the decision. Yes, things are complex, yes you don't know everything ahead of time, but given your situation and given what you do know, one can morally evaluate them. The fact that a particular bad choice turned out good, because of some unforseen factor is irrelevant.

2) Since we are operating with unknowns and have limits on our predictive capabilities there are obviously cases where we really can’t distinguish between two choices. But there is more to it – there are an infinite number of situations where there is truly no way of evaluating a choice. We may agree that it is a moral necessity to do things based on our self-interest. But what when we don’t know what our self-interest is? Suppose you have several choices with different risk/reward ratios. If you don’t know the ratios you can’t evaluate which choice to make. Rand says: ...

Uncertainty is part of reality and reason that is incapable of taking account of uncertainty is not worth much. And the absolutism of reality is never the final word as we are not omniscient. The consequences of one’s actions will be according to an absolute reality, but the choices that we make will be made on an incomplete and simplified model of that reality.”.

Well, this is not what Rand means by the "cult of uncertainty". The absolutism of reality means that the consequences of our choices will be absolute. Which means that to the extent that our reason describes reality accurately, then our choice is absolute. This is what she means by that. To the extent the model is imperfect, then that is an error of knowledge. Rand is railing against those who would say that to the extent the model is perfect, that one can still distinguish shades of grey within accurate descriptions of reality, which is not the same thing.

3) Interactivity limits our ability to evaluate the validity of our choices. We are not just reactive creatures – we make predictions, plan ahead and make choices based on those plans and predictions. Once a choice is made it both limits future choices and prevents us to see the consequences of having taken some other action. Having a reason for doing something is not enough – it has to be evaluated against reality (otherwise anything goes) and once we take a pre-emptive action (which we do all the time) we can no longer say (with differing degrees of reasonable uncertainty) what another choice would have led to.

Well, you've just highlighted probably the biggest problem to be addressed and that is inductive reasoning, but this does not fault Rands argument because it goes to errors of knowledge, not of morality. That is, how we transfer ignorance into knowledge is a difficult thing, but once knowledge of reality is known, morality is absolute, and can be applied in situations and can be morally judged to the extent tha the context of the situation is known.

By the way, welcome to the Board, and to Atlas, The Fountainhead and VoS.

[denoir]

Yes, so all of this falls under the category of errors in knowlege. They are not up for moral evaluation.

I think they have to be if you want to maintain a link to reality. The foundation of moral values has to (according to Rand and which I agree with) be linked to the fact that in order to survive we just can't take arbitrary actions. Or to put it a bit differently, your model of reality matters. If you start off with a strange model of reality, you can make perfectly rational choices and end with disaster. There are two variables in play: your model of the world and the actions that you take. You can even imagine having a consistently wrong world view combined with taking consistently wrong actions and have a system that produces good results. Granted it's not likely, but my point is that I don't think you can limit moral evaluation to internal reasoning but that there needs to be a link to reality - which is internal model of the reality that you have.

Well, you've just highlighted probably the biggest problem to be addressed and that is inductive reasoning, but this does not fault Rands argument because it goes to errors of knowledge, not of morality. That is, how we transfer ignorance into knowledge is a difficult thing, but once knowledge of reality is known, morality is absolute, and can be applied in situations and can be morally judged to the extent tha the context of the situation is known.

Well, yes if reality is reasonably known and our predictions of the consequences of certain actions are reasonably accurate. And I do think her arguments apply to a wide range of commonly held views. I would however not categorically dismiss the problem of knowing reality in terms of predicting the consequences of one's actions. To me the value of Rand's position comes from her highlighting the inevitable auto-destructive principles of popular value systems. What is remarkable there is more that those people have not thought at all what would happen if they consistently practiced what they preached and how strongly they are advocating to saw off the branch that they are sitting on. There is however a range of less obvious ethical problems that I think Rand ignores. Even when you come to the conclusion that it is in your interest not trying to destroy the world, yourself included it is far from obvious in a number of cases how you should go about not destroying yourself. I think that this forum is a case in point - people that agree that rational selfishness is a good idea discussing ethical issues. If a true/false statement was obvious for each moral dilemma then there would be no need for such discussions.

By the way, welcome to the Board, and to Atlas, The Fountainhead and VoS.

Thanks

[D'kian]

As such a rational “white” moral choice that has bad consequences cannot be as “white” as a choice that apart from the right motivation also has good consequences.

Let's consider an example:

1) You see a red light at an intersection. You decide you're in too much of a hurry to stop. As a consequence you run over and kill a pedestrian.

2) You see a green light at an intersection. A pedestrian crosses against the light and you run him over and kill him.

Now, the consequences are the same but the choices vary. Who is at fault in either example? Why?

Or let's try something different. Say you come up with a better kind of rechargeable battery, one less expensive that charges faster. You borrow loads of money to develop mass production procedures, you gather investors and more loans to set up a factory. You go into production and, suddenly, Duracell or Varta or someone else comes out with tiny fuel cells at a price comparable to yours. You didn't kow this was in the offing. your market surveys and your research indicated nothing of the sort (since Duracell kept it secret, naturally). You and your investors go broke.

Your choices were good, but the consequences disastrous. There are no guarantees in life.

[KendallJ]

I think they have to be if you want to maintain a link to reality.

Well, that is simply using omniscience as your standard of value, and it certianly leads to the idea of moral greyness. But tell me why using omniscience as the standard of value is helpful? So just so I understand, you want to judge someone witout a priori knowledge of reality as immoral if they make a decision based on an incorrect model, just as you would judge someone who has a correct model and knowingly makes the immoral decision anyway? By combining the two all this does is destroy the idea of moral judgement in the first place. They are not in any way ethically equal. Don't you agree?

The linkage to reality remains even in Rand's classification system, because regardless of your model of reality, you cannot escape the consequences of your choices, whether they are caused through ignorance or not. THat is what links the facts of reality to our choices. If you step out in front of a truck and really truly didn't know better, you'll still be dead. There's your linkage. Evaluation of the consequences of our actions, which remain tied to reality, regardless of our model is what gives us the linkage to evaluate and make ethical choices in the first place. That linkage is not lost because one type of decision has moral evaluation associated with it and the other does not.

Well, yes if reality is reasonably known and our predictions of the consequences of certain actions are reasonably accurate.

Well, that is what I said. When we have knowledge of reality, then morality is black and white, to the extent of our knowledge.

Let's say there are 3 aspects of reality that are relevant to the choice of a course of action in a particular case, and one is known correctly, and the other two are not. To the extent that knowing that one eliminates courses of action, we can make absolute moral judgements about someone who chooses from the set of eliminated actions. They are immoral. If several courses of action remain that rely on knowledge of the other two factors, then choosing among those courses of action cannot have ethical judgement, even if in reality, there are differences. THis does not elimnate the linkage becuase regardless of the knowledge, the person will not escape the consequences of their actions, and is then free to evaluate their model of reality given those consequences. That is a bit of a simplification because knowledge isn't discreet; it is related to all other knowledge. But it illustrates the principle.

I would however not categorically dismiss the problem of knowing reality in terms of predicting the consequences of one's actions.

I didn't dismiss it. It is a huge issue. But it is an epistemological problem; not one of ethics.

