The Prudent Predator argument

[hunterrose]

Suicide is immoral. However, there may be life-endangering actions that fall short of suicide... So we would call those who engage in these activities “foolish” but not necessarily “immoral.”

That's still not an ethics. Ought a person choose a moral action over a "not necessarily immoral" action? If yes, then "not necessarily immoral" actions are actually immoral. If no, then your moral actions are "not necessarily moral". Either way, your "ethics" would be eviscerated.

What would constitute proof that a given tax collector lives a safe, comfortable life as a result of her looting?

That the house, the cars, the three square meals, the vacations in Cozumel, and Junior’s college tuition were paid with checks from a bank account into which IRS paychecks were deposited.

That doesn't cut it. If I fire a gun at my head, Superman could catch the bullet before it splatters me. Would that prove that I continued to live as a result of shooting a gun at myself? Of course not, it'd only prove that some things can ameliorate the results of destructive behaviors.

If you wanted to determine whether shooting a gun at oneself (or looting) was a destructive behavior, you have to isolate it from "Superman" factors, just as a proper scientific experiment requires isolating immaterial overpowering factors.

[Inspector]

Furthermore, I have never insisted that “destruction” as used by Ayn Rand meant “spontaneously explode.” (You were the one to introduce that particular fantasy into the debate.)

So far, I have no direct statement from you as to what you do in fact suppose she meant. I only have attacks against Exaltron, attempting to intimidate him on his simple question as to whether there may have been any confusion over what was meant by "destruction." When he said that it should not be taken "literally," it is crystal clear to me that he meant it shouldn't be taken to mean instant death. Unless you posit that it must have meant instant death, then none of your responses so far make any sense whatsoever.

[Freddy]

So far, I have no direct statement from you as to what you do in fact suppose she meant. I only have attacks against Exaltron, attempting to intimidate him on his simple question as to whether there may have been any confusion over what was meant by "destruction." When he said that it should not be taken "literally," it is crystal clear to me that he meant it shouldn't be taken to mean instant death. Unless you posit that it must have meant instant death, then none of your responses so far make any sense whatsoever.

I find this quote to be somewhat relevant to this debate:

You must attach clear, specific meanings to words, i.e., be able to identify their referents in reality. This is a precondition, without which neither critical judgment nor thinking of any kind is possible. All philosophical con games count on your using words as vague approximations. You must not take a catch phrase--or any abstract statement--as if it were approximate. Take it literally. Don't translate it, don't glamorize it, don't make the mistake of thinking, as many people do: "Oh, nobody could possibly mean this!" and then proceed to endow it with some whitewashed meaning of your own. Take it straight, for what it does say and mean.

Edited April 10, 2007 by Freddy

[Inspector]

I find this quote to be somewhat relevant to this debate:

Do tell, how do you think that you should apply that quote?

(this ought to be good...)

[Freddy]

Do tell, how do you think that you should apply that quote?

(this ought to be good...)

Well, to take a simple example from this thread. The fundamental alternative is existence or non-existence. I have given a test for whether a person is firmly within the realm of existence, that is, to deny that a person passing the test exists would render absurdities that you have yourself said you don't adhere to (see my post 224) . But still, when the matter is pushed one do get the impression that existence dosn't really mean existence, but instead means something like "practicing a lifestyle Objectivists see fit". However, applynig the advice from the quote we can settle that my interpretaion of existence or non-existence is the correct one, since my interpretaion is literal and is consonant with the obvious truth that a person who is able to ask himself whether he exists, does in fact exist, something the more eloborate interpretations of the concept existence have to deny.

[Maarten]

Umm, statements don't exist in a vacuum, you know. You have to keep the context of everything else she said in mind, or you can interpret someone literally and have them advocate just about anything you want them to advocate.

[Inspector]

I'm disappointed. I thought he was going to apply it to "destruction" and not "existence."

[Gary Brenner]

\'Marc K. wrote:

Think of it this way.

You stop me on the street. You ask me for money. You give a reasoned argument as to why I should help you. I refuse. You now pull a gun and demand that I give you my money.

Reason and force are opposites. A gun is not an argument. As soon as you pull the gun, you abandon reason.

You raise hogs for a profit. I give you a reasoned argument that you should not kill the animals, that their nature requires that they be free to fuel their bodies with what they can obtain from their environment.

