Rand v. Hume

Questions about Objectivism
1

Try not to bite my head off for this. I am posting it because I am willing to listen to any counterargument you are willing to provide, which means I am not set on the following passage. It is simply something that has been running through my head for the last hour or so. To paraphrase the issue:

Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand, is formatted under the condition that man’s goal is to live – it is subjective upon this idea. Rand states in defense of this that “[t]he concept of ‘value’ is genetically dependent upon and derived from the antecedent of ‘life’. To speak of ‘value’ as apart from ‘life’ is worse than a contradiction in terms”.

David Hume says that a goal can be neither rational, nor irrational, but only non-rational. Actions can be described as either rational or irrational according to whether or not they are consistent with a goal.

It is true by Hume that if an individual wishes to survive, he must partake in the actions required to do so. If he aspires to something, he ought to undergo the decisions leading into that result, or he is being irrational. But it is also true by Hume that if an individual does not want to live, to take his life or to act against it is equally rational.

Therefore, in the absence of life, no values can be possible (Rand; I think both Objectivists and non-Objectivists can accept this as true). To pursue a value which is opposed to life – death, for example, or a desire to be obese, or to contract AIDS – is irrational to the concept of life (Rand), but the actions taken to achieve the goal may still be consistent and rational to that particular goal (Hume).

But I digress; do you hold certain things above life, because you have principles? Is there anything you would die for? Anything you would not want to live without, because life would not have value in its absence? If yes, I think it is safe to say that your standard is not just life, but life, conditionally. Life with the use or presence of certain aspects – be it freedom, self-control, coordination, mental competence, etc. If you would choose to die rather than refute these values, your values are higher than just life and apart from it in certain emergency situations (to accept a dictator or be shot for insubordination). They are possible only in an ideal version of the life that you seek.

Is it irrational to pursue these things when they may lead to your destruction?

I know Rand touched on the matter, saying it is not immoral for a man to die to save his wife if life would be meaningless without her. I understand the value hierarchy. But, “[t]he concept of ‘value’ is genetically dependent upon and derived from the antecedent of ‘life’. To speak of ‘value’ as apart from ‘life’ is worse than a contradiction in terms”.

  1. How does that come into place with the above statement?

  2. How do you respond to Hume’s theory?

  3. When can a goal be ‘irrational’?

It is an objective necessity that you must act one way if you wish to live.

If X, you ought to Y.

In order to live, you ought to eat.

But isn’t this subjective to whether or not you want to live? It presupposes that life is of higher value to you than the cause which led you to stop eating in the first place.

2

In addition, I realize that the goal must be consistent with the reasoning for it to be rational. If you want to gain weight to be taken seriously for a job application in a society where being overweight does not result in respect, your goal is irrational because there is nothing leading into it.

But if you want to gain weight to be taken seriously for the job in a society where being overweight shows that you are productive enough to feed yourself, is the goal irrational because being overweight is unhealthy?

3

People with schizophrenia show certain level of consistency in their behaviour, related to irreal goals. For example, if I have a paranoid delusion about being observed by extraterrestrial beings who can see through brick walls but not through metal, I might build for me a room with iron walls to secure my privacy. My behaviour would be consistent to my goals and beliefs, but not consistent to reality as a whole.

The Rationality of values and actions, therefore, has to be judged all things considered.

Now, regarding values higher than life, it is worth remembering that in Objectivist ethics, life does not refer merely to biological life (keep breathing and metabolically active) but to the rich, lucid, flourishing life characteristic of beings with volitional conciousness who use their minds to understand and command nature and shape their own character. We call this life “life qua man” and it is this life what constitutes the standard of value. It presuposes biological life, but not ANY kind or level of biological life. Life deprived from the possibility of rational choices is no more precious than the value of the life of a chimpanzee, or a tree.

Therefore, in those unusual circumstances where a person cannot make rational choices or pursue rational values any longer, biological life loses its role as source of life qua man and hence loses much of its value.

A man could then say: "Give me a life qua man or give me death."

It is up to any man to recognize whether a big loss represents an irreversable deterioration of the buman quality of his life.

Not all persons who lose a spouse would have to commit suicide for the sake of consistency.

Each person has his own hierarchy of values and will have to asses his own circumstances.

2 Likes
4

But isn’t this subjective to whether or not you want to live? It presupposes that life is of higher value to you than the cause which led you to stop eating in the first place.

