= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
buybuydandavis comments on Avoiding the emergency room - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (68)
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.
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.