That "is" defines "ought," or "The fact that a living entity is, determines what it ought to do," is clearly circular. Rand confuses this situation with her theory of moral choice which leaves the "ought" to choice and not to "is." This is the problem of pre-moral choice which has stymied Objectivist ethics for decades now.
If an ought is defined by an is, then how is this up to pre-moral choice? How can any choices be pre-moral? "Choosing life as your standard of value is a pre-moral choice. It cannot be judged as right or wrong; but once chosen, it is the role of morality to help man to live the best life possible." http://importanceofphilosophy.com/Ethics_LifeAsMoralStandard.html
So it appears that Objectivism has not bridged the is-ought gap as long as there is at least one a-moral choice ("it cannot be judged as right or wrong"), the so-called "pre-moral choice."
"You have no choice about the necessity to integrate your observations, your experiences, your knowledge into abstract ideas, i.e., into principles." OPAR, 1. However true that may be, Objectivism has not bridged the gap enabling them to integrate facts of reality into moral prescriptions. We may have no choice than to integrate them, but the "how" of this is left up in the air. Objectivism therefore leaves man with no philosophical guidance to make the correct pre-moral choice, only highly romantic novels to convince his mind through escapist literature.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
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17 comments:
"If an ought is defined by an is, then how is this up to pre-moral choice? How can any choices be pre-moral?"
Because moral choice presupposes choosing to live. Without life, there can be no choices and thus no morality.
Without life there can be no eating, breathing, editing blog posts, etc.
However, choosing to live is, for Rand, choosing to live in accord with certain (rational) principles of her own creation which she believed helped to further an individual's life and happiness in the long run.
Many self-help books in the psychology section of the bookstore offer the same or similar gems of wisdom, but without needing to pose as moral philosophy.
However, choosing to live is, for Rand, choosing to live in accord with certain (rational) principles of her own creation which she believed helped to further an individual's life and happiness in the long run.
Because to her, those principles are all life choices as well. You would have to choose them or you are admitting a contradiction, ie. you supposedly chose to live, but then are making choices that contradict that choice to live.
Not sure why you'd focus on that particular argument as it's pretty straightforward. Some of her other inferences in ethics and aesthetics are much more questionable. You might also have luck questioning her premise that only the living have values, so only those values that support life are worth consideration. Still, it's an interesting attempt at bridging is/ought.
I brought up the question because it has been brought up by others, perhaps 30 years ago or more. The problem of pre-moral choice is hardly new to this kind of criticism. And I believe it to be noteworthy, whereas many times I find other criticisms of Rand to miss the mark entirely, so I don't waste my time with those. The issue of pre-moral choice pretty much drags down, as a foundational issue, everything Rand wrote on the subject of morality.
Pre-moral choice is rather trivial, and Rand did address it. The question of our nature is a factual question, a question of "is". We have a drive to live, to survive. The pre-moral choice is then whether to act in concert with our nature, or contrary to it.
There is no right or wrong answer, but this pre-moral choice defines the premise for our moral theory, and all subsequent choices must be consistent with this premise. However, Rand argues, choosing not to live is de facto choosing death.
Rand takes it even further, in that a person's choice to live is also not merely a choice to survive. We are choosing instead to live a life worthy of a human, and all the potential that comes with being human. We are choosing to live man qua man. Anything less is a choice to live as a lower animal, where your life and death is dictated by others and you have no freedom.
This is her actual attempt to bridge is-ought, since it answers many questions of survival vs. freedom, and is the more questionable argument of her moral theory. It's still rather compelling though, and one of the better arguments I've come across.
Bridging the is-ought gap constituted committing the naturalistic fallacy - in the Randian context, the fallacy states that what a man is determines what he ought to do.
If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is.
I'm afraid that's not much of a counter-argument. Firstly, the naturalistic fallacy is a misnomer, as it is not a formal fallacy. Secondly, you are confusing the naturalistic fallacy with the is-ought problem, a common mistake (they are related, but not synonymous).
Finally, "sounding too good to be true" is not a fallacy either. We don't have to accept her argument without a more rigourous treatment, or more reflection, but as Aristotle said, "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." But criticizing her argument as ill-founded when it clearly is not, as you have done in this article, does not advance discourse.
