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I don't understand why objectivists seem to be held in low regard here. My exposure is limited to browsing a forum of objectivists[1] - they were indistinguishable from those here, though much more focussed on personal instrumental rationality in their topics.
I know they are formally a closed loop belief system limited by the writings of Ayn Rand (which I've not read), and have heard this belief system is flawed in some way. That sounds like a straw man.
I'm only interested in the steel man. What is the difference between rationality and objectivism?
The only one that comes to mind: Objectivism implies there is only one true way of some things, while rationality allows for individual variety in thinking processes (resulting from different information, experiences, terminal values, etc.)
However, if for one person their most desired thing is happiness - which can only be achieved through quasi-altruistic deeds - then I cannot see it as anything but objective and rational to carry out those deeds. Objectivism applied to the fulfilment of one's desires appears indistinguishable from rationality to me. Where am I wrong on this - or am I playing semantics?
[1] Knowing what to look for, I discovered the site again. They indeed are very skilled at applying instrumental rationality to various areas of their lives (exempli gratia what type of plastic surgery yields the most natural results?) - however in the Philosophy and Ethics sections, Ayn Rand philosophy abounds. They are describing the intent of an Important Figure (scary), without doing so for the purposes of then breaking it down; those that try the latter attack straw-man versions and are refuted.
I have had few discussions with Objectivists and read few other discussions where Objectivists took part and I haven't seen particularly high level of rationality there. Objectivism as actually practiced is a political ideology with all downsides - fallacious arguments of all kinds, tight connection between beliefs and personal identity, regarding any opposition as a threat to morality by default and so on.
Objectivism as philosophy is a mix of beliefs often mutually incompatible, connected by vague net of equivocations. You may have been mislead by the etymology of "Objectivism" to thinking that belief in objective reality and morality is the distinguishing characteristic belief of Objectivists. But it is not so. To be an Objectivist, you ideally have to agree that
That "there is only one true way of some things" is not a steelman version of Rand's Objectivism, it's a vague nearly tautological statement which almost everyone is bound to agree with, Objectivist or not.
Agreed. I'll also note that several of the Objectivists who I've shown LW have reacted positively, often saying things along the lines of "this is what I wanted out of Objectivism."
Not true. Last I heard the debate was between life "qua man" and a flourishing life.
I believe that's mistaken as well. She was not a rationalist in that sense. Concept formation came from observational data.
I had always been under impression that the value of life "qua man" is derived from the value of life in general, because human life which is not "qua man" is actually equivalent to death, as living "qua man", whatever it means, makes one human. Am I mistaken?
I think you are right in your second objection, there is some limited role for observation in Objectivist philosophy.
Not life in general, but your life, to you. As Rand would say, value is not a conceptual primary - it presupposes value to whom for what.
I believe her transition from life to "life qua man" is untenable. What you describe would have been more consistent in my eye, if your life is what makes the concept of right and wrong possible, it should be the objective standards for your life that matters, not the life of Man, Mammal, Biped, or Bowler. But the requirements of life wouldn't have taken her where she wanted to go.
Playing the essentialism card allowed her to smuggle in a boatload of values masquerading as implicit in the choice between life and death. The requirements for your concrete life get subordinated to the standards of Man's life qua Man. And then it's "Man can't live as this, Man can't live as that", no matter how many men have managed to do so.
I think she's wrong on the basic question - life isn't what provides a standard of right and wrong, it's preference. Her example of the immortal, indestructible robot undermines her case. The robot would still make choices, and could stlll have preferences, even if immortal and indestructible. '“Value” is that which one acts to gain and/or keep.' The robot can still act to gain or keep things - it can still have values.
Indeed, it would be perverse, even from an Objectivist perspective, for values in life to be impossible without the possibility of death.
I think she fails, like all do, in demonstrating an objective code of values. But I found the sense of life in the novels liberating and moving, and the criticisms of altruism empowering.
By "value of life in general" I meant value of one's own life for oneself (the "in general" qualifier was there to mark the absence of "qua man").
That's what I find most annoying and in the same time bizarre with Objectivism. On the one hand, it asserts that my life belongs to me and nobody else, on the other hand it prescribes what I am entitled to do with my life and what not, lest be considered a looter. Among other freedoms, I want my freedom to be altruistic if I choose to.
Free to be altruistic. Wouldn't that be nice. But freedom is precisely what most everyone would deny you, including Rand. Some say you have a duty to be altruistic, while says you have a duty not to be, but both agree that you're evil unless you submit and do your duty.