There is however a range of less obvious ethical problems that I think Rand ignores. Even when you come to the conclusion that it is in your interest not trying to destroy the world, yourself included it is far from obvious in a number of cases how you should go about not destroying yourself.

This is all true. How is this an ethical issue, and not an epistemological one? But realize what you're saying vs. what Rand is.

Rand is saying that it is far from obvious what the true false statement is. But there IS a true-false statement that can be made. That is, the issue is complex, but still evaluatable.

You are saying (if I understand you correctly) that it is also far from obvious what the true-false stament is, because there is none. The man who doesn't know the reality of the situation is as morally culpable as the one who does. This can only be because there is no actual distinction between the two.

If you actually mean what Rand is saying, then the issue is one of terminology, and you'll have to help me understand what is different about your position than hers.

[JMeganSnow]

If you start off with a strange model of reality, you can make perfectly rational choices and end with disaster.

No, you can't, and this is the source of your entire confusion on this issue. Rational is *not* the same as *logical*. It does *not* mean "internally consistent*. It contains such things as objectivity, which means that a rational idea *must* be in accordance with reality, not in accordance with a "strange model of reality". It is *impossible* to make rational choices based on an irrational worldview; it is a complete and utter contradiction.

[denoir]

Well, that is simply using omniscience as your standard of value, and it certianly leads to the idea of moral greyness. But tell me why using omniscience as the standard of value is helpful? So just so I understand, you want to judge someone witout a priori knowledge of reality as immoral if they make a decision based on an incorrect model, just as you would judge someone who has a correct model and knowingly makes the immoral decision anyway? By combining the two all this does is destroy the idea of moral judgement in the first place. They are not in any way ethically equal. Don't you agree?

It's not the omniscience that is the standard of value but reality. Our moral values have to be derived from reality - not just our model of it. It is not the internal process of decision that is relevant, it is the action or more precisely the consequences of the action that one takes. Otherwise anything goes as long as you can justify it in terms of internal reasoning. I do not subscribe to that kind of ethics although it seems to be popular today (hate crime legislation is a trivial example). In that case ignorance is treated like a moral blank check - a permission to do anything as long as you keep yourself ignorant.

The linkage to reality remains even in Rand's classification system, because regardless of your model of reality, you cannot escape the consequences of your choices, whether they are caused through ignorance or not. THat is what links the facts of reality to our choices. If you step out in front of a truck and really truly didn't know better, you'll still be dead. There's your linkage. Evaluation of the consequences of our actions, which remain tied to reality, regardless of our model is what gives us the linkage to evaluate and make ethical choices in the first place. That linkage is not lost because one type of decision has moral evaluation associated with it and the other does not.

Since the consequences of your choices are the end result, I can't see how they could be excluded from the moral evaluation. I'd say that Rand's approach to it is a form of consequentialism paired with a generalization of Kant's categorical imperative. Her way of analyzing an ethics system is to do an reductio ad absurdum of it demonstrating the disasterous consequences of a flawed system should it actually be fully implemented. In that regard it is entirely consequentialist - her ultimate argument are the effects of accepting for instance altruism as an ethical system. I have no problem with that - on the contrary, that perspective is the most valuable that I've gained from her work. But being a consequentialist tied to objective reality through an often inadequate model of it is not without its share of problems. As you operate against the model while you get the results from the real thing. On average the model has to at least resemble the real thing or we wouldn't be able to survive. From that average we can derive certain principles that if applied consistently on average produce good consequences in the real world. However that doesn't say that those rules are guaranteed to produce a good result each time as the real world is far more complex than what can be captured with a simple set of principles. If you recognize a situation that doesn't fit with the knowledge that you have - i.e if you know you can't predict the consequences then at best your action will be morally neutral until the consequences are known. And in the case of pre-emtive action, it gets even more complicated as an a posteriori evaluation of the choices that you have may not be possible.

Let's say there are 3 aspects of reality that are relevant to the choice of a course of action in a particular case, and one is known correctly, and the other two are not. To the extent that knowing that one eliminates courses of action, we can make absolute moral judgements about someone who chooses from the set of eliminated actions. They are immoral. If several courses of action remain that rely on knowledge of the other two factors, then choosing among those courses of action cannot have ethical judgement, even if in reality, there are differences. THis does not elimnate the linkage becuase regardless of the knowledge, the person will not escape the consequences of their actions, and is then free to evaluate their model of reality given those consequences. That is a bit of a simplification because knowledge isn't discreet; it is related to all other knowledge. But it illustrates the principle.

Again, I have difficulty seeing how the consequences could be decoupled from morality. The fact that you will have to face the consequences of an action has a direct moral implication. Otherwise anything goes. Sure you'll face the consequences but you'll be able to claim to have acted morally. Unless the consequences are considered morality loses all meaning as it can be anything.

Rand is saying that it is far from obvious what the true false statement is. But there IS a true-false statement that can be made. That is, the issue is complex, but still evaluatable.

You are saying (if I understand you correctly) that it is also far from obvious what the true-false stament is, because there is none. The man who doesn't know the reality of the situation is as morally culpable as the one who does. This can only be because there is no actual distinction between the two.

If you actually mean what Rand is saying, then the issue is one of terminology, and you'll have to help me understand what is different about your position than hers.

What I am saying is that there are scenarios where there is a true-false statement but it is unreachable through the limited model of the world that we have access to. Since we make our choices based on that model we can't a priori determine the choice. What is worse, in many cases we can't even determine it after the fact as one chosen action may prevent us to analyze or predict the consequences had we taken a different action. Given our approximate model of reality the ease of reaching a true-false statement will range from trivial to impossible - and thus the shades of gray. In the trivial case where the consequences are predictable and a simple rule fits the problem, it will be black and white. In the cases however where you operate with incomplete information against an approximate model of a very complex system you can't do a reasonable moral assessment as you can't predict the consequences. The less you know and the more complex the issue is the smaller is the probability that you'll blindly make a good decision. And just blindly making a choice can hardly be considered moral although perhaps not as immoral as knowingly making a wrong choice. In between are all the shades of gray.

[KendallJ]

It's not the omniscience that is the standard of value but reality. Our moral values have to be derived from reality - not just our model of it. It is not the internal process of decision that is relevant, it is the action or more precisely the consequences of the action that one takes. Otherwise anything goes as long as you can justify it in terms of internal reasoning. I do not subscribe to that kind of ethics although it seems to be popular today (hate crime legislation is a trivial example). In that case ignorance is treated like a moral blank check - a permission to do anything as long as you keep yourself ignorant.

hmm, ok, I think I'm starting to see where your issue comes from.

I think the biggest issue here is that you've disconnected the "internal reasoning" process from reality. And so when you look at the situation then it appears to you that there is no connection in Rand's view, when this is not what she means. This is the view of a rationalist: that the fucntion of our brains is some sort of internal calculus that has no bearing on reality. This is NOT Rand's view at all. Reason is by definition the integration of reality into our model. Willful internal calculus with no reference to reality is a form of evasion and not in any way an exercise of reason. Evasion is the first sin, if you will, since rationality is the primary virtue.