You ignore my plea and kill the hogs anyway. But your gun is not an argument. Reason and force are opposites. You have abandoned reason.

Is this what you mean?

[Freddy]

I'm disappointed. I thought he was going to apply it to "destruction" and not "existence."

That is just a matter of inference. With the concept of existence firmly in place we can go on to infer that survival means to prolong existence, while destruction refers to shortening the existence of an individual. To opt for CI-adherence when looting is the method from which we would rationally expect a longer lifespan is self-destruction.

[Gary Brenner]

hunterrose wrote:

That’s still not an ethics. Ought a person choose a moral action over a “not necessarily immoral” action? If yes, then “not necessarily immoral” actions are actually immoral. If no, then your moral actions are “not necessarily moral\". Either way, your “ethics” would be eviscerated.

Moral actions are by definition of greater value in maintaining an ethical standard than actions of moral uncertainty. But that is not to say that that it is necessarily immoral to undertake an action which has an undetermined moral weight. For example, it is moral to further one’s life by taking actions which provide the necessities of survival. Now if I accomplish that task from Monday through Friday, is it immoral to read a trashy book on Saturday and Sunday? The reading of the book adds nothing to the furtherance of my life. It doesn’t make me wiser, healthier, or better equipped to deal with life. It is purely a hedonistic pleasure.

That doesn’t cut it. If I fire a gun at my head, Superman could catch the bullet before it splatters me. Would that prove that I continued to live as a result of shooting a gun at myself? Of course not, it’d only prove that some things can ameliorate the results of destructive behaviors.

Here we go with the gun at the head again. Very well. Not only were the IRS paychecks sufficient to pay for the house, the cars, the three square meals, the vacations in Cozumel, and Junior’s college tuition, but they also apparently wiped out all evidence of “destruction” done to the looters by their looting.

If you wanted to determine whether shooting a gun at oneself (or looting) was a destructive behavior, you have to isolate it from “Superman” factors, just as a proper scientific experiment requires isolating immaterial overpowering factors.

Fine. We can conclude by saying that until you isolate looting from “Superman” factors or “immaterial overpowering” factors, the Objectivist position that looting leads to the destruction of the looter is unproven.

[Inspector]

To opt for CI-adherence

Just where do you get off? I've explained there is no CI in Objectivism.

Remember this, Freddy?

You can dispute that argument if you like, but the point is that there is no categorical imperative in Objectivism.

[exaltron]

That is just a matter of inference. With the concept of existence firmly in place we can go on to infer that survival means to prolong existence, while destruction refers to shortening the existence of an individual. To opt for CI-adherence the rational integration of the mind when looting is the method from which we would rationally expect a longer lifespan is self-destruction.

Fixed it for you. You're welcome.

[Gary Brenner]

So far, I have no direct statement from you as to what you do in fact suppose she meant

See my Post #374.

I only have attacks against Exaltron, attempting to intimidate him on his simple question as to whether there may have been any confusion over what was meant by “destruction.”

False. I never attacked Exaltron. Look at what I wrote: “Since Ayn Rand did not assign a special definition to her use of the word ‘destruction,’ we can take the word to mean just what it says in a dictionary.” Now if this constitutes an “attack,” perhaps we need your definition of that word.

When he said that it should not be taken “literally,” it is crystal clear to me that he meant it shouldn’t be taken to mean instant death.

And if you had bothered to read my Post #374, it should have been crystal clear to you that I listed several likely definitions that included possibilities other than instant death.

Unless you posit that it must have meant instant death, then none of your responses so far make any sense whatsoever.

I posit exactly what I wrote in Post #374, namely that the literal definition of “destruction” includes six possible definitions, any of which would make sense in the context that Rand used the word.

[Moebius]

Not true. Have your read OPAR?

No. Does OPAR explain how your brain ceases to function upon looting? Because that's what the context of my quote was which you conveniently singled out.

[Inspector]

False. I never attacked Exaltron. Look at what I wrote: “Since Ayn Rand did not assign a special definition to her use of the word ‘destruction,’ we can take the word to mean just what it says in a dictionary.” Now if this constitutes an “attack,” perhaps we need your definition of that word.

What do you call this, from your very same post #374:

So you wish to assign a non-literal meaning to “destruction,” despite the fact that Rand gave no indication that she employed the word in any way other than its common English usage? Imagine what would happen to Rand scholarship if any reader could declare that a certain passage of her works is not to be taken literally. Example, “Well, Rand did not mean that A is literally A.”

