The Prudent Predator argument

[Inspector]

No, it dosn't. If you meet an unknown person, then do you say to him: Since I don't know whether you practice the life style I see fit, I therefore don't know whether you exist or not? If you don't concede the absurdity of that statement, then I don't know how to proceed.

That's not what I meant. Nor anyone, as far as I know.

How about you go first and answer my question directly and then I can try to clear things up for you?

[Freddy]

Maybe this will help tie it together for you. You have offered thinking as the criteria for man's existence. This is exactly congruent with the Objectivist ethics: all it requires is for you to think. Which is to say, the is (to think) and the ought (to think) dovetail precisely.

I have offered a test for existence that wouldn't pose any trouble whatsoever for Hitler, Stalin, Mao...

[Seeker]

I have offered a test for [man's] existence that wouldn't pose any trouble whatsoever for Hitler, Stalin, Mao...

You are saying that Hitler, Stalin, Mao were rational?

(edit - to make the quote clear in its meaning)

Edited March 27, 2007 by Seeker

[Freddy]

You are saying that Hitler, Stalin, Mao were rational?

My test was: If you can ask yourself the question of wheter you exist ot not, then you exist. And yes, they would pass the test, since they were not braindead. Do you agree that a person passing the test would exist?

To the question of rationality I would first point you to my initial discussion withy KendallJ in this thread. I there make a distinction between smartness and rationality where the latter is a moral application of the former. In order to sort out what is rational we therefore first have to sort out the ethics. Thus if the proper end for a human is to live as long as possible, than it might very well be rational to do things in conflict with the Objectivist ethics.

[Freddy]

How about you go first and answer my question directly and then I can try to clear things up for you?

Your question was: Existence as what? My answer was that if you pass my test then you exist. This answer is clear, there is no need to append an "as <fill in the blank>". If you exist then you exist. Do you agree that a person passing the test does exist? Does the person passing the test exist as a truckdriver, as a karate master, as a thief? The test doesn't say because that is irrelevant to the question of whether he exist or not. With respect to the fundamental alternative, I can make my point with only people passing this simple test. If a person can extend the tmie he can pass this test (that is, extend his existence) then that is the moral thing to do, even if this extension is at the exepense of someone elses existence. I suspect you want to say that to exist is to exist as a man where man is a shorthand for your ethical ideal, but this move will render exactly the kind of absurdities I was pointing to in the qoute above.

[blackdiamond]

My test was: If you can ask yourself the question of wheter you exist ot not, then you exist. And yes, they would pass the test, since they were not braindead. Do you agree that a person passing the test would exist?

So, imaginef the doctor said to our survivor,"we have invented a drug called madophine that can extend your life by twenty years, but this will mean that from the day you take it until the day you die, you have to become practically insane. Like a four year old kid, you will have the ability to ask yourself the question of whether you exist or not, but you will have no ability to reason beyond the mind of a four year old. The government will of course be oblidged to look after you in a mental hospital until you die, but you are assured of reaching that old age."

I presume this "survivor" would accept to take this drug because his standard, a long life, is only fulfilled the more by it.

And this leads me back to what i said to you in my last post, to which you have not responded: philosophy is useless to a person who can make such a choice. This is a choice to exist without the context of life since a man has a particular kind of life with particular needs to sustain that kind of life. with respect to a man's life, therefore, the choice to make "long life" your ultimate goal or standard is the choice to die. Yes, you still do exist, and yes you still do live, but in the same way an animal lives, which is why we said "qua animal".

So, the simple answer to your problem is that you do exist qua animal, but you do not exist qua man. and you can even continue to have a name (like Mao) in that state, just as my brother's dog does have a name (Napoleon!).

Existence applied in ethics, necessarily means "existence as a man" even if that is not stated all the time, simply because ethics is exclusively for MEN. Mao was not a real man. He did not exist - qua man.

[Inspector]

blackdiamond went ahead and posted up something very close to what I was going to say. I was going to withhold it until I got a straight answer from Freddy, but since we're past that point then I will continue:

Freddy, your error in looking at the "whether a man exists or not" is one of emphasis.

