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Reason and Freedom vs. The Liberty Summer Seminar

May 20, 2008 by  

I recently posted The One Way to Defeat a Rational Argument, which was about the importance of speaking in favour of freedom, even when you do not have a large audience or a prospect of changing the minds of the majority of people. In response, Peter Jaworski, a Canadian philosophy student currently doing his Ph.D. at Bowling Green, essentially accused me of not practicing what I preach, on the ground that I have refused to attend his annual “Liberty Summer Seminar” (LSS). The LSS is a summer get-together in Orono, Ontario, Canada. The event is, de facto, a small-l libertarian event, and is usually billed as such by its speakers and attendees. Peter, himself, is a libertarian.

Some background: Last year, in a private e-mail to him, I explained my reasons for declining to attend the LSS. With permission, he reprinted my e-mail on his blog as a follow-up to another post he had about what one must believe to be a libertarian. Essentially, I explained that I regarded libertarianism as a movement that ultimately is anti-freedom, and that I thought it morally wrong to sanction it.

In any event, the comments between the two of us (i.e., comments to my “The One Way to Defeat a Rational Argument”) became longish and went far afield from the topic of the original blog post. I think that they help shed additional light on the libertarianism issue and, accordingly, I’ve reproduced them, together, in a new blog post, below.


Peter wrote:

Well… not at every venue available to you, Paul. You don’t come to the Liberty Summer Seminar to express your dissenting voice against libertarians…

You’ve told me that attendance at events like these implies agreement with the organizers and their principles. If that’s your view, what venues have you spoken at, and how many “reason and reality” conferences are there?

Incidentally, I do advocate reason. But I’m open to hearing what others have to say.

I replied: Ah, well, as you know, I don’t regard the Liberty Summer Seminar as an opportunity for me to advocate freedom. As I’ve explained elsewhere, the net effect of an Objectivist doing a talk at a libertarian event is to give libertarianism an undeserved reputation for being a movement that defends freedom.

Those who deny the existence of existence; who deny that reason, and reason alone, is man’s means of obtaining knowledge; or who deny ones own life to be ones own highest value, rationality to be ones highest virtue, or ones own happiness to be ones highest purpose; are all people who will – in one instance or another – argue that government should not defend a person’s freedom rationally to pursue his own happiness. Yet libertarianism deliberately avoids taking a stand on metaphyics (reality), epistemology (reason), and ethics (rational egoism), in an attempt to gain the support of those who hold anti-reality, or anti-reason, or pro-altruistic philosophies; to gain the support those whose beliefs do not consistently support freedom.

Why give people the impression that I think a Hegelian’s arguments; or a mystic’s arguments, or an altruist’s arguments; are somehow worthy of serious consideration? They are not. But were I to stand amongst them; or to appear to be in league with them; it would be inferred that I think that freedom can be obtained when those committed to the facts of reality work with those who are committed to denying the facts of reality; that freedom can be obtained when those who regard divine revelation as a means of obtaining knowledge work with those who know reason alone to be effective in the discovery of knowledge; that freedom can be obtained when those who regard rational egoism to be pure evil work together with those who regard rational egoism to be the height of goodness; that the freedom rationally to pursue ones own happiness can be won by implicitly sanctioning altruism, irrationality, and the myth of the supernatural.

I’ve spoken/written numerous times as a guest of television programs; in newsmedia and magazine interviews; in major daily newspapers (including columns in the National Post and Toronto Star); in magazines (including the Fraser Forum, Consent, and the now defunct “Wealthy Boomer”), at Freedom Party dinners, conferences and media events; at private functions; at numerous all-candidates debates in 4 elections; on radio programs; on youtube (where I’m a partner); on my blog, etc.. I even spoke at the Liberty Summer Seminar before I understood how much of a mistake that was for one who wants a freer society. You can find much of it (though, clearly, not all of it) linked from my main web site: http://www.paulmckeever.com

Reason and reality conferences are held every year (see, for example, http://www.objectivistconferences.com ) though, clearly, there should be many more: if you want freedom, advocate reason.

Peter replied:

I’ve accused you in the past of strawmanning libertarians, and I have another opportunity. The word “libertarian” does not function in the way you think it does. It does not represent a “closed” system. Neither, incidentally, is Objectivism (if you take the work of the Objectivist Center–now the Atlas Society–seriously).

How do you figure that the Liberty Summer Seminar is not helping the freedom movement? Can you name a speaker, or anything, for that matter, that doesn’t serve the ends of promoting liberty? Why is it so “much” of a mistake?

Because we don’t just repeat what Ayn Rand said? Surely, surely there’s room for disagreement. And, besides, the LSS is not an advocacy event, it is an educational event. We intend, and do, discuss various views on liberty. We always have plenty of objectivists who attend, and who are happy to participate in the discussion.

It’s possible, you know, for people to be wrong about things, Paul. And to be wrong about them while not being evil or being willfully ignorant. Some of us just haven’t heard the right arguments (or we find the arguments presented to be wanting).

I replied: Peter, in the past you’ve accused me of straw-manning arguments, and then proceeded to prove my argument by saying that libertarianism brings together anyone who advocates its political strategy (you might call it a philosophy, I wouldn’t), regardless of their metaphysics, epistemology, or ethics. Here’s a direct quotation, of you, from your blog:

Libertarianism is broad and “lacks” foundations not because libertarians don’t hold foundational views that would exclude many others, but because the word “libertarian” applies to the conclusion of an argument, and not the argument itself. For the sake of an argument, you can define your terms in special ways for special purposes. But when you are using the ordinary notion of “libertarian” you are referring to people who share the belief that government should be massively restrained (for whatever reason–including consequentialist and deontological reasons).

(emphasis added)

I don’t care to rehash – yet again – why freedom cannot be defended without reference to a rationally-defensible metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical base. Those interested can read here, or here, or watch here:


Damned to Repeat It, Part I: Libertarianism, by Paul McKeever
Part II: Anarchism | Part III: Voting

You write:

The word “libertarian” does not function in the way you think it does. It does not represent a “closed” system. Neither, incidentally, is Objectivism (if you take the work of the Objectivist Center–now the Atlas Society–seriously).

First: a thing is what it is. That’s the law of identity. Ayn Rand’s philosophy is Ayn Rand‘s philosophy. Ayn Rand called her philosophy “Objectivism”. The various innovations that others want to pass off as her philosophy, by representing those innovations as “Objectivist”, are not a part of Ayn Rand’s philosophy and, so, are not Objectivism (whether those innovations are right or wrong). Objectivism is no more an “open system” than the concept “off” is open to including the concept “on”.

Second: I don’t take the work of David Kelley’s “Objectivist Centre-now the Atlas Society-seriously”. It tends to be associated with people who falsely call themselves Objectivists, and who speak at libertarian meetings. Related video:


Paul McKeever’s “The Peikoff-Kelley Debate”

You write:

How do you figure that the Liberty Summer Seminar is not helping the freedom movement?

Because it both implicitly and explicitly promotes libertarianism as being pro-freedom when it is not. Libertarianism, being a “big-tent” electoral strategy that intentionally denies the importance of metaphysical, epistemological and ethical issues to freedom, is anti-freedom in its effect.

Can you name a speaker, or anything, for that matter, that doesn’t serve the ends of promoting liberty?

Peter Jaworski, libertarianism, and the Liberty Summer Seminar.

Why is it so “much” of a mistake? [for an advocate of reason to attend or speak at the Liberty Summer Seminar]?

Because doing so helps give libertarianism an undeserved reputation for being pro-freedom when, in fact, it is anti-freedom. It is a mistake because those who are committed to reality and reason are pro-freedom.

Surely, surely there’s room for disagreement.

Of course, but not in the context of a pro-libertarian function. For example, I’m disagreeing with you right now.

And, besides, the LSS is not an advocacy event, it is an educational event.

Its purpose is to educate people…about libertarianism; or, at the very least, to educate in a way that implies libertarianism is a pro-freedom movement/strategy.

We always have plenty of objectivists who attend, and who are happy to participate in the discussion.

Believing you are an Objectivist is different from (a) being an Objectivist, and (b) acting as one. For example, I know anarchists who erroneously consider themselves to be Objectivists. Objectivists understand that to attend the Liberty Summer Seminar is to provide the sanction of the victim of altruism, irrationality, and unreality. A person truly committed to freedom looks at an invitation to the Liberty Summer Seminar, and shrugs.

It’s possible, you know, for people to be wrong about things, Paul.

You demonstrate that amply.

And to be wrong about them while not being evil or being willfully ignorant. Some of us just haven’t heard the right arguments (or we find the arguments presented to be wanting).

Tell me Peter. You are an intelligent guy. You have the capacity to read and understand Objectivism if you want to. You seem to imply that you have done the reading. What do you think about Hume and skepticism?

Peter replied:

I asked: “Can you name a speaker, or anything, for that matter, that doesn’t serve the ends of promoting liberty?”

And you wrote: “Peter Jaworski, libertarianism, and the Liberty Summer Seminar.”

And I say: I was never a speaker at the LSS. I only co-host the event, I don’t speak at it. And add that that’s a pretty harsh indictment of me, personally, and you really shouldn’t do it without knowing me better. You don’t know where I diverge with Objectivism, and I think even Rand would insist that you collect more evidence before you cast so harsh a judgment. I might say the same of you, Paul, since I think Objectivism is a poor way to promote liberty. Unless you think you know that I like Mozart. In which case I stand corrected–since knowing that someone thinks this or that thing is aesthetically pleasing is sufficient to judge their character… ahem…

You asked: “Tell me Peter. You are an intelligent guy. You have the capacity to read and understand Objectivism if you want to. You seem to imply that you have done the reading. What do you think about Hume and skepticism?”

And I say, 1. thanks!,
2. I’ve read every significant work Ayn Rand ever wrote. Every non-fiction book, and every work of fiction, including Night of January 16.
And 3. You’ll have to be more specific. What are we talking about, exactly? Is it Hume’s general point about the fact that we have to use our senses, that those are, of necessity, filters, that we don’t perceive the (what Kant called) “noumenal” world, but only phenomena? Or do you mean his point about causality, and our inability to “know” the future? Or do you mean Hume’s skepticism with respect to religion, the existence of a god or gods, and his argument against miracles? His skepticism with respect to metaphysics, and its usefulness in general (that is where the famous “condemn it then to the flames” quip comes from)? Or something else?

I’ll answer all of them, I guess, and going backwards: 4. Condemn it to the flames, I say! Largely stuff we shouldn’t bother with, akin to arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Not all of it, mind you, but large, large chunks of it.
3. Miracles? Nonsense. God? I don’t believe. The supernatural? Humbug.
2. Hume’s right. And he’s usually grossly misunderstood. He does not deny causality, merely our ability to “know” this. Kant’s response is to insist that cause and effect is a frame we must use in order to understand the world in the first place. Awakened from his dogmatic slumber by Hume (if only Objectivists could be so roused), Kant’s response is pretty good, in my mind. We might append it here and there, and insist, for instance, that we have every reason to use cause-and-effect reasoning as a justified and legitimate *assumption,* even though we can’t *know* this without faith (and faith is a bugaboo, Paul). Incidentally, and contrary to Rand’s and Peikoff’s bastardization of both Kant and Hume (one wonders if they ever bothered to actually read them), neither of them “condemn” us to uncertainty or undermine our ability to think or reason. It does not undermine “man’s mind.” All it does is admit a fact: There’s stuff we can’t know (although some of that stuff we have excellent reason to go on as an assumption).
1. Yup, Hume’s right about this as well. We can’t step outside of our heads, as it were. We need reasons to think that our senses convey accurate information about the world. Reasons that are extra-sensesual (I don’t want to use “sensual” since that has a double-meaning…). But our senses are our only means of acquiring information about the external world, and so we’re stuck with the instruments we’ve got. But they *are* instruments and filters. They do not give us the world-as-it-is, they give us the world-as-it-appears-to-us. Of course, we can construct other instruments that tell us more–like the discovery that colours are not “in the objects” (as it were), but are rather the result of light waves bouncing off of them and interacting with our eyes in certain ways.

We have better and worse reasons to accept the world-as-it-appears-to-me (note the use of “me” rather than “us” here, since we don’t have access to a collective brain, but must constitute some sense of world-as-it-appears-to-us through a combination of world-as-it-appears-to-me). But that’s all we have–better and worse reasons, not “knowledge,” strictly speaking.

So I’m basically on-board with Hume, but it doesn’t lead to things Rand or Peikoff thinks it does.

One other thing: “Believing you are an Objectivist is different from (a) being an Objectivist, and (b) acting as one. For example, I know anarchists who erroneously consider themselves to be Objectivists. Objectivists understand that to attend the Liberty Summer Seminar is to provide the sanction of the victim of altruism, irrationality, and unreality. A person truly committed to freedom looks at an invitation to the Liberty Summer Seminar, and shrugs.”

a) duh and b) duh. You might know anarchists who consider themselves Objectivists, but I know Objectivists who think they know things that they don’t. A person truly committed to freedom looks at an invitation to the Liberty Summer Seminar and does what they can to attend.

I replied:

I asked: “Can you name a speaker, or anything, for that matter, that doesn’t serve the ends of promoting liberty?”

And you wrote: “Peter Jaworski, libertarianism, and the Liberty Summer Seminar.”