If you want a philosopher who leaves you free to be an egoist, you want Stirner, the egoist. Egoism isn't the opposite of altruism, it is the opposite of theism, the belief the you were born a slave to a cause not your own. Rand says she doesn't believe in God, but does she believe in Good any less than the most fanatical theist believes in God? Does she condemn those who won't serve her Good any less harshly?
Youtube atheists had a big stink over the definition of atheism - is it disbelief in God, or a lack of belief in God? And round and round they went. And both sides were wrong, because they took belief in the sense of "belief in the existence of", which really isn't the point with respect to theism. There have been no end of people worshiped as gods by other people. It wasn't that these "gods" didn't exist for their respective atheists, it's that their atheists did not believe they were born slaves to these gods. In Paradise Lost, Satan certainly knows God exists, but does it make any sense to thereby call him a theist? Isn't he an atheist precisely for his refusal to be a slave, his Non Serviam?
Rand actually started off very close to really being an egoist. Anthem and We the Living were just assertions of freedom over people and ideologies who demand your submission. IMO, it wasn't enough for her to be free, she wanted to be right, and for other people to be wrong. A will to power, even in philosophy.
And while Nietzsche was all for that, and went about consciously trying to impose his vision on others, I don't think Rand got the joke. She was a true believer in her truth, Stirner would say possessed by it, and wasn't consciously serving her own will, but dutifully served her truth instead.
Funny you should put it that way. Stirner's "Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum" is alternately translated "The Unique One and His Property", or "The Ego and His Own". It's about what you can own, and what it means to have an attitude of ownership to your own life and the world. Your life may or may not belong to you, but that depends on you and the attitude you take toward it.
Objectivism comes with a bunch of baggage about e.g. economics and psychology that's simply untrue, empirically. For instance an objectivist would say that status seeking inhibits self-actualisation. The objectivist plan is to learn to care less about status. As I understand the evidence, this is bad advice for almost all humans, as almost nobody can self-modify to just not care about their place on the totem pole.
In a nutshell, I think objectivists live in the "should universe", and this leads to a bunch of whacky nonsense.
The problem is Objectivism was actually an Ayn Rand personality cult more than anything else, so you can't really get a coherent and complete philosophy out of it. Rothbard goes into quite a bit of detail about it in The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard23.html
Some highlights:
"The philosophical rationale for keeping Rand cultists in blissful ignorance was the Randian theory of "not giving your sanction to the Enemy." Reading the Enemy (which, with a few carefully selected exceptions, meant all non- or anti-Randians) meant "giving him your moral sanction," which was strictly forbidden as irrational. In a few selected cases, limited exceptions were made for leading cult members who could prove that they had to read certain Enemy works in order to refute them."
"The psychological hold that the cult held on the members may be illustrated by the case of one girl, a certified top Randian, who experienced the misfortune of falling in love with an unworthy non-Randian. The leadership told the girl that if she persisted in her desire to marry the man, she would be instantly excommunicated. She did so nevertheless, and was promptly expelled. And yet, a year or so later, she told a friend that the Randians had been right, that she had indeed sinned and that they should have expelled her as unworthy of being a rational Randian."
This is not to say Rand didn't have any valid insights, but since Rand really believed that things she said were by definition rational since she was rational (and as a bonus, the only possible rational thing)... there's a lot of junk and cruft in there, so there's no real good reason to take the whole label.
Objectivisim includes an ethic that many here dislike.
I think the main sin of Objectivism is that, though most Objectivists don't really think of it as a closed belief system, they focus too much on the writings of Ayn Rand, who for reasons of both insufficient rationality and insufficient available evidence, believed a lot of things that are now generally thought to be false (humanity's "state of nature" probably the most relevant and fundamental thing she was wrong about).
Some of them are, and some of them are not. David Kelley is at least a leader of those who are not, and previously posted to LW to point out the error of this assumption.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/m1/guardians_of_ayn_rand/h16
But Objectivism is not about fulfilling your desires, which Rand would consider "whim worshipping subjectivism".
Many people believe in altruism and their feelings of self worth are based in it. Even those not particularly moved by it generally grant that it is moral. She condemns altruism as an evil in harsh, explicit, and effective terms. People are unaccustomed to that, and don't like it. That makes her a natural object of hatred for altruists, as probably the most well known "egoist" philosopher, particularly in the US.
