Rand Gets No Respect

[ammonius]

Notice that this is stated in terms of wishes and other predicates of consciousness, without reference to actual hardcore reality.

The way that I have always understood this is, that one should act in a way that one could will one's action to be enacted by everyone everywhere all the time (that is "universal"). Thou I'm not sure what you mean by "hard core reality"; is there a "soft core reality"? I'm generally of the view that there is but one reality, that is "this" reality, which of course includes individual/particular will as well as the particular who wills.

The "whether" part is where he runs off the rails -- that means that I should act with others as a goal.What does that even mean?

I don't see "goal" anywhere in Kant's statement, rather he is saying that each individual is an end in themselves, and that they shouldn't be used as a means to another end. That is, you shouldn't "use" other people.

That's like something that Wes Studi's character in Mystery Men would say. Well, I'm pretty sure it's wrong, because it basically says that one man's mean is every man's meat, which is untrue.

The third formulation is the closest to the "golden rule", which basically says treat others as you wish to be treated, Kant is saying, I think, that one should act "as if" you are the legislator of all humanity. Kant thinks all three formulations are getting at the same thing, the Categorical Imperative.

The idea of a floating imperative is at the root of the problem, IMO. God utters imperatives, and if you have to ground your ethics in an imperative theoretically uttered by a non-existent being, or pretend that there are imperatives just "out there" not uttered by god but that would be what god would say, if he existed, then you are kind of sauteed, philosophically speaking. Of course, the notion of a categorical imperative is also utterly antithetical to Objectivism, and it's caca as well. I cannot think of a single categorically true moral prescription -- every one of them is dependent on some fundamental contextual fact.

I'm not sure what you mean by "floating imperative", Kant thinks his moral principle is fully rooted in reason and is thus universal, or categorical. For Kant reason is not "out there" (is it for Objectivists?), though it is Transcendental (Universal), without being Transcendent (God), he makes that distinction. The imperative is Categorical (Universal) because it is rational, and reason for Kant is universal. Kant most certainly replaced God with Reason, but for him it wasn't "out there" but rather always everywhere. What Kant would call Universally valid. Kant is simply claiming that in order for an act to be moral it must be Universal (Rational); to behave otherwise is immoral (irrational). Personally, I don't think the Categorical Imperative is accurate; but for entirely different reasons from Objectivists, though after your post, I'm not entirely sure.

[DavidOdden]

The way that I have always understood this is, that one should act in a way that one could will one's action to be enacted by everyone everywhere all the time (that is "universal").

Admittedly, he didn't write in English so I have to put massive faith in the translation, but I'll do so, and then what he said (doing a translation into less stuffy English) would be "Act only according to a principle which you could wish all beings to follow". But this says absolutely nothing about how you could identify such a principle, other than introspecting that indeed, you feel that this is how you want being (including yourself) to act. The only thing that it refers to is "your wish", and we know why beggars don't ride. I could, for example, act according to the principle that I, David Odden, am Lord God Supreme and owed all fealty -- and I could wish that all beings also act according to the principle that I, David Odden, am Lord God Supreme and owed all fealty. Of course I don't realistically expect people to do this, but I can wish for it. Part of my wishful thinking is that as god, I can fly (though in reality, I need an airplane to do that). A wish is a soft-core fact of reality -- I won't deny that some people have certain wishes about the nature of existence. But the wish goes no further than that: it doesn't change what is.

I don't see "goal" anywhere in Kant's statement, rather he is saying that each individual is an end in themselves, and that they shouldn't be used as a means to another end.That is, you shouldn't "use" other people.

Despite the fact that he didn't use the word "goal", he's still talking about goals when he talks about ends (are you aiming for some kind of distinction between a "goal" and an "end" that one works towards?). The objection is that you should treat other being as the same end as yourself, i.e. my life and the life of others should be my goal. Indeed, I would contend that you should treat other people as a means towards a goal (your life), though the exact means of doing so is not the same as how you would "use" a hammer. I know people get upset at the thought of "using" other people. But keep in mind that using a hammer still has to respect the nature of the hammer, for example it's not a good gardening tool and you shouldn't leave it out in the rain.