And I say: I was never a speaker at the LSS. I only co-host the event, I don’t speak at it. And add that that’s a pretty harsh indictment of me, personally, and you really shouldn’t do it without knowing me better. You don’t know where I diverge with Objectivism, and I think even Rand would insist that you collect more evidence before you cast so harsh a judgment.

Peter, I have explained, at various times mentioned above, that libertarianism not only fails to promote freedom, but implicitly or explicitly (depending upon the libertarian, and the day) denies the necessity or relevance of a commitment to the facts of reality, to reason, or to objective morality in the promotion of freedom. You have as much as agreed with me without saying so, when you’ve said such things as this:

Libertarianism is broad and “lacks” foundations not because libertarians don’t hold foundational views that would exclude many others, but because the word “libertarian” applies to the conclusion of an argument, and not the argument itself.

As for my needing to know you better before making such an evaluation of your efforts: it is not as though you have not made your views amply known in writing and on your campus radio show. You have been a vocal advocate of libertarianism. Indeed, my understanding is that you just this weekend attended a Libertarian Party of Canada conference. Similarly, the Liberty Summer Seminar is a libertarian event hosted by you.

My argument (and that of Peter Schwartz, before me, in his “Libertarianism: The Perversion of Liberty“) is that Libertarianism does not “serve the ends of promoting liberty”. If you understand my argument, then you will understand my conclusion that it also follows:

  1. that (such as the Liberty Summer Seminar) which promotes, advocates or sanctions libertarianism as a way of promoting liberty is not serving “the ends of promoting liberty”; and
  2. those who (like yourself) promote, advocate, or sanction libertarianism as a way of promoting liberty are, similarly not serving “the ends of promoting liberty”.

You write:

…I’ve read every significant work Ayn Rand ever wrote. Every non-fiction book, and every work of fiction…

You asked: “…What do you think about Hume and skepticism?”…our senses are our only means of acquiring information about the external world, and so we’re stuck with the instruments we’ve got….We have better and worse reasons to accept the world-as-it-appears-to-me …But that’s all we have–better and worse reasons, not “knowledge,” strictly speaking.

Regrettably, then, you cannot claim to be ignorant, or accidentally wrong, in respect of that which you are promoting.

And you will be familiar with the fact that, in proposing that Objectivists get on board with those who believe knowledge to be impossible, you are – not ignorantly or accidentally – asking that that which leads logically to freedom work together with that which undermines it entirely.

In any collaboration between two men (or two groups) who hold different basic principles, it is the more evil or irrational one who wins. (“The Anatomy of Compromise,” Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, 145.)

Comments

31 Responses to “Reason and Freedom vs. The Liberty Summer Seminar”

  1. Peter Jaworski on May 20th, 2008 1:04 pm

    You wrote: “And you will be familiar with the fact that, in proposing that Objectivists get on board with those who believe knowledge to be impossible, you are – not ignorantly or accidentally – asking that that which leads logically to freedom work together with that which undermines it entirely.”

    And I say: There are at least two different senses of “knowledge” which you are equivocating on. I “know,” for instance, that Socrates was put to death by hemlock way back in the day. I also “know” that a bachelor is an unmarried male. The second sense of “know” means: without *any* chance of error. The first sense of “know” means: have overwhelming reason to believe. The two are not the same, Ayn Rand and Leonard Peikoff (and anyone who pretends to do philosophy) should “know” that, and apply the right standard in the right context. Doing otherwise is to commit the fallacy of context-dropping (or whatever new fallacy Rand decided to call it).

    Hume believed that “knowledge” in the looser sense is possible with respect to non-analytic or tautological truths or facts. Hume did not believe that we had “knowledge” about empirical matters in the strictest possible sense of “to know,” where there is no chance of being wrong.

    But Rand probably knew that, and Peikoff does know it (since he is a professional philosopher), and so I’m tempted by the oft-repeated criticism of Rand that she was being imprecise for the sake of a cheap, emotional point. Because to be absolutely precise is to have to take Kant and Hume much more seriously than she did, and to admit that *they have a persuasive case.*

    So, to make myself perfectly clear: Knowledge is possible. Knowledge about the past will necessarily not be without *any* chance of error, similarly with knowledge about the future, and so, too, with knowledge that we derive directly from our senses. We are not omniscient, Paul. But we *can* have knowledge in the sense of having *overwhelming* reason to believe some proposition. That’s real, genuine, honest-to-goodness knowledge. So let’s not play the Randian equivocation game (she does this so often, it’s used as a humorous example in philosophy classes).

    Then you wrote: “In any collaboration between two men (or two groups) who hold different basic principles, it is the more evil or irrational one who wins. (“The Anatomy of Compromise,” Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, 145.)”

    And I challenge you to prove this statement without quoting Ayn Rand. Why? Because the case is flimsy. In fact, I claim that that statement is empirically without support either in the sense of there being an insufficient number of empirical cases to support it (and therefore it would be wrong for her to assert that she knows this rather than to say that she’s got this hypothesis about “evil” stuff having more “power” than “good” stuff bouncing around in her noggin’ and she’s just throwing it out there so that others can do some empirical work), or in the sense of it being literally false.

    Interestingly, it’s a conjunction of 1. evil *and* 2. irrational. Proving a conjunction requires that it be true that 1. The more evil individual or group will win and it must *also* be true that 2. The more irrational individual or group will win. Since the latter proposition is false (depending on what Rand means by “irrational”… but I’ll get to that), the whole statement is false.

    Why is it false? Because “rationality” in one sense means merely to take the right means to accomplish your goals. On this version, “irrationality” means taking the wrong means to accomplish your goals (whatever they happen to be). For instance, if you want to count all the blades of grass on your front lawn, it would be irrational for you to grow corn on the assumption that the number of corn stalks will be directly proportional to the number of blades of grass on your front lawn if you multiply by a factor of 10. Thus, in any battle between good and evil, the “irrational” will lose, except by accident. Because they’ll be busy talking about lettuce when they want to move their feet, say, or eat telephones.

    In the sense that Rand probably means, it is probably false as well. Surely one thing (amongst many others) going for being rational is that you can defeat “evil.” Surely we’d like to think, if we’re Randians, that in a battle between the rational man and the irrational man, the rational man will win out (one-on-one).

    Finally, if it’s a *collaboration* (to achieve goal Y, say), then *they both win*. They *both* get Y. So suppose we want liberty, but you want it because of a (false) belief about the teleological nature of man (Rand either didn’t read enough, or didn’t understand, evolutionary theory), or you want it because of a (false) belief in God, and I want it because it leads to good outcomes (say). And suppose we collaborate (meaning: “work together on some particular goal,” where “goal,” in this case, means “get liberty”), and suppose that the goal we collaborate on is not the sort that only one of us can benefit from (as is the case with liberty), then the meaning of you “winning” in this case is you attaining the goal that we collaborated on. But that means that I won too, since I also get liberty!

    It’s like she’s saying: if you’re on a soccer team, and you’re collaborating to score more goals, as a team, during the match, then that teammate of yours who is more evil or irrational will win. Uhm…

    And Peter Schwartz’ article is a perfect example of an intellectually dishonest article. What kind of a libertarian you are makes a big difference. The Schwartz’ of the world see libertarians as one giant collective and then criticize that collective for holding different, and mutually exclusive views. But that’s like saying that ethical egoists hold inconsistent views, or that atheists hold inconsistent views. It may be true that this atheist (Ayn Rand, say), or that ethical egoist (Ayn Rand, say), does not hold inconsistent views, but when we compare Ayn Rand’s views on politics with Richard Dawkins views on politics, then–a ha!–we get an inconsistency, and then (by some magic) get to criticize Ayn Rand for being an atheist because atheists hold inconsistent views! But that is just utterly false.

    Interestingly, Rand accepts the label “atheist” (why she doesn’t just insist that she’s not an “atheist”–because they don’t all reject faith or are atheists as a consequence of being thoroughly committed to reason–but an “objectivist” is beyond me), she also accepts “ethical egoist” (she could, likewise, insist on being called an “objectivist” because some ethical egoists will be Nietzschean-esque, and so inconsistent with her ethical views), but doesn’t accept “libertarian” which has the same genus function as “ethical egoist” and “atheist”.

    It is *identical* to the fallacy Aristotle commits right off the bat in the very opening of the Nichomachean Ethics: “Every craft and every investigation and likewise every action and decision seems to aim at some good; hence, the good has been well-described as that at which everything aims.” (That’s the fallacy of composition).

    Rand is wrong on this score, Paul. And wrong according to the demands of reason. Of course, no one is compelling you to be reasonable. (I suppose you’ll have the benefit of winning when you collaborate with the reasonable…)

  2. P.M. Jaworski on May 20th, 2008 1:18 pm

    Now there are two errors, and not just one (and the errors are so obvious, that I have a really difficult time explaining them. It’s like someone is asking me what blue smells like…):

    “Yet libertarianism deliberately avoids taking a stand on metaphyics (reality), epistemology (reason), and ethics (rational egoism), in an attempt to gain the support of those who hold anti-reality, or anti-reason, or pro-altruistic philosophies; to gain the support those whose beliefs do not consistently support freedom.”

    Both of the errors are semantic. One: “Libertarian” is a concept that functions just like “atheist.” Rand called herself an atheist. There are more than one “type” or “kind” of atheist. Some atheists might be atheists on the basis of faith. “I have faith that there is no God,” this atheist might say to herself. Rand is an atheist that would reject that kind or type of atheism. And yet it would still be true of both of them that they were atheists. To qualify as an atheist you merely need to not believe in God. *For the sake of the classification* (and not for other sakes), why you are an atheist is irrelevant. This is because that is a *substantive* issue that *descriptive* concepts are not meant to address.

    To see your error, replace the word “libertarianism” with “atheism” or “ethical egoism” (mutatis mutandis, of course). Here, I’ll do it for you and, for clarities sake, parse your sentence (without loss of meaning or context) so that we can more clearly see each of the two errors:

    “Yet atheism deliberately avoids taking a stand on politics (capitalism), epistemology (reason), and ethics (rational egoism)… ”

    See how the criticism doesn’t make any sense? That’s because the function of the term is not what you want it to be.

    Second (and gross) error: In describing oneself as a libertarian, you are not committed to the following *strategy* that Paul wants to commit you to: “…in an attempt to gain the support of those who hold anti-reality, or anti-reason, or pro-altruistic philosophies; to gain the support those whose beliefs do not consistently support freedom.”

    False. You can be a libertarian without having any such motive. Why? Because, to repeat myself, the word “libertarian” is a descriptive concept specifically meant to address *only* your political philosophy as distinct from, for instance, political morality (this is why we can speak of “libertarianism” as a political morality vs. (note the “vs.”) “libertarianism” as a political philosophy (and specifically as a public policy), and as distinct from any motive that you might have in becoming a libertarian, or any strategic considerations (like your desire to shuffle “anti-reality” hobgoblins under your banner), or any further considerations of any sort, including your height, weight, age, sexual preference, religious views, and so on.

    Those are the two gross errors. They are both semantic, not substantive.

  3. Brandon Byrd on May 20th, 2008 1:30 pm

    I think you’re talking past each other. As a label, the term “libertarian” can designate at least two things. It can either indicate a set of beliefs that place a strong value on personal liberty in a political context OR it can indicate a cultural movement designed to produce a particular kind of change. Peter seems to be primarily talking about the former while Paul seems to be talking primarily about the latter. While it may be accurate that Objectivist is a species of the “libertarian” genus (that is, libertarian in a technical, philosophical sense) because it upholds the value of individual liberty within a particular context, it does not therefore follow that Objectivists should support the libertarian movement in either culture or politics. The fallacy of which you accuse Rand doesn’t seem to be that big of a deal. Given the ambiguities of what it means to “be libertarian,” and given Rand’s distaste with libertarianism as a movement (not to mention as a political party), it makes sense that she would reject the label out of hand to avoid any confusion on the part of her audience. She would not want to be erroneously lumped in with a movement that does not truly advocate individual liberty.

  4. Austin Heller on May 20th, 2008 2:30 pm

    I see why the Freedom Party had less candidates and got less votes in 2007 than in 2003. Keep purging Paul, your party of one is almost within reach.

  5. Paul McKeever on May 20th, 2008 3:00 pm

    Mr. Heller:

    The Liberals and Progressive Conservatives got the lion’s share of votes. Should the Libertarians seek to bring those socialists into their party…to pursue freedom?

  6. Glenn on May 20th, 2008 3:15 pm

    And Austin Heller says to Roark:

    “After all, it’s only a building. It’s not the combination of holy sacrament, Indian torture and sexual ecstasy that you seem to make of it.”

    And Roark answers: “Isn’t it?”

  7. Todd on May 20th, 2008 6:03 pm

    I have to admit that this does smack of sectarianism – or at least semantics – to some degree. I hear Paul: big L Libertarianism is solely a political movement, and so accomodates any number of people that may (or may not) be carrying around some rather pernicious views on the nature of knowledge, ethics, and seem unable to see the contradictions between these views and the liberty they espouse.

    Now, I wouldn’t ever join the Libertarian party for that reason, but given the dire state the world is presently in, I wouldn’t lose any sleep over voting for them strategically if it looked like they would knock out a more statist candidate. Nor would I have any qualms about speaking at a conference if it seemed likely that there might be some good, honest folks in the crowd I could reach out to. Usually at such events, it’s your bio that sets the context – one may make it quite clear that you’re participating in some oppositional role, and disagree to a large extent. Of course, it’s up to the individual to judge for themselves where their energies are best directed. If, for example, the speaking gig wouldn’t provide you with the opportunity to outline the differences between Objectivism and organized Libertarianism, you may not choose to participate for that reason. That’s what I believe the gist of Rand’s argument was. It’s easy for the layman to confuse Objectivists with Libertarians in a purely political context, so her choice as a philosopher and a public figure was to avoid that entanglement.

