my hesitations about Ayn Rand, a recap

[ebola?]

It seems to me, that this has become pertinent again.
Here is where I break from her:

1. altruism is evil and anti-man.

No. Altruists derive satisfaction from their altruism, so there is really no pure self-destructive altrusism of the sort that Rand describes.

2. through the use of reason, we can discern the objective patterns of the universe and derive the singular truth.

I disagree with this ontology and I think it is the source of a lot of Randist arrogance ("if you disagree, you must be irrational.")

3. The only good is one man's pleasure. Therefore, the moral is to work in self-interest.

This does not work on a systemic level. It is not necessarily so that all individuals working for their own good will in turn create the greatest possible aggregate good.

4. The primary person to person relation is that of trader.

I disagree. This creates an artificial picture of society as the aggregation of atomized individuals. Rather than beginning as traders, human beings begin in social relations...the primary relation being that of cooperative labor.

This relates to Rand's major fallacty that she overlooks cooperative solutions to mutual problems as rational activity.

5. Capitalism rewards those with innovative ideas, for these ideas are the source of wealth, not laboring activity.

This is not true. If it were the case, we would see a wealth of scientists driving rolls royces. Instead, under capitalism, the system rewards those who begin with capital and those who trade their capital shrewdly, rather than those who carry out any really useful task.

ebola

 

[DigitalDuality]

Not saying a good debate won't be present here, but if you want a real challenge.. post this here:
http://www.shroomery.org/forums/postlist.php?Cat=&Board=Forum14

or here:
http://www.shroomery.org/forums/postlist.php?Cat=&Board=Forum11

 

[Cpt. Pink Pants]

I think the issue stems from the atomized motivation behind cooperative behavior.

1. Altruism on the basis of self-interest (satisfaction) is not altruism... It's action based on self-interest.

2. You have not provided any argument beyond the statement that you take issue with it on some grounds that you haven't described.

3. The mis-definition of Altruism you used in #1 contradicts your analysis here...

4. The inital social relation of the human infant is not cooperative labor, but self-interested demand. This pattern remains true for most people, only being mitigated as the "common good" is realized intellectually or forcibly conformed to.

5. Capitalism does not require one to begin with capital. You would need capital in lieu of an idea. The idea being referenced here is one to which financial gain is the end - which would exclude most scientific research which is conducted with knowledge and professional recognition as the end.

 

[Jimmy the Gun]

rand wrote good books but here politics are nutcaseish. in a speach to the west point graduates in the 80s, she denied the existence of the american military industrial complex.

 

[David]

May I ask what prompted this thought Ebola? Seems to have come from no where.

 

[atlantabiolab]

May I ask what prompted this thought Ebola? Seems to have come from no where.

It derives from the Capitalism thread, since Rand was a major proponent of Capitalism.

 

[David]

Oh, I stayed away from that thread. Capitalism puts me in a bad mood. I hate being a wage slave. Food is expensive though.

 

[protovack]

1. altruism is evil and anti-man.

It is easy for Ayn Rand to attack something that doesn't exist. I think her conception of altruism extremely is distorted, in that she sees it as some singularly-motivated contrivance. I think we can all agree that we "do nice things" for people under the assumption that they will not treat us badly in return. That is obviously an example of the trader principle. Ayn Rand just announces a rule, "All men are traders," and then she bases another rule off of it, like "Altruism is evil (Because it isn't trading)." EXCEPT in Rand's conception of altruism, IT IS TRADING, and therefore shouldn't every man be altruistic? Trading is not the only route to pleasure.

Well, it seems we have a problem here. Shouldn't I agree with Ayn Rand if I believe, as she should, that altruism is a form of trading? That would make altruism a perfect fit for objectivism wouldn't it? But the problem is, that definition of Altruism isn't really useful for solving this problem. Let's instead talk about what altruism really is: An advantageous inter-species support mechanism which is born out of shared experience. Why don't we set up a test for Ayn Rand? Put a 4 year old kid on a race track. Drive a car towards him at 35 mph. Put Ayn Rand at the side of the road next to the kid. She'd save him.

