James Randi and Objectivism

[joesixpack]

Now back to the "Injuns".

Both the Europeans and the earlier tribes had irrational conceptions of who deserved to live or be here or there. Those are issues that raise different concerns, and whether you can grasp it or not yet, on which I think most of your positions and Objectivist positions will agree. Rand was no racist, and neither am I.

They both had irrational concepts of who deserved to live here? What I see is that the morality of the Europeans was crafted especially to justify the ethnic cleansing program that started with the first settlers and lasted up to the end of the 19th century, and I see that the morality of the natives was perfectly in line with their desire for survival.

No, I don't think you're a racist, but I do think that it's laughable to propose that an objective morality was what guided the European settlers in the new world. How convenient that this "objective" morality seems to cast the winners in such a rosy light.

I'd be happy to call it a "rational morality", though. It was rational in the sense that it got the job done, and it was moral in the sense that no one felt particularly bad about doing what they needed to (except the natives).

The issue that is more complex and pertinent in the current context is the one of property rights that are a corollary to the right to life from which they derive their validity. Property rights recognize the fact that human beings are not genetically equipped like other living entities to automatically act for the sustenance and flourishing of their lives. They have to apply the product of their reason to their physical actions to produce that sustenance.

Actually, because humans are tribal animals, we must act together to ensure our survival. We are genetically equipped to act for our sustenance. The specific genetic adaptation is social structure. Why else would we have such a well developed language? Humans can't and won't thrive on their own

The mere fact that men can greatly increase their productivity by voluntary cooperation does not constitute any claim by any other person or persons to a right to compel such cooperation. There does not exist any grounds that would support any one man's claim to the product of another's reason and effort. It is a primary moral principle, therefore, that each man owns and has the sole right to use and/or dispose of the product of his own reason applied to his own physical actions. That product is his property.

Calling it "voluntary cooperation" is like calling what fish do "voluntary swimming". I agree that we should own the product of our own labor, and I agree that I shouldn't be compelled to work in the gulag. But we are still compelled by the very nature of society to contribute to the survival of the family/tribe/city/state. Do you think you can drop out and fend for yourself? I'll bet you can't.

Conversely, no man may claim to own something that is not produced by or acquired in a voluntary exchange of a product of his own reason/effort.

So you are opposed to inherited wealth? That's great because I'd like to see a much greater inheritance tax.

That is why a thief or an accomplice does not have a right to booty.

But European settlers had every right to land already occupied. That's a very convenient sort of morality.

And what of the grifters and con men? Don't they live by their wits and their Reason/effort? What of Derivitive traders who sell worthless securities? Do they deserve the product of their labor?

It is also why matter cannot be owned, because it is not the product of anyone's reason/effort. Grasping this, one must then distinguish between possession and ownership. The thief possesses your watch, but does not own it.

So real estate is not going to be a safe investment in your world. If I let my backyard get a bit weedy will you be able to lay claim to it because you can put better use to it?

You can claim you own the land by just consuming the plants and animals on it or sleeping and eating there, but unless you incorporate into the land the product of your reason/effort, there is nothing you can own. The ownership of land actually means that you own the reason/effort that is embodied into the matter you possess and gives it a value greater than it had in its natural state. Because no one else can claim to own that matter, your moral claim to the value of the embodied reason/effort also sanctions a right to its possession.

So I can take any land with which I can turn a greater profit on than the current owner? What if I can't make a profit, but I just think I can? What if I'm wrong? What are the penalties? What if I find out that my lead-acid battery recycling facility isn't so economically viable? Who will compensate the farmer I kicked off?

Even if they could not explain these facts when they came here, most of the Europeans did grasp the notion of establishing ownership by the principle of homesteading. The tribes that preceded them neither understood that nor tolerated it

No, they grasped the notion that might makes right. And the tribes that proceeded them were powerless to stop them, and they grasped the same notion.

And when you think about it, the Europeans were no less squatters and the native Americans were no less "homesteaders". The only difference between the two was gunpowder.

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To the extent the Europeans acknowledged the property of those who settled on and planted the lands and only killed those who killed the arriving settlers that homesteaded other lands and did not support herding them into reservations, they were innocent. To the extent they did not, they were not.

So there seems to be a narrative in your head of "good settlers/native americans" and "bad settlers/native americans". It sounds more like children's fiction than history.

