[While I am a “closed” system proponent, I do not really want to discuss that here. I shall state here that I do not consider Kelley’s adjustments, developments, additions, etc. to be part of Objectivism (Rand’s philosophy). While Kelley may have developed his theories in the Objectivist tradition (which is also questionable), I do not consider them part of Objectivism. This is comparative to Aristotle’s philosophy and the other philosophers that studied and promoted ideas in the Aristotolian tradition (the same with Plato’s philosophy vs. Platonic tradition, Kant’s philosophy vs. Kantian tradition, etc.). With that said, I’ll discuss the differences between Kelley’s ideas on moral judgment in the Objectivist tradition, with that of Rand’s (Objectivism’s) theory of moral judgment.]
Note: All of Kelley’s quotations are from “Truth and Toleration”.
There is enough Objectivism in Kelley’s moral judgment theory that one can say that it is almost Objectivist. Rand and Kelley both agreed on the necessity of moral judgment. Their theories deviate from one another in how they frame the discussion of it and the main problem with Kelley’s theory is a product of that deviation.
Kelley writes:
The distinctive feature of moral judgment is the attribution of moral responsibility, of blame or credit for an action, and this is appropriate only where choice is involved… Since the fundamental choice is whether to think or not, whether to use our capacity for reason, we must judge people by how they make this choice. In judging an action, therefore, we are concerned not only with its consequences, measured by the standard of life, but also with its source in the person’s motives, as measured by the standard of rationality. The question is how to integrate these two factors into a single judgment. Philosophers have long wrestled with this question; they have proposed various theories about the proper weight to assign to consequences on the one hand and motives on the other. The Objectivist ethics, unfortunately, has yet to address this question in any depth. But it’s clear that we cannot ignore either factor.
The problem that philosophers have wrestled with so long is the dichotomy of the mind and body (or motive and consequence) and moral judgment. Two irrational products of this dichotomy are the Utilitarian and Kantian criteria of immorality. Utilitarians focus only on the consequence. Kantians focus only on the motive.
Kelley is wrong when he says: “The Objectivist ethics, unfortunately, has yet to address this question in any depth.” Rand completely rejected the mind-body dichotomy all-together, she rejected that there was even a question to begin with. I’ll agree that nowhere did Rand explicitly write on how to morally judge another, she mostly wrote one why man needs to do it.
However, Rand wrote in multiple essays and in her books about the mind and body of man. She made no distinction between what a man thought and what a man did, and she rejected every attempt at such a distinction. Every action of a man has a root in his thoughts. The very instant a man makes his thought known he is performing an action. At every level of a man’s life there is a complete integration of his mind and his body.
From “The New Intellectual”:
The New Intellectual … will discard … the soul-body dichotomy. He will discard its irrational conflicts and contradictions, such as: mind versus heart, thought versus action, reality versus desire, the practical versus the moral. He will be an integrated man, that is: a thinker who is a man of action. He will know that ideas divorced from consequent action are fraudulent, and that action divorced from ideas is suicidal.
Objectivism doesn’t address the issue of the mind-body dichotomy because it already rejects it in its every form.
Kelley doesn’t reject the mind-body dichotomy rather, he embraces the dichotomy by attempting to solve its “problem”. One cannot create an Objectivist theory by embracing what Objectivism rejects. In order to discuss and create a properly Objectivist theory, one would have to reject the dichotomy and discuss the issue opposite of the way Kelley does.
Kelley separates moral judgment into four parts: Evaluating actions, Interpreting motives, Inferring character traits, and Judging the person. Kelley attempts to make a distinction between the actions and the motives of a person. That is not Objectivist in any form.
Rand said in a 1971 issue of “The Objectivist”:
Moral judgment must be objective, i.e., based on perceivable, demonstrable facts. A man’s moral character must be judged on the basis of his actions, his statements and his conscious convictions—not on the basis of inferences (usually, spurious) about his subconscious.
That is where a proper Objectivist theory of moral judgment must start and that is distinguishably different than what Kelley attempts to do.
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