Also, I want to be very clear to distinctly separate aspects of morality that are codified legally vs. the broader field of ethics. The reason is specifically the codification. There is no moral whiteness regarding ignorance of reality when it comes to legal aspects because the law is objectively codified. It is ignorance of the law which is no excuse, but only for those aspects that are codified, because they are codified.

You may claim that omniscience is not the standard of morality, but that does not make it so. By standard we meant the yardstick against which we measure what is "the good". Don't confuse true-false, with good-bad here. True-false implies a good-bad, yes. But the standard then must be based against the reasoning man's knowledge of reality. If as you say reality is the standard, then the only good comes from the man who know reality entirely, i.e. omnisciently.

My assertion here is that Rand has observed all the same issues in reality that you raise; that you believe her particular conceptualization to not address certain issues. I would assert that it does address those issues you raise, but not by your understanding of it. ALso, the particular conceptualization you would replace it with opens up much larger issues which have been pointed out to you, but for which you have yet to respond.

Conceptually, Rand's demarcation is better, cleaner, crisper, without capitulating anything. Yours however muddies the water namely by equivocating the good with the evil in some sort of amalgum you call "shades of grey". Shades of grey are not necessary, and they serve to complicate, not illuminate. This is as regards ethical principles, as a tool of conceputal evaluation. Note that Rand made allowances for men of mixed principles, i.e. "grey" men. How does this not address your issue of complexity, entirely? The principles themselves are white or black.

So I will ask again, as others have.

If reality is the standard, what is the moral status of a man who knowlingly makes the evil choice, but because of unforseen circumstances, ends with only "good" results?

...and the status of the men who end in the same result, but for whom one made the good choice, and the other made the evil choice given their knowledge of reality?

Since the consequences of your choices are the end result, I can't see how they could be excluded from the moral evaluation. I'd say that Rand's approach to it is a form of consequentialism paired with a generalization of Kant's categorical imperative.

Ugh. You must have previous philosophical training then. I might suggest that your classificatoin of her does not do her any sort of justice, nor is it correct. Others have made both of those classifications of Rand's work, and there are threads on it, especially the heinous idea that the categorical imperative is in anyway related to her ethics. Please search for them.

Tara Smith in Viable Values also does a nice job of dealing with the attempt to classify Rand in any of the broad schools of ethical thought. (i.e. "Is she virtue ethics, or consequentialist?")

The categorical imperative is a lousy explanation of her epistemolgical method of generatlizing ethical principles, and while her primacy of existence mindset means that consequences are very important to her, the good must be translated into something that can be prescribed a priori as the good action for men (not Gods). It is ethics after all - that's its purpose. The process of analyzing consequences is the process of bringing reason to bear to fashion ethical principles that can be used a priori by men, not of making ethical evaulations in a given context. That is the linkage. Reason is the linkage to reality, and the reason that it is the cardinal virtue. In that sense she is not a consequentialist, but a virtue ethisicst, and hence the problem that Smith points out of trying to classify her into today's classifications. She is a synthesis of virtue ethics and consequentialism. The best way to say it is that she is a virtue ethicist who uses the consequences of reality to fashion her principles of virtue through the use of reason. That is NOT a consequentialist.

Again, I have difficulty seeing how the consequences could be decoupled from morality. The fact that you will have to face the consequences of an action has a direct moral implication. Otherwise anything goes. Sure you'll face the consequences but you'll be able to claim to have acted morally. Unless the consequences are considered morality loses all meaning as it can be anything.

Again, your concerns are only true if your version of reason is rationalism. The fact that you have to face the consequences of your action has a direct metaphysical implication. It only has an ethical bearing if it would have changed your prescribed actions a priori, given exactly the same circumstances. The fact that the first primary ethical virtue is rationality means that you must consider the consequences of your actions, and failing to do so is evasion. That has moral implications for you both for your actions now, and your actions in the future. However, omniscience need not be the standard to effectively deal with those concerns. This is what you are continually missing. Claiming you have acted morally is not a way to get around having rationally considering the consequences, and in fact that claim only works the first time around, doesn't it?

If ethics is about defining the "shoulds". If white men are doing all they "should" do, then what is the morally "grey" man, who is acting fully upon all of his current information, but because of some unkown factor of reality, he will end up having bad consequences. You call him grey. That must mean there is another "should" out there that he could know a priori, but is not doing. If he is doing what he should do, he can be nothing but white. If it is not, then you please tell me the action, the "should" that is white in that situation? You slip out from underneath your own classification system by calling it morally "neutral". No it's grey by your system. What results from Rand's view is that a man considers rationally, and at some point acts on the knowledge he has, without guilt, without any feeling that there was something else he should have done, knowing that he will then evaluate the consequences of his actions to improve his knoweldge and assessment, and act with more knowledge of reality in the future. Rand would call this morally white, coupled with the unknown. At your best, you would call it "neutral". Regardless, it has no new implications for what should be done so calling it grey makes no sense. The standard must be that the man who is doing all he should do, given his nature (his non-omniscience included) must be white. If there is another should, but that should requires him to be something he is not (i.e. omniscient) then it cannot be one that applies to him in this situation. To do so fails to recognize the reality of man's nature.

Rand's system recognizes the reality of man's nature by providing the linkage to reality in the "feedback loop" of reason. Your system denies man's nature, and requires him to be omniscient to be "good". Who is missing out on reality then?

What I am saying is that there are scenarios where there is a true-false statement but it is unreachable through the limited model of the world that we have access to. Since we make our choices based on that model we can't a priori determine the choice. What is worse, in many cases we can't even determine it after the fact as one chosen action may prevent us to analyze or predict the consequences had we taken a different action. Given our approximate model of reality the ease of reaching a true-false statement will range from trivial to impossible - and thus the shades of gray. In the trivial case where the consequences are predictable and a simple rule fits the problem, it will be black and white. In the cases however where you operate with incomplete information against an approximate model of a very complex system you can't do a reasonable moral assessment as you can't predict the consequences. The less you know and the more complex the issue is the smaller is the probability that you'll blindly make a good decision. And just blindly making a choice can hardly be considered moral although perhaps not as immoral as knowingly making a wrong choice. In between are all the shades of gray.

Yes, yes, you've said this many times. What you have not given us an indication of is what difference in action results from this view that is for the better. The differences in action that you try to ascribe to someone who takes Rand's position are completely in error. They would not happen as you claim. You position does nothing new, and in fact makes the conceptualization of this so muddy that someone else will come along and blur the distinction between what is truly good, and truly evil.

For a rational man, working to the best of his ability, there is certianly a reason to consider the consequences of his actions, but there is no reason to try to a priori give him a morally negative evaluation because of his ignorance, because that evaluation will not ask him to do anything differently. There is no new should that results from your moral greyness, which is simply not what moral evaluations are for. It only serves to pile on him unearned guilt.

So it's two things. A failure to see the linkage to reality of reason in the whole process, as opposed to naked rationalism, and a failure to see moral evaulation as only useful if it results in different a priori prescribed action. There is no reason to give something a morally negative connotation if it results in no different a priori prescription than that which would be morally white. The prescription, "He should do this, given he knows all there is to know about the situation" cannot by definition be a priori, unless man is omniscient.

