Free Capitalist

Stephen, was that the article which basically showed how dogs evolved (in the literal, biological sense) along with humans, ever since we first domesticated them as wolves? I remember a philosophy professor put up a Science article about dogs and was very happy about it because it proved evolution beyond any doubt.

Betsy has recently written a post where she corrects a person for trying to begin his chain of reasoning with abstract notions, and instead suggests he begins with the evidence from the real world. The subject of the best government is usually a place where such advice is needed sorely. The most common approach is to begin the discussion from highest abstractions and try to proceed deductively down to the level of politics; aside from the epistemological weakness of this approach, it doesn't work because it cannot tell which of such imaginary governments will actually work and which won't. A better alternative to this kind of deductive approach is begin studying the issue from the real world, from one's knowledge of various free constitutions, from their successes and their failures. This means a study of Classical history, the only period in history of man which provides plentiful examples of many successful free and moral societies - Roman Republic, Athenian democracy, Spartan mixed constitution, Carthage, Rhodes, etc. It was, after all, precisely this inductive approach to politics (i.e. an in-depth study of Classical history) that our Founding Fathers used in shaping their ideas of proper government; from grade school they learned the ancient languages and memorized whole passages of ancient manuscripts by heart, reading and studying the accounts of ancient constitutions of various cities in original literary glory. If we wish to study proper governments, we should begin with knowledge of what free men had tried to build before, and how well they succeeded in doing it. And if we wish to imitate the Founding Fathers' achievement of America, which is wholly Classical in its institutions and governing principles, then we should imitate the means they used to achieve it, if not through ancient languages themselves then at least through translations.

CF, moral evaluation does not depend on how much someone "tilts" the scales in one direction or the other. It depends on adherence to our nature qua rational animals. Every action and every man can be morally evaluated in one direction or another, based on that standard; if the people Betsy mentioned do not violate moral rules, then they should be considered moral, in agreement with her evaluation of them. I didn't think you would have such a serious disagreement on the nature of morality, so at this point all I can do is to point to VoS and relevant chapters in OPAR. They don't explicitly address our current predicament here, but they do explain the nature of proper morality, and thus serve as the foundation for continuing to debate this.

Hmm, this thread and my thread on morality/practicality are beginning to seriously overlap...

CF, That's not an answer. Then what is the difference between "amoral" and "immoral"? Properly defined, "moral" and "immoral" are the two exclusive alternatives in ethical evaluation. "Amoral" refers to actions that do not belong within the moral sphere at all, such as a North Korean scientist who is forced at gunpoint to build the nuclear bombs for the government. His action is amoral, because no moral evaluation is possible for targets of initiation of force. Another amoral kind of action is when you breathe in and breathe out. Your body does it, but you don't really tell it to, nor does it operate according to your values. You can usurp volitional control over breathing and then moral evaluation would apply, but that would be an exception; breathing in the usual meaning of the world would not properly qualify for moral judgment.In essence then, as I said, "amoral" is a word used to describe things that do not fall within the moral sphere. This is why your definition of the word, "not moral", is inadequate -- the definition could be used to mean both something that isn't open for moral evaluation, and something that is open but and is deemed immoral. Both such interpretations are possible with your definition, whereas it is precisely between these two meanings that I am asking you to distinguish. Those people Betsy mentioned, why not just come out and clearly call them immoral, in open disagreement both with Betsy's evaluation, and those of other Objectivists? --- I too am beginning to see where you're coming from, and I will have to ponder abit about how to properly put my thoughts into words. It is in this future reply that I will address your quote of me. You're not seeing what I was trying to say there, and that's what I will have to try to formulate.

So what you're saying is that, although these people hang out with Objectivist crowds, and are friends with oldtime Objectivists who recognize them as fullblown Objectivists too, that these people who can probably lecture you and me on fine points of Ayn Rand's philosophy, they are somehow amoral?!And what does "amoral" mean in this context, anyway?

What's the contradiction?

I think what Betsy's trying to say, and what I was trying to say earlier, is that there's entire sphere of human action on top of the moral sphere, which is the sphere of goals and means. And the practical quality of each person is what deals with that sphere, rather than their knowledge or their ethics, regardless of how well they know their philosophy. This is how someone can be a very knowledgeable person, but completely impractical and still not a success in life.

I wouldn't presume so much as to say I corrected you . I was just trying to clarify things.