2. through the use of reason, we can discern the objective patterns of the universe and derive the singular truth.

I hate Ayn Rand for espousing this kind of crap. What an arrogant westerner approach to knowledge. She railed against mysticism without even knowing what it was. That said, I do believe that humans can discover universal physical principles, but that they are only universal for our human intents and purposes. There is nothing objective or singular about truth and the universe, except that Ayn Rand observes it in one particular way. Plus, where is the objectivist benefiting from holding this philosophical perspective? They aren't. They just use it to feel superior to others. Why can't they all just read some Plato?

3. The only good is one man's pleasure. Therefore, the moral is to work in self-interest.

Ayn Rand's logic: The pleasurable aspects of experience are pleasurable. UNIVERSAL MORAL LAW!

4. The primary person to person relation is that of trader.

This is probably the most anti-man thing I've ever heard. Sure, many interactions could be analyzed using that model. But that's only looking at a relation from an outsider's perspective. It doesn't seem appropriate once you try to view things from the relation's participants. For example, a rock concert. Now Ayn Rand would tell you that the musicians provide a service (music), which they create as traders (trading entertainment for money). And the audience provides the money for the service. Personally, I think it is flat wrong to assume that the band members involved in this example are thinking, "I'm on a trading expedition. When I get home I'm going to make spreadsheet which computes the net benefit I derived from each song, and the net benefit I derived from each minute of audience applause." Of course nobody would say that, it's ridiculous. But in Ayn Rand's world, everyone is constantly "laboring," for a later reward. There is no activity which objectivism wouldn't tarnish and ruin for their retarded philosophy. I used music as an example because in general, art is a "real-time" phenomenon in which the participants appreciate a common good. I'd like to think that the audience thinks something like, "It is cool that I get to come here and hear music. The experience of being at a concert is intangible, yet pleasurable, a relation not possible without both parties, artist and audience." Many people, in the midst of experience, by their own nature, discover a universal principle of the common good. We aren't carrying around piggy-banks into which we deposit net benefit. We are not atomized consumption machines, and I think it is tragic that some people believe that. We can be economic entitites and still retain our dignity. Why Ayn Rand needs to make us all feel like walking cash-registers confounds me (And she doesn't even contribute to the debate of why people do what they do).

5. Capitalism rewards those with innovative ideas, for these ideas are the source of wealth, not laboring activity.

HAHA. The scientists right now are just as much wage slaves as anyone else. They make a little bit more money than ditch-diggers because they provide the fuel on which the fire of capitalism burns. At least for now, that is. One day technological development will slow to a standstill when the fascists figure out that technology doesn't form an economy - mind control does. I can't believe Ayn Rand is so ignorant. I don't even understand how she came to this conclusion. I mean, was she friends with, as ebola said, a bunch of wealthy scientists? The bottom line is....the acquisition of land through forceful coercion starts the ball of capitalism rolling, not the pretend "reason" of objectivism.

 

[protovack]

*bump*

 

[killarava2day]

 

[psychoblast]

She's an idiot.

3. The only good is one man's pleasure. Therefore, the moral is to work in self-interest.

A lot of her ideas break down. Here's one obvious one. She cannot find a place to insert empathy into her calculations without fucking up the works.

If you empathize with the suffering or happiness of a stranger, then your own pleasure (or suffering) depends on how others are doing.

And what gives "pleasure" beyond meeting your necessities of life? If you were guaranteed all the food, shelter, clothing and medical care you would ever need, without having to pay for it, what more would you need to be happy? Ski trip? Cocaine? Yacht? Hookers? Family? Good movie? Once you have optimized your own survival, what's next? See, when you get to that point, people seem to run into problems. They can't seem to find any way to get happier. All they can do is KEEP seeking to optimize their survival, even though it is pointless. So they wind up having far more wealth than anyone would need to survive a hundred lifetimes.