[denoir]

hmm, ok, I think I'm starting to see where your issue comes from.

I think the biggest issue here is that you've disconnected the "internal reasoning" process from reality. And so when you look at the situation then it appears to you that there is no connection in Rand's view, when this is not what she means. This is the view of a rationalist: that the fucntion of our brains is some sort of internal calculus that has no bearing on reality. This is NOT Rand's view at all. Reason is by definition the integration of reality into our model. Willful internal calculus with no reference to reality is a form of evasion and not in any way an exercise of reason. Evasion is the first sin, if you will, since rationality is the primary virtue.

No, no - I'm not saying that internal reasoning is disconnected from reality. I'm saying that it is correlated but not a 1:1 mapping. The internal model of reality that we have is not arbitrary but it is incomplete. Due to that incompleteness there are situations where a prediction will not match reality.

Also, I want to be very clear to distinctly separate aspects of morality that are codified legally vs. the broader field of ethics. The reason is specifically the codification. There is no moral whiteness regarding ignorance of reality when it comes to legal aspects because the law is objectively codified. It is ignorance of the law which is no excuse, but only for those aspects that are codified, because they are codified.

Why? I don't see the difference. Why would you excuse ignorance just because a rule is not codified? And in that case, how would you treat immoral laws?

My assertion here is that Rand has observed all the same issues in reality that you raise; that you believe her particular conceptualization to not address certain issues. I would assert that it does address those issues you raise, but not by your understanding of it. ALso, the particular conceptualization you would replace it with opens up much larger issues which have been pointed out to you, but for which you have yet to respond.

Which issues? And I'm not aware that I have advocated a system one way or another - I'm just questioning Rand's views on ethics as I understand them.

So I will ask again, as others have.

If reality is the standard, what is the moral status of a man who knowlingly makes the evil choice, but because of unforseen circumstances, ends with only "good" results?

...and the status of the men who end in the same result, but for whom one made the good choice, and the other made the evil choice given their knowledge of reality?

If a man consistently makes evil choices he cannot get only "good" results. There may bee unforeseen circumstances on occasion, but on average the results will be bad. The other side of the coin is more interesting - an ignorant man making the best choices he can and ending up doing evil. A typical example would be religious people that do atrocities. They got indoctrinated as children - they didn't know any better. They listened to their mystic - they didn't know any better. They were told that killing unbelievers was a virtue - they didn't know any better.

According to the ethical system you are suggesting their chain of actions were all "white". They did the only way they knew how to do "good". Would you claim that when they start killing people that their choices are morally "white"? By my book choosing not to kill would be white, killing out of ignorance would be dark gray and killing out of evil would be black. I would sooner excuse an ignorant man for his error than the one that does errors knowingly. I would however not equate the man that does good with the man that does evil out of ignorance.

Ugh. You must have previous philosophical training then. I might suggest that your classificatoin of her does not do her any sort of justice, nor is it correct. Others have made both of those classifications of Rand's work, and there are threads on it, especially the heinous idea that the categorical imperative is in anyway related to her ethics. Please search for them.

No, I don't have any philosophical training - I'm an engineer - so I'm sorry if I use the wrong terminology. I'll try to explain what I mean. An important theme in AS is the self-destruction of society because it chose to adhere to a bad set of rules. An important theme in FH is the self-destruction of Peter Keating by his following a corrupt ideology. Rand's approach in both books was to illustrate what would happen to a society or a person if the logic of altruism was followed through to its full extent. Her argument is: look at all the bad things that would happen. That makes her a consequentialist. The link to Kant's categorical imperative is by her following through the logic of altruism ideal to its conclusion. The Kantian imperative is: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." Rand shows what would happen if a society acted as if altruism was a universal law that was followed to the letter.

Example: Is religion moral? Randian answer: No. Religion attacks reason and rationality and demands that we give it up for faith and mysticism. At the same time the religious people are dependent on food, water etc that can only be provided by a rational approach to the world. If they had their way and we destroyed reason and rationality and substituted it for faith, we would all starve to death - them included. Hence religious ideology is self-destructive and thus immoral.

If ethics is about defining the "shoulds". If white men are doing all they "should" do, then what is the morally "grey" man, who is acting fully upon all of his current information, but because of some unkown factor of reality, he will end up having bad consequences. You call him grey. That must mean there is another "should" out there that he could know a priori, but is not doing. If he is doing what he should do, he can be nothing but white. If it is not, then you please tell me the action, the "should" that is white in that situation? You slip out from underneath your own classification system by calling it morally "neutral". No it's grey by your system. What results from Rand's view is that a man considers rationally, and at some point acts on the knowledge he has, without guilt, without any feeling that there was something else he should have done, knowing that he will then evaluate the consequences of his actions to improve his knoweldge and assessment, and act with more knowledge of reality in the future. Rand would call this morally white, coupled with the unknown. At your best, you would call it "neutral". Regardless, it has no new implications for what should be done so calling it grey makes no sense. The standard must be that the man who is doing all he should do, given his nature (his non-omniscience included) must be white. If there is another should, but that should requires him to be something he is not (i.e. omniscient) then it cannot be one that applies to him in this situation. To do so fails to recognize the reality of man's nature.

Rand's system recognizes the reality of man's nature by providing the linkage to reality in the "feedback loop" of reason. Your system denies man's nature, and requires him to be omniscient to be "good". Who is missing out on reality then?

Yes, yes, you've said this many times. What you have not given us an indication of is what difference in action results from this view that is for the better. The differences in action that you try to ascribe to someone who takes Rand's position are completely in error. They would not happen as you claim. You position does nothing new, and in fact makes the conceptualization of this so muddy that someone else will come along and blur the distinction between what is truly good, and truly evil.

For a rational man, working to the best of his ability, there is certianly a reason to consider the consequences of his actions, but there is no reason to try to a priori give him a morally negative evaluation because of his ignorance, because that evaluation will not ask him to do anything differently. There is no new should that results from your moral greyness, which is simply not what moral evaluations are for. It only serves to pile on him unearned guilt.

So it's two things. A failure to see the linkage to reality of reason in the whole process, as opposed to naked rationalism, and a failure to see moral evaulation as only useful if it results in different a priori prescribed action. There is no reason to give something a morally negative connotation if it results in no different a priori prescription than that which would be morally white. The prescription, "He should do this, given he knows all there is to know about the situation" cannot by definition be a priori, unless man is omniscient.

Well, I think we've reached the core of the issue here. Your position is that moral judgement is done only at the moment of the choice while I'm saying that the moral judgement comes after the consequences are known (regardless if any other choices were available or not). You make a good point about ethics being about "shoulds". From that perspective, I would say that you are right. But I'm not sure it's quite that simple. Laws for instance are typically codified morality and they are applied after the fact. If you run over somebody with your car, you get punished even if it wasn't intentional. Would you say that there are just black and white in a situation where: a) doesn't run over a pedestrian runs over a pedestrian by mistake c) runs over a pedestrian by mistake because he was drunk c) runs over a pedestrian because he wants to kill a pedestrian

Was the one that did it by mistake behave ethically? Was the drunk just as unethical as the murderer? In your case the one that didn't run over a pedestrian's and the one that did it by mistake's decisions would be classified just as "white" and the drunk's and the murderer's decision "black". And to say that an action that kills a man by mistake and an action that doesn't kill a man are morally equivalent seems odd to me.