What you're looking at is: "do you exist"

But the meaning we are emphasizing is: "Do you exist. Does your reasoning mind exist?"

I could train a parrot to answer your question in the affirmative. That does not indicate the presence of a reasoning mind.

But presumably, all you would require is the ability to speak the simple words "I exist," so you would presumably go ahead with blackdiamond's injection, living out the rest of your long life in a straitjacket, soiling yourself in a padded cell.

The only alternative is to accept that the rational mind has identity (you know, that whole "A is A" thing) and that the entity that is choosing existence or non-existence is not only a body but also that mind.

From there, you have no choice but to accept that we examine the question in terms of qua man.

So, what will it be: qua man or the blender?

[Freddy]

So, imaginef the doctor said to our survivor,"we have invented a drug called madophine that can extend your life by twenty years, but this will mean that from the day you take it until the day you die, you have to become practically insane. Like a four year old kid, you will have the ability to ask yourself the question of whether you exist or not, but you will have no ability to reason beyond the mind of a four year old. The government will of course be oblidged to look after you in a mental hospital until you die, but you are assured of reaching that old age.

This doesn't touch my position, I will try to explain the nature of my argument. First, I don't subscribe to Rands meta-ethics, I think it is wrong (or I might just not understand it). Why? Because the fundamental alternative doesn't correctly capture or exckude behaviours I think are right. I'm basing this on my intuition or whatever. My complaint is that in order to make the Objectivist ethics follow from the premise that existence or non-existnce is fundamental you have to make some illigitimate moves.

In order to expose these illigitimate move I have constructed a simple test for whether a person exists or not. To deny that a person who passes the test does in fact exist will render an obvious absurdity. Therefor you have to accept that the person passing the test does in fact exist, and from this I can construct a simple scenario involving the prolonging of a looters existence (where existence still means to pass the test) and then I show that to deny that this action must have a positive evaluation with respect to the fundamental alternative must rely on denying that the person passing the test is in fact existing. That's pretty much my gameplan....

Existence applied in ethics, necessarily means "existence as a man" even if that is not stated all the time, simply because ethics is exclusively for MEN. Mao was not a real man. He did not exist - qua man.

This will reduce the fundamental alternative to: Either to exist as man or to not exist as man, which basically is the same thing as to say that either to be moral or not. What's the point with that argument? The meta-ethical argument was to suppose to give a critera for what it is to be moral and if this critera is resting on the fundamental alteranitve of either being moral or not, well then that is not very informative.

[softwareNerd]

...if the proper end for a human is to live as long as possible, ...

I haven't been involved in this thread, but it's the second time I've noticed you put it that way, so I wanted to point out that that is not the standard that Objectivism puts forth. (I think there's an earlier thread that discussing 'Life as the Standard of Value'.) Edited March 27, 2007 by softwareNerd

[Freddy]

Freddy, your error in looking at the "whether a man exists or not" is one of emphasis.

If existence really meant existence (as in passing my test) then the fundamental alternaive would provide a rather clear guidance, ethics would be a a code for remaining in existence. Given this mission we would then proceed to examine the nature of man as to find out effective means to this end. And the mind would be an excellent tool. You have to admit that this line of reasoning, despite the fact that it will imply absurdities, is at least is easy to understand. Here we have a clear test for whether an action is moral or not (provided you accept this foundation).

Your propsed alternative is to rediefine existence to mean exist as man, where man is an ethical ideal, so the redifinition amounts to saying that to exist is to exist as man ought to exist. The problem is that that is the very question we started out with. Since the meta ethcial argument reduces to a rephrasing of the very question we wanted an answer to it cannot be used to derive any ethical content.

Point in case: If someone claims that you don't exist as man unless you are propmoting other peoples happiness (and therefore it is irrational not to do it), you should be able to trace this argument back to the fundamental alternative in order to show that it is wrong. But your fundamental alternative is either to live as man or not to live as man, so you cannot use it to resolve this question. Which proves that in order to resolve this dispute you have to resort to ethical argument that has nothing to do with this fundamental alternative.