 

[MichaelM]

And if you read your history leading to your Constitution, you will see nothing about the country getting out of the government business,

You are not paying attention either. Neither Rand nor I have advocated no government.

That's fine. But what of those who don't agree with you?

Those who do not agree and act on the principle that they may take whatever they want from others by force will stopped by the force that the government wields (police, courts, army etc) in defense against force.[/QUOTE]

But, in any case how do you prevent an individual from not using physical force? Other than calling the police of course.

Why do you think there is another way?

No. I think people would organize to establish roads, schools, drug certifiers, and etc. And they would need methods to enforce payment for them and punish those who refused or otherwise violated rules for their use. Such an organization is called a government.

But that government would be neither moral nor just because the decisions of what roads and where, what would be taught, and how thorough and trustworthy the certifiers were would be coerced at the point of a gun ... like it is today in Canada... and the US.

 

[MichaelM]

That's a nice recitation of Bastiat/Rand property theory that never quite gets beyond the concept of divine right. To put it in Objectivist terminology: Greater value— according to whom? Voluntary— under what circumstances? Blank-out.

How much value is value added to warrant ownership is contextual. If you are fishing in unowned waters you own the fish by catching it, or a piece of driftwood floating on the surface by merely taking it home and putting it on your mantle.

In early America you could own a piece of land by fencing it. Today that standard is seldom an issue because most land is already owned in one way or the other. And whether in the process of arriving at just values in all cases errors are made one way or the other and later corrected, in no case does it alter the validity of the principle as I enunciated it.

Voluntary is a simpler matter, it means, under all circumstances, subject to one's own volition unimpeded by force or the threat thereof.

 

[joesixpack]

Michael I think your quotes may be jumbled in the post above. I see a stray HTML thinger.

 

[MichaelM]

If I, in an Objectivist World, own a piece on land next to a Fellow Objectivist (who for purposes of this thought experiment remains un-named) on which I build a Quantum Mangling Plant that no one has ever seen or heard of before and it blows up killing everyone for 1200 kilometres around what is the Fellow Objectivist going to do about it?

Sue me?

Suggest I don't build any more?

Check with Consumer Reports?

Your overeagerness to look like you are scoring against me is leading you to ask silly questions.

The response would not be any different than it would be under existing civilized governments. It would constitute a horrific crime of violence.

When I say that the government's only task is to stop violent actions of men, why do you ask me what I would do with people who perpetrate violent actions?

 

[Gazpacho]

Who's to say that errors will necessarily be corrected through the workings of your principles?

If, like countless capitalist pioneers, I decide to fence off resources that people have been using communally, impoverish them, and then graciously offer to pay them for their labor, is that quite voluntary?

 

[MichaelM]

I don't trust people to be rational. I hardly trust myself to be.
Is Objectivism meant for humans or only fictional characters?

So long as your irrational actions do not interfere in the choices of actions of others by force, you have the right to those actions. What you should want is that no others may use force against you just because they think you are irrational so long as you are not coercing anyone to involuntary actions.

In short, Objectivism does not condone victimless crimes. No victim of force? No crime.

 

[MichaelM]

I don't think human nature would change.

Human beings are neither innately good nor innately evil. We are volitional creatures capable of both. That is our universal nature. And beware the implication of regarding men as bad by their nature as you too are a member of that group.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I am interested in knowing what James Randi and people here think of Objectivism and Ayn Rand. As many of you must know Ayn Rand was athiest and considered the founder of Objectivism, which is the belief that you must live your live by reason and rational thinking. Objectivist are also usualy (all the ones I know are) strong capitalist. Ayn Rand is quoted saying:

I'll try to get through 5 pages at some point but in the meantime I have a point that was probably made already. This is the same ignorant nonsense as claiming if you don't believe in god you must have no morals. Sorry, it's crap. Critical thinking leads to atheism, it doesn't lead to amorality or selfish-ism or objectivism. Rand's beliefs are no more evidence based than the foolish assumption our morality comes from our religion.

Morality evolved and we are a gregarious species not an individualist species. Objectivism is anything but objective. It is the product of a self centered fantasy of a minority of individuals who lack the concern the majority of us have for others.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Human beings are neither innately good nor innately evil. We are volitional creatures capable of both. That is our universal nature. And beware the implication of regarding men as bad by their nature as you too are a member of that group.