[KendallJ]

No, no - I'm not saying that internal reasoning is disconnected from reality. I'm saying that it is correlated but not a 1:1 mapping. The internal model of reality that we have is not arbitrary but it is incomplete. Due to that incompleteness there are situations where a prediction will not match reality.

There is a name for it when our rational minds have a perfect model of reality: omnscience. That seems to be your standard even if you say it is not.

Why? I don't see the difference. Why would you excuse ignorance just because a rule is not codified?

I woudl excuse a certain type of ignorance, reasonable ignorance. I'll show you this later, because you are confusing this.

Which issues? And I'm not aware that I have advocated a system one way or another - I'm just questioning Rand's views on ethics as I understand them.

Well, you'll have to read back to find them. Well, as far as I can tell so far you are pretty enamoured of using omniscience as your ethical standard, and so far that is what you are contrasting Rand's system with.

If a man consistently makes evil choices he cannot get only "good" results. There may bee unforeseen circumstances on occasion, but on average the results will be bad. The other side of the coin is more interesting - an ignorant man making the best choices he can and ending up doing evil. A typical example would be religious people that do atrocities. They got indoctrinated as children - they didn't know any better. They listened to their mystic - they didn't know any better. They were told that killing unbelievers was a virtue - they didn't know any better.

Well, be careful here. Again you are failing to understand the distinction between willful ignorance and reasonable ignorance. None of these are examples of men being reasonable, i.e. using their rational faculty. Jenni pointed this out to you above, and you never ackowledged her. These are NOT examples of rationality.

According to the ethical system you are suggesting their chain of actions were all "white". They did the only way they knew how to do "good".

No I'm not. These are not examples of using one's rational faculty (assuming we're talking about adults); therefore, there ignorance comes from evasion, which is morally black.

Would you claim that when they start killing people that their choices are morally "white"?

No for several reasons. The law against murder is codified so no one can claim ignorance on that count. Ignorance by willful evasion is immoral evenso.

By my book choosing not to kill would be white, killing out of ignorance would be dark gray and killing out of evil would be black.

Well, already you are forgiving the unforgivable. By my book, it would be white, black, black.

I would sooner excuse an ignorant man for his error than the one that does errors knowingly. I would however not equate the man that does good with the man that does evil out of ignorance.

Again you misunderstand the role of reason in Rand's ethics. If a man is committing wilful evasion, then he is already black, ignorance notwithstanding. Because that in effect means he is choosing to create his ignornace. This is not what Rand means by an "error of knowledge".

No, I don't have any philosophical training - I'm an engineer - so I'm sorry if I use the wrong terminology. I'll try to explain what I mean. An important theme in AS is the self-destruction of society because it chose to adhere to a bad set of rules. An important theme in FH is the self-destruction of Peter Keating by his following a corrupt ideology. Rand's approach in both books was to illustrate what would happen to a society or a person if the logic of altruism was followed through to its full extent. Her argument is: look at all the bad things that would happen. That makes her a consequentialist. The link to Kant's categorical imperative is by her following through the logic of altruism ideal to its conclusion. The Kantian imperative is: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." Rand shows what would happen if a society acted as if altruism was a universal law that was followed to the letter.

Well, this is your assertion of what Rand was doing, and I don't think you can back out her intent by looking at her method. You understand she thought Kant was one of the most foul philosophers on earth and the categorical imperative a heinous idea? Yes, she showed what would happen if these ideas were practiced consistently, but her justification for incorporating them into her ethics is NOT Kant's categorical imperative.

Here is what Rand thought of Kant, from The New Intellectual:

Thus reason was pushed off the philosophical scene, by default, by implication, by evasion. What had started as a serious problem between two camps of serious thinkers soon degenerated to the level where nothing was left on the field of philosophy but a battle between Witch Doctors and Attilaists.

The man who formalized this state, and closed the door of philosophy to reason, was Immanuel Kant.

Kant gave metaphysical expression to the psycho-epistemology of Attila and the Witch Doctor and to their primordial existential relationship, shutting out of his universe the existence and the psycho-epistemology of the Producer. He surrendered philosophy to Attila—and insured its future delivery back into the power of the Witch Doctor. He turned the world over to Attila, but reserved to the Witch Doctor the realm of morality. Kant's expressly stated purpose was to save the morality of self-abnegation and self-sacrifice. He knew that it could not survive without a mystic base—and what it had to be saved from was reason.

Attila's share of Kant's universe includes this earth, physical reality, man's senses, perceptions, reason and science, all of it labeled the "phenomenal" world. The Witch Doctor's share is another, "higher," reality, labeled the "noumenal" world, and a special manifestation, labeled the "categorical imperative," which dictates to man the rules of morality and which makes itself known by means of a feeling, as a special sense of duty.

The "phenomenal" world, said Kant, is not real: reality, as perceived by man's mind, is a distortion. The distorting mechanism is man's conceptual faculty: man's basic concepts (such as time, space, existence) are not derived from experience or reality, but come from an automatic system of filters in his consciousness (labeled "categories" and "forms of perception") which impose their own design on his perception of the external world and make him incapable of perceiving it in any manner other than the one in which he does perceive it. This proves, said Kant, that man's concepts are only a delusion, but a collective delusion which no one has the power to escape. Thus reason and science are "limited," said Kant; they are valid only so long as they deal with this world, with a permanent, pre-determined collective delusion (and thus the criterion of reason's validity was switched from the objective to the collective), but they are impotent to deal with the fundamental, metaphysical issues of existence, which belong to the "noumenal" world. The "noumenal" world is unknowable; it is the world of "real" reality, "superior'' truth and "things in themselves" or "things as they are"—which means: things as they are not perceived by man.

Even apart from the fact that Kant's theory of the "categories'' as the source of man's concepts was a preposterous invention, his argument amounted to a negation, not only of <ftni_32> man's consciousness, but of any consciousness, of consciousness as such. His argument, in essence, ran as follows: man is limited to a consciousness of a specific nature, which perceives by specific means and no others, therefore, his consciousness is not valid; man is blind, because he has eyes—deaf, because he has ears—deluded, because he has a mind—and the things he perceives do not exist, because he perceives them.

As to Kant's version of morality, it was appropriate to the kind of zombies that would inhabit that kind of universe: it consisted of total, abject selflessness. An action is moral, said Kant, only if one has no desire to perform it, but performs it out of a sense of duty and derives no benefit from it of any sort, neither material nor spiritual; a benefit destroys the moral value of an action. (Thus, if one has no desire to be evil, one cannot be good; if one has, one can.)

Those who accept any part of Kant's philosophy—metaphysical, epistemological or moral—deserve it.

Example: Is religion moral? Randian answer: No. Religion attacks reason and rationality and demands that we give it up for faith and mysticism. At the same time the religious people are dependent on food, water etc that can only be provided by a rational approach to the world. If they had their way and we destroyed reason and rationality and substituted it for faith, we would all starve to death - them included. Hence religious ideology is self-destructive and thus immoral.