If pleasure for EVERYONE is ultimately derived from being a good force in the world (as you subjectively view it), which can alternatively be called having a good self-image, and if we innately feel better about ourselves the more selflessly we live, then you get the odd outcome that the more selfless you are, the happier you are.

Oh, selfish people TRY to convince you that they are happy as can be. But stand them beside some poor buddhist monk and see who has the bigger smile, who has the more confident air of contentment. We think if we say we are happy often enough, we can fool everyone, even ourselves. To some degree it works, but it is always a lesser pleasure than what we could have if we chose honesty.

Material acquisition has failed as a source for happiness. It has been shown in psychological study after psychological study that the rich are not happier than the poor, because happiness derived from material objects is inherently relative. Capitalism is based on the notion that the harder you work for material wealth, the more you will acquire and the happier you will be. Wealth is a function of ingenuity and hard work and happiness is, in turn, a function of wealth. So all is right with the world. Want to be happy? Work hard and make lots of money and you will be happier than those who work less hard and make less money. Capitalism presumes that you can choose to be happier by working harder to be wealthier. But if wealthier people are no happier than poor people...well, the system can't work. This is the Great Lie that feeds the continuation of capitalist thinking. The lie that material crap makes happiness. The latest dvd player, flat screen tv, X-box, combination camera and cel. phone, trendiest clothes and shoes, etc. Every commercial for this crap tries to sell you on the idea that these OBJECTS can make you happy. But psychologists KNOW this is false. Too bad the laws against false advertising are not more liberally applied in this country.

And can you see and hear hundreds (if not thousands) of advertisements a day telling you that happiness comes from stuff you buy, and NOT start to believe it? And when you have more money and buy more stuff and are not more happy...yet you have been trained (brainwashed?) to believe stuff leads to happiness... Well, your mind has an internal dilemma, an irreconcilable conflict. Which most people try to ignore with the help of tv, alcohol, food, drugs, war and pretending they are in fact getting happier the richer they become...because if you tell people you are not, then you will look like a grade A sucker, a moron who worked extra hard all those years and came away UNHAPPIER! Yeah, if there is one thing no one wants to be, it is a sucker. So we pretend. If we all just stopped pretending, maybe we could actually create a system that didn't turns us into suckers. I, myself, am sick of getting sucked dry by this stupid capitalistic system.

~psychoblast~

 

[ebola?]

>>1. Altruism on the basis of self-interest (satisfaction) is not altruism... It's action based on self-interest.
>>

Protovack hit it on the head. The altruism against which Ayn rand argues is a fiction.

>>2. through the use of reason, we can discern the objective patterns of the universe and derive the singular truth.

I disagree with this ontology and I think it is the source of a lot of Randist arrogance ("if you disagree, you must be irrational.")

2. You have not provided any argument beyond the statement that you take issue with it on some grounds that you haven't described.>>


You are correct. . I disagree with the very idea that this sort of metaphysical picture is tenable. It divorces artificially the subject and non-subject universe, logic from the empirical, and discourse from experience.

Here is a picture with which I am sympathetic. The subject arises naturally out of increasingly complext interactions in the natural environment. The subject, inquiring into this world, engages properties of this interaction and not the universe "as such". The system of logic is one such truth emergent from this interaction and discovered/created in inquiry. In this way, logic is not fixed but is empirically contingent. Due to the back-drop of previous interactions (including culture which includes logic), new experiences do not arrive in some sort of raw, unadultered from. Rather, they reflect conceptual structures formed of prior interactions.

I am sucking it up at explaining this. I am really just getting at Dewey's metaphysics. I have also written a few papers on this issue which are, somehow, more eloquent than I am now.

>> The only good is one man's pleasure. Therefore, the moral is to work in self-interest.