[Inspector]

Your propsed alternative is to rediefine existence to mean exist as man

Well, if you have a problem with the conclusion, then at least address the first step on the road to it, which I have yet to see you do.

The fact is: you must answer the question of what entity is being discussed when one says the fundamental choice is existence or non-existence. What entity does this choice confront, Freddy?

[Freddy]

Well, if you have a problem with the conclusion, then at least address the first step on the road to it, which I have yet to see you do.

The fact is: you must answer the question of what entity is being discussed when one says the fundamental choice is existence or non-existence. What entity does this choice confront, Freddy?

The alternative of either being able to pass my test (in which case the person exist) or not being able to do it confronts indivual humans. If they want to keep passing the test, then they have to act accordingly.

[Inspector]

The alternative of either being able to pass my test (in which case the person exist) or not being able to do it confronts indivual humans. If they want to keep passing the test, then they have to act accordingly.

What entity, Freddy?

[Freddy]

What entity, Freddy?

A humane being of course, if you are a human being and pass the test, then you are still a human being. And whether the entity taking the test is human being to begin with can be determined by some genetic standard.

[Inspector]

A humane being of course, if you are a human being and pass the test, then you are still a human being. And whether the entity taking the test is human being to begin with can be determined by some genetic standard.

So, when you say the word "I," you're not identifying the entirety of your consciousness, but only the part of it that is necessary to utter the words "I exist?" That's a bit odd. Because when I say the word "I," I mean quite a bit more than you do, apparently.

[blackdiamond]

This will reduce the fundamental alternative to: Either to exist as man or to not exist as man, which basically is the same thing as to say that either to be moral or not. What's the point with that argument? The meta-ethical argument was to suppose to give a critera for what it is to be moral and if this critera is resting on the fundamental alteranitve of either being moral or not, well then that is not very informative.

To exist *as man* requires that you understand the nature of man. So, it is very informative because this knowledge is not automatic.

The problem is that you think we just "intuitively" chose certain values (like you've done) and then called those values "man", and then worked backwards to "existence qua man" with these values as part of the definition of "qua man" (this is what you call "rigging"). No, the nature of man is discovered in reality and then the values that tend to promote that nature, rather than destroy it, are also fixed in reality.

The nature of a lion or any other animal is also fixed in reality, and its needs for survival "as a lion" (according to that nature) are also fixed in reality. The ONLY difference is that the lion does not have a choice about living according to its nature, whereas a man does. This is also not a random statement, it is based on a fact of reality: man's consciousness has a property called "free will."

Thus, when you look at a lion, it will survive by running very fast and overpowering certain animals for its food. So, the lion values its physical strength and its powerful teeth very highly. The man, on the other hand, is also structured in a way that he needs to eat these animals, except he has one problem: he can't run as fast as the lion, his teeth are not as strong, he can't digest certain food the way certain animals can, and so on. But there is something he has: his mind. He can think of creating a spear to do the "chasing" for him, he can make fire to make the food softer for his teeth, and so on. Further, he doesn't have enough "hair" on his skin to protect him from the cold and he doesn't have the ability to hibernate in a hole for months without dying. But he has the ability to think of how to make warm clothes for himself, he has the ability to figure out how to make a house, and so on.

So, from the ultimate value (life), we arrive at his first and most important value, the one that essentially distinguishes him from the other animals: reason. He needs this to survive AS A MAN, given the facts of reality about him and around him, just as the lion needs his strong teeth and fast legs and thick fur to survive as a lion. His highest virtue, naturally, is rationality, because he can not survive as an animal, because he does not (want to try to) exist as an animal.

Now, i think it is enough for me to demonstrate to you just how this one value (and virtue) comes about in order to dispel your allegation that Objectivist ethics are subjectively created by rigging the definitions and that existence qua man is not morally informative.