[Inspector]

No. Does OPAR explain how your brain ceases to function upon looting? Because that's what the context of my quote was which you conveniently singled out.

It will explain how your question is invalid and you've got everything completely backwards. Has anyone here read OPAR?

There is no question more crucial to man than the question: what is man? What kind of being is he? What are his essential attributes?

Many thinkers and artists have sought to answer this question. They have looked at men and then offered a report on man's nature. Their reports have clashed through the ages. Aristotle defined man as the "rational animal." Plato and the medievals described other-worldly souls trapped in a bodily prison. Shakespeare dramatized man as an aspiring but foolish mortal, defeated by a "tragic flaw." Thomas Hobbes described a mechanistic brute. Kant saw man as a blind chunk of unreality, in hock to the unknowable. Hegel saw a half-real fragment of the state. Victor Hugo saw a passionate individualist undercut by an inimical universe. Friedrich Nietzsche saw a demoniacal individualist run by the will to power. John Dewey saw a piece of flux run by the expediency of the moment. Sigmund Freud spoke of an excrement-molding pervert itching to rape his mother.

Ayn Rand looked at men and saw the possibility of Howard Roark and John Galt. A philosophical inquiry into man is not part of the special <opar_188> sciences, such as psychology, history, or economics; it does not define detailed laws of human thought, feeling, or action. It is concerned only with fundamentals; hierarchically, a knowledge of such characteristics is a precondition of pursuing any specialized science. Ayn Rand refers to this inquiry as a study of man's metaphysical nature. The term is apt because, in some form, every fundamental of human nature involves the issue of man's relationship to reality.

In this inquiry, one is not concerned to discover what is right for man or wrong, desirable or undesirable, good or evil. A view of man is a step on the road to ethics, but the view itself does not include value-judgments. The concern here is a purely factual question: what is the essence of human nature?

Like the special sciences, value-judgments—ethical, political, and esthetic—presuppose an answer to this question. Until you decide in some terms what you are, you cannot know whether you should be selfish or just or free; whether you should admire George Washington or George III or George Bush; whether, for the unique satisfaction offered by art, you should turn to the statues of Praxiteles and Michelangelo or to the modern collages made of dirt and bus transfers. All such issues are derivatives. Their root is the nature of man.

Can anyone tell me what makes this so relevant? 10 points to the first one to tell me.

Edited April 10, 2007 by Inspector

[Gary Brenner]

Inspector wrote:

What do you call this, from your very same post #374:

1) A question about whether Exaltron really thought that it was a good idea to assign a figurative meaning to Ayn Rand’s use of the word “destruction” when Rand herself gave no indication that she intended a meaning other than a literal one, and 2) a problem that might arise when a reader, unprompted by the author, assigns non-literal meanings to an author’s words.

Now, tell me again what is your definition of “attack”?

[Inspector]

1) A question about whether Exaltron really thought that it was a good idea to assign a figurative meaning to Ayn Rand’s use of the word “destruction” when Rand herself gave no indication that she intended a meaning other than a literal one, and 2) a problem that might arise when a reader, unprompted by the author, assigns non-literal meanings to an author’s words.

Now, tell me again what is your definition of “attack”?

What was the difference between Exaltron's proposed usage and the ones you advocate, other than the fact that he used the word non-literal?

[Gary Brenner]

Inspector wrote:

What was the difference between Exaltron’s proposed usage and the ones you advocate, other than the fact that he used the word non-literal?

Long before Exaltron’s post, I made it clear that I was willing to consider an argument for the looter’s destruction “in any sense of the word.” (See my Post #42.) My specific disagreement with Exaltron was methodological. It had to do with his claim that “she used the word figuratively in her fiction and non-fiction.” (His Post #366.) As I explained previously, there is no basis for a figurative reading, considering 1) the author gave no indication that the word took on a meaning apart from that found in common, English usage, and 2) the dictionary definitions of the word make perfect sense for the context in which the word is employed.

More importantly, since I never suggested that “destruction” for Rand necessarily meant complete and instantaneous annihilation, all the debate over this issue is a red herring.

Edited April 10, 2007 by Gary Brenner

[Freddy]

Just where do you get off? I've explained there is no CI in Objectivism.