One can take issue with Rand's inferences without dismissing her entire philosophy. For instance, philosopher David Kelly started a branch of moderate Objectivism quite contrary to Rand's official, stricter brand. Objectivism does have many positive points, it's merely some of the inferences that are suspect. The foundations are rather reasonable.
Rather than being dismissive, why not take a more open-minded scientific approach. Appreciate another scientists' work, however flawed, and incorporate the elements that are elegant into a new theory which addresses the perceived weaknesses of the original.
I'm not 100% negative toward Objectivism, it only seems that way because of my posting style, and because I believe the hazards of it outweigh the benefits.
There has been some debate over the decades concerning the naturalistic fallacy, but whether or not it is a formal fallacy need not concern here. Since Rand failed to bridge the is-ought gap it is likely there is at least one fallacy involved in her argument. Since Rand pretends to have moved from man's nature (the "is") to what he ought to do, then the main culprit here is likely the so-called naturalistic fallacy.
It's not as if Hume didn't deal with and dismiss the question centuries ago. No, that doesn't make me a Humean, it makes me someone who agrees with him on that point. I am not all-or-nothing in my beleifs concerning other philosophers, as Rand was, not even about Rand.
On the other hand, my labeling something a fallacy, as in this case, doesn't necessarily disprove it, perhaps I am only hand-waving it away. Where's the beef?
Rand's solution, however, is simply to hand-wave away all other attempts to deal with it without mentioning any specifics, and then go on to propound an idea that could hardly be considered original or true.
But it does have the advantage of being concise, in fact, she thinks to have solved this riddle of the centuries in just a couple of sentences. Then she declares 'So much for the issue of the relation between "is" and "ought".'
Do you really think that not a single philosopher down through the centuries thought of Rand's 2-sentence solution?
Here's the catch:
Moving from "is" to "ought" requires more than that two-sentence declaration. It requires that one first make the pre-moral choice to behave as one ought to according to one's rational nature.
Now how is it that a philosophical problem can be solved simply by making a certain choice?
Blank-out.
You don't solve a philosophical problem simply by choosing to accept one side over the other.
"Rather than being dismissive, why not take a more open-minded scientific approach. Appreciate another scientists' work, however flawed, and incorporate the elements that are elegant into a new theory which addresses the perceived weaknesses of the original."
Because I'm not a system-builder, I prefer just to pick and choose the elements of philosophy in general that I like.
I don't remember who came up with the phrase "pre-moral choice." But it aptly describes her meta-moral theory. So it would more accurately be called "meta-moral choice." Meta-moral theory is used to determine the principles used in morals proper. In this case, those principles are chosen on the meta-moral level.
I'm again left wondering whether we are actually communicating, because I have described in brief but sufficient detail exactly how Rand's argument does bridge is-ought, and yet you again proclaim that she hasn't. Her explanation is not 2 sentences, and your criticisms are very confusing.
I'll take yet another tack in a last hope of conveying that the problem you perceive in her arguments does not actually exist. Sam Harris has started a movement for the science of morality. This too is an effort in defining a class of objective ethics, and has been widely criticized by moral relativists as suffering from the is-ought dichotomy.
But in fact, the science of morality does not suffer from this problem, because questions of human happiness and functional societies are descriptive, not prescriptive in nature. In other words, science alone can describe our values by sophisticated observational techniques (fMRI, etc.), and can model the consequences of various soceital structures via computer modelling of economics and game theory.
And so we can infer the ethics of what we ought to be doing from the realities of collective human behaviour and values, thus bridging is-ought via science.
Rand is making a similar, albeit more limited form of this argument: that life values living. As a result, and as free-thinking agents, we must then choose to either live and value that which supports life, or die. We need not concern ourselves with those values that end in death, because one must live to concern oneself with the ethics of choice.
The question then remains of the values by which a man must live by, beyond those required for mere survival. A man must choose to live by those values which make him a man, a creature that is inherently different from all other animals, values that objectively fulfill him. Hence, man qua man. This inference is of the exact same descriptive nature as Harris' goal of analysing human happiness.