The third formulation is the closest to the "golden rule", which basically says treat others as you wish to be treated, Kant is saying, I think, that one should act "as if" you are the legislator of all humanity.

Okay, so you need to start treating me as god.

I'm not sure what you mean by "floating imperative", Kant thinks his moral principle is fully rooted in reason and is thus universal, or categorical.

Ordinary imperatives are commands given by someone (somebody of authority); a "floating imperative" is a command actually given by nobody. So we can't actually ask the agent to repeat his command, to paraphrase his command, to present his authority for making the command, not can we inquire into the penalties that he will impose in making the command.

Reason does not make commands and utter imperatives. It is a tool by which a man can discover moral facts and create ethic concepts.

The imperative is Categorical (Universal) because it is rational, and reason for Kant is universal.

I am pretty sure that rocks do not have a faculty of reason, and in fact even dogs, as clever as we, uh, they may be, don't have a faculty of reason. So reason is clearly not universal. In fact, reason is potentially present only when / where man is present. Furthermore, reason alone gives you bupkis -- reason has to act on something (namely, knowledge). The commandment cannot be universal, because knowledge is not universal. Another non-universal is the validity of peanuts as a snack. For me, peanuts are a tasty snack and it is imperative that I eat peanuts, because doing so advances my life. I've got some friends who would die from doing the same thing, so that is an example of the non-categoriality of The Imperative.

Kant is simply claiming that in order for an act to be moral it must be Universal (Rational); to behave otherwise is immoral (irrational).

I take it we agree that that is an untenable principle. BTW, do you think that according to Kant, universality is the primary and rationality is derived from that? That is, "if it's universal, it's therefore rational".

[ammonius]

Admittedly, he didn't write in English so I have to put massive faith in the translation, but I'll do so, and then what he said (doing a translation into less stuffy English) would be "Act only according to a principle which you could wish all beings to follow". But this says absolutely nothing about how you could identify such a principle, other than introspecting that indeed, you feel that this is how you want being (including yourself) to act. The only thing that it refers to is "your wish", and we know why beggars don't ride. I could, for example, act according to the principle that I, David Odden, am Lord God Supreme and owed all fealty -- and I could wish that all beings also act according to the principle that I, David Odden, am Lord God Supreme and owed all fealty. Of course I don't realistically expect people to do this, but I can wish for it. Part of my wishful thinking is that as god, I can fly (though in reality, I need an airplane to do that).

You have hit a point that most undergrads recognize as problematic in the Categorical Imperative, namely how one goes about formulating a maxims. Though, I don't think that Kant is talking about eating peanuts, or self-appointed divinity. He's talking about things like murder or theft. Particularly, if you steal something from someone then you must be able to will that everyone could steal from everyone else (including yourself) all the time. The same goes for murder. As far as your Maxim of willing everyone to treat you as God, well that's sort of Kant's point in the formulation of treating everyone as an end rather than a means. Though in your formulation you would be willing everyone treated you as God in the same way as you treat yourself as God, which may or may not have contradictory consequences.

A wish is a soft-core fact of reality -- I won't deny that some people have certain wishes about the nature of existence. But the wish goes no further than that: it doesn't change what is.

Well, willing and wishing have very distinct meanings and uses in the history of philosophy, Nietzsche after all didn't write "the Wish to Power". conflating the two doesn't solidify your point, besides if you had a will to fly I suppose you would act on that by taking piloting lessons, rather than hurling yourself out a window. That is will is generally a desire that one may act upon, while wishing is merely action-less desire. And I wouldn't grant your distinction between soft-core reality and hard-core reality; that seems an entirely fruitless distinction. Will is real in so far as it is will, a wish is a wish in so far as it is a wish, just like a rock is a rock in so far as it is a rock; and they all reside within the same universe; or are you positing a qualitative distinction, like mind/body, inside/outside, or other such dualism?