    The problem I see here is that we, who are not Ayn Rand, run the risk of simply sitting on our hands until the perfect Objectivist vehicle for organizing political action comes along. Objectivists that care about connecting their ideas to action and bridging that mind-body dichotomy need to get in the trenches, as Paul has done. Otherwise this movement remains SIDELINED. Not a desirable outcome, as I’m sure we can all agree.

    Getting anything done politically typically involves forming coalitions, particularly when resources are low. It’s the definition of the nature and scope of how long the coalitions are to last and what the common goals sought are that form the substance of the moral issue in my view. I believe it would be a rational solution to deal with a common enemy first, perhaps on a contractual basis, then part ways. Choose your battles!

  8. Paul McKeever on May 20th, 2008 7:03 pm

    Peter wrote:

    We need reasons to think that our senses convey accurate information about the world.

    No, we need evidence before reasoning that our senses convey false information about the world. Lacking such evidence, you cannot assert that the senses provide false information.

    Peter wrote:

    There are at least two different senses of “knowledge” which you are equivocating on. I “know,” for instance, that Socrates was put to death by hemlock way back in the day. I also “know” that a bachelor is an unmarried male. The second sense of “know” means: without *any* chance of error. The first sense of “know” means: have overwhelming reason to believe.

    You are referring to an analytic/synthetic dichotomy. I regard the dichotomy as invalid, but that is beside the point. There was no equivocation on my part, because it was perfectly clear that neither of us were speaking about so-called “analytic” truths. Your comments were solely about whether our senses provide us with knowledge of the world. They were a rejection of the possibility of such knowledge. Thus your statements:

    “There’s stuff we can’t know”

    “But that’s all we have–better and worse reasons, not “knowledge,” strictly speaking.”

    and your embrace of the noumenal/phenomenal distinction. A person without senses could not “know” that all bachelors are men. My reference to “those who believe knowledge to be impossible” applies to you in this respect, without any equivocation at all.

    In respect of Rand’s assertion that “In any collaboration between two men (or two groups) who hold different basic principles, it is the more evil or irrational one who wins” Peter responds:

    “I claim that that statement is empirically without support…Why is it false? Because “rationality” in one sense means merely to take the right means to accomplish your goals…in any battle between good and evil, the “irrational” will lose, except by accident”

    Rand’s claim is not based upon statistics. It is based upon logic. In the context in which Rand used the statement, evil is that which is of no value to ones own life, and the good is that which is a value to ones own life. In the context in which Rand used the statement, rationality is that which makes happiness, and its competent pursuit, possible. Rand is saying that those who are not a value, who have no values, or do not competently pursue values have nothing to lose, and values to gain, by working with those who are a value, who have values, and who work competently to obtain them. She is saying that the evil/irrational wins values from the good/rational if the good/rational commits the error of collaborating with the evil/irrational. The relation is one of parasite to host. The parasite (the evil/irrational) gains at the expense of the host (the good/rational), but the host gains nothing from the parasite. Hence it is logically correct to say that “evil wins” in a collaboration between good and evil. Rand’s warning is, in effect: don’t voluntarily feed the parasites.

    Peter next writes that if people want to achieve the same goal (e.g., “liberty”) for different reasons (whether rational or irrational), and if they collaborate, then if they (through such collaboration) achieve their goal, they all win. That is like arguing that if both A and B want to determine the square root of 4, but A believes 2 squared = 4 and B believes 2 squared = 0, then if they succeed in discovering the square root of 4, it won’t matter that they disagree about the value of 2 squared. In other words: they won’t achieve their goal, so the idea of a win-win is ridiculous. You cannot logically achieve freedom by embracing – in whole or in part – the false, the irrational, the sacrificial.

    Peter writes:

    The Schwartz’ of the world see libertarians as one giant collective and then criticize that collective for holding different, and mutually exclusive views.

    Peter, by your own admission, libertarians do hold different, mutually exclusive views on metaphysics, epistemology and ethics. You openly agree with Schwartz in that respect. But you misrepresent/misunderstand his issue. He takes issue not with libertarians’ differences of opinion on metaphysics/epistemology/ethics, but with the fact that libertarianism deliberately disregards/denies the importance of any of those opinions when it comes to justifying libertarianism’s call for “liberty”. His point, and mine, is that libertarianism is, as you put it, a conclusion without an argument. And, lacking an argument, it leaves itself with – and in some cases explicitly advocates the use of – bullets and ballots.

  9. P.M. Jaworski on May 21st, 2008 12:18 am

    I wrote: “We need reasons to think that our senses convey accurate information about the world.”

    Paul wrote: “No, we need evidence before reasoning that our senses convey false information about the world. Lacking such evidence, you cannot assert that the senses provide false information.”

    And I say: No one said the senses provide false information (double-check my posts. To claim that we don’t *know* [strict sense] whether or not our senses provide accurate information is not the same as claiming that our senses provide false information). I don’t know, for instance, whether or not you are now wearing a tie. And that is not the same as saying that I know that you are not wearing a tie.

    You wrote: “…your embrace of the noumenal/phenomenal distinction. A person without senses could not “know” that all bachelors are men. My reference to “those who believe knowledge to be impossible” applies to you in this respect, without any equivocation at all.”

    And I say: For the first part, that is decidedly not the point of my claim about analytic truths. Analytic truths (and empty tautologies like “a thing is what it is” and “existence exists” and “if there is a thing then there is a thing” and “green stuff is green”–I never got why objectivists think this is at all profound or worth repeating. I know Rand did it… “A is A, guys! Stop the train! A thing is what it is!”… but I never understood why it’s worth making a mantra out of. No one denies tautologies.) are *necessarily* true, and have absolutely no chance of being false given further information. However, given further information, we may discover that we were wrong about some empirical or historical or future fact of the matter. That does not mean that knowledge is impossible. It merely means that it is neither necessarily true nor true without any chance of being false.

    So your use of English in the sentence “My reference to “those who believe knowledge to be impossible” applies to you in this respect, without any equivocation at all.” must mean something other than the common meaning of those words, since I’ve repeated that I believe that knowledge *is* possible. I’ve merely qualified it by saying that by “knowledge” I mean “have overwhelming reason to believe” and not “having such reasons to believe as for it to be impossible to be false.” There is so much space between absolute and good-reason-to-believe truth as to drive several tanker trucks through. But for Rand, and countless other objectivists, there isn’t. On this issue, like too many others, there is either “a thing is true absolutely” or “it is false.”

    Paul writes: “Rand’s claim is not based upon statistics. It is based upon logic. In the context in which Rand used the statement, evil is that which is of no value to ones own life, and the good is that which is a value to ones own life. In the context in which Rand used the statement, rationality is that which makes happiness, and its competent pursuit, possible. Rand is saying that those who are not a value, who have no values, or do not competently pursue values have nothing to lose, and values to gain, by working with those who are a value, who have values, and who work competently to obtain them. She is saying that the evil/irrational wins values from the good/rational if the good/rational commits the error of collaborating with the evil/irrational. The relation is one of parasite to host. The parasite (the evil/irrational) gains at the expense of the host (the good/rational), but the host gains nothing from the parasite. Hence it is logically correct to say that “evil wins” in a collaboration between good and evil. Rand’s warning is, in effect: don’t voluntarily feed the parasites.”

    And I say: Okay, that’s a significant qualification on the original claim. I still think there is no very good reason to believe this. For a thing to have no value to one’s life is not for it to be evil. A speck of dust on a planet that we, or any other, rational creature will never get to has no value to anyone’s life, but it would be ridiculous to assert that it is, therefore, evil. It’s just a speck of dust!

    Perhaps you meant something that is contrary to a value, or something that destroys a value is evil. That’s fine.

    “…rationality is that which makes happiness, and its competent pursuit, possible.” — Why would anybody believe this? We have very good empirical support for the claim that sometimes rationality, in Rand’s sense, promotes happiness, and sometimes it doesn’t. But, of course, objectivists have clever re-definitions of words, so that “happiness” doesn’t mean “subjective well-being.” It allows for it to be the case that someone is phenomenologically feeling depressed, miserable, and down-in-the-dumps, while simultaneously being “happy” in Rand’s super special new meaning of the word “happy.” Well, golly, clear out the psychiatrists’ offices! No unhappy people there. Just people who don’t know the meaning of the word “happy.”

    Importantly: Rand is ignoring specific cases for a hasty generalization. It may be true that, in general, rationality in Rand’s sense is necessary to happiness and its competent pursuit (but notice how including “competent” is circular–since being rational is the same as being competent, so the meaning of the sentence is “rationality is necessary to happiness and its rational pursuit.” The first claim is, in principle, open to empirical investigation (and I believe the literature screams a resounding “not in all cases”), while the second is merely a re-iteration of the first, and so bereft of any additional meaning.

    Further, you write: “Rand is saying that those who are not a value, who have no values, or do not competently pursue values have nothing to lose, and values to gain, by working with those who are a value, who have values, and who work competently to obtain them.”

    And I need clarification. If nothing is, in fact, of value to someone, then how can they obtain a value?

    More: “She is saying that the evil/irrational wins values from the good/rational if the good/rational commits the error of collaborating with the evil/irrational. The relation is one of parasite to host. The parasite (the evil/irrational) gains at the expense of the host (the good/rational), but the host gains nothing from the parasite. Hence it is logically correct to say that “evil wins” in a collaboration between good and evil. Rand’s warning is, in effect: don’t voluntarily feed the parasites.”

    But “parasites” have values. They value what you have. That’s what explains their latching on to you. If they had no values at all, and if nothing was of value to them, what explains their “collaboration”? They have no motive, since they value nothing. They might accidentally collaborate with you, but why would they move at all? I thought Rand said something about how without values you have no motive to even get up in the morning (this is a big paraphrase of a more complicated claim she made, I know, but I don’t think that, in this context, the nitty gritty makes that much of a difference).

    It turns out, actually, that the quote has nothing to do with our conversation. Libertarians have values. They are hardly “evil,” even if you think it’s fun to call them that (but you don’t just get to make hyperbolic statements because they give you, and other objectivists, aesthetic and emotional satisfaction. Radical claims like these have higher demands on evidence. And Rand failed to provide it, and Schwartz is a bombastic fool in his article). I could easily say the following: “Objectivists are evil and parasitic, LOL!” but it would be ridiculous and without sufficient evidence. So I don’t. Too bad objectivists throw around words like “evil” as though they were toilet paper and libertarians were the principal’s house on All Hallow’s Eve. Yeah, evil. Because they want political liberty, but not all of them want it for the exact reasons objectivists think are the only “true and right reasons” as Rand discovered in her tea leaves one morning.

    Paul writes: “Peter next writes that if people want to achieve the same goal (e.g., “liberty”) for different reasons (whether rational or irrational), and if they collaborate, then if they (through such collaboration) achieve their goal, they all win. That is like arguing that if both A and B want to determine the square root of 4, but A believes 2 squared = 4 and B believes 2 squared = 0, then if they succeed in discovering the square root of 4, it won’t matter that they disagree about the value of 2 squared. In other words: they won’t achieve their goal, so the idea of a win-win is ridiculous. You cannot logically achieve freedom by embracing – in whole or in part – the false, the irrational, the sacrificial.”

    And I say: Nope, you’ve misunderstood me. For one, I was looking at the word “collaborate” which I understood to mean “to work together to achieve a goal.” I added that *on the condition that the goal is such that both of them could share in it if they reached it*, and gave the example of a team playing to win a soccer game. According to this case of collaboration, then If one wins (meaning: gets the goal), then it follows by dint of logic alone (and no additional special premises or assumptions) that they both win. You score a goal, and you’re on my team, then the team is one up on the opposition. You like tautologies (and objectivists think there’s some of them that are super profound), so here’s one that might be worth putting on a t-shirt: If we want ten eggs in a basket, and consider getting ten eggs in a basket winning, then you winning means me winning.

    Secondly, the following statement is false: “You cannot logically achieve freedom by embracing – in whole or in part – the false, the irrational, the sacrificial.”

    You can *logically* achieve freedom regardless of what you embrace. I am not suggesting this as a strategy, and please do not continue to mischaracterise and strawman my position. The following is a *logical* possibility: “I embrace the irrational, and I am politically free.” Unless you’ve just changed the terms of our argument, and somehow dumped “embracing the false” as being in contradiction to freedom *by definition*. Notice that that is the only way you can make that argument logically true.

    A *logical* possibility is any possibility that is not self-contradictory. There is no self-contradiction in being both free and irrational, in being both free and believing what is false (that should be obvious, since we surely believe, right now, all sorts of things that are false–like whether or not our significant others have romantic feelings for others, or that next week it will be sunny, or whatever other totally insignificant falsehood you happen to “embrace” right now in your box of stuff you believe). It may be a psychological or empirical fact that you cannot be both irrational and free, but that is a substantive claim not settled by logic alone.