Where Rand goes wrong is not taking it immediately in Harris' direction by declaring that science is the avenue by which we discover such values. She relied far too much on her reason alone, and her experiences of oppressive political regimes influenced her ethics far more than was healthy. Her ego led her astray in many ways.
In conclusion, Rand is not hand-waving anything. Her argument is sound, and it does bridge is-ought, though it largely explains how is-ought is bridged, and not specifically what has been bridged in all cases. Some values can be determined from simple observation, and for the rest we have only "working definitions" reflecting the best knowledge available at the time.
Sandro,
I gave your previous comment more thought than you give me credit for. In fact, I pondered it during a 45-minute drive and you can see where I directly responded to it. If you think my response was confusing then maybe you didn't give it enough of a chance, but I don't see where you really responded to it.
For example, I responded to your "A man must choose to live by those values which make him a man" because that is just another way of focusing on the nature of that which causes man to stand out conceptually, viz, his rationality. Then when you say that man "must choose to live by those values which make him a man," that is the pre-moral choice right there - but it is not the "ought" that forms the latter part of the is-ought "dichotomy." It is not a moral "ought," but a pre-moral one. It is that fundamental choice that makes all human valuation possible.
The problem as I see it is that Rand never gives a philosophical reason why one ought to make the pre-moral choice one way or another. It is simply expressed as a conditional "if," as in "..if you wish to go on living..." as man qua man or as simply remaining alive. I'm not saying the reasons don't exist, but they are given as stories and not philosophically, as if I'm supposed to think "I wish to go on living because I want to be more like Hank Reardan or John Galt or Howard Roark."
Perhaps the part that confused you about my previous comment (you didn't say exactly) was my statement that the is-ought "dichotomy" is healed through making the pre-moral choice. Or let me put it this way: it is through my acceptance of my essence as rational that determines what I then ought to do with my life, i.e., which values I ought to pursue. It is through this pre-moral choice, not through logical argumentation, that Rand bridged the is-ought gap.
If Rand didn't do any hand-waving, she sure did a lot of sweeping:
"sweep aside those parasites of subsidized classrooms..."
"Sweep aside those hatred-eaten mystics..."
As for the rest, you say that Rand's explanation is more than two sentences - one could say that it is essay length. But here are the two sentences I was referring to:
"In answer to those philosophers [which ones? Blank-out] who claim that no relation can be established between ultimate ends or values and the facts of reality, let me stress that the fact that living entities exist and function necessitates the existence of values and of an ultimate value which for any given living entity is its own life. Thus the validation of value judgments is to be achieved by reference to the facts of reality. The fact that a living entity is, determines what it ought to do."
Come to think of it, her last sentence isn't logical. For if reference to the facts of reality is necessary here, then "that" a living entity is is logically less important than "what" it is. This is an important distinction. Because "that" refers simply to existing, the "what" refers to its mode of existing (e.g., rational man or instinctive animal) which is to be determined with reference to reality - the "that". IOW, we already know "that" it exists, but we need to know something about its nature to determine its mode of existing and the values it requires to further this existence.
Sorry, but the deeper I look into this issue the more nonsensical Rand becomes.
I don't think her error lay in not following someone named Harris after making some basic arguments, her error was making the basic arguments to begin with.
Sandro,
Let me demonstrate that I have been and still am putting some thought into your responses. You say,
But in fact, the science of morality does not suffer from this problem, because questions of human happiness and functional societies are descriptive, not prescriptive in nature.
I'm afraid here you are solving a problem by avoiding it, that is, by staying with the "is" and avoiding the "ought" by simply reducing the "ought" to a question of "is."
Certainly one can describe what one ought to do. But that does not relegate the "ought" to descriptive statements. And anyway, human beings will reject being reduced to things in this scientific manner.
I'm afraid here you are solving a problem by avoiding it, that is, by staying with the "is" and avoiding the "ought" by simply reducing the "ought" to a question of "is."