Interesting. Not my experience. I'd say they are more focused on instrumental rationality here than in objectivist lists I've been on previously. Almost entirely theoretical, to the extent that I can recall. Maybe that was because it was the very early days of the internet, and people hadn't gotten pontificating out of their systems yet.
And she uses the original definition of altruism (approximately: reversed survival instinct), which most people don't even know today.
Instead of blaming her, I would rather blame the people who use the word "altruism" as an applause light. Successful Dark Arts maneuver here -- 1) invent a new word describing something horrible, and say it is the best thing ever and all humans should do that; 2) wait for your opponents to publicly criticize the word; 3) change the definition of the word to something nice and pretend the original version never existed... now all your opponents look like horrible, evil people.
I don't think that's the definiction she gives, although given the sum of her beliefs, you could say that. Reversed "interests" instinct seems about right. It's about who is the intended beneficiary of the action - if it's them, it's a good action, and if it's you, it's a bad action. Now you put that together with life as your fundamental interest, and you could say "reversed survival instinct", but I think that conveys a too narrow concept for most people.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary (which is generally very trustworthy on such things),
In that work, Comte says of positivism "It is by its nature thoroughly altruistic, or unselfish" which seems to indicate that he takes altruism to mean something like "being concerned directly for others rather than only or primarily for oneself" -- which is pretty much the standard present-day meaning.
Here's a longer quotation from the same work of Comte; it doesn't happen to use the word "altruism" but seems to me to make it clear that he isn't calling for the abandonment of self-interest, never mind its outright reversal:
On what basis do you say that the original definition of altruism is "approximately: reversed survival instinct"?
George H. Smith talks about what Comte meant by altruism here. Excerpts below. Assuming his summaries are accurate and his quotes are selected charitably, this is not what most people mean nowadays by altruism.
So, first of all, none of that indicates even slightly that "altruism" ever meant anything like "reversed survival instinct". (Which, to me, implies an outright preference for death.)
Secondly, it is not necessarily right to assume that Comte intended "altruism" to mean "the entirety of what Positivism says people should think, feel and do". It looks to me, from an admittedly cursory look at his book, as if he took "egoism" to mean "acting for oneself" or "caring about oneself" and "altruism" to mean "acting for others" or "caring about others", and the key moral content of his quasi-religion was: "altruism should totally dominate over egoism". If I'm right, this dominance is part of Positivism but not part of what he meant by "altruism", and any action or attitude based on caring about others is "altruistic" in his sense even if the person involved cares a lot about himself too.
Those don't seem to me like safe assumptions.
No, I don't think it was. I do think Comte believed in something like that duty (though I think Smith is overstating it a little) but it doesn't seem to me that that duty was what he meant by "altruism".
That isn't (in my reading, at least) Comte's meaning of "altruism", merely one of his doctrines about altruism. And, further, I think "exclusively" is an exaggeration: see the passage I quoted above, which seems to me to be saying that although the welfare of humanity as a whole is the One True Ultimate Goal it's necessary and proper for people to care about themselves because if they don't they'll end up being no use to the rest of humanity.
To summarize my position:
and it seems to me that even Comte's meaning is actually pretty close to what "altruism" usually means today, even though he believed things about it that few other people do.
[EDITED to fix formatting]
I disagree. Altruism is almost always put in opposition to egoism. If you care about your family because you love them, and put their needs above the needs of others, that's less altruistic than putting the needs of another family over the needs of your own.
I think Rand is correct on the current usage. One is altruistic to the extent that one sacrifices your own interests to the interests of others.
You can always leave yourself an out with "at all about yourself". Yes, even most people who praise altruism will allow you a moment to do something for your own happiness. How generous they are! But you are praised to the extent you sacrifice your own happiness for the sake of others, and condemned to the extent that you don't. It's not how much happiness you produce in others, it's how much happiness it costs you that matters. If you do exactly as you please but thereby still make millions happier, you are not an altruist by the usual calculations.
If you think that contradicts what I was saying, then I fear you have misunderstood my point. Altruism is (according to what I think was Comte's usage) the opposite of egoism in the same way as loving is the opposite of hating: they point in opposite directions but the same person can do both -- even, in unusual cases, both at once.
A single action will rarely be both altruistic and egoistic, just as a single action is rarely both loving and hating. But "altruism" doesn't mean "never thinking about your own interests" any more than "loving" means "never hating anyone". A typical person will be altruistic sometimes and egoistic sometimes; a typical person will sometimes be moved by love and sometimes by hate.