Exactly, the principle is immoral. What about the men who practice it? Remember she said there could be "grey" men, right? Men of mixed principles? To the extent that they preserve some amount of rationality, and their actions are based upon that aspect of their mix of principles they are white. To the extent they allow the irrational to become pat of their daily actions they are black. hence a man of mixed principle.

There is a very good essay on this whole topic called Fact and Value by Leonard Peikoff, which synthesizes your need to see reality determine the good, and teases apart how we judge men. I suggest you read and understand it

Well, I think we've reached the core of the issue here. Your position is that moral judgement is done only at the moment of the choice while I'm saying that the moral judgement comes after the consequences are known (regardless if any other choices were available or not).

Not at all. I am saying that ethics as such must deal with the a priori prescriptions for mans action, given man's nature, as a rational (i.e. reason practicing) man. That does not mean that some form of evaluation is occuring constantly. But from an ethical perspective, the new knowledge gained after the consequences of an action have been evaluated, is pertinent only upon the subsequent actions taken, not retroactively upon past actions. If a man is using his rational faculty (not simply being a mindless dolt), he is not faulted by the fact that he is not omniscient which is not his nature.

You make a good point about ethics being about "shoulds". From that perspective, I would say that you are right. But I'm not sure it's quite that simple.

Well, keep in mind the difference between the ethical judgement of a principle and a man. I think it is quite that simple.

Laws for instance are typically codified morality and they are applied after the fact. If you run over somebody with your car, you get punished even if it wasn't intentional. Would you say that there are just black and white in a situation where: a) doesn't run over a pedestrian runs over a pedestrian by mistake c) runs over a pedestrian by mistake because he was drunk c) runs over a pedestrian because he wants to kill a pedestrian

And this is a perfect example.

a) innocent

innocent

c) guilty

d) guilty

Note that the outcome here is not based upon the result, but upon the accused's a priori action relative to some standard, and his mental state, exactly as my perspective above would demand. If it were based upon the result then b ) would be guilty too, but he is perfectly innocent. Note also that this is congruent wether we analyze based upon the outcome, or the expecation of the man's omniscience. In either case b ) would have been guilty when he is not.

The evaluation of c's action varies from b's, but this is because part of c's actions contributed to culpability. He was negligent to some degree. And what is the standard for negligence? It is a priori actions that a reasonable man could be expected to take. Here is a perfect example of how Rand's perspective is congruent to the law. Ignorance coupled with irrationality is NOT white, as I have explained several times, and so has Jenni. This is not what Rand means by an "error of knowledge". You keep bringing up examples of irrational ignorance, and claiming Rand lets these people off the hook. She does not.

Was the one that did it by mistake behave ethically? Was the drunk just as unethical as the murderer? In your case the one that didn't run over a pedestrian's and the one that did it by mistake's decisions would be classified just as "white" and the drunk's and the murderer's decision "black".

And that is exactly how the law classifies it as well. Please note to be convicted of manslaughter requires some sort of contributory negligence on one's part. If it is the case that the person was killed by mistake and you were not doing anything that a reasonable man would not do, the law will judge you innocent (i.e. white).

As regards, the drunk an the murderer, they are both guilty. Is one "more guilty" than the other? They are guilty of different things, but the whether they are guilty or not is not in dispute.

[denoir]

First, let me apologize for the late reply. I'm pretty busy with RL work right now so I didn't have the time to give a proper reply.

There is a name for it when our rational minds have a perfect model of reality: omnscience. That seems to be your standard even if you say it is not.

Call it omniscience - I call it reality. If you decide that a lion is a cuddly animal you´d like to hug, it will still eat you no matter how noble your intentions were. Nature is devoid of any morality - it is what it is. We derive our values from nature and not the other way around. In my opinion there needs to be a feedback loop - your actions need to be judged by their consequences. If you don't condemn mistakes as bad, you'll repeat them. Is it unfair to condemn a man when he did the best he could? No. It's neither fair nor unfair - it's reality. Nature has no sense of fairness or unfairness and it is the ultimate judge of our actions.

Well, be careful here. Again you are failing to understand the distinction between willful ignorance and reasonable ignorance. None of these are examples of men being reasonable, i.e. using their rational faculty. Jenni pointed this out to you above, and you never ackowledged her. These are NOT examples of rationality.

How is it willful ignorance if you have been indoctrinated from birth? In each step they did good according to the only standards they had been taught? As for Jenni's post, I thought that it was covered by our discussion and I didn't want this to branch out to parallel discussions.

I thought it was pretty obvious, but sure, I can state it more explicitly: Saying that rationality includes a necessary link to actual reality at best says nothing and at worse is a circular reference. You are forgetting that you are operating against a model of reality. You get feedback from actual reality, but that also is processed through your conceptual model of it. The same thing that defines your reasoning defined the model. The model is limited by both our senses but more importantly by our brains' computational capacity - we can't make good predictions except for some very trivial cases. Your reasoning, be it rational or irrational are both a part of the model and a function of it.

So, how good approximation of reality is the model? If we eliminate all the solipsism nonsense and the noumenon irrelevancies we get down to our biological hardware. We are apes - African apes to be specific. Humans have changed little in the last 50,000 years in terms of intellectual capacity but our societies have changed greatly. Our technological and social progress are side effects of the capabilities we evolved that increased survivability when we roamed the plains of Africa in small family hunter-gatherer groups. To assume the resulting information processing system (the brain) would the ultimately optimal solution for anything else is not justifiable. How we see the world and how we reason about it is a consequence of our biological past.

Our reasoning and our conceptual model of reality are the result of our brains. To claim that our reasoning is only acceptable if our model of reality is accurate says nothing. The two issues are linked: our reasoning forms our model of the world and our model of the world forms our reasoning.

No I'm not. These are not examples of using one's rational faculty (assuming we're talking about adults); therefore, there ignorance comes from evasion, which is morally black.

It isn't evasion if they don't know that they don't know. It's only if they are aware of their ignorance that you can accuse them of anything (according to your principles).

Again you misunderstand the role of reason in Rand's ethics. If a man is committing wilful evasion, then he is already black, ignorance notwithstanding. Because that in effect means he is choosing to create his ignornace. This is not what Rand means by an "error of knowledge".

It's meta knowledge - knowing that you don't know or not knowing that you don't know. I think in the case of most religious people - especially the fundamentalists and fanatics it is a case of not knowing that they don't know. It's not willful ignorance.

Well, this is your assertion of what Rand was doing, and I don't think you can back out her intent by looking at her method. You understand she thought Kant was one of the most foul philosophers on earth and the categorical imperative a heinous idea? Yes, she showed what would happen if these ideas were practiced consistently, but her justification for incorporating them into her ethics is NOT Kant's categorical imperative.

Exactly, the principle is immoral. What about the men who practice it? Remember she said there could be "grey" men, right? Men of mixed principles? To the extent that they preserve some amount of rationality, and their actions are based upon that aspect of their mix of principles they are white. To the extent they allow the irrational to become pat of their daily actions they are black. hence a man of mixed principle.