    Paul writes: “Peter, by your own admission, libertarians do hold different, mutually exclusive views on metaphysics, epistemology and ethics. You openly agree with Schwartz in that respect. But you misrepresent/misunderstand his issue. He takes issue not with libertarians’ differences of opinion on metaphysics/epistemology/ethics, but with the fact that libertarianism deliberately disregards/denies the importance of any of those opinions when it comes to justifying libertarianism’s call for “liberty”. His point, and mine, is that libertarianism is, as you put it, a conclusion without an argument. And, lacking an argument, it leaves itself with – and in some cases explicitly advocates the use of – bullets and ballots.”

    And I say: That was not my admission. I claimed, from the start, that “libertarianism” is a genus term that captures only the conclusion of an argument (and so functions just like “atheist” and “ethical egoist”). I, for instance, insist on a fairly comprehensive philosophy to justify and ground liberty. It’s part of what I’ve done all along, and it’s part of what I’m doing with all this philosophy. And now you expose Schwartz as a collectivist: There is no such entity with a mind called “libertarianism” that calls us to do anything at all. There are only individual libertarians. Some of them insist that you believe in God, others insist that you don’t. Some insist on an epistemology that includes appeals to miracles and the supernatural, other insist on an epistemology (and metaphysics) that excludes them. Some are right, some are wrong. But they are libertarians for the very basic and simple reason that they agree on a political landscape with a certain shape and size.

    You might insist that libertarians ought only to associate with those libertarians who share a certain metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, and further believe that only that kind of libertarianism (we’ll call it objectivist-libertarians for the obvious reason that objectivists *are* libertarians) has any hope of success, but you don’t just get to call libertarians evil and antithetical to freedom because *some* of them believe in fairy tales.

    There are libertarians out there (self-described libertarians) who are not part of any libertarian movement. Since this is a possibility, it cannot be true that all libertarians are movement libertarians. It therefore follows that objectivists need to be clearer. The fault rests on those objectivists (not all of them, mind you) who make the mistake of thinking that all libertarians are big-tent movement libertarians. They are not.

    And how come so many objectivists get to be in the Republican party, which is more overtly religious and mystical and self-sacrificial and all the things objectivists hate the most (“evil” right?), without getting anything like the bile spewed forth at libertarians from the objectivist camp? How come they get to associate with evil without somehow necessarily becoming hosts to parasites?

  10. Paul McKeever on May 21st, 2008 11:32 am

    Peter writes:

    …given further information, we may discover that we were wrong about some empirical or historical or future fact of the matter. That does not mean that knowledge is impossible. It merely means that it is neither necessarily true nor true without any chance of being false… I believe that knowledge *is* possible. I’ve merely qualified it by saying that by “knowledge” I mean “have overwhelming reason to believe” and not “having such reasons to believe as for it to be impossible to be false.”

    Peter, you’re being a bit of a moving target here. You initially were committing yourself to a statement about our senses not providing us with knowledge of the world as it really is. You’ve dropped that, and now your arguing about fallibility, which is a straw man: contrary to what you suggest, Objectivism does not assert that people’s understanding of things – for example, the factors involved in climate change – cannot include errors.

    Worse, you’re intentionally or unintentionally confusing the issue of fallibility with the issue of man’s ability to have knowledge. The fact that some beliefs might eventually prove to be false does not imply that all of man’s beliefs are not knowledge. But that is exactly what you imply when you say things like “that’s all we have–better and worse reasons, not knowledge, strictly speaking”. To say that a man can know something – not just “have reasons to believe” something to be true, but actually know something – is not to imply his omniscience. To say that a man might eventually be shown to have been wrong about something is not to imply that man is incapable of knowing anything at all. To the contrary, to say that a man might eventually be shown to have been wrong is to admit that knowledge is possible to man: to know someone is wrong is itself to have knowledge.

    Peter writes:

    “…rationality is that which makes happiness, and its competent pursuit, possible.” — Why would anybody believe this? We have very good empirical support for the claim that sometimes rationality, in Rand’s sense, promotes happiness, and sometimes it doesn’t.

    Read the quotation. I said rationality makes happiness possible, not that it makes happiness inevitable.

    Peter writes:

    Further, you write: “Rand is saying that those who are not a value, who have no values, or do not competently pursue values have nothing to lose, and values to gain, by working with those who are a value, who have values, and who work competently to obtain them.” And I need clarification. If nothing is, in fact, of value to someone, then how can they obtain a value?…“parasites” have values. They value what you have.

    In the context of that sentence, I use the term “value” as Rand uses it: a thing that is “of value” she calls “a value”. So, by the words “have no values”, I mean “have no things that are of value”. In Dylan speak: if you are nothin’, and you got nothin’, and you can yourself earn/produce nothin’, then you got nothin’ to lose”.

    For a parasite to value a thing of value is different from the parasite having the thing of value.

    Libertarians have values.

    No doubt. But that’s not the issue. The issue is that libertarianism, and libertarian organizations and movements, are not values (i.e., are not things “of value”) to a rational person. Rather, they are disvalues (things that are, de facto, contrary to life).

    Peter writes:

    you’ve misunderstood me. For one, I was looking at the word “collaborate” which I understood to mean “to work together to achieve a goal.” I added that *on the condition that the goal is such that both of them could share in it if they reached it*, and gave the example of a team playing to win a soccer game. According to this case of collaboration, then If one wins (meaning: gets the goal), then it follows by dint of logic alone (and no additional special premises or assumptions) that they both win.

    I understood you perfectly. You’re missing my point. Let’s use your example, above. Key to the example is “if they reached [the goal]”. My point was that you are wrong to assume that the collaboration inherent in libertarianism allows one to reach the goal of freedom. Therefore, any talk of, say, altruists and rational egoists working together as “libertarians” and achieving the win-win of freedom is unwarranted. In a collaboration between something and nothing, nothing has something to gain from something, but something has nothing to gain from nothing.

    Peter writes:

    You can *logically* achieve freedom regardless of what you embrace.

    You cannot speak of freedom being achieved logically if it is not achieved in reality: for freedom to be achieved at all, it must be achieved in reality. You can show the internal consistency of the following:

    All dogs write English novels.
    Jake is a dog.
    Therefore, Jake writes English novels.

    But, in reality, it is false that dogs write English novels. Therefore, the statement “All dogs write English novels” (etc) is illogical from the get-go.

    Peter writes:

    A *logical* possibility is any possibility that is not self-contradictory.

    I disagree. That which is possible cannot contradict the facts of reality.

    There is no self-contradiction in being both free and irrational, in being both free and believing what is false

    I agree. You could drop a lunatic into a completely free society and he would be free. But that is not the issue. The issue is: how does one achieve the condition we call “freedom”. And, in reality, that which opposes freedom is irrational. That which is rational promotes freedom. You cannot defeat irrationality with irrationality, and you cannot defeat tyranny with irrationality. You can defeat rationality and freedom by deferring to the irrational.

    Peter writes:

    There is no such entity with a mind called “libertarianism” that calls us to do anything at all.

    Libertarianism is a strategy. It is one that leads not to freedom but to its opposite. Libertarians and Libertarian parties/organizations are entities who support the strategy and who, as a result, cannot achieve freedom but can only undermine it.

    Peter writes:

    There are libertarians out there (self-described libertarians) who are not part of any libertarian movement.

    If one is truly a libertarian, one supports the libertarian strategy in some way. If one does not, one is not.

    Peter writes:

    And how come so many objectivists get to be in the Republican party, which is more overtly religious and mystical and self-sacrificial and all the things objectivists hate the most (”evil” right?), without getting anything like the bile spewed forth at libertarians from the objectivist camp? How come they get to associate with evil without somehow necessarily becoming hosts to parasites?

    Unlike Libertarians, Republicans do not consistently pretend to be a force for individual freedom and capitalism. They are theists, and they say so. They give tax credits to the poor and to big corporations for altruistic or utilitarian reasons. They call individual freedom “extremism”, “radicalism”, and the like. They never advocate the separation of economics and state.

    Libertarians do. They bill themselves as a force for freedom, as the voice of freedom, as catalysts for change. None of it is true. Their representations are false and only serve to distract those few who want freedom from the means by which it can be achieved.

  11. Brandon Byrd on May 21st, 2008 1:08 pm

    Objectivists get to be in the Republican party?

    Peter also writes that: “bjectivists have clever re-definitions of words, so that “happiness” doesn’t mean “subjective well-being.” It allows for it to be the case that someone is phenomenologically feeling depressed, miserable, and down-in-the-dumps, while simultaneously being “happy” in Rand’s super special new meaning of the word “happy.”

    That’s entirely false. Happiness is a state of consciousness, non-contradictory joy. Rand would never consider a depressed person as happy.

    Peter also writes: “And I need clarification. If nothing is, in fact, of value to someone, then how can they obtain a value?”
    This is because “value” is ambiguous; it can either mean that which one acts to gain or keep OR it can mean something evaluated with respect to life as the standard of value. So a heroin addict (or libertarian) may have values, but they might not all be values in the second, more important sense.

    You’re a little rusty, friend.

  12. Paul McKeever on May 21st, 2008 1:22 pm

    Jason:

    My apologies. I thought I had cut and pasted your question into a new comment. After I posted my response (below), I realized that I had been in some sort of edit mode on your comment itself.

    I cannot seem to retrieve it. However, if I recall correctly (please correct me if I’m mistaken), your major points/questions were:

    1. Didn’t Rand endorse Goldwater, Nixon and maybe Ford?
    2. If Rand thought it right to endorse Republicans, would it not follow that it would have been equally right to support Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives under John Tory in election 2007 rather than work to build Freedom Party of Ontario?
    3. Or was Rand wrong?

    re: Republicans and Rand – see my comments near the end of comment #10, above. I hope to be able to provide a more detailed answer (or, as you suggest, perhaps a new blog topic) as soon as time permits. Please do not hesitate to send more questions my way if I have missed any.

  13. P.M. Jaworski on May 21st, 2008 1:30 pm

    Brandon: Re-read my point about “happiness.” If you don’t catch the sarcasm, you’ll miss what I’m saying. My point is that Objectivists are inclined to change the terms of their debate so that they can avoid empirical research, and the mountains of available data on what brings about, causes, correlates with, and is constitutive of happiness. They are empirically wrong on this score, but nowhere do they address the literature. Because, at bottom, the actual facts do not matter to Objectivists. That is my criticism.

    As for your second point, I could have been clearer by what I meant by “in fact.” I meant to capture the second sense of “value” that you point to, but I realize that both “of” and “to” in “of value to someone” points to the first version. I meant the second.

  14. P.M. Jaworski on May 21st, 2008 6:38 pm

    Paul writes: “Peter, you’re being a bit of a moving target here. You initially were committing yourself to a statement about our senses not providing us with knowledge of the world as it really is. You’ve dropped that, and now your arguing about fallibility, which is a straw man: contrary to what you suggest, Objectivism does not assert that people’s understanding of things – for example, the factors involved in climate change – cannot include errors.”

    And I say: Paul, the claims I am making are the following.

    1. We cannot know (strict sense) that our senses provide us with information about the world as it really is, out there, rather than as perceived by us.
    Clarification: This does not mean that knowledge (less-strict sense) is impossible.
    2. We have good reason to *assume* that the senses provide us with accurate information about the external world (under certain conditions–like that I’m not on crack, or drunk, or whatever).
    3. Given the *assumption* (which everyone has reason to accept) of accurate information provided by the senses under certain conditions, knowledge of empirical and historical stuff is possible.

    You attributed to me the claim that knowledge was not possible. I repeated myself that that was not my position, and tried to clarify at each step what I meant. It’s not a moving target, Paul, since I’m not changing any of the definitions of my terms and concepts, I am merely elaborating on those terms and concepts, and cutting off as many potential avenues of (either deliberate or accidental) misrepresentations as possible.

    The right strategy for a proper philosophical debate is to ask people for clarification. For instance, the right response to my support for the Humean and Kantian position that we cannot know the world-as-it-is independently of our senses (as filters) is not, “therefore you believe knowledge is impossible,” but, “how do you manage to avoid the conclusion that knowledge is impossible, given that you agree with Hume and Kant?” Then, when I provide an answer to that, you can further prod it, or try your hand at a reductio.

    I have learned, however, that any opportunity an objectivist has to misrepresent a view in order to get to what they really want to say–which is to get to call a view or person “evil” and “irrational”–is an opportunity that they will gladly take. Which is why my posts are so long and so banal and so full of tiny, tiny minutiae as to make it wholly unentertaining for most readers.

    Paul writes: “Worse, you’re intentionally or unintentionally confusing the issue of fallibility with the issue of man’s ability to have knowledge. The fact that some beliefs might eventually prove to be false does not imply that all of man’s beliefs are not knowledge. But that is exactly what you imply when you say things like “that’s all we have–better and worse reasons, not knowledge, strictly speaking”. To say that a man can know something – not just “have reasons to believe” something to be true, but actually know something – is not to imply his omniscience. To say that a man might eventually be shown to have been wrong about something is not to imply that man is incapable of knowing anything at all. To the contrary, to say that a man might eventually be shown to have been wrong is to admit that knowledge is possible to man: to know someone is wrong is itself to have knowledge.”

    And I say: Nope, didn’t do that at all. I offered a definition of “knowledge” (have overwhelming reason to believe–fallible), contrasted it with a separate definition of “knowledge” (true without chance of error–infallible) and threw my hit in with the former rather than the latter. Further, I accused the objectivists on equivocating on those two meanings, since it is obvious that to accept the phenomenal/noumenal or analytic/synthetic distinction is not to accept the claim that knowledge is impossible, and neither does the claim logically follow. Almost finally, when I said “strictly speaking” I meant (and you should have known this) knowledge in the second sense of “knowledge.” I stick by that claim, and repeat my embrace of the claim that knowledge is possible. And finally, your last few lines agree wholeheartedly with Hume–so what’s your beef with him?