This does not work on a systemic level. It is not necessarily so that all individuals working for their own good will in turn create the greatest possible aggregate good.

3. The mis-definition of Altruism you used in #1 contradicts your analysis here... >>

Yeah...silly me for attempting to work with Rand's definition of altruism and self-interest for a moment.

the criticism of the individual/aggregate divide stands though.

>>4. The inital social relation of the human infant is not cooperative labor, but self-interested demand. This pattern remains true for most people, only being mitigated as the "common good" is realized intellectually or forcibly conformed to.>>

It is currently theorized that the early infant does not even have self-based cognition much less self-interest. If we wish to look to infancy, there is more there than self-interest, namely the loving infant-mother bond and the burgeoning intersubjectivity wrought by language-development. And, regardless, this infant is hardly an atomized trader.

I was a little sloppy with my use of the word "begins". I wasn't really thinking of the development of the infant but rather what type of human relations are primary (logically primary?) in our social activity. These seem to me to be cooperative labor and intersubjective intercourse (mostly linguistic).

The "common good" is a moot point and only presents itself in opposition to the majority of our wishes when we begin from the standpoint of the trader.

>>5. Capitalism does not require one to begin with capital. You would need capital in lieu of an idea. The idea being referenced here is one to which financial gain is the end - which would exclude most scientific research which is conducted with knowledge and professional recognition as the end.>>

two issues.
1. Even if you have an idea, you will still need capital for its realization (unless the idea is to labor).
2. I was thinking Ayn Rand meant that capitalism rewards the good that is anchored outside of the system of commoidity trade. If she claims only that capitalism delivers tautological goods, well, I guess I'll take little issue.

ebola

 

[atlantabiolab]

It is easy for Ayn Rand to attack something that doesn't exist. I think her conception of altruism extremely is distorted, in that she sees it as some singularly-motivated contrivance. I think we can all agree that we "do nice things" for people under the assumption that they will not treat us badly in return. That is obviously an example of the trader principle. Ayn Rand just announces a rule, "All men are traders," and then she bases another rule off of it, like "Altruism is evil (Because it isn't trading)." EXCEPT in Rand's conception of altruism, IT IS TRADING, and therefore shouldn't every man be altruistic? Trading is not the only route to pleasure.

Well, it seems we have a problem here. Shouldn't I agree with Ayn Rand if I believe, as she should, that altruism is a form of trading? That would make altruism a perfect fit for objectivism wouldn't it? But the problem is, that definition of Altruism isn't really useful for solving this problem. Let's instead talk about what altruism really is: An advantageous inter-species support mechanism which is born out of shared experience. Why don't we set up a test for Ayn Rand? Put a 4 year old kid on a race track. Drive a car towards him at 35 mph. Put Ayn Rand at the side of the road next to the kid. She'd save him.

Again, as ebola attempted to do, you create a false premise that you can easily destroy. Your definition of "altruism" is not what Rand was denouncing. She was against the more formal definition of "altruism", the definition espoused by religious philosophies, mainly that of Christianity.

Here is a formal definition and not one contrived by our board members:

altruism
Belief that an agent's moral decisions should be guided by consideration for the interests and well-being of other people rather than merely by self-interest, as egoism would recommend.

It is evident that many on this thread have never read, or comprehended, her non-fiction works, many of which answer the issues you have with her philosophy. It is most likely that most have merely read what others have wrote about her.

Rand states that one can rationally harm themselves in the process of assisting others, such as the case of a man who drowns to save his child's life, since the personal value of one's life can be of less importance than that of life without one's loved one. There is no equivalent in a situation where the person in danger was a stranger, since your life would be no different if this person died, due to the lack of any personal bond.