The principle is only immoral because the consequences are disastrous. And most religious people have presumably not thought through what the system they are advocating would lead to. Hence they are ignorant - and not willfully so but because they have been taught the religious dogma since birth. They don't know their ignorance to the extent that they don't even think of questioning the auto-destructive system they adhere to. According to your principles they would be excused.

There is a very good essay on this whole topic called Fact and Value by Leonard Peikoff, which synthesizes your need to see reality determine the good, and teases apart how we judge men. I suggest you read and understand it

Thanks, I will.

Not at all. I am saying that ethics as such must deal with the a priori prescriptions for mans action, given man's nature, as a rational (i.e. reason practicing) man. That does not mean that some form of evaluation is occuring constantly. But from an ethical perspective, the new knowledge gained after the consequences of an action have been evaluated, is pertinent only upon the subsequent actions taken, not retroactively upon past actions. If a man is using his rational faculty (not simply being a mindless dolt), he is not faulted by the fact that he is not omniscient which is not his nature.

And I'm saying that his intentions are irrelevant as long as they are incompatible with reality. Nature doesn't care about good intentions and honest mistakes. A mistake is a mistake regardless of the mindset behind it. Does it prevent a man from being 100% good? Sure. Does it prevent differentiation between good and evil? Not the least. Our internal model of reality has to correspond to reality on average. Those whose brain doesn't give an adequately accurate model will not survive and their genes will not stay in the gene pool. From that we can derive some principles that on average increase our survivability and protect our primary value: life. It is still however on average. We encourage people to follow those principles because on average they will produce good results. It does however not excuse them from the consequences. And blindly approving of actions that are good in general but fail in a specific case is a receipt for disaster. Adaptation is the prerequisite for life. If we do not continuously adjust our ethics to fit reality we are just creating another mindless religion. What was once an exception can become a new principle that on average produces good results. New scientific discoveries and new technologies typically prompt the need for an update of the ethical framework. Otherwise you get into absurd situation - like today when people use bronze age philosophy (the bible) to analyze the ethical implications of biotechnology.

As regards, the drunk an the murderer, they are both guilty. Is one "more guilty" than the other? They are guilty of different things, but the whether they are guilty or not is not in dispute.

Guilt or not is not in dispute, but degree of guilt is. Suppose you are playing Russian roulette for a huge reward. Is one bullet in the chamber ethically equal to five? Hardly. In the first case there is a 1/6 probability of disaster and 5/6 probability of reward. In the second case the odds are reversed. The first case is still very dangerous but the second is positively suicidal. Are the two cases equally "black" or "white"?

Suppose I want to buy a t-shirt. I can choose a white one or a black one and I don't care which. Is one choice moral and the other immoral? Or is the choice completely without moral implications?

While extreme, the first example is a very typical decision scenario: risk/reward analysis. Usually you're guessing the odds and in many cases your information is at best incomplete of both the risk and the reward. A binary true/false good/bad analysis is impossible. And this is not just willful ignorance of the situation but simply because humans are not omniscient. The only thing that is possible is a) an a priori probabilistic assessment of the situation and the choices (which includes previous knowledge and previously derived principles) and an a posteriori analysis of the consequences. Both are necessary components for a stable ethical system.

To use an analogy from engineering: You start by actualizing your idea by following known rules, natural laws and past experiences. When you have the model of what you wish to build the work is not complete. You validate the model by running simulations to make sure that it works. If the validation fails then no matter how good you were at following the rules, the model was not good. And if it fails in the real world the model was not good. You failed to take into account something that happened and that is not an exuse - even if you were not aware that you hade omitted something. A failure is a failure regardless of the package you wrap it in. Reality is the ultimate judge.

Edited November 13, 2007 by denoir

[lex_aver]

Wow, the discussion has grown really big!

If you decide that a lion is a cuddly animal you´d like to hug, it will still eat you no matter how noble your intentions were. Nature is devoid of any morality - it is what it is.

Here you judge the wrong "man": a lion is non-volitional animal, it can't be moral or not; you are totally correct here. Who you should judge is the man who decided to hug a lion.

We derive our values from nature and not the other way around. In my opinion there needs to be a feedback loop - your actions need to be judged by their consequences. If you don't condemn mistakes as bad, you'll repeat them. Is it unfair to condemn a man when he did the best he could? No. It's neither fair nor unfair - it's reality.

They are — your action is moral if it advances your life, and vice versa. However, you can't just assume that act that turned out to be benefatical by accident is moral or that malevolent action was caused by honest mistake is immoral.

Sure, any action is either good for man or bad for man, but in order to prosper, you can't act randomly hoping that your actions will somehow advance your life. You must identify what is the proper way for man to make a decision. Man does not act automatically, he must choose how to act volitionally. And because man's only valid tool of cognition is reason, his every action ought to be done after rational evaluation. But human must be judged by human standard, not a standard of some omniscient supreme being. You can't condemn a man for not being omniscient, because qua man he has no potential to be omniscient, his fallibility is not a result of his choice. You can't condemn a man for making honest mistakes.

Nature has no sense of fairness or unfairness and it is the ultimate judge of our actions.

You are right in that reality is the ultimate arbiter. It will punish you for every mistake you make, yet you can't brand every mistake as immoral.

How is it willful ignorance if you have been indoctrinated from birth? In each step they did good according to the only standards they had been taught?

You have a capacity to judge any moral system by its merit, and you have a capacity to learn from reality, not others. If it weren't so, a weel hadn't been created, let alone philosophy as such.

You are forgetting that you are operating against a model of reality. You get feedback from actual reality, but that also is processed through your conceptual model of it.

Concepts, when formed properly, omit only qualities irrelevant in the context. You don't have to know what's ball's color to predict its trajectory. Conceptualizing is not the same as oversimplifying, if done properly.

If we eliminate all the solipsism nonsense and the noumenon irrelevancies we get down to our biological hardware. We are apes - African apes to be specific. Humans have changed little in the last 50,000 years in terms of intellectual capacity but our societies have changed greatly. Our technological and social progress are side effects of the capabilities we evolved that increased survivability when we roamed the plains of Africa in small family hunter-gatherer groups. To assume the resulting information processing system (the brain) would the ultimately optimal solution for anything else is not justifiable. How we see the world and how we reason about it is a consequence of our biological past.

Our reasoning and our conceptual model of reality are the result of our brains. To claim that our reasoning is only acceptable if our model of reality is accurate says nothing. The two issues are linked: our reasoning forms our model of the world and our model of the world forms our reasoning.

Here you fall in Kant's trap: you assert that man's understanding of reality is never correct and never complete, in any context. The thing is that such viewpoint is inherently contradictory — you basically say that it is wrong, just as anything you say.

Guilt or not is not in dispute, but degree of guilt is. Suppose you are playing Russian roulette for a huge reward. Is one bullet in the chamber ethically equal to five? Hardly. In the first case there is a 1/6 probability of disaster and 5/6 probability of reward. In the second case the odds are reversed. The first case is still very dangerous but the second is positively suicidal. Are the two cases equally "black" or "white"?

I would like to comment on "Black & White" analogy in general. It is flawed. The thing is that two people can be both good, yet one of them is better than the other. It is impossible with colors: if one grayscale tint is whiter than the other, at least one of them is gray. The same distinction applies to evil and black color.