    Paul writes (after quoting me): “Read the quote. I said rationality makes happiness possible, not that it makes happiness inevitable.”

    And I say: I stand corrected. My apologies. But this conjunction, properly understood, is still troubling. Why would we believe that rationality makes happiness possible? (I am ignoring the “rationality makes its competent pursuit possible” because that’s just circular) To be clear, I am reading the claim as implying that, without rationality, happiness is impossible. I insist that there may very well be at least one case of a person who is both irrational and happy.

    Paul writes: “The issue is that libertarianism, and libertarian organizations and movements are not values (i.e., are not things “of value”) to a rational person. Rather, they are disvalues (things that are, de facto, contrary to life).”

    And I say: The libertarian movement is contrary to life… Do you really believe something so, so stupid, Paul? I mean… honestly. Really? I see this as an example of absurd histrionics. The libertarian movement may be bad at attaining liberty, some of the strategies employed by some movement types may not get the result they want, but to say that the movement is “contrary to life” is to say something so profoundly idiotic as to be beyond the pale for any reasonable interlocutor.

    Paul writes: “My point was that you are wrong to assume that the collaboration inherent in libertarianism allows one to reach the goal of freedom. Therefore, any talk of, say, altruists and rational egoists working together as “libertarians” and achieving the win-win of freedom is unwarranted. In a collaboration between something and nothing, nothing has something to gain from something, but something has nothing to gain from nothing.”

    And I say: I was addressing the formal meaning of the quote by Rand. I was attacking the quote, as it stood, not the particular content that you applied to it. The claim is formally false, so should be abandoned by all reasonable individuals. Putting the goal of liberty into the formula still renders it false, since the terms in the quote do not give us the content for “winning” in “the evil one wins.” We’re agreed that the evil one would consider getting liberty a victory, per our assumptions. We agree that the good one would consider getting liberty a victory, per our assumptions. We have to somehow guess at what else counts as “winning” by the evil one to be able to say that the one winning means the other losing. So: What is the content of “win” for the altruist in Rand’s quote?

    There is so much confusion in your last sentence, that I don’t even know where to begin. An altruist is not “nothing.” You cannot even have a collaboration between “something” and “nothing” because nothing is, uhm, nothing. Of course this is a (bad) metaphor, but the metaphor is either meaningless or incoherent.

    Paul writes: “You cannot speak of freedom being achieved logically if it is not achieved in reality: for freedom to be achieved at all, it must be achieved in reality. You can show the internal consistency of the following:

    All dogs write English novels.
    Jake is a dog.
    Therefore, Jake writes English novels.

    But, in reality, it is false that dogs write English novels. Therefore, the statement “All dogs write English novels” (etc) is illogical from the get-go.”

    And I say: Nope, it’s perfectly logical. You’re confusing soundness (all inferences are valid, plus all true premises) with logic, which is that branch of philosophy studying the *formal* methods of drawing valid inferences from *whatever* premises (including false ones). A thing may be contrary to reality, but be logically possible. The only thing that is logically impossible are things that are self-contradictory. It is logically impossible to square a circle, but it is not logically impossible to fly under your own powers, or for dogs to write Shakespearan plays.

    Paul quoted me: “A *logical* possibility is any possibility that is not self-contradictory.” And wrote, “I disagree. That which is possible must cannot be inconsistent with the facts of reality.”

    And I say: This isn’t something that you can have an opinion on, Paul. It is the definition of “logical possibility,” not a substantive thesis.

    Paul writes: “Libertarianism is a strategy. It is one that leads not to freedom but to its opposite. Libertarians and Libertarian parties/organizations are entities who support the strategy and who, as a result, cannot achieve freedom but can only undermine it.”

    And I say: Nope, libertarianism is not a strategy. But I’ve said this so many times I won’t repeat my reasons. Just go back to the original distinction I drew between libertarianism as a political philosophy, and libertarianism as a movement. In no sense whatsoever is libertarianism a strategy. No one at a business meeting says, “instead of the Rockefeller strategy, let’s try the libertarian strategy,” or “should we try the quarterback sneak strategy on this play, or the libertarian strategy?” You’re making a category error.

    Paul writes: “If one is truly a libertarian, one supports the libertarian strategy in some way. If one does not, one is not.”

    And I say: Nope, you can be a libertarian and not endorse doing anything at all to promote liberty, because libertarianism merely describes what you believe the government should look like.

    Paul writes: “Unlike Libertarians, Republicans do not consistently pretend to be a force for individual freedom and capitalism. They are theists, and they say so. They give tax credits to the poor and to big corporations for altruistic or utilitarian reasons. They call individual freedom “extremism”, “radicalism”, and the like. They never advocate the separation of economics and state.”

    And I say: Oh, great. So objectivists get to hold hands with evil on the condition that the evil ones do not try to conceal the fact that they are evil. But as soon as some group says, “we are evil,” objectivists say, “it’s okay for us to hang out with you!” Fantastic.

    Separately, apparently for Republicans to be inconsistent is okay, but for Libertarians to be inconsistent is not just bad, it’s downright evil. Superb!

    …Why the different standard?

    Paul added: “Libertarians do. They bill themselves as a force for freedom, as the voice of freedom, as catalysts for change. None of it is true. Their representations are false and only serve to distract those few who want freedom from the means by which it can be achieved.”

    And I say: Baloney.

  15. Paul McKeever on May 21st, 2008 7:01 pm

    Peter wrote:

    the claims I am making are the following.

    1. We cannot know (strict sense) that our senses provide us with information about the world as it really is, out there, rather than as perceived by us.

    I’ll repeat: you’ve got the onus backward. Possibilities must be consistent with, and supported by, evidence. You cannot assert that arbitrary assertion X is possible “because we have no evidence to the contrary and no means of obtaining such evidence”. There is no evidence to justify the assertion of a possibility that the senses do not provide us with accurate data about the world as it really is.

    And, to anticipate a red herring: No, we cannot see atoms with our naked eye, and we cannot see the content of the whole universe with our eye either. But to demand such information from the eye is to demand not just knowledge, but omniscience. The fact that one is not omniscient does not imply that the senses do not provide information about the world as it really is.

    Peter wrote:

    2. We have good reason to *assume* that the senses provide us with accurate information about the external world (under certain conditions–like that I’m not on crack, or drunk, or whatever).

    When I see a leaf in my hand, I do not have to “assume” that I have a leaf in my hand: I have evidence that there is a leaf in my hand. I have no evidentiary basis upon which to make any assumption to the contrary.

    Peter wrote:

    3. Given the *assumption* (which everyone has reason to accept) of accurate information provided by the senses under certain conditions, knowledge of empirical and historical stuff is possible.

    That’s like saying “given the assumption that John exists, it is possible to know if John is sitting right now”. If you’ve got nothing more than an assumption, you have no basis for the assertion of a possibility.

    Peter wrote:

    You attributed to me the claim that knowledge was not possible. I repeated myself that that was not my position…

    …and then you repeatedly assert that it is not possible to know whether our senses are providing us with accurate information about the world. And, when you make that assertion, you impliedly are denying that the information provided by our senses is evidence: evidence is not that which might be true, it is that which is true. Having denied that that information is evidence, you are left with no means of obtaining any evidence at all. Without evidence, there can be no knowledge…there can only be “assumptions”. Assumptions are not a source of knowledge. To assert the impossibility of knowing that our senses provide us with information about the world is to deny the possibility of knowledge.

    Peter wrote:

    The right strategy for a proper philosophical debate is to ask people for clarification.

    When a person makes themselves perfectly clear – and I would submit that most of what you have said has been perfectly clear, even if incorrect – it is entirely appropriate, if they are wrong, to tell them so, and to explain why they are wrong. The right strategy for winning is: not to be wrong.

    Peter wrote:

    I offered a definition of “knowledge” (have overwhelming reason to believe–fallible), contrasted it with a separate definition of “knowledge” (true without chance of error–infallible) and threw my hit in with the former rather than the latter. Further, I accused the objectivists on equivocating on those two meanings

    Yes you did, and it was a straw-man argument, as I’ve already explained, because Objectivists do not define knowledge in either of the two ways that you did. As I’ve already pointed out, Objectivists do not define knowledge as “true without chance of error-infallible”. I don’t care to re-hash my response here, given that you apparently can quote me (see first paragraph of your Comment #14) saying “now your arguing about fallibility, which is a straw man: contrary to what you suggest, Objectivism does not assert that people’s understanding of things – for example, the factors involved in climate change – cannot include errors”, but you cannot take the time actually to read what you are quoting.

    Peter wrote:

    To be clear, I am reading the claim as implying that, without rationality, happiness is impossible. I insist that there may very well be at least one case of a person who is both irrational and happy.

    There is a difference between the relief of pain and the experience of happiness. Most people experience the former regularly, the latter relatively rarely, and confuse the first to be the second.

    Peter wrote:

    The libertarian movement is contrary to life… Do you really believe something so, so stupid, Paul? I mean… honestly.

    Libertarianism is a strategy the effect of which is anti-life. Libertarian movements engage in activity the effect of which is anti-life. But do not infer, from my statement, that libertarians understand libertarian movements to be contrary to life. Were they to understand that fact, the moral among them would cease to be libertarians.

    Saying so is no different than saying communism – which, as your arguments demonstrate, has no less a regard for the efficacy of reason than does libertarianism – is contrary to life. Would it be “histrionic” of me to say so?

    Peter wrote:

    I was addressing the formal meaning of the quote by Rand. I was attacking the quote, as it stood, not the particular content that you applied to it.

    And, in doing so, you were dropping all of the context of what she said…context I wrongly assumed you to know, given your claims concerning your knowledge of Objectivism.

    Peter wrote:

    The claim is formally false,

    Which is just another way of saying that: if you deprive Ayn Rand’s words of their full context, it is possible falsely to characterize her statement as false and as something that…

    should be abandoned by all reasonable individuals.

    Peter adds:

    We have to somehow guess at what else counts as “winning” by the evil one to be able to say that the one winning means the other losing.

    You don’t have to “somehow guess” if you just read the essay from which the quote was derived before condemning the quote itself. Ayn Rand was not so lazy as just to assert the sentence. She explained herself. You having claimed to have read nearly everything she wrote, I did not believe it necessary for me to reproduce her entire essay so that you could understand the quotation. Given that you feel a need to “guess”, it appears I was wrong in that belief. More to the point: a refusal to take the time to read what she wrote does not justify an assertion that she left it to the reader to guess.

    Peter wrote:

    So: What is the content of “win” for the altruist in Rand’s quote?

    For the irrational to win is for the collaborative effort itself to be irrational and (wittingly or unwittingly) to serve irrational ends.

    Peter wrote:

    You’re confusing soundness (all inferences are valid, plus all true premises) with logic, which is that branch of philosophy studying the *formal* methods of drawing valid inferences from *whatever* premises (including false ones)…The only thing that is logically impossible are things that are self-contradictory.

    That’s not a confusion. It’s a disagreement. You can draw valid inferences from arbitrary or false premises, but that does not make the inferences logical. Now, I don’t expect you to agree, but that is one of the major differences between Objectivist epistemology and that which most people study in university. Objectivism regards an inference to be logical only when the premises from which they are drawn are also logical. In Objectivist philosophy, a belief that contradicts the facts of reality is not a logical belief. Objectivism rejects the notion that logic, per se, has nothing to do with the facts of reality.

    Peter wrote:

    you can be a libertarian and not endorse doing anything at all to promote liberty, because libertarianism merely describes what you believe the government should look like.

    That characterization undermines the argument for libertarianism even more, and certainly deprives it of any claim to being a “philosophy”.

    Peter wrote:

    So objectivists get to hold hands with evil [Republicans] on the condition that the evil ones do not try to conceal the fact that they are evil.

    To be accurate, Objectivists who boost the Republicans tend to get criticized by Objectivists. Consider, in recent history, Leonard Peikoff’s assessment of which of the two US parties is the more destructive force. Or just read what Ayn Rand wrote on the subject, including this:

    “Above all, do not join the wrong ideological groups or movements, in order to ‘do something.’ By ‘ideological’ (in this context), I mean groups or movements proclaiming some vaguely generalized, undefined (and, usually, contradictory) political goals. (E.g., the Conservative Party, which subordinates reason to faith, and substitutes theocracy for capitalism; or the ‘libertarian’ hippies, who subordinate reason to whims, and substitute anarchism for capitalism.) To join such groups means to reverse the philosophical hierarchy and to sell out fundamental principles for the sake of some superficial political action which is bound to fail. It means that you help the defeat of your ideas and the victory of your enemies.” (from “What Can One Do?” in Philosophy: Who Needs It)

    If you have read all of the Rand that you say you have read – notably, such significant essays as “What is Capitalism?”, “Conservatism: An Obituary”, etc. you will know that Rand opposed conservatives almost as much as she opposed libertarians. The same is true of me: read my various blog entries about Ontario’s conservatives, or any of the many Freedom Party of Ontario press releases that have addressed boneheaded policies/decisions/advocacy by the Ontario Progressive Conservatives. And it would be remiss of me not to point out that you attended the Ontario PC leadership conference, donning a Jim Flaherty-for-leader tee. Would you, then, condemn also the practice of Objectivists condemning conservativism?