Despite the fact that he didn't use the word "goal", he's still talking about goals when he talks about ends (are you aiming for some kind of distinction between a "goal" and an "end" that one works towards?). The objection is that you should treat other being as the same end as yourself, i.e. my life and the life of others should be my goal. Indeed, I would contend that you should treat other people as a means towards a goal (your life), though the exact means of doing so is not the same as how you would "use" a hammer. I know people get upset at the thought of "using" other people. But keep in mind that using a hammer still has to respect the nature of the hammer, for example it's not a good gardening tool and you shouldn't leave it out in the rain.

Again, I don't think ends and goals are the same thing. An end in itself is that which one can not go beyond, while a goal is a marker. One can have many goals in life, but the end of ones life is, in Kant's world, your own subjectivity. That is, and this is where I think Kant is rather close to Objectivism; one shouldn't treat Julie(A) as a good Lay (-B-) (A=-B-), but rather Julie(A) should be treated as Julie (A) (A=A) as her own end.

As far as the "nature of the hammer", I have no idea what this is getting at. Perhaps you mean something like 18th century natural philosophy, or the search for a unified "human nature". Kant very well may be thinking of sort of thing, in fact he might mean that when you shouldn't treat another being as anything but an end, that is their own Nature. Here is a point where I certainly can't but into Kant. Nature seems to me to be one of those metaphysical claims about objects that is entirely based on the subjective apprehension of said object.

Okay, so you need to start treating me as god.Ordinary imperatives are commands given by someone (somebody of authority); a "floating imperative" is a command actually given by nobody. So we can't actually ask the agent to repeat his command, to paraphrase his command, to present his authority for making the command, not can we inquire into the penalties that he will impose in making the command.

Kant thinks the Imperative is given by reason, which he holds as supreme, even though he goes into a lengthy critique of "Pure Reason". Kant's reason is very close to Aristotle's, he holds the law of non contradiction, for example, and lays out just a few things which reason can not make sense of (his antinomies).

Reason does not make commands and utter imperatives. It is a tool by which a man can discover moral facts and create ethic concepts.I am pretty sure that rocks do not have a faculty of reason, and in fact even dogs, as clever as we, uh, they may be, don't have a faculty of reason. So reason is clearly not universal.

Kant, I suppose, like other Natural philosophers certainly thought that Reason was universal and not subjective, and he would've pointed to natural laws, such as those expressed in Newtonian Physics as evidence that the universe has reason running throughout.

in fact, reason is potentially present only when / where man is present. Furthermore, reason alone gives you bupkis -- reason has to act on something (namely, knowledge). The commandment cannot be universal, because knowledge is not universal.

But let me ask a question, if there is no reason without humanity; did humans simply make it up? If not, why do other creatures not appear to have faculties of reason?

BTW, do you think that according to Kant, universality is the primary and rationality is derived from that? That is, "if it's universal, it's therefore rational".

I think that Kant saw the universe as bound by specific natural laws which were understandable; that the universe itself was reasonable. For Kant then reason was the faculty that we can know the world through, including the faculty of making moral choices. That is, for Kant there was no need to look to God for any kind of moral knowledge, rather one could simply look to reason.

Now, I certainly am no Kantian; and I don't know anyone who really is. I have a good friend who is a Kant scholar, he certainly isn't a Kantian. Most of the philosophers who wrote after Kant weren't Kantian, most especially Hegel, Nietzsche, etc. I don't know were they myth that philosophers were plagued by a consistent Kantianism comes from, most of the canonical philosophers after Kant explicitly disagreed with him, they certainly didn't put him up on a pedestal. Furthermore, contemporary philosophy (at least the philosophy I was taught in) is nearly an utter rejection of Kant, though they tend not to straw-man him.