I hate Ayn Rand for espousing this kind of crap. What an arrogant westerner approach to knowledge. She railed against mysticism without even knowing what it was. That said, I do believe that humans can discover universal physical principles, but that they are only universal for our human intents and purposes. There is nothing objective or singular about truth and the universe, except that Ayn Rand observes it in one particular way. Plus, where is the objectivist benefiting from holding this philosophical perspective? They aren't. They just use it to feel superior to others. Why can't they all just read some Plato?

Randians do not adhere to Platonic philosophy since they believe that Aristotle corrected the problems with his mentor's teachings.

As for your lambasting of Rand's concept of truth and reality, you provide no argument against it, merely your claims that there are multiple "truths", possibly a polylogism for all humans, a "truth" for different people, etc. You claim Rand does not understand mysticism, yet you don't elaborate on what it "is".

This is probably the most anti-man thing I've ever heard. Sure, many interactions could be analyzed using that model. But that's only looking at a relation from an outsider's perspective. It doesn't seem appropriate once you try to view things from the relation's participants. For example, a rock concert. Now Ayn Rand would tell you that the musicians provide a service (music), which they create as traders (trading entertainment for money). And the audience provides the money for the service. Personally, I think it is flat wrong to assume that the band members involved in this example are thinking, "I'm on a trading expedition. When I get home I'm going to make spreadsheet which computes the net benefit I derived from each song, and the net benefit I derived from each minute of audience applause." Of course nobody would say that, it's ridiculous. But in Ayn Rand's world, everyone is constantly "laboring," for a later reward. There is no activity which objectivism wouldn't tarnish and ruin for their retarded philosophy. I used music as an example because in general, art is a "real-time" phenomenon in which the participants appreciate a common good. I'd like to think that the audience thinks something like, "It is cool that I get to come here and hear music. The experience of being at a concert is intangible, yet pleasurable, a relation not possible without both parties, artist and audience." Many people, in the midst of experience, by their own nature, discover a universal principle of the common good. We aren't carrying around piggy-banks into which we deposit net benefit. We are not atomized consumption machines, and I think it is tragic that some people believe that. We can be economic entitites and still retain our dignity. Why Ayn Rand needs to make us all feel like walking cash-registers confounds me (And she doesn't even contribute to the debate of why people do what they do).

You obviously have never read any of Rand's works, for this whole spiel was misguided, as Rand does not argue any of your points. She, nor any of the capitalistic economists, argue that each man is an "economic calculator" tabulating "net benefits", as you call it. What they argue is that each man acts for his personal reward, or as von Mises states "man acts purposefully to minimize discomfort". In these actions, men cooperate or transact to maximize their rewards, not with the specific knowledge of the underlying economic principles involved, merely with the knowledge or expectation of personal benefit. So your analogy of a concert is not contrary to Randian or capitalistic philosophy, since each person willfully transacted to maximize their pleasure: the musicians, by being paid to do what they love and the fans, by deriving more pleasure from the entertainment than the value of "x" amount of dollars.

HAHA. The scientists right now are just as much wage slaves as anyone else. They make a little bit more money than ditch-diggers because they provide the fuel on which the fire of capitalism burns. At least for now, that is. One day technological development will slow to a standstill when the fascists figure out that technology doesn't form an economy - mind control does. I can't believe Ayn Rand is so ignorant. I don't even understand how she came to this conclusion. I mean, was she friends with, as ebola said, a bunch of wealthy scientists? The bottom line is....the acquisition of land through forceful coercion starts the ball of capitalism rolling, not the pretend "reason" of objectivism.

More Marxist drivel, continually infecting the minds of the masses. Being a scientist I have good knowledge of the inner workings of laboratories. You are correct that many scientists are not making tons of money, but you are wrong to insinuate that NONE are. The scientists who do make large sums of money are those who invest large amounts of capital and liabilities in attempting to create new and innovative products, unlike the average bench scientist, who while taking part in the project would provide no product to the world if left on his/her own efforts. He/She is paid comparably to their contribution to the project, which will always be less than that of those who invest more or have the ability to generate more revenue.