Mo' Dernity, Mo' Problems

Continued commentary on Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand by Leonard Peikoff

The Relationship Between Survival and Happiness
"In existential terms, the moral man's reward is life. In emotional terms there is another reward, a concomitant of the first, which also requires study: happiness." (324)
I was always a little unclear about the Orthodox Objectivist view of the connection between survival and happiness. Sometimes people have made it sound like you persue 3 goals - survival, happiness, and the preservation of other people's rights. But actually, Peikoff is pretty clear that this is not the case. Instead, he says that people ought to pursue survival, and when they do so, two things will happen. By selfishly pursuing survival they will 1) end up respecting other people's rights, and 2) achieve personal happiness.
Does this imply that health/fitness nuts are happier than the average person? They very self-consciously work to to increase their survival, so according to Peikoff you'd expect them to be happier than average.

The Randian Version of the Fall of Man
"Nothing but a false theory of concepts can explain the worldwide scorn today for the conceptual guidance offered by principles... As long as men reject reason in epistemology, they will necessarily reject it in ethics." (334-5)
Translate this to read "War, rape, theft, murder, bad art, and elevator music are all a result of the dominance of a false theory of concepts." Now, I agree that men are unethical in part because they use their powers of reasoning incorrectly. But I don't think that's sufficient; something else is involved. I think human beings naturally have disordered desires, and they are tempted to distort their ethical and metaphysical beliefs in order to fit those desires.
This gets at one of the key differences between logic and philosophy. In logic, one is seldom tempted to produce the result one desires. When one is evaluating the truth-value of an abstract expression, one doesn't desire a particular result. But in philosophy, one might desire a particular result. For example if Johnny doesn't like to feel obligated to his friends and family, Johnny would be more likely to adopt an ethical system that devalues loyalty. Because Johnny has an unethical desire (to abandon friends and family) he brings a bias to his study of ethics. Or, to use an example from the Objectivist context, it would seem natural to say that men sometimes fall into ethical errors because they are too lazy to be virtuous ("I don't want to have to do the hard work of being productive, so I think I'll just be a moocher or a looter.")
But Objectivists disagree with the Christian claim that man's desires are naturally disordered. This puts them in the awkward position of having to argue that all ethical errors ultimately stem from errors of rationality, and not from man's disordered desires.

Fighting the good fight against those pesky Manichæans
"Intrinsicism... holds that love is a relationship between two souls that is not to be sullied by connection to the body." (346)

Redefining Terms
" 'Pride' is the commitment to achieve one's own moral perfection." (303)
Great. St. Thomas's sister wrote him, asking him what she needed to do to become a saint. His response was only two words: "Will it."
"An ethics that extols humility is a self-contradiction. It is the advocacy of a code of behavior, along with the demand not to practice it fully." (309)
Again, using St. Thomas: "The virtue of humility consists in keeping oneself within one's own bounds, not reaching out to things above one, but submitting to one's superior" (Summa Contra Gent., bk. IV, ch. lv, tr. Rickaby). Humility certainly doesn't mean saying, "Well, I'm pretty lame, so I'm not going to try to do good." If one says that, one is guilty of spiritual sloth.

Continued commentary on Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand by Leonard Peikoff

Invincible Robots Cannot Succeed
". . . a robot, not facing the alternative of life or death, requires no action to sustain itself. It is 'an entity which moves and acts, but which cannot be affected by anything. . . which cannot be damaged, injured or destoyed.' Imagine for a moment that this sort of entity were possible. What values could it act for?" (209)
"Can abstract knowledge, say, be a value to it? What for? The robot has no use for knowledge as an aid in achieving its ends; so far, it has no ends." (210)
The argument, as I understand it, is that life/survival is the only valid end in itself, and that therefore an entity which cannot die has no basis for action or for chosing values. If someone were to suggest to Peikoff that the robot could value math, and therefore might decide to take an algebra course, he would respond that the robot would have no reason to pursue algebra, since it would not aid in his survival. The assumption here is that a value is only valuable if it contributes to one's ability to remain alive.
But why is survival the only valid end in itself? Why not declare that abstract knowledge is an end in itself? Or pleasure?

Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Stayin' Alive
"On the physical level, as Ayn Rand observes, 'the functions of all living organisms, from the simplest to the most complex - from the blood circulation in the body of a man - are actions generated by the organism itself and directed to a single goal: the maintenance of the organism's life.'" (189-190)
This is simply absurd. Organisms do not maintain their life through reproduction. Reproduction in most cases actually makes it more difficult for an organism to survive, as it's resources must be directed to the young. The only exception might be humans, since sometimes parents are able to get their children to take care of them in their old age.

Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand by Leonard Peikoff

A is A, therefore causality, therefore Hume is wrong
Peikoff writes, "Given the facts that action is action of entities, and that every entity has a nature-both of which facts are known simply by observation-it is self-evident that an entity must act in accorance with its nature." And he goes on to quote Rand, who declares, "The law of causality is the law of identity applied to action. All actions are caused by entities. The nature of an action is caused and determined by the anture of the entities that act; a thing cannot act in contradiction to its nature." (15)
This, he thinks, amounts to an argument against David Hume's claim that man cannot know causality. Hume does not claim that objects sometimes act in contradiction to their natures; rather he argues that man cannot use induction to gain knowledge of an object's nature. One cannot say, for example, "The ball has bounced on the first 100 trials, and that proves that its in the ball's nature to bounce when drop on a hard surface." It might be in the nature of the ball to bounce on the first 100 trials, but not on the 101. This does not contradict the Objectivist axiom "existence exists."

If you feel warm and fuzzy, check your premises.
"There are four steps in the generation of an emotion: perception (or imagination), identification, evaluation, response... To many people... it seems as if men perceive and then feel, with no intervening factor. The truth is that a chain of ideas and value-judgments intervenes." (156)
I agree with this. For example, if you buy into leftist ideology, you'll be more likely to feel sympathetic towards leftist organizations.
"Emotions are automatic consequences of a mind's past conclusions, however that mind has been used or misused in the process of reaching them... The fact that a man has a certain feeling means merely that, through some kind of process, he earlier reached a certain idea, which is now stored in his subconscious; this leaves completely open the question of the idea's relationship to reality." (159)
This seems like an empirical claim, but I don't see Peikoff providing any evidence. It seems to me that biological and chemical factors must also play some role in man's emotions. For example, an individual tends to experience different emotions when he's drunk than when he's sober, despite his subconscious ideas remaining unchanged. And even leaving out the drug example, it seems at least reasonable to think that empathy is partially rooted in biology/chemistry, and it would be ridiculous to say that romantic feelings aren't partially rooted in our biology. Subconscious ideas may influence our emotions, but I doubt very much they are the sole cause of our emotions.
Peikoff wants to defend Rand's claim that "emotions are not tools of cognition." But if subconscious ideas are only part of the cause of emotions, and biological factors are another part of the cause, then emotions do have a cognitive function. They tell us what things accord well with our biological nature and which do not. For example, when my brother was younger he would throw tantrums when his blood sugar got too low. He realized he needed to eat more often than most people in order to remain in a good mood throughout the day. Another example - two people with the same mathematical ability might get different amounts of enjoyment out of solving math problems. Maybe person A loves doing math problems, while person B takes great joy in composing music. Both person A and person B can be completely rational (as an Objectivist would understand the term), and yet in this situation it seems like person A should chose a career that will involve math, while person B should to try to eek* out a living as a composer, or work on scores in his spare time.

Man's only purpose is to live. Suicide is noble in certain situations.
"Objectivism says that remaining alive is the goal of all values and of all proper action." (213)
"Suicide is justified when man's life, owing to circumstances outside of a person's control, is no longer possible; an example might be a person with a painful terminal illness, or a prisoner in a concentration camp who sees no chance of escape. In cases such as these, suicide is not necessarily a philosophic rejection of life or of reality. On the contrary, it may very well be their tragic reaffirmation. Self-destruction in such cases may amount to the tortured cry: 'Man's life means so much to me that I will not settle for anything less. I will not accept a living death as a substitute.'" (247-8)
A living death - talk about A being not A. Objectivism boldly declares that man's purpose is to remain alive, and then says that in some situations you should kill yourself to avoid a "living death." But there is no such thing as a living death. Objectivists might say that Rand/Peikoff meant that it's acceptable for a man to kill himself in order to avoid an unhappy life, but if Rand/Peikoff put it that way they would contradict the basis of Objectivists ethics (man's purpose is to remain alive). It would be more consistent with Rand's writing on suicide to say that man's purpose is to seek long-term happiness, but Rand/Peikoff don't want to say that because it would make them look like hedonists.

*its supposed to be spelled "eke." Thanks to Eve Tushnet.