I have shown you how beginning with existence (metaphysically), going down to existence qua man (meta-ethically?), you can begin to derive man's proper values, from which you can derive man's proper virtues (ethics), without any stage being circular or non-informative in the way you suggested. You of course have the free will to continue arguing that it is non-informative, even if someone has shown you how information of moral actions derives from it.

It is also important to note that man's happiness comes from his increased ability of surviving as a man, i.e. with the abundance of his proper virtues in place, as this enables him to feel competent to survive nature as it is. But, unlike animals, he has to create all these virtues as a part of his "nature" (what we call his soul) because he is not born with them. A state of consciousness that has these virtues in place (all of them being applications of his rationality in different areas of his life) is a state of happiness. He feels proud of himself for achieving these virtues, and this results in a happy state of consciousness.

Because happiness is a spiritual state, it is only attainable by possessing these spiritual values, from developing the spiritual virtues. It does not come from a big house, nice clothes, spears, etc without the spiritual causes. Even a dog can be given a big house, etc, but a man's joy comes from creating a mind that can produce. The test that one has produced something valuable with his mind is if other people can appreciate it and give something of theirs to get one's product (trade). [i'm not sure if Objectivism actually says this explicitly, but it's a fact].

A looter, on the other hand, is a person who fails to produce and instead just gets things from other people without impressing them with the product of his own mind, the same way an animal survives. A looter cannot therefore experience the happiness of man. This is not a religious belief, it is derived from reality, from the nature of man's consciousness and the nature of man's environment. A man who does not develop his productive abilities has chosen a path of self-destruction - metaphysically, of non-existence - for the life of man qua man, and the level of his self-esteem will reflect this back to him.

Intellectually, a looter stands against productivity. it is a contradiction to say he supports productivity (for his own good) and yet attacks the producers. The producers are demotivated by his actions (which is why they avoids place with a lack of property rights protection, but the looter prefers these), so he can't also say that he supports them. He therefore lives with a further contradiction which will add to the unhappiness of his consciousness since a man's soul needs integration, not contradiction, to be peaceful, an important factor of happiness. I don't need to ask every looter to know if they are happy or not, because i know man's nature and i know these experiences are confirmed in myself by introspection.

I have said a lot. I'm out for now.

[KendallJ]

If existence really meant existence (as in passing my test) then the fundamental alternaive would provide a rather clear guidance, ethics would be a a code for remaining in existence.

Isn't this sort of collapsing ethics down into the fundamental alternative? Are you implying then that the contradiction you spoke of earlier arises because a whole different ethics is implied by this fundamental alternative? than the man qua man standard of Objectivism?

As I understand the fundamental alternative, it is pre-moral, and it is pre-rational. It generates the concept of an ultimate value, but not how that value is to be acheived. I think to assert that the fundamental alternative implies ethics a priori to applying reason to determine what those ethics is mischaracterization.

The alternative is not a qualified statement of how to live. As such, your qualification "life as long as possible" is NOT what the fundamental alternative is. It is neither "as long as possible", "to maximize pleasure" or whatever other qualifier you would assert. To then take this fundamnetal alterantive and dispense with any sort of ethical analysis is to assert that that alternative is all there is to ethics. That one should examine any particular context and use the fundamental alternative as a standard of value, which is not what the alternative is.

I can certainly choose to live, at any cost. But that is not the fundmantal alternative. That is the fundamnetal alternative and then an ethical judgement chosen after it. The fundamental alterative does not imply the how. At least this is how I udnerstand it.

[Freddy]

Thus, when you look at a lion, it will survive by running very fast and overpowering certain animals for its food. So, the lion values its physical strength and its powerful teeth very highly. The man, on the other hand, is also structured in a way that he needs to eat these animals, except he has one problem: he can't run as fast as the lion, his teeth are not as strong, he can't digest certain food the way certain animals can, and so on. But there is something he has: his mind. He can think of creating a spear to do the "chasing" for him, he can make fire to make the food softer for his teeth, and so on. Further, he doesn't have enough "hair" on his skin to protect him from the cold and he doesn't have the ability to hibernate in a hole for months without dying. But he has the ability to think of how to make warm clothes for himself, he has the ability to figure out how to make a house, and so on.