Yes, exactly. Your implicit assumption is that "ought" is actually a different question from "is". In fact, the body of evidence from science suggest otherwise. We can only derive our ethics based on our epistemology and metaphysics. To do otherwise would be a fallacy.
I think perhaps you misunderstand the nature of the is-ought problem. Hume stated that he noticed that the derivation of ethical theories invariably changed from propositions of the descriptive kind, to propositions of the prescriptive kind, with no logical implication connecting the two. This is a fallacy.
Classifying "ought" as "is" is a logical implication connecting the two, and is in fact supported by mountains of evidence, so you cannot dismiss it as not solving the problem, because it emphatically does. You may not like it, but there's no denying it.
And anyway, human beings will reject being reduced to things in this scientific manner.
Why? Regardless of whether the universe is deterministic, people will continue to do what they like. Do human beings reject medicine when they're sick? Do they reject cars when they need to get somewhere?
Similarly, they will not reject an ethical theory that is scientifically validated to provide happiness, stability and fulfillment.
It is through this pre-moral choice, not through logical argumentation, that Rand bridged the is-ought gap.
I don't think this is a fair interpretation. Every other ethical theory leaves such conditionals implicit. For instance, an ethical rule "thou shalt not kill" is implicitly saying "if thou chooses to be ethical then thou shalt not kill". Rand's argument is of exactly the same form, just explicit.
Her ethics suggests you choose life, and merely acknowledges that any other choice is unethical and de facto choosing death. There is no more pre-moral choice here than in any other ethics.
Sandro,
The blogger spam trap had misdetected your comment as spam. I found it and posted it to the proper place in the comments section.
"Do human beings reject medicine when they're sick? Do they reject cars when they need to get somewhere?" Speaking of the modern world, certain religious sects reject modern methods of transportation and medical doctors of any stripe. Going to heaven is the most important thing to them.
..."with no logical implication connecting the two. This is a fallacy." Which fallacy? And how do you solve it, with the conditional? "If you want to be happy, then you ought to (blank)."
Does the "ought" comes from metaphysics and epistemology? What do they consist of, study of reality qua reality and theory of knowledge? My own observation suggests that most people derive their moral "oughts" from other people's ideas of the "ought," not from any deep metaphysical investigation or reflection upon concepts.
"It is through this pre-moral choice, not through logical argumentation, that Rand bridged the is-ought gap."
I don't think this is a fair interpretation. Every other ethical theory leaves such conditionals implicit. For instance, an ethical rule "thou shalt not kill" is implicitly saying "if thou chooses to be ethical then thou shalt not kill". Rand's argument is of exactly the same form, just explicit.
Are you saying that it's not fair to pick on Rand when others have argued the same way?
But I'm not saying there's any conditional involved at this point. Yes there is previously a conditional, it's just not present here because first someone has to make the choice to live (qua rational being). Having done so, the is/ought dichotomy is thereby "solved." The pre-moral choice to live implies that one has simply chosen to connect the is/ought in the expression "what a man is determines what he ought to do."
Came across this discussion again quite by accident. I don't remember leaving it off here, so just thought I'd write one more reply. ;-)
Are you saying that it's not fair to pick on Rand when others have argued the same way?
I'm saying that by necessity, every ethics is predicated on what you call a "pre-moral choice". Ethical propositions are of the (implicit) form:
"if you choose to be ethical, then you ought to do X"
The first conditional is often implicit. Rand's propositions are of the form:
"if you choose to live, then you ought to do X"
There is a formal correspondence between these propositions, ie. they are equivalent, if we equate ethics with life, which Rand does. Thus choosing life, is no more and no less than choosing to be ethical. There is no "pre-moral choice" in Rand's ethics any more than there is in any other ethics, ie. one choose to be ethical or not.
This raises the question of how one can equate the choice to live and with the choice to be ethical. This turns out to be a factual question, because our very nature has evolved to live, to survive, and so by acting in concert with our nature, ie. choosing to live, we have determined how we ought to act. And thus is-ought is bridged.
The only way to attack this position is by attacking the factual basis. In fact, our natures are not always driven by individual survival, and this is where Rand went really wrong, because she tried to apply pure reason to empirical questions.
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