I think our species is innately good while the evil members among us are at the far end of the continuum and in the minority.

 

[Stomatopoda]

And beware the implication of regarding men as bad by their nature as you too are a member of that group.

In other words, ignore any facts if you find their implications disagreeable. Reminds me of creationists screaming "I'm not a monkey! You're a monkey!"

 

[MichaelM]

You're going to use violence to end violence?

Who will be these wielders of force?

To understand this you must first be capable of grasping the moral distinction between aggressive force implemented to take values from others and defensive force to protect the victims.

The wielders will be the government that will be authorized by the people to use force in specific circumstances enumerated in principle that are well defined and objectified. They will be unable to coerce funding and will own nothing, leasing the means from the populace and restrained from utilizing the force other than in their defense.

 

[MichaelM]

So the citizens are supposed to persuade the corporate bosses to with hold funding from the government?

When consumers are angry corporations turn on a dime. I left my career as an automobile designer having tried on two continents to persuade them to produce something good even if the public did not appear to want it. At both companies they insisted on building the crap that was selling.

 

[MichaelM]

You wrote a lot of words complaining about our lack of understanding but not a single word explaining your doctrine.

Less complaining, more explaining.

Read Ayn Rand.

 

[MichaelM]

How does the practice of slavery violate O'ism?

Objectivism recognizes one single fundamental alternative operative in every principle regarding moral human interrelationships: freedom v. force.

Slavery is the epitome of a use of force to coerce the actions of an otherwise free (autonomous) person—i.e. it violates a person's absolute right to his life and thus is a crime.

 

[MichaelM]

Slaves are property, by what right do you tell someone what to do with his property?

No human being can treat another human being as property without granting that they too may be treated as property, since all human beings have the same fundamental nature. No human being can violate the right of another human being to his life without implicitly forfeiting his own right to life.

That is the moral justification for self defense and incarceration of those who violate the rights of others.

 

[MichaelM]

Who's to say that errors will necessarily be corrected through the workings of your principles?

No government can guarantee that men will act rationally or be productive. So that may not be its task. It must only prevent the use of force among men however successful they are as human beings.

If, like countless capitalist pioneers, I decide to fence off resources that people have been using communally, impoverish them, and then graciously offer to pay them for their labor, is that quite voluntary?

If their use involved a defined area and utilization of previously unowned land then they may claim ownership and be deeded the property legally. In that case, you would be committing a crime.. If they merely consumed existing wildlife and vegetation over vast undefined areas no government should honer their claim of ownership.

Note though that the standards of homesteading are usually low, because it is beneficial to enhance the productivity of people and land to the general benefit of all.

 

[MichaelM]

I think our species is innately good while the evil members among us are at the far end of the continuum and in the minority.

If you are careful with your contexts we can agree. It is natural for man to be good, because the definition of good is to act for the long range benefit of your life when "life" is understood to mean consistent with your nature. When all men are good by that definition the quality of life is maximized.

But you may not think of man having innate ideas, because that is a self-refuting notion. If any part of your knowledge is predestined or predetermined, there would be no way to distinguish that part of you knowledge from that which you can demonstrate to be objectively true. In that case the concept of "truth" is made meaningless and you are precluded from claiming that your assertion of innate ideas is "true."

 

[MichaelM]

In other words, ignore any facts if you find their implications disagreeable. Reminds me of creationists screaming "I'm not a monkey! You're a monkey!"

You have contrived a bunch of nonsense just to get to that joke.

I did not say that. I said that all men are by their common nature human beings, and that claiming humans are innately bad by that nature is ipso facto admits to being innately bad oneself.

 

[The Norseman]

Did you follow that particular thread of conversation back to where it started?

I was pointing out that MichaelM's fairytale description of the "objectivist" beginnings of this country (which I must assume is the US, but hey, he really wasn't specific) diverges quite sharply from the historical record.

Was there no coercive interaction with the indigenous people around the founding of this country? I could also point out these poor saps as well. Maybe I'm mistaken, though.

So was this country truly founded on "objectivist principals"? Or did I misunderstand MichaelM?

No, I didn't follow that thread from the beginning, but what you are saying now makes more sense to me. Thanks for the clarification!