  16. Jason Hickman on May 21st, 2008 7:39 pm

    Paul, no worries – these things happen, especially on blogs.

    The gist of my question is, I suppose, is this: Rand endorsed Republican candidates – not with any enthusiasm/pleasure, but simply as a “least of 2 electable evils” kind of thing. As I understand it and I could be wrong, she felt that the importance of keeping LBJ, McGovern, Carter, etc out of the White House was worth endorsing, in public, a Party that was only *marginally* closer to her philosophy. That endorsement, of course, didn’t stop her from calling out the Repubs when she felt it was warranted, nor did it stop her or other objectivists from speaking out and trying to move the goalposts outside of party politics.

    Would not the same logic apply in Ontario? Would objectivists not be following her example if they were to vote for, and even endorse, the “lesser of two (or three, or four) evils”, in the form of the PCPO, even if they also critiqued the Tories and did things that, to my understanding, FPI is supposed to be doing – making arguments, putting ideas out there, & c., rather than as you put it, trying to build an FPO?

    (Extra bonus question for you, since I had to do this twice! – What’s up with the Freedom Party of Canada? As near as I can see, it has a website, but that’s about it – is the intention to register it fully with Elections Canada, run candidates, etc?)

  17. Robert on May 21st, 2008 7:51 pm

    PM Jaworski wrote:

    It is logically impossible to square a circle, but it is not logically impossible to fly under your own powers, or for dogs to write Shakespearan plays.

    Did I read that correctly??? How is it not logically impossible for dogs to write plays? This is bizarre.

  18. P.M. Jaworski on May 21st, 2008 11:06 pm

    Good lord.

    Yes, I have read every significant work that Rand ever produced. I have also read every piece of fiction by Dostoevsky. I’ve also read much of Tolstoy’s body of work as well. But if you insist that I recall the conversation had on page 55 of “The Idiot,” then your insistence is silly. Similarly with the quote you pulled out of one of her essays. *I don’t memorize Rand*. I do not view Rand’s opus like devout Christians view the Bible (which, incidentally, I’ve also read. But if you ask me what John 3:16 says, I won’t be able to tell you). Neither of which are worth memorizing in any event.

    As for the senses telling us what the world is like, rather than how it is perceived by us: That’s just faith, I’m afraid. We have no reason to think that we can get at the noumenal world. Kant’s response, and it’s a pretty good one, is to insist that there are certain “frames” (like cause-and-effect relations) that are necessary if we are to make sense of anything at all. Those “frames” (or, more properly, categories of the understanding) are such that without them the world would be a hobgoblin of chaos.

    An assumption of this sort–one required if anything is to make sense, or if we are to act in the world at all–is different from the kind of assumption that we can do without (like assuming that John is on the telephone).

    Notice that even Rand needs to begin somewhere. We all do. What would be the (non-circular) proof for the very first thing? (In the context of epistemology, mind you). Good luck.

    Paul writes: “Yes you did, and it was a straw-man argument, as I’ve already explained, because Objectivists do not define knowledge in either of the two ways that you did. As I’ve already pointed out, Objectivists do not define knowledge as “true without chance of error-infallible”. I don’t care to re-hash my response here, given that you apparently can quote me (see first paragraph of your Comment #14) saying “now your arguing about fallibility, which is a straw man: contrary to what you suggest, Objectivism does not assert that people’s understanding of things – for example, the factors involved in climate change – cannot include errors”, but you cannot take the time actually to read what you are quoting.”

    And I say: The discussion was about knowledge. If you were using a special technical term, then you should have offered it. However, I was not offering a definition, but a rough-and-ready guide to what I mean to distinguish the two senses. A more formal definition was not, and is not, necessary. Hume’s point was that we cannot know–meaning: *without any chance of error*–that tomorrow objects will fall towards the ground like they’ve always done in the past, or happen to fall upwards. His claim was not that we do not have overwhelming evidence to assume that tomorrows will resemble yesterdays in certain respects. His further point was that we have our senses, and they are filters, and we cannot know–without any chance of error–that it is as we perceive it to be. He’s right on both counts. The Randian definition of knowledge was irrelevant to our discussion.

    So the strawman is Rand’s arguments against Hume and Kant, and her conclusion (not mine) that somehow knowledge is impossible on their views. If it’s true that objectivists use different terms, they can’t insert those novel meanings into the original meanings that Hume and Kant meant.

    I wrote: “To be clear, I am reading the claim as implying that, without rationality, happiness is impossible. I insist that there may very well be at least one case of a person who is both irrational and happy.”

    Paul responded: “There is a difference between the relief of pain and the experience of happiness. Most people experience the former regularly, the latter relatively rarely, and confuse the first to be the second.”

    And I say: I wrote my master’s dissertation on the economics of happiness, Paul, so I’m well aware of the difference between relief of pain and happiness. My point stands: I insist that there may very well be at least one case in the whole history of the universe of at least one person being both irrational and happy. (I also know that “happiness” is more than mere hedonistic pleasure, and a host of other bugaboos that you might accuse me of.)

    If Rand defines “happiness” such that it is true *by definition* that happiness is unobtainable by the irrational (rather than a substantive inference drawn from a combination of principles and empirical facts), then that’s yet another reason for why professional philosophers pass over her in silence.

    Paul writes: “Libertarianism is a strategy the effect of which is anti-life. Libertarian movements engage in activity the effect of which is anti-life. But do not infer, from my statement, that libertarians understand libertarian movements to be contrary to life. Were they to understand that fact, the moral among them would cease to be libertarians.”

    And I say: Libertarianism is not a strategy, you do not know what you are talking about. You, like too many other objectivists, are making a category error.

    Paul wrote: “Saying so is no different than saying communism – which, as your arguments demonstrate, has no less a regard for the efficacy of reason than does libertarianism – is contrary to life. Would it be “histrionic” of me to say so?”

    And I say: No, it would not be histrionic of you to say so. But we can, if we’re being serious for a moment, distinguish Communism (the political party) from communism (the philosophical system), and say that some communists are not Communists. Of course, private property is essential to progress and decent standards of living (amongst many other good things), so eliminating private property has pernicious outcomes.

    And I add: Libertarians are not committed to the view that I am espousing about Hume and Kant. You can be a libertarian and accept Rand’s metaphysics and epistemology wholecloth. Why? Because libertarianism is a word that functions *JUST LIKE* “atheism” and “ethical egoism.” That’s how that word functions. If you don’t like it, tough. But quit ignoring this fact and delineate libertarianism from Libertarianism and from the movement.

    Paul wrote: “That’s not a confusion. It’s a disagreement. You can draw valid inferences from arbitrary or false premises, but that does not make the inferences logical. Now, I don’t expect you to agree, but that is one of the major differences between Objectivist epistemology and that which most people study in university. Objectivism regards an inference to be logical only when the premises from which they are drawn are also logical. In Objectivist philosophy, a belief that contradicts the facts of reality is not a logical belief. Objectivism rejects the notion that logic, per se, has nothing to do with the facts of reality.”

    And I say: Great. Rand has a new definition for “logic.” Fantastic. The onus is on you to provide me with that definition, otherwise I’ll think you’re speaking ordinary English, rather than Randlish. What word do those speaking Randlish have for what ordinary philosophers call “logic”? What Rand calls a “logical” argument, philosophers call a “sound” argument. I’m curious: Does Rand also have a new word for “math”? Does addition only count as math when the numbers have some relationship to reality? (Logic, after all, is just the mathematics of argument).

    I wrote: “you can be a libertarian and not endorse doing anything at all to promote liberty, because libertarianism merely describes what you believe the government should look like.”

    Paul wrote: “That characterization undermines the argument for libertarianism even more, and certainly deprives it of any claim to being a “philosophy”.

    And I say: So is moral realism not a philosophical view because it does not speak to a strategy? You are making far too many assumptions about the content of the word “libertarian,” Paul. It’s a fun game to play (because you get to throw around “evil” and “irrational”) but it’s dishonest. Please tell Schwartz when next you are at an OPAR memorization seminar.

    Paul wrote about my reference to Republicans: “To be accurate, Objectivists who boost the Republicans tend to get criticized by Objectivists.”

    And I say: Really? Why aren’t you out denouncing them as “evil” and “anti-life”?

    Paul wrote: “And it would be remiss of me not to point out that you attended the Ontario PC leadership conference, donning a Jim Flaherty-for-leader tee. Would you, then, condemn also the practice of Objectivists condemning conservativism?”

    And I say: Yes, I did attend not only that OPC conference, but several youth conferences as well. Everywhere I go, I argue for liberty. I’m happy to go to socialist conferences to do the same. I attended the FTAA protest as a libertarian when it was in Quebec, and had long conversations with lefties before the tear gas canisters disrupted a perfectly good conversation. I’m not in the same business as you are. I’m not looking for heretics and blasphemors around every corner. I go wherever I have an opportunity to talk to people, to see why they believe what they believe, to make my case for individual liberty, and to do it charitably. To do it without assuming that the other guy is out there to destroy life as we know it, or to impose tyranny on the world.

    Do I condemn conservatism? I certainly disagree with it. I think it’s bad, as I often say on my radio show. But I don’t go around tearing my clothes throwing around epithets like “evil” or “anti-life”. Because that’s just histrionic nonsense.

  19. Paul McKeever on May 22nd, 2008 8:14 am

    Peter wrote:

    if you insist that I recall the conversation had on page 55 of “The Idiot,” then your insistence is silly.

    So, you would condemn something said on page 55 of “The Idiot” without first re-reading it? If not, then why is it appropriate to condemn a passage from a whole essay by Rand, on the basis that one must “guess” what some of it means when, in fact, the only reason you feel you must guess is: you don’t recall the context in which Rand wrote the passage?

    Peter wrote:

    As for the senses telling us what the world is like, rather than how it is perceived by us: That’s just faith, I’m afraid.

    What physical evidence do you have for asserting a non-correspondence between what you sense and how the world really is? Lacking any, it is the assertion of non-correspondence that is a matter of faith.

    Peter wrote:

    What would be the (non-circular) proof for the very first thing?

    The information provided to you by your senses.

    Peter wrote:

    The Randian definition of knowledge was irrelevant to our discussion.

    False. I asserted that one should not attempt to work for freedom by collaborating with those who deny the possibility of knowledge. You responded that Objectivists equivocate between two “senses of knowledge”, which was a straw man argument because Objectivists disagree with both of those “senses of knowledge”. Shall I quote you?

    Peter wrote:

    There are at least two different senses of “knowledge” which you are equivocating on. I “know,” for instance, that Socrates was put to death by hemlock way back in the day. I also “know” that a bachelor is an unmarried male. The second sense of “know” means: without *any* chance of error. The first sense of “know” means: have overwhelming reason to believe. The two are not the same, Ayn Rand and Leonard Peikoff (and anyone who pretends to do philosophy) should “know” that, and apply the right standard in the right context. Doing otherwise is to commit the fallacy of context-dropping (or whatever new fallacy Rand decided to call it).

    and

    we *can* have knowledge in the sense of having *overwhelming* reason to believe some proposition. That’s real, genuine, honest-to-goodness knowledge. So let’s not play the Randian equivocation game (she does this so often, it’s used as a humorous example in philosophy classes).

    and

    I offered a definition of “knowledge” (have overwhelming reason to believe–fallible), contrasted it with a separate definition of “knowledge” (true without chance of error–infallible) and threw my hit in with the former rather than the latter. Further, I accused the objectivists on equivocating on those two meanings

    You now write:

    If it’s true that objectivists use different terms, they can’t insert those novel meanings into the original meanings that Hume and Kant meant.

    Peter, you are here trying to excuse yourself from having made a straw man argument on the basis that you didn’t know Objectivism to have agreed with neither “sense” of the term knowledge. Well, if you’re going to say that Objectivism equivocates between the two senses that you bring up, the onus is on you – not on your reader – to first discover what Objectivism does say about knowledge.

    Peter wrote:

    My point stands: I insist that there may very well be at least one case in the whole history of the universe of at least one person being both irrational and happy.

    “May very well be”? That’s not a point. It’s an arbitrary assertion. Either you have evidence that there is one such case, or you do not. Which is it?

    Peter wrote:

    If Rand defines “happiness” such that it is true *by definition* that happiness is unobtainable by the irrational (rather than a substantive inference drawn from a combination of principles and empirical facts), then that’s yet another reason for why professional philosophers pass over her in silence.

    (my emphasis). She doesn’t do so. The balance of your sentence is, therefore, just anger and bile.

    Libertarianism is not a strategy, you do not know what you are talking about.

    Oh please Peter. Who do you think you’re talking to? I was a libertarian, and hanged out, spoke with, and debated with libertarians, when you were just a child. Here’s a father of libertarianism, Murray Rothbard:

    “THE LIBERTARIAN CREED rests upon one central axiom: that no man or group of men may aggress against the person or property of anyone else. This may be called the “nonaggression axiom.”

    To say such a thing is axiomatic is not merely to assert something as true. It is to reject the possibility of proving “that no man or group of men may aggress against the person or property of anyone else” without assuming it to be true. It is to reject the relevance of metaphysics, epistemology and ethics to the political issue of freedom. Rothbard’s assertion that this is an “axiom” is false, but calling it an axiom serves a purpose: to bring together people in the common cause of achieving freedom, regardless of their differences on matters of metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics.