Edited November 26, 2007 by lex_aver

[lex_aver]

Actually, I just understood that mistake as such cannot be morally judged. Morality is not a criterion for judging whether the action was benefetical or whether it had expected results. Moral code is a guide to life, a set of virtues that man has to posess if he wants to thrive consistently, not by accident. So what's judged by proper moral code is not correctness of a decision, but rather the way it was made: rational or irrational. If mistake was made involuntarily — it is called honest mistake — you cannot condemn man for making it, it was not his fault, he acted rationally. But if there was an act of evasion, choosing to mistake, it is worth condemning, because that was irrational, improper for man.

[JMeganSnow]

Oi, these lengthy posts are making my head hurt. Is it possible to condense this down to some sort of fundamental issue? I think it really does come down to the definition of what exactly constitutes rational behavior, which is why my comment wasn't a side-discussion. Identifying the fundamental or core issue is very important because you can argue the particulars until you're blue in the face and never get anywhere without it.

[denoir]

They are — your action is moral if it advances your life, and vice versa. However, you can't just assume that act that turned out to be benefatical by accident is moral or that malevolent action was caused by honest mistake is immoral.

Sure, any action is either good for man or bad for man, but in order to prosper, you can't act randomly hoping that your actions will somehow advance your life. You must identify what is the proper way for man to make a decision. Man does not act automatically, he must choose how to act volitionally. And because man's only valid tool of cognition is reason, his every action ought to be done after rational evaluation. But human must be judged by human standard, not a standard of some omniscient supreme being. You can't condemn a man for not being omniscient, because qua man he has no potential to be omniscient, his fallibility is not a result of his choice. You can't condemn a man for making honest mistakes.

You are right in that reality is the ultimate arbiter. It will punish you for every mistake you make, yet you can't brand every mistake as immoral.

It's not quite that clear cut. From a point of view of practical ethics you are correct - at the point of making a decision you cannot expect omniscience. However that isn't enough. When you make a mistake you must get feedback in order not to repeat it - that's the basic concept of learning. For a mistake the feedback must be negative in order for you to realize that it was a mistake that should not be repeated. Now you may say that the feedback will be the consequences of the action you have taken. But that doesn't hold as in many cases the consequences won't hurt you, but somebody else. With the lack of explicit feedback, implicit one is needed - i.e. condemnation of the actions.

Here you fall in Kant's trap: you assert that man's understanding of reality is never correct and never complete, in any context. The thing is that such viewpoint is inherently contradictory — you basically say that it is wrong, just as anything you say.

No, it's not contradictory as it isn't one or the other. The fact that I can't see ultra violet doesn't diminish my capacity to see the colors in the visible spectrum. Not complete or not entirely correct doesn't mean incorrect and useless. Our conceptual model of the world is good enough for elementary survival - that is what it has been shaped to handle. It doesn't mean that reality is relative or subjective - just that we operate against a limited subset of it and we use approximate models to guide our interactions.

To give a practical example - I cut my finger pretty deep yesterday. I was slicing a lemon and the knife slipped. Could I have predicted it? No, the trajectory was too complex and there were another bunch of factors such as the bluntness of the blade, the texture of the lemon etc that my brain was inadequate for calculating. My internal model and prediction was that the knife was going through the lemon and not through my finger and it ended up being dead wrong.

Let's take another more general example: sexual desire. The genetic reasons for it are obvious - your genes encouraging you to reproduce so that the continuing survival of the genes is ensured. You can however still feel sexual desire even if you are using contraceptives. It's a misfiring of a rule of thumb that was built into you at a time when contraceptives didn't exist. Reproduction is the rational reason for sex and the enjoyment we get from it is false feedback. We're not bothered about it though although we know it is a misrepresentation of reality and in fact irrational. We're aware that our mental model of it and the biological reality behind it and we know that they are in contradiction - and we don't care. To be consistent we'd have to renounce sex without reproduction as an unearned enjoyment (as the enjoyment is given to us by our genes as an encouragement to help spread them). It is a fraud against our biological reality but we accept it because frankly not many people would think that life with sex would be very fun to endure. (Come to think of it - had Rand been consistent she would have damned sex without reproduction as immoral. It could be framed something like this: We depend on our genes for our survival and how do we reciprocate? By preventing their survival.)

Another example is of course kin altruism which makes sense genetically as your kin share your genes. Helping them is like helping yourself from the genes' point of view. While altruistic behavior may be a reasonable rule of thumb when your world consists almost exclusively of family members (as it was for humans for hundreds of thousands of years), it is a terrible idea in a society where you are surrounded by strangers. We stopped being hunter-gatherers living in family bands only about 15-10,000 years ago, so of course we still have those rules built in and we operate according to them although they don't make much sense today.

You may see a moth spiraling into a candle flame and ask why it is suicidal. But it's the wrong question to ask. The moth has rules of thumb for navigation based on the assumption of using stellar objects as points of reference. They are in optical infinity and the navigation system works quite well in that scenario. It fails however miserably when you have artificial lights and the moth kills itself by the misfiring of the otherwise useful rule of thumb.

Anyway, the point is that our biological systems, including our brain have evolved to survive in a very different context than the one we are living in today. We can still adapt to a large degree, but there are many systems and rules that made sense in pre-historic times but are bad in a modern society. Our priorities and internal models are optimized for survival.. back then and may or may not be applicable today. It doesn't mean however that we are completely blind to reality and that we can't say anything about it. Not so at all - our minds are powerful and flexible devices that can adapt to different situations and can generalize.

I would like to comment on "Black & White" analogy in general. It is flawed. The thing is that two people can be both good, yet one of them is better than the other. It is impossible with colors: if one grayscale tint is whiter than the other, at least one of them is gray. The same distinction applies to evil and black color.

I agree, Rand does not.

[denoir]

Oi, these lengthy posts are making my head hurt. Is it possible to condense this down to some sort of fundamental issue? I think it really does come down to the definition of what exactly constitutes rational behavior, which is why my comment wasn't a side-discussion. Identifying the fundamental or core issue is very important because you can argue the particulars until you're blue in the face and never get anywhere without it.

I agree, and it's a bit in that direction I wanted to go with the evolutionary discussion. In essence, my point is this - we are optimized for survival in a reality that at least to some degree doesn't exist any more. The rules for survival of hunter-gatherers are in some respects different than for a group of people that live in a modern metropolis. So our brains may be very good at some today rather useless stuff and pretty bad for stuff that would be useful. Yes, the foundation is the same based on the laws of physics etc, but that's just a very fundamental level and there are many above it. If you have ten people or ten million people living in one place makes a big difference for instance.

That doesn't mean that everything is relative and that we can't say anything about the world. Not at all - reality is still absolute. The difference is that we are facing other aspects than the ones we were biologically optimized for. The way our minds work may not always be optimal for our current context. While the brain is a magnificent adaptive system, it is also a product of evolution which means that it is full of quick fixes, shortcuts and rules of thumb. Evolutionary changes are very slow while our change of environment has been extreme, both in speed and in quantity of change. So rational decisions in context of the aspects of reality we face today may go against our biological disposition - including the operation of our brain.