[...]

I have shown you how beginning with existence (metaphysically), going down to existence qua man (meta-ethically?), you can begin to derive man's proper values, from which you can derive man's proper virtues (ethics), without any stage being circular or non-informative in the way you suggested. You of course have the free will to continue arguing that it is non-informative, even if someone has shown you how information of moral actions derives from it.

No you have not. Let's agree that metaphysically existence is to pass the test I proposed:

If you are asking yourself the question whether you exist, then you do exist.

Given that the goal is to keep passing the test (to remain in existence, to survive, to avoid death) then you have not shown that a looter extending the time he will pass the test by 20 years is immoral. You say that the looter has not used his mind. But that certainly is not true, you can envision that the looter is a very clever hacker. How is that not to use the mind? And furthermore, he uses his mind in order to further his existence. Your problem is that you want to barr his actions, but you cannot reach that conclusion unless you define the hacker out of existence, which I claim is an illigitimate move.

[Freddy]

Isn't this sort of collapsing ethics down into the fundamental alternative? Are you implying then that the contradiction you spoke of earlier arises because a whole different ethics is implied by this fundamental alternative? than the man qua man standard of Objectivism?

Yes that's it. The fundamental alternative proposes a goal. Then, given the goal we can proceed to investiagte the nature of man in order to find out effective means, and then we can summarize this method to achieve the goal in a standard. If that is not how this alternative is used, then I have no idea what the point is. And the goal proposed seems to be to remain in existence. And I have also propsed a test for existence.

As I understand the fundamental alternative, it is pre-moral, and it is pre-rational. It generates the concept of an ultimate value, but not how that value is to be acheived.

It generates the goal, and then you proceed to investigate the method by which you accomplish this goal.

[Freddy]

So, when you say the word "I," you're not identifying the entirety of your consciousness, but only the part of it that is necessary to utter the words "I exist?" That's a bit odd. Because when I say the word "I," I mean quite a bit more than you do, apparently.

If I utter the word I i refer to myself and have a lot of proporties and capacities and abilities. What we are interested in is what we ought to to. You have claimed that there is a fundamental alterntaive of either existing as a man or not existing as man. I summarized the main problem here:

Point in case: If someone claims that you don't exist as man unless you are propmoting other peoples happiness (and therefore it is irrational not to do it), you should be able to trace this argument back to the fundamental alternative in order to show that it is wrong. But your fundamental alternative is either to live as man or not to live as man, so you cannot use it to resolve this question. Which proves that in order to resolve this dispute you have to resort to ethical argument that has nothing to do with this fundamental alternative.

I have porposed

1) A test for what it is to exist

2) A fundamental alternative with a clear meaning given the test

3) A goal impled by 1 and 2.

This is all we need to proceed to work out an ethics.

You have:

1) A fundamental alternative to either exist as man or not

2) No test for what it is to exist as man.

3) No goal implied, and we can therefore not proceed with the ethics.

The problem is 2. Your test for what is is to live as man is the test for whether something is moral or not. And this test cannot rest on the fundamental alternatve, that would be clearly circular. Thus, you have to first derive the ethics before you can even understand what the fundamental alternative means. So how do you derive the ethics?

[Gary Brenner]

Freddy wrote:

You say that the looter has not used his mind. But that certainly is not true, you can envision that the looter is a very clever hacker. How is that not to use the mind? And furthermore, he uses his mind in order to further his existence. Your problem is that you want to barr his actions, but you cannot reach that conclusion unless you define the hacker out of existence, which I claim is an illigitimate move.

I think Freddy’s incisive and eloquent argument is exposing the same weakness in Rand’s ethics that I pointed out.

I was alleged to have misinterpreted the author of “The Objectivist Ethics.” So let’s look at Galt\'s speech instead:

“Man’s life is the standard of morality, but your life is its purpose. If existence on earth is your goal, you must choose your actions and values by the standard of that which is proper to man--for the purpose of preserving, fulfilling and enjoying the irreplaceable value which is your life.”