    Here’s another libertarian mover and shaker, Walter Block:

    There must not be more to our Libertarian movement than its disembodied ideology – its nonaggression principle. Any sort of additional ‘animating ideal’ or ‘spirit’ will only needlessly, and unjustly, force true Libertarians to leave; although they may agree with the non-initiation of force, they may not be in tune with this undefined, ineffible ‘spirit’. (The Libertarian Forum, April 1976)

    Libertarianism is a strategy Peter. Neither a desire for freedom nor a belief that freedom is ethically right, is itself libertarianism. Libertarianism goes further: it rejects the relevance, to the achievement of freedom, of metaphysics, epistemology and ethics. It rejects no end, only the means by which ends are achieved. To a person who believes that people should live in different regions, and attend different schools, on the basis of their race, or their sex, or their sexual orientation, libertarianism says: “So long as you’re not advocating that they be forced to do so, I see nothing un-libertarian about that…want to help spread the libertarian message?”. To a person who believes that all blacks should be hanged from trees, libertarianism says: “So long as you’re advocating their suicide, and not their murder, I see nothing un-libertarian about your view…want to attend the Liberty Summer Seminar and exchange your views with other open-minded people?”

    Peter wrote:

    Libertarians are not committed to the view that I am espousing about Hume and Kant.

    Then, perhaps, there’s reason for hope.

    Peter wrote:

    Paul wrote about my reference to Republicans: “To be accurate, Objectivists who boost the Republicans tend to get criticized by Objectivists.”

    And I say: Really? Why aren’t you out denouncing them as “evil” and “anti-life”?

    Because I live in Canada, so I would spend no more time denouncing the Republican Party than I would denouncing some party in Never-Never Land. That said, in Ontario, Canada (where I do live), I denounce conservatives all of the time. As I said above: read my blog, or any of the man Freedom Party of Ontario media releases that discuss the Progressive Conservatives. You’re criticism is unwarranted and arbitrary (though, given your epistemology, I shouldn’t be surprised by that…how were you to know, for example, that I even exist…or that you are reading my words…or words…or that you are actually seeing a computer screen…or that there is such a thing as a computer screen…or…).

    Peter wrote:

    Yes, I did attend not only that OPC conference, but several youth conferences as well. Everywhere I go, I argue for liberty. I’m happy to go to socialist conferences to do the same. I attended the FTAA protest as a libertarian when it was in Quebec, and had long conversations with lefties before the tear gas canisters disrupted a perfectly good conversation. I’m not in the same business as you are. I’m not looking for heretics and blasphemors around every corner. I go wherever I have an opportunity to talk to people, to see why they believe what they believe, to make my case for individual liberty, and to do it charitably. To do it without assuming that the other guy is out there to destroy life as we know it, or to impose tyranny on the world.

    So, I take it, if invited, you’ll be at the next meeting of the Nazi Party of the USA, or of the KKK, advocating liberty? They will be comforted to know how charitable you will be toward them. And, I am quite sure, they will enjoy receiving, from you, an unwarranted reputation for loving liberty and that which gives rise to it.

    And then you wonder why I argue that libertarianism is not pro-freedom.

  20. Brandon Byrd on May 22nd, 2008 2:09 pm

    Re: Peter’s bit about Objectivists not caring about data relating to the causes of happiness and thus not caring about facts.

    I, as well as a number of other Objectivists I’ve personally spoken with, have a great interest in what causes happiness, as well as what the true nature of happiness is. In fact, I have a great deal (as do some of my Objectivist friends) of enthusiasm for the program of positive psychology (http://www.ppc.sas.upenn.edu/) though I think that recent development within psychology lacks an appropriate philosophical foundation (as well as a coherent account of what happiness itself is). But at any rate, I won’t continue the discussion here. There’s a lot of accusations being hurled around and I don’t fancy being struck by one.

  21. P.M. Jaworski on May 22nd, 2008 8:15 pm

    Robert: Yup, it is logically possible for a dog to write Shakespearan plays. Of course, it is not true that dogs write plays (or that they could, given the way they are), but that is not what “logical possibility” is. Look it up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_possibility

    Paul: What I said was that I don’t assume that the other guy in a debate is out to destroy life as we know it, or impose tyranny. I don’t need to assume that Nazis are out to destroy Jews, because that’s part and parcel of what we mean by “Nazi.” Similarly with the KKK. So, without reason to think that someone means to do harm, I don’t assume that they mean to do harm. So, no, I wouldn’t associate with Nazis or KKK members. (Incidentally, I’m surprised that you didn’t pull out the Nazi card much, much earlier. So good for you.)

    Here are my two points: 1. The Humean position on the senses is true, and Ayn Rand is wrong. But I don’t care to continue this discussion, because it is irrelevant to what is really motivating me in this discussion. Namely, the definition and meaning of the word “libertarian.” So:
    2. The word “libertarian,” as I, and philosophers, and most competent English speakers use the term, is a descriptive term to denote a commitment to individual liberty specifically captured by the shape of governmental institutions. Nothing more, nothing less.

    One way to argue for this position is to look at what are considered “proto-typical” libertarians in the philosophical literature, and amongst competent English speakers. People like Robert Nozick, Jan Narveson, David Schmidtz, Cato Institute scholars, Murray Rothbard, Walter Block, Harry Browne, Ayn Rand (yes, Ayn Rand), etc., are all called “libertarian.”

    Now we can assume either that they are conceptually confused (which is a fine strategy), or look to see if there is anything that is the same amongst all of them to make sense of their use of the concept “libertarian.” I submit that there is a core similarity between all of these disparate thinkers. Namely, they have a commitment to individual liberty and a roughly similar view about the appropriate size and scope of government. They differ on: 1. Normative reasons to believe in individual liberty, 2. The normative status of individual liberty (whether it is a means to some more significant morally desirable outcome, or whether its moral status is inviolable), 3. How to get individual liberty (strategy considerations), 4. Whether or not Hume is right about our senses, 5. The existence of God, 6. Whether we have natural rights or not, 7. The motives for accepting the belief in limited government, and so on.

    Another way to argue for this *definitional* question is to, uhm, *look it up*. I’ll do the heavy linking: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian (I think this is, in all particulars, roughly right.)

    Another method is to simply state it as a technical term, specifying that definition as what you mean. I am not arguing for libertarianism *as a strategy* (I don’t even know what that means, actually, since how can a goal and the means be conceptually identical?–I want x, therefore I will x to get x–??–a goal and the means to that goal have to be conceptually differentiable to make any sense. Your calling libertarianism a strategy misses this conceptual fact).

    You can urge philosophers to change what they mean by “libertarian,” and to exclude Rand from that category (for whatever reason), but that doesn’t change the fact that that is what the word means.

  22. Paul McKeever on May 23rd, 2008 10:08 am

    Peter, you wrote:

    I go wherever I have an opportunity to talk to people, to see why they believe what they believe, to make my case for individual liberty, and to do it charitably. To do it without assuming that the other guy is out there to destroy life as we know it, or to impose tyranny on the world.

    (my emphasis)

    Those two sentences do not mean: “I go only to those places where I can assume the other guy is out there to destroy life as we know it”.

    They do mean: “I go wherever I haven an opportunity to talk to people and, each time, I do it without assuming that the other guy is out to destroy life as we know it”.

    To “play the Nazi card” is to say that someone is a Nazi, or to imply it. I did neither to you. I demonstrated the monstrous implications of your stand, as you initially stated it: that stand implies that you would be willing to advocate liberty at a meeting of the Nazi Party of the USA or at a meeting of the KKK. Identifying the implications of your stand does not imply that you are a Nazi, a KKK member, or someone who shares any of their beliefs. You chose to say I “played the Nazi card” because, you think, making such an accusation will help your case (on the basis that “he who plays the Nazi card has lost”). Shame on you.

    Now, that said, I’m happy that you’ve excluded the KKK and the Nazis from your list of venues.

    You now say that you do not assume Nazis do not “mean to harm” because, you say, “out to destroy life as we know it, or impose tyranny” is “part and parcel of what we mean by “Nazi.” “. I must conclude that you do make an assumption, about some people, that they “mean to harm” or are “”out to destroy life as we know it, or impose tyranny”. To which I say: thank goodness, that’s progress beyond the completely non-judgmental stand you implied.

    You agree with me that it is right to refuse to advocate liberty at a conference of people who “mean to harm” or who are “out to destroy life as we know it, or impose tyranny”. In short, you agree with me that one should not sanction that which is anti-freedom.

    At root then, your objection to my refusal to attend the Liberty Summer Seminar is that, in your view: libertarianism does not mean to harm, and advocates of libertarianism are not out to destroy life as we know it or to impose tyranny. Were you to be of the view that libertarianism, or those who espouse it, “mean to” harm, or that they are “out to” destroy life as we know it or to impose tyranny, you would be in full agreement with me that I should not attend the Liberty Summer Seminar any more than I should try to advocate liberty at a Nazi conference or a KKK meeting.

    Your use of the words “mean to” and “out to” implies that your criterion for attending or not attending a given event is the intentions of the audience/group/meeting, or the intentions of the thing advocated by the meeting (e.g., Naziism, etc.). You reject attending a Nazi conference because those who support Naziism intend to harm.

    In contrast, I would reject attending a Nazi conference because doing so would constitute doing harm, whether intentional or not. Nazi beliefs, put into action, logically involve harm, not the increase of liberty. Therefore, giving a lecture about liberty at such a conference is to leave people with the false impression either that (a) Nazis value liberty, or (b) those who value liberty are sympathetic to, supportive of, or tolerant of, Naziism. Either way, liberty is defamed, and the prospects for liberty undermined. In other words: he who goes to a Nazi conference as a proponent of liberty does harm. That is true whether the proponent of liberty realizes it or not. Assuming his brain is not damaged, and that he is not a mere naive child, he does not get a pass/forgiveness because of his ignorance. Rather, after doing such harm, he must undo the harm he – through his ignorant behaviour – has done before deserving forgiveness.

    But even that is assuming the unwarranted in many cases. Attendees to things like your Liberty Summer Seminar are not naive youngsters and, from what I can tell, their brains are healthy and normal. Many of them have read about libertarianism and have had the opportunity to read critiques of it. However, some – like yourself – have an exceptional amount of education in philosophy. With full understanding of what you are doing, you reject that man is capable of knowing that that which he senses corresponds to the facts of reality. You thereby assert that all we can ever do is assume things to be true. And you thereby imply that virtually nothing can be ruled out as a possibility in respect of the facts of reality, save things that can be disproven without regard to knowledge of the facts of reality, like “A=not A” (although, even the the law of non-contradiction, for you, says nothing about the possibility of contradictions in the universe). Implicitly, if not explicitly, you thereby discard the idea that an ought can be derived from an is (i.e., that ethics can or should correspond to the facts of reality, including those facts which relate to the nature of man, his mode of survival, and his pursuit of happiness). You thereby reject the idea that man has absolute rights of life, liberty and property (if you wish, I’ll put it in the form of a question, though I already know your answer: “Peter, does every individual have natural rights of life, liberty and property and, if so, why and, if not, why not?”). Rejecting man’s capacity to know (rather than assume), accepting that something can be logical even if it is founded upon false or arbitrary premises, and rejecting that man has objective rights of life, liberty and property, you go out and represent yourself, and your event, as one for those who want liberty. And you expect rational people (a) to consider, as a “possibility” the idea that freedom can be obtained, defended and justified without knowing that one holds knowledge that corresponds to the facts of reality, and (b) to give their sanction to an event, and to an event host, that implicitly regards a rejection of reality, of reason, of objective ethics, and of natural rights of life, liberty and property as compatible with freedom, its defence, and its attainment. In my view, to proceed as you are is to “mean to” do harm.

    Peter writes:

    Now we can…look to see if there is anything that is the same amongst all of them to make sense of their use of the concept “libertarian.” I submit that there is a core similarity between all of these disparate thinkers. Namely, they have a commitment to individual liberty and a roughly similar view about the appropriate size and scope of government. They differ on: 1. Normative reasons to believe in individual liberty, 2. The normative status of individual liberty (whether it is a means to some more significant morally desirable outcome, or whether its moral status is inviolable), 3. How to get individual liberty (strategy considerations), 4. Whether or not Hume is right about our senses, 5. The existence of God, 6. Whether we have natural rights or not, 7. The motives for accepting the belief in limited government, and so on.

    You’re missing a couple of things. Implicit in arriving at a definition of “libertarian” in the manner you do is this an assertion that each libertarian implicitly or explicitly believes that:

    1. “Although my metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics completely disagree with those of John, both John and I are libertarians”, which is to say: “Because I am a libertarian, I believe that my own metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, has nothing to do with my own status as a libertarian”, which is to say: “A defining characteristic of libertarians is that they believe issues of metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical philosophy are irrelevant to the nature of libertarianism”; and, more importantly, that

    2. “As a libertarian, I believe that a person’s metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics are irrelevant to whether the person is committed to individual liberty”, which is to say “A defining characteristic of libertarians is that they believe metaphysics, epistemology and ethics to be irrelevant to the issue of whether one is committed to individual liberty“.

    Thus, a defining characteristic of libertarianism is that even those who are doing what is demonstrably contrary to the goal of attaining and defending liberty should be regarded as being “committed to individual liberty”, on the basis that they merely believe or say they are committed to individual liberty.