Whether or not you want to live is in a way subjective in the sense that there isn’t exactly a reason for you to choose to live. Of course, if you don’t choose to live, death would come soon enough. That’s why it can’t be said that morality is subjective, since the only way to define what a person should do is the requirements of life, as you say at the end of your post.

Rationality is about making choices in the context of a person’s whole life and their various goals. Now if we’re talking about specific goals in a more limited and short-term context, the means to reach a goal may be logical, but not necessarily rational. If I want to rob a bank without getting caught, there are a variety of ways I can do this, and I can use logic to figure out how to do it. My goal in robbing the bank might be to get a lot of money in order to buy a house, a goal which might be rational. In the context of my whole life, robbery is an irrational course of action because it overall hinders my pursuit of life in the long-term. Goals are ends, but ends are also means to more ends; in other, words the goal of robbing would be the means of buying a home. So I would disagree with Hume, when talking about humans, that all goals are non-rational. Hume would only be right if there were no ultimate value.

But I digress; do you hold certain things above life, because you have principles?

There is nothing I hold above life. I wouldn’t die for anything, but I’d risk my life for some things. I would prefer to rephrase that as what would I live for.

1 Like
5

David Hume says that a goal can be neither rational, nor irrational, but only non-rational. Actions can be described as either rational or irrational according to whether or not they are consistent with a goal.

Value cannot exist without a standard of value, and life is the only possible source of values. Reason is a method for a particular purpose, i.e. life, and has no meaning or foundation without life. The choice to live, therefore, is pre-rational. If someone were to ask you “Why do you live?”, you may give a list of things you greatly value, “My life is good; I love my parents; I have a good job; etc.,” but all of these things are values derived for life. You would essentially be saying “I live to live.”

This is where Objectivism and Hume would converge, where it is accepted as fact that nothing can be rational or irrational but non-rational without a particular end. However, no goals are possible absent of life; life is the fundamental goal that must be pursued. Thus, to pursue any goal one must pursue life, to pursue life one requires many goals for the pursuit, since every action one partakes in has an effect on one’s life, one can quickly see that life is the highest end. However, one must understand exactly what life is and what’s required for it, and this is where the values of which one may die for stem from.

I would recommend Tara Smith’s Viable Values if you want to understand this further.

6

I second the recommendation of Tara Smith’s Viable Values, particularly chapters 4 & 5, which cover this exact topic.

7

I suppose one could value things above life. Most people do, and to the degree that they do, and to the degree that value contradicts their life, they will experience pain, decay, and misery on many leveles.

However, if you have some sort of value scale that goes something like " I would rather die than live in a tyranny " then it won’t harm you unless you are in that cricumstance.

I isn’t so cut and dry. Valueing life related values above life is not a rejection of life in the same way valueing God or some other fantasy above life is. It is just an ethical quirk that most likely won’t harm you.

Life is the standard of value, but you can choose other things and still get away with living a long happy life. Even christians can do it!

I for one value my survival, above all the nice things that can come from that. So no I would not willingly die for anything.

8

Now, regarding values higher than life, it is worth remembering that in Objectivist ethics, life does not refer merely to biological life (keep breathing and metabolically active) but to the rich, lucid, flourishing life characteristic of beings with volitional conciousness who use their minds to understand and command nature and shape their own character. We call this life “life qua man” and it is this life what constitutes the standard of value. It presuposes biological life, but not ANY kind or level of biological life. Life deprived from the possibility of rational choices is no more precious than the value of the life of a chimpanzee, or a tree.

Very well said. This should answer the question.

9

I used to agree with Hume about goals being non-rational. However, I have been persuaded to believe that goals are either rational or irrational. A great example of this was Hotu Matua’s post about schizophrenics. If your goal is to protect yourself from aliens, the goal would be irrational simply because it denies the truth. Inversely, if your goal is in accordance with reality, then it is rational. The ethical value of goals is another matter entirely.

Another point I’d like to make is to argue for the rationality of suicide in certain cases. Imagine you are a spy for the CIA and you’ve been captured. You are certain that you will be tortured for valuable information and fairly certain you will be shot and killed regardless. Unless you have a reason to believe you can escape or have rescue on the way, it would make sense to save yourself from unnecessary pain by taking your own life quickly and painlessly. Life itself, as in the state of being alive, is not valuable. It is merely a neutral container for experiences. If you reasonably expect your future to hold more positive (read: goal-worthy) experiences than negative (non-goal-worthy) ones, then it is rational to live and irrational to commit suicide. I hold the inverse to be true also.