“Since life requires a specific course of action, any other course will destroy it. A being who does not hold his own life as the motive and goal of his actions, is acting on the motive and standard of death.” (p. 932)

The premise is unobjectionable. One’s life is the purpose of one’s morality. Whether an action is good or evil is determined by whether it furthers one’s existence on earth or not.

The non sequitur is the part about “fulfilling and enjoying.” If the basis of the ethics is “existence or non-existence,” then “fulfilling and enjoying” are relevant only insofar as they serve to maintain one’s existence.

But by introducing these values late into the argument, Rand gives herself room to rule out certain self-serving behaviors that she does not approve of. But it does not follow that looters are choosing “non-existence” or “acting on the motive and standard of death.”

[mrocktor]

The non sequitur is the part about “fulfilling and enjoying.” If the basis of the ethics is “existence or non-existence,” then “fulfilling and enjoying” are relevant only insofar as they serve to maintain one’s existence.

"Fulfilling" and "enjoying" are irrelevant to the existence of a hydrogen molecule, a rock or a fish. They are essential to the existence of "man", because of what "man" is. That is what you fail to grasp.

[KendallJ]

Yes that's it. The fundamental alternative proposes a goal. Then, given the goal we can proceed to investiagte the nature of man in order to find out effective means, and then we can summarize this method to achieve the goal in a standard. If that is not how this alternative is used, then I have no idea what the point is. And the goal proposed seems to be to remain in existence. And I have also propsed a test for existence.

It took me a bit to find your test. Sorry. I think I get where you are coming from. It really turns on the concept of value. I don't see the fundamental alternative as providing a goal, and ethics the means. Ethics defines a standard of value, and the method to acheive that value.

Your test is the wrong sort of generalization of the fundamental alternative. That is, the fundamental alternative does not imply any possible end, as long as it results in a beating heart and conscious mind. Nor does it imply in any way, when given an alternative that keeps your heart beating or not, that you you must choose the one that keeps your heart beating (or whatever your test). That is the role of value.

The fundamental alternative is an "ante" in my mind. That is it does not place a bet, but it creates the conditions under which a bet has any sort of validity. It say's "I'm in." or "I'm out." What "in" means comes next. And "in" might mean making a decision to fold. That decision does not conflict with the alternative, because the alternative doesn't have meaning (i.e. value) yet. It creates the possiblity of value.

[Gary Brenner]

mrocktor wrote:

“Fulfilling” and “enjoying” are irrelevant to the existence of a hydrogen molecule, a rock or a fish. They are essential to the existence of “man”, because of what “man” is. That is what you fail to grasp.

But the premise of Rand’s ethical argument is that “your life is your purpose.” Now what if I found that sustaining my life was not enjoyable? Suppose that I’m on an island and I don’t like fishing or cracking open coconuts (the only food sources available)? If man’s life is the standard of morality, and his life is its purpose, then it would be evil to give up on my life, despite the fact that I’m not enjoying it.

If you want enjoyment to be the standard of morality, then you are not talking about the Objectivist ethics.

[RationalBiker]

The non sequitur is the part about “fulfilling and enjoying.” If the basis of the ethics is “existence or non-existence,” then “fulfilling and enjoying” are relevant only insofar as they serve to maintain one’s existence.

This is precisely why you aren't getting it. You want to take out the part that shoots down your position and saying it's non-sequitur. It is fulfillment and enjoyment of life (along with those things that are required in achieveing that) that separate it from the concept of staying on earth for the longest possible duration and simple doing all that helps one "avoid the morgue". You are selectively taking one piece out of a huge body of work and ignoring the rest in order to try to make your point. It's not working.

I'm not likely to become entangled in this thread as there are people more eloquent than I pointing out where you misunderstand things. However, I think once you understand the difference between (mere) "existence" and "life qua man", you may be on the road to understanding better.