Proper morality is just a start, not an end, to knowing how to live a successful life.

You bet it does!! I'm so glad that your point of view has been stated so succinctly. Now we've finally gotten to the essentials of the issue.Betsy has mentioned many times, here and on the other forum how over the course of many years, she has met many Objectivists whom she could find no flaw with in terms of philosophy, but found completely unreliable, untrustworthy even with things like money, and generally unsuccessful in life. I hope she corrects me if I'm misinterpreting her words, but I think this is a wonderful example from experience. CF seems to believe that as soon as we get the philosophy down perfectly, we'll all be successful individuals. I've seen this opinion many times, and, with all due respect to CF, I believe this position to be detrimental to a happy life. This is why I raised this subject in the first place, though it might have originally seemed trivial and obvious.

Andrew, I think Betsy meant "should" for morality in the sense of, does the moral code allow or prohibit this behavior, and "can" for practicality in the metaphysical sense of, can I achieve this goal with the means available to me.

I think movies like this are appealing to some (including me) because they are very intellectually stimulating. So, despite their lack of benevolence or an exalted sense of life, they still keep us interested. But I certainly don't think they hold mass appeal, or even interest us when we just want to go to movies to relax and be inspired. Plus, the first, or at most second viewing is usually the max. Dark City is an example of this, a dark but very intellectually interesting movie; I've seen it the second time and 'got' every little bit of it (and enjoyed it), but I'm definitely not going to make it a movie I will probably ever watch again. Once the intellectual interest settles down, a movie's theme and values are what becomes its lasting message. And Memento, Dark City, etc, really don't have the theme or the values that are anything to recommend. It kind of gets down to the issue of whether someone enjoys intellectual movies, rather than simply interesting, exciting, and uplifting movies. Not everyone will, or should, enjoy the former.

But CF, I already stated in the very first post of this thread that what is immoral cannot be practical, so I am not sure why you were so concerned about establishing that or defending it. No one disagreed with you, certainly not me! As Betsy excellently points out, just because we can say that the all immoral is impractical does not mean we can say that all moral is practical. Her diagram really sums everything up: <-------Moral-----------><---Immoral---> <---Practical---><------Impractical----->

Daniel, you said, If you've gone that far, you've agreed with me. I never denied that morality can be applied to achieve practical results, that'd be absurd. But what I was trying to do was to justify making room in the decision making process for concerns other than ethical. If morality alone doesn't determine our every choice, what is that other faculty that does? It's the practical faculty, our capacity to get things done.The interesting thing is that all of what I'm claiming is obvious via a simple process of introspection. We do hundreds of things per day, and for how many of them do we question their moral status, or think about them in moral terms? But still I received disagreements, and too often I see people (not anyone on this forum) going around and pontificating, essentially. Morality to them consists of a very narrow set of action, surrounded by a sea of all kinds of immoral actions, and they live very stiff and repressed lives. My whole point here has been to explain that the proper thing to do is to turn things around on them, that it is the immoral that is a narrow set of what we can do, and the moral which is the large sea of action. In such a reversal, it would be impossible any longer to identify one's worth by the strictness of one's moral rules. If practicality was granted a valid sphere of influence, that would mean it would actually be necessary to live successful lives in order to live up to a good moral standard. And that's what I'm trying to defend, ultimately.

That another poster was me. I think Burgess summed up the issue in the best way possible, because I too consider myself an Objectivist in one context, and merely a student of the philosophy in another.

Andrew, you actually said it better than I did. Kudos! The problem with CapitalismForever and Dominique's suggestion is that it essentially removes the concern for practicality and attempts to derive all rules for everyday life from moral rules. That is akin to eliminating science and trying to get by with philosophy, or trying to discredit induction and believing deduction is all we need.

Let's be concrete. It's both moral to clean the computer, and not to clean it, as per my example above. Just because it is not impractical for me to clean it now, because I'm late for somewhere else, does not make the action immoral. Nor could it ever, because that'd contradict the original statement.

Yes I know you believe this, but you have to justify it. I certainly don't think Ayn Rand said anything to the effect. And I have continually made examples of cases in which your rule must fail. Practical deals with conflicting alternatives, but since all of Practical resides within Moral, we don't just rely on Ethics alone to guide our action. In your scenario we could.So, I guess I'm asking for support for your claim, or a quote from AR.