My point in posting on this forum in particular was that Rand really wasn't all that novel in her philosophy, and I agree that she discounts most of academic philosophy out right; but I don't think it is a "return of the favor" that contemporary philosopher don't address her as such; you'll find few philosophers who read the rather neo-platonic philosophy of Aldous Huxley. It is rather because Rand, like Huxley didn't deal with problems of her time but rather re-articulated apologetics from the past. If Objectivist philosophers want to be taken as philosophically significant they should address concerns and problems of the contemporary world, not the boggy men of an imagined enemy. For example, Rand's greatest enemy seems to be Marx, but she never explicitly examines Marx, she doesn't do a systematic reading of Marx, which one could easily do, rather she write polemic against Marx and Marxists. I was always disappointed in reading Rand's philosophy, as I imagine others who read philosophy outside of Rand are, given the adoration her readers celebrate.

For example, at the time that Rand was writing her work centered on the Individual; the whole notion of the Individual was being torn apart in general philosophical discourse; Rand might have addressed this openly, head on, but rather she chose to ignore it and repeat, more or less, the philosophical notions (Aristotelian) that those philosophers were tearing apart. Those philosophers weren't Kantians, the Kantians were all long dead; so were the Hegelians by the way. Some of them were Marxists, but they had their own critiques of Marx. Rand, like Huxley, doesn't address any of that, and instead does philosophy in a vacuum, against boogy men that don't exist; and creates a discourse addressing a philosophy that is long over. I personally would like to see her students, today's Objectivists, take up that discussion that she never bothered to, rather than simply retreat into the teachings of a master.

note: the -B- above was to keep a smiley from coming up it should be read as B

and: I am in no way trying to disparage Rand or Objectivists, in fact I think Objectivist would do quite well to throw their hat into various (Analytic or Continental) philosophical discourses; in particular, I think Prof. Odden could produce significant work in the areas of linguistic philosophy/ philosophy of language, again in addressing Analytic or in Post-Structuralist philosophies. There are, after all, as many philosophical publications and conferences professionally as there are in any other discipline; and perhaps more than quite a few. I think the APA in particular would be generally welcoming, especially given the interest in Rand amongst the undergraduate student population (at least at the schools I have been at). Quite a few important contemporary philosophers don't have PhDs explicitly in philosophy, and many don't hold positions in Philosophy departments, it's quite an interdisciplinary field, not nearly as walled of as many have suggested in this discussion.

Edited August 15, 2007 by ammonius

[Tenure]

You know, that's all well and good, and I'll leave it to David to take on the task of responding to this on a point-by-point basis, but Kant's work is entirely underminded by his refutation of certainty. What does it matter if he thought everything had a nature, if he also thought that it didn't matter whether they existed or not, only whether or not it was in your interest to pretend they existed in the first place? Kant's great evil, in my opinion, and the reason Rand rejects him outright, is that he places bizarre limitations on man's reason, and adds to it that reason is not the sole tool and mark of a man, but a floating abstraction which man dips into.

How can you say that a man, who think that we can never be sure of the existence or non-existence of many a-thing, but that all that matters is whether it is useful to us to pretend that it exists, is a stable forerunner or even progenitor of Rand's ideas?

[DavidOdden]

Though, I don't think that Kant is talking about eating peanuts, or self-appointed divinity. He's talking about things like murder or theft.

My first objection is that people should say what they mean, so if Kant meant to state a set of principles relevant only to theft and murder, he should have said that. Second, if we suppose that his version of morality is applicable to only murder and theft, it's clearly inferior to a general theory of morality that applies to all moral issues. The principle underlying eating or stealing peanuts is the same, and Kant didn't seem to get that.

Though in your formulation you would be willing everyone treated you as God in the same way as you treat yourself as God, which may or may not have contradictory consequences.

This tells me that Kant's formulation is insufficient. It leads to no contradiction, and is one of about 6 billion arbitrary wills that are just sheer acts of willpower and do not derive from the nature of existence (man's existence, in particular).

That is will is generally a desire that one may act upon, while wishing is merely action-less desire.

Methinks these texts needeth to be translated into modern English. But furthermore, it doesn't matter to me whether the verb in question entails action or just pure desire -- the point is that the Kantian approach takes desire to be primary. There is no fact of existence that makes my selfishness be a contradiction. I act only with my own existence as my end, and I wish or will not act with the existence of another as my end. Thus I cannot obey the Kantian imperative. I can refrain from murdering, because doing so is a contradication of reality (the nature of man, in particular).

Again, I don't think ends and goals are the same thing. An end in itself is that which one can not go beyond, while a goal is a marker.

I don't buy it. The only valid distinction is between an immediate goal and an ultimate goal. Existence is the ultimate goal. Perhaps rewriting Kant or at least including a set of definitions of "will" and "end" would make his claims seem less incoherent.

That is, and this is where I think Kant is rather close to Objectivism; one shouldn't treat Julie(A) as a good Lay (-B-) (A=-B-), but rather Julie(A) should be treated as Julie (A) (A=A) as her own end.

But this tells me nothing about my relationship to Julie. Who cares if Julie is her own end? I can still say "Julie is her own end; she is a good lay; I'm gonna screw her and leave her". No contradiction there. The question is, can you show me anything in Kant's writings that proves that that would be inconsistent with his imperatives?

As far as the "nature of the hammer", I have no idea what this is getting at. Perhaps you mean something like 18th century natural philosophy, or the search for a unified "human nature".

I'm referring to the suggestion that you shouldn't use people -- that's just not true. You should use people. Did you have an objection to using people (and what is that objection)?

Nature seems to me to be one of those metaphysical claims about objects that is entirely based on the subjective apprehension of said object.

No, "nature" is simply "identity". Nature is a fact, not a claim -- in the primacy of consciousness school, I think there isn't any difference between existence and claim, but I'm not talking about metaphysical claims, I'm talking about the actual metaphysical facts. Before there was any apprehension of objects in the universe, e.g. before man existed, there was still a lot of stuff and the things had a nature.

Kant thinks the Imperative is given by reason, which he holds as supreme, even though he goes into a lengthy critique of "Pure Reason".

Well, what exactly does reason work on? What can you get with pure reason? (Nothing). Why? (Because existence is supreme, and reason is secondary).

But let me ask a question, if there is no reason without humanity; did humans simply make it up? If not, why do other creatures not appear to have faculties of reason?

Your question is not a philosophical one, it's a scientific one. That's a very tough question, which we have a hard answering since this happened quite a long time ago. I propose that (barring the discovery of alien videotapes of human evolution) we may be able to get closer to an answer by (1) a deeper understanding of human brain structure and a good grasp of the mind / body dichotomy, (2) the discovery of other kinds of mind / body dichotomy (laboratory invention, evolution, or alien probe for example). As far as what we can do now, understanding "concepts", "symbolic representation" and the capacity for abstraction would be the most productive use of our time.

If Objectivist philosophers want to be taken as philosophically significant they should address concerns and problems of the contemporary world, not the boggy men of an imagined enemy.

I agree and disagree. I agree that a focus on Kant is not useful, and personally I find Kant to be incomprehensible. I think that Rand said everything that needs to be said about Kant. I disagree that we should address concerns and problems of the contemporary world, meaning, parochial interests of contemporary academic philosophers or matters that address just contemporary life and death issues -- e.g. is racial profiling at airports morally just. The ancient issues that underly the question are still applicable to matters such as taxation and national defense, and the fact that they have been discussed for millenia doesn't change the fact that taxation and pacifism are both immoral. I don't see any point in spinning your wheels with dedicated irrationalists. Actually, I generally find it pointless to spend a lot of time addressing foolishness, and I find it more productive to only present the truth. Strategically speaking, it can be useful to oppose mistaken ideas but there comes a point at which you can tell that people are no longer using reason on a particular topic, and that is when a rational man should stop addressing the opposition directly. Instead, you can offer the truth, and if there is someone who still uses reason, they will hopefully understand and accept your ideas.