    As soon as you separate metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics from the determination of whether a person is “committed to individual liberty”, you deprive yourself of any ability to judge a course of action or a belief to be inconsistent with a commitment to individual liberty. Indeed, you cannot even give “liberty” a static, unambiguous, unequivocal definition.

    Thus, we are left with libertarianism being a system that has no means of defining liberty, no means of judging whose beliefs or actions are not libertarian, no means of distinguishing anti-liberty conduct from pro-liberty conduct, and no means of condemning any metaphysical, epistemological, or ethical belief as being contrary to a commitment to individual liberty.

    Libertarian beliefs and actions, ultimately, include everything in general, and nothing in particular. Such being the case, libertarianism cannot be a belief, movement, strategy, etc. that can achieve, defend, or justify individual freedom.

    It follows that libertarians, asserting themselves to be advocates for individual freedom, are doing harm, whether they “mean to” or not. And, for someone who knows libertarians, and libertarianism, to be doing harm to sanction libertarianism by attending the Liberty Summer Seminar is itself to do harm, and to “mean to” do so; to have intent.

    Thus, even by your own standard concerning when someone should attend and event, it would be wrong for me – or for any other person who, in belief and in deed, are committed to individual freedom – to attend the Liberty Summer Seminar or to otherwise sanction libertarianism.

  23. P.M. Jaworski on May 23rd, 2008 3:40 pm

    I’m glad you are charitable enough to grant me the claim that I won’t talk to Nazis or KKK members. Thank you. I did not mean to suggest that I would speak in defence of liberty at venues that are host to people or views that I consider viciously immoral.

    Paul writes: “You now imply that you do assume Nazis “mean to harm” because, you say, “out to destroy life as we know it, or impose tyranny” is “part and parcel of what we mean by “Nazi.” “. I must conclude that you do make an assumption, about some people, that they “mean to harm” or are “”out to destroy life as we know it, or impose tyranny”. To which I say: thank goodness, that’s progress beyond the completely non-judgmental stand you implied.”

    And I say: But I’m not non-judgmental, and you know this. You should have said, “your statement implies that you would speak to Nazis and KKK members. But I know that you wouldn’t do that, because I’ve met you, read your work, and listened to you on the radio. So you must have meant something different than what the literal meaning of your sentence implies.” Incidentally, I don’t have to assume that that’s what they’re out for, because that’s what they say. But anyways, this is a distraction from the main discussion. We can leave it at our agreement on the fact that I won’t talk to Nazis or KKK members.

    Paul writes: “At root then, your objection to my refusal to attend the Liberty Summer Seminar is that, in your view: libertarianism does not mean to harm, and advocates of libertarianism are not out to destroy life as we know it or to impose tyranny. Were you to be of the view that libertarianism, or those who espouse it, “mean to” harm, or that they are “out to” destroy life as we know it or to impose tyranny, you would be in full agreement with me that I should not attend the Liberty Summer Seminar any more than I should try to advocate liberty at a Nazi conference or a KKK meeting.”

    And I say: A lot of people are mistaken about what will lead to better lives for human beings. Some believe that more state interference will help people, and lead to better, longer, and happier lives for many, many people. Some of them are young, many of them are idealistic, and really mean to do what is right (there are caveats here, but I’ll trust that you will insert them where appropriate so that our conversation isn’t peppered with qualifiers, okay?). These are people that, in my judgment, we–you and I–need to address if the message of liberty (yours the Objectivist message, mine a somewhat different one) is to spread and flourish. That is my strategy decision. You may disagree with my strategy, that’s fine.

    Paul writes: “In contrast, I would reject attending a Nazi conference because doing so would constitute doing harm, whether intentional or not.”

    And I say: Yup, I also agree with that. But this is a distraction as well.

    Paul says some stuff that I already said I don’t believe, and then ends with me being out to do harm on purpose. I pass over things that are stupid in silence.

    Paul then goes collectivist on me and says that libertarians are implicitly committed to two claims: “1. “Although my metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics completely disagree with those of John, both John and I are libertarians”, which is to say: “Because I am a libertarian, I believe that my own metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, has nothing to do with my own status as a libertarian”, which is to say: “A defining characteristic of libertarians is that they believe issues of metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical philosophy are irrelevant to the nature of libertarianism”; and, more importantly, that”

    I will pause here to say: Yes. Although Nietzsche and Rand disagree about metaphysics and epistemology and political philosophy, both Rand and Nietzsche are ethical egoists. Because the word functions as it does, it is inappropriate to insert content into it that doesn’t belong to it because of the kind of word that it is. There is a difference between persons and words. The word “libertarian,” as a word, is a concept that does not speak to metaphysics, epistemology, and so on. Just like “ethical egoist” and “atheist” don’t.

    Here’s the more important bit from Paul: 2. “As a libertarian, I believe that a person’s metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics are irrelevant to whether the person is committed to individual liberty”, which is to say “A defining characteristic of libertarians is that they believe metaphysics, epistemology and ethics to be irrelevant to the issue of whether one is committed to individual liberty“.”

    And I say: Not at all. This is because, again, a concept that applies to a person is not itself a person. A defining characteristic of *THE WORD* libertarian is that it does not also (necessarily) include views about metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. Notice that it may be possible (and Randians claim this) that a commitment to individual liberty logically requires precisely her views about metaphysics, ethics, and so on. Notice also that particular libertarians may believe that views on metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics are absolute requirements that we cannot evade if we are to be consistent defenders of individual liberty. Rand, for instance, is just this kind of libertarian.

    Paul then writes: “Thus, we are left with libertarianism being a system…”

    And I say: Ooops. Libertarianism is not a “system.” It is not a “strategy.” It is not an architectonic. It is not a telephone.

    Then Paul writes: “Libertarianism is, ultimately, everything in general, and nothing in particular. As such, it cannot be a belief, movement, strategy, etc. that can achieve, defend, or justify individual freedom.”

    And I say: Good lord you are so confused about a simple matter of definition… Libertarianism is a belief, a belief in individual liberty coupled with a view about the appropriate size and scope of government. It is not a movement, and it is not a strategy.

    Paul writes: “Thus, we are left with libertarianism being a system that has no means of defining liberty, no means of judging who is not a libertarian, no means of distinguishing anti-liberty conduct from pro-liberty conduct, and no means of condemning any metaphysical, epistemological, or ethical belief as being contrary to a commitment to individual liberty.”

    And I say: Hmmm…. The word “libertarian” has means of excluding a whole host of people. That’s why philosophers, intellectuals, competent English speakers, and intelligent laymen use it. Tell me, Paul, you call yourself an atheist–qua atheist, and using only the tools you get from the definition of atheism, please tell me whether we ought to be utilitarians or ethical egoists. What’s that? You can’t… Now think about that for a little bit, and then get back to me when you have an “a-ha!” moment.

    Paul ends with: “Thus, even by your own standard concerning when someone should attend and event, it would be wrong for me – or for any other person who, in belief and in deed, are committed to individual freedom – to attend the Liberty Summer Seminar or to otherwise sanction libertarianism.”

    And I say: We’ll miss you.

  24. Paul McKeever on May 23rd, 2008 4:20 pm

    Peter, lest anyone (especially you) think otherwise: I enjoy debating with you, I wish you nothing ill, and I know for a fact – on the basis of our face-to-face discussions, your writings, etc. that you do not hold the political beliefs of racists etc.. In subjecting the actual wording of your argument to the situation of a hypothetical invitation to speak to Nazis etc., I knew full well that I would get a qualification from you that excludes from consideration the idea that you would speak at such events. I had no doubt, because of all I know about you. But please: don’t call me charitable. I’m not, and I don’t expect it from others…especially if I say something that is demonstrably false. I explicitly recognized your claim (about for whom you would not do a speech) as true because, in qualifying your position, you regained the right to that recognition. I owed it to you.

    Now, mushiness dispensed with, let’s get back to the swinging of mental clubs (I am a civil litigator, not a social worker, after all):

    I agree with you that advocates of individual freedom need to try to educate the naive, the young, the mistaken, etc.. And, without any intended insult, that’s my aim in having this public debate with you.

    I’ve made my position clear on definitions, logic, knowledge, etc., so I’ll add little more on those subjects. Those who want to learn more about my position will probably benefit from reading chapters 3 and 4 of Leonard Peikoff’s “Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand“, or from reading Ayn Rand’s “Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology“. Suffice it to say that I disagree wholeheartedly with the idea that knowledge can be obtained by means of appeal to authority (e.g., by just accepting representations made in wikipedia entries as true), or by means of determining how many people agree with a given definition of a given word. If a word represents a concept that is not supported logically by the facts of reality, derived from sense data, either the word should be dispensed with or it should be assigned to a concept that is so supported. Arbitrary concepts are not worthy of consideration, hence are not worthy of a word.

    Peter writes:

    Tell me, Paul, you call yourself an atheist–qua atheist, and using only the tools you get from the definition of atheism, please tell me whether we ought to be utilitarians or ethical egoists. What’s that? You can’t… Now think about that for a little bit, and then get back to me when you have an “a-ha!” moment.

    I’ve used the word Atheist to describe myself, but rarely, and hopefully never again. I’ve come to believe it is a mistake for a person who does not believe in a god to call his or her self an “Atheist”, so I try to avoid doing so.

    The reason is: there is a nearly infinite number of things that I do not believe. A descriptor should refer to something that is true, not to something that is false. It is false that I believe in unicorns, but I think it would be a mistake to call myself an Aunicornist. It is false that I ride bicycles these days, but I think it would be a mistake to call myself an Abicylclist. In the case of “Atheist”, using the word suggests that a belief in god (i.e., theist) is somehow worthy of more consideration than a belief in unicorns, elves, moons made of cheese, or intelligent life on CNN, etc.

    In my view, if someone asks “Are you an Atheist?”, the answer should be: “I believe only in that for which there is, ultimately, physical evidence”…or, simply, “I’m rational”…or, if someone insists that I be something: “I’m an Objectivist”. That way, the whole field of falsehoods and arbitrary concepts can be lumped together as the equally false or arbitrary, and worthless, things they are.

    Now, to address your point: From a term that refers to a falsehood or arbitrary concept that someone does not hold, one can infer nothing about what a person does believe or why.

    The word “libertarianism” differs from the word “atheism”; and libertarian differs from atheist, accordingly. Unlike “atheism”, “libertarianism” refers to certain beliefs that a person does hold, and to the actions that follow therefrom. “Libertarian” either refers to a person who holds such beliefs and does such actions, or serves as an adjective specifying the beliefs and actions by which something is characterized.

    This brings us full circle to the nature and definition of “libertarian”/”libertarianism”. See posts above.

    As for being missed at the Liberty Summer Seminar: good, that means there’s still hope for y’all.

    Cheers,

    Paul

  25. Luke on May 26th, 2008 1:58 pm

    Hi Paul! Great blog and great Youtube videos as well!

    Kant:

    “Certainly I could revel in the intelligible world, the world of intelligences…; but although I have a wellfounded idea of it, still I do not have the least knowledge of it….This intelligible world signifies only a something which remains when I have excluded from the determining grounds of my will everything belonging to the world of sense….After banishing [that]…, there remain to me only the form, the practical
    law of the universal validity of maxims, and, in conformity with this, reason in relation to a pure intelligible world….An incentive must here be wholly absent unless this idea of an intelligible world itself be the incentive….But to make this conceivable is precisely the problem we cannot solve.”

    So to Kant, the “intelligible” (noumenal) world is not only unknowable to man, it has no causal relation to him either. So Peter’s example of constructing instruments to detect the cause of colors, or to gain knowledge of the “noumenal” world, is false. According to Kant, the “noumenal” world would be undetectable by senses and by any type of instrument. It is an arbitrary creation with no evidence to support it.

    The idea of “things in themselves” is silly. It is like when someone asks you, “What do you think the color green REALLY looks like?” What they mean is, what does green look like outside of it being looked at? The answer is that it doesn’t LOOK like anything at all. Objects exist, they are there independent of our perception, but they don’t look, or smell, or feel, like anything outside of perception. Humans, Rhinoceroses, Dogs, Snakes, all have different types of senses, and/or different resolutions of these senses. A rhinoceros is practically blind, a dog goes mostly by smell and can’t differentiate between certain colors, and snakes see infrared light(heat). Nonetheless, all of the percepts that each of these animals experience come from, and ultimately are, reality.

    Kant masked a lot of his ideas with contradictions, and interpreting him requires sorting through these to get to the essentials. Objectivist interpetrations of Kant are right on the money.

  26. Paul McKeever on May 26th, 2008 2:52 pm

    Thanks for your comment Luke. I agree.

    Still, I would pay a handsome sum for the exclusive rights to video footage of intersections at rush hour in Kant’s other-worldly noumenal realm.

    Cheers,

    Paul

  27. Luke on May 28th, 2008 4:38 pm

    Heh, well that’s just the thing, as soon as you point the camera at it it stops being noumenal and becomes phenomenal!

    Luke

  28. Shawn on June 17th, 2008 9:04 pm

    I think that libertarianism can accurately uphold freedom. What I mean is, if someone holds the political ideology of freedom (I mean “let it be”-capitalism) then what difference does their ability to think rationally etc. have to do with the context of politics? I don’t think that a ridged philosophical backing is necessary in order to uphold liberty. I think a commitment to the cause of liberty is necessary. Libertarianism, as far as I understand is a blanket term that indicate the political ideology of liberty and freedom. It is