Andrew, Because morality sets up the broad, fixed framework of rules and principles. And what is practical is in a flux, but it always is within the moral, as per Betsy's diagram.CapitalismForever, Nothing that is immoral is practical. And conversely, nothing that is practical is immoral. That's about all there's to say in terms of absolute statements. The sphere of moral actions is greater than the sphere of practical actions at any one time, because the latter conflict with one another, by definition. I'm not sure where you disagree with me here.

Why would I do it if it was impractical? Practical concerns what I want to do. But if the long range practical concerns dictated that I did something, and I didn't do it because I was lazy or didn't have enough will power, then yeah that would be a breach of morality.

Not to give anything away about the end of the movie, but even by the end I felt like Nash's victory was temporary and provisional. There would always be a specter that the entire movie could replay itself. His victory was not final. And the question of will - his strength of will was only shown in the fact that he refused to believe the images in his mind, not in the resumption of his control of his own mind. That, I think is what makes the movie malevolent - it portrays a person who is beset by a problem that simply cannot be fixed through his own effort. And this problem is not isolated, but affects and undermines his entire view of reality, his whole sense of life. And by extension, the viewer's; mine. Again, I guess it depends on how strong the viewer is. I definitely would not recommend this movie to a young person just starting out with holding on to a benevolent sense of life. To someone who's held a firm grasp of that for decades, perhaps the aspect that affected me would be less dreadful. I have seen the movie years ago and have no idea how much I'd be affected by it now. I was a lot more fragile then, however, so my posts still serve as a valid note of caution to those who are not solid in their feet. I'm sure you'll agree that considerations like that matter. You probably wouldn't recommend watching Memento to someone who is very vulnerable psychologically and epistemologically because of a serious memory debilitation, which traumatized them before, and from which they're only recovering now. It's kind of like that. Except that the issue Memento deals with is is rare, and less likely to affect an average viewer. Beautiful Mind is about having and dealing with malevolent reality, and is thus about one's sense of life, which affects most people directly.

Janet, by "Objectivists" I presume you mean "students of Objectivism". If so, then I personally have found it malevolent because the main hero was beset by a malevolent reality, by evil forces outside of his control. And to bring it down to a more personal level, his acting to this extent was so incredible that he even instilled this sense of life in me . So that, as I wrote above, after coming out of the theater I too believed that reality was essentially uncontrollable and antithetic to me and my mind, and also that something as personal as my own hands and fingers were as foreign to me as bulks of wood. This is why, I called that aspect of the movie terrible. It was both malevolent in its theme, and malevolent in how it affected me personally. Maybe not all watch movies with this intensely, but I can only relate what my personal reactions were.

Amazon.com: Founders and the Classics. I don't know which review of the book you're asking for; I personally have never read it, but I've 'flipped' through the first pages of the book on Amazon, and it looks to be incredible, so I can't wait to check it out. However the Culture of Classicism is sill relevant to the period in question, because it details specifically the American obsession with the Classics, and explains in enormous detail the values and principles that Revolutionary Americans, the Founding Fathers preeminent among them, cared deeply about, and built their country based on.

Haha, the diagrams got way out of hand. My previous diagram was opposite of what it should have been, and Betsy's correction got it best (only 2 lines are required for this discussion) - Level 2, less fundamental..............<--- Practical ---><-----Impractical-------> Level 1, more fundamental............<--------- Moral ---------><--- Immoral---> What's moral and what's practical are not equivalent terms. Some things may be moral but that doesn't necessarily mean you should to do them, i.e. they're impractical. Stephen, I see your point unequivocally now, and your answer to my question is precisely why I raised my point in the first place. You believe this discussion is an ethical question, i.e. are arguing on the first and most fundamental level. However I don't think Alex is approaching the discussion from this angle at all. Not all questions of conduct are necessarily moral questions. The example I used before was the question of whether to clean the hypothetical dust off the top of my computer or not. I suppose we can ask ourselves whether it's moral, because there is a moral dimension to the question, but more likely than not we will assume that it's moral and really concern ourselves with whether it's practical or not. It is in that sense that I think Alex was approaching this discussion. In your context, this appears to be exclusively a moral question. In his context it's not a moral question at all. Unless I'm mistaken then, you guys are talking to each other on different levels of the same issue, which makes this argument a prima facie case of "talking past one another". I don't think Alex realized that there was disagreement with you on the moral status of the issue (but, of course, I don't presume to speak for either him or you).