There are probably people who hold that everyone should be as completely altruistic and non-egoistic as possible. Perhaps Auguste Comte was one of them. That's an entirely separate question from whether "altruism" implies the total absence of egoism; still more is it separate from whether "altruism" means anything like "reversed survival instinct", which you might recall is the claim I was originally arguing against and which no one seems at all inclined to defend so far.
There may be people who believe that, but it certainly isn't part of the meaning of "altruism". And the example you give doesn't support that very strong claim. If you do something with the purpose of making millions happier and not out of considering your own welfare then (at least in my book) that is an altruistic action whether it happens to help you or harm you. If people are reluctant to apply the term "altruistic" to actions that benefit the agent, I suggest that's just because it's hard to be sure something was done for the sake of others when self-interest is a credible alternative explanation.
Bad analogy. Loving and hating are different emotions with different qualities, while egoism and altruism are different in the objects of their intent, not the quality of the intent. The intent is to serve the interests of the object - whose interests are to be served is what is at issue. Basically, it's whose love matters to you, your own, or the other guys?
And your continued disavowal of absolute Altruism as the meaning of Altruism is self contradictory - Altruism is what it is, and allowing people to be less than 100% does not change the quality that we're measuring in percentages.
More altruistic means more willing to sacrifice your interests for the interests of others. It's the balance of the trade off that matters. The more you lose, the more altruistic you are. The smaller the gain to others for what you lose, the more altruistic you are. The more you hate the beneficiary, the more altruistic you are. It's the ratio of marginal cost to yourself (including actually caring for the beneficiary) versus marginal benefit to the beneficiary.
Of course, one should not just waste value inefficiently, destroying your own values to jack up the cost to yourself, or minimizing the value you create for others to minimize the benefit to others. But as you maximize net total weighted utils, it's the relative weight you assign to your utils and their utils that matters.
But I admittedly said this poorly
I was just trying to get at the issue of the trade off here. Setting myself on fire willy nilly is not necessarily altruistic, it's only altruistic if it's done as an intended and efficient tradeoff for the benefit of others.
I wrote:
You've changed the scenario. In mine, You did exactly as you pleased and it happened to make others happier. You changed it to "with the purpose of making millions happier". That was not the purpose. Satisfying yourself was the purpose.
So, in my scenario, are you altruistic according to you, or not?
I don't see why. I was trying to point out a feature of the logical structure. If the difference between love/hate and egoism/altruism that you point out invalidates that, I'm not currently seeing why.
If (as I think is the case) your objection is simply that generally optimizing for one thing gets you suboptimal results by any other standard, so that e.g. if you optimize for others' wellbeing then usually you end up worse off yourself, then of course I agree with that.
We seem to be agreed that (1) whatever the exact definition of "altruism", it is possible to say coherently that a person, or an individual action, is somewhat altruistic and somewhat egoistic, and (2) altruism doesn't mean actively preferring worse outcomes for oneself. In which case, I think we are in fact agreed about everything I was trying to say.
Yes; that was the whole point. Your scenario was relevant to the question "is altruism about intentions or about outcomes?", but we never had any disagreement about that; of course it's about intentions. I was aiming at the question "is altruism about acting for others or about suppressing one's own interests?". Though I'm not sure my scenario actually addresses that very well, and I suspect it's almost impossible to give clear-cut examples of. (Because in most circumstances there's no observable difference between the results of caring more for others, and those of caring less for oneself.)
Have they redefined altruism it to something nice when I wasn't looking?
Altruism as the desire to help others is fine and dandy. But who means that by altruism?
Everyone seems to mean that slave morality which states that working for the happiness of others is good, and working for your own happiness is evil.
Uhm, almost everone?
I am not sure, because people typically don't provide their definitions of words like "altruism" when they use them. They assume that everyone knows exactly what it means, and if you ask for a definition, that seems like trolling.
That too, actually. Perhaps the word is usually used to mean a set of this all. You know, the wider the meaning, the greater the chance that at least some part of it can be defended successfully in a debate.
(Anti-epistemology as usual: oppose "tabooing" words, and only use narrow definitions for the things you don't like.)
Most importantly, themselves.
Yes. If you suggest they're conceptually muddled, instead of attempting to demonstrate their conceptual clarity, which should be trivial to do if they have it, they will get huffy and declare you a troll.
That's the true Dark Art. Endlessly equivocate on the meaning of your terms. It's so dark, you can manipulate yourself into believing that you know what you're talking about. See Rand and "life" for details.
Only one of them is like a political party but more so.
Upvoted for asking a good question and showing you'd thought about it and looked for answers.