The reason I claim you smuggle in the CI is by observing the direction of your reasoning. That is, if we derive Rands argument bottom up, then it certainly doesn't follow that you don't exist unless you act according to principles that can be universilized. The reason this does not follow is made very clear in post #430.

Instead the derivation here goes the other way around, existence is a concept that is retrofitted to encompass a specific set of conclusions. What are those conclusions? One obvious criteria for those conclusions is that man ought to act on universal principles becuse that is rational. This line of reasoning is obvious from exaltron's post. This is basically a Kantian argument, and the retrofitting step of redefining existence to encompass this conclsuion adds absolutelty nothing to the derivation of the ethics. The derivation of the ethics dosn't in any way rest on the fundamental alternative since the meaning of the concepts involved (existence and non-existence) isn't defined until the ethics is derived. Thus, the actual base for the ethics is somewhere else, and this base is at least in part very Kantian.

[Inspector]

Long before Exaltron’s post, I made it clear that I was willing to consider an argument for the looter’s destruction “in any sense of the word.” (See my Post #42.) My specific disagreement with Exaltron was methodological. It had to do with his claim that “she used the word figuratively in her fiction and non-fiction.” (His Post #366.) As I explained previously, there is no basis for a figurative reading, considering 1) the author gave no indication that the word took on a meaning apart from that found in common, English usage, and 2) the dictionary definitions of the word make perfect sense for the context in which the word is employed.

More importantly, since I never suggested that “destruction” for Rand necessarily meant complete and instantaneous annihilation, all the debate over this issue is a red herring.

You didn't answer me. I repeat,

What was the difference between Exaltron's proposed usage and the ones you advocate, other than the fact that he used the word non-literal?

[Inspector]

The reason I claim you smuggle in the CI is by observing the direction of your reasoning.

Here is my reasoning:

The step is that looting destroys the mind, and the mind is included in the entity which is choosing existence or non-existence. The mind is not merely a means to the survival of the human body; the mind is the human entity.

You can dispute that argument if you like, but the point is that there is no categorical imperative in Objectivism.

Show me the CI.

Can anyone tell me what makes this so relevant? 10 points to the first one to tell me.

Come on, it shouldn't be that hard. It's the key to Freddy's faulty belief that there is a CI here...

[exaltron]

You didn't answer me. I repeat,

What was the difference between Exaltron's proposed usage and the ones you advocate, other than the fact that he used the word non-literal?

I think some people would take the sense of destroy as in "It would destroy her if she knew her husband was cheating on her" to be a figurative or non-literal meaning, though it certainly wouldn't be "creating a new definition" as GB asserts. The problem is that figurative language can enter acceptable speech through wide usage, so to simply say "literal" is everything in the dictionary and "figurative" is some sort of "creative interpretation" that negates all word meaning drops the context.

Context is always important. When Rand states in Galt's speech that anyone who initiates force, to any degree, "is a killer, operating on a premise wider than murder", I don't think that is to be taken literally (though I don't think that renders Galt's speech or that statement meaningless). Likewise in VOS where she advocates for the legal system to be implemented by impartial "robots", she is not suggesting that they should run on batteries.

[edit to correct typo]

Edited April 11, 2007 by exaltron

[Inspector]

I think some people would take the sense of destroy as in

What I mean is that what you meant by a "non-literal meaning" would fit under the dictionary definitions he provided, so his attack on you is entirely baseless.

Edited April 11, 2007 by Inspector

[exaltron]

What I mean is that what you meant by a "non-literal meaning" would fit under the dictionary definitions he provided, so his attack on you is entirely baseless.

Yeah, I don't think we need a big debate over what is figurative or literal. But I did find that Webster's had a markedly different set of definitions for the word "destroy":

Main Entry: de·stroy

Pronunciation: di-'stroi, dE-

Function: verb

1 : to ruin the structure, organic existence, or condition of <destroyed the files>; also : to ruin as if by tearing to shreds <their reputation was destroyed>

2 a : to put out of existence : KILL <destroy an injured horse> b : NEUTRALIZE <the moon destroys the light of the stars> c : ANNIHILATE, VANQUISH <armies had been crippled but not destroyed -- W. L. Shirer>

intransitive verb : to cause destruction

Interesting that #1 seems to describe perfectly what the looter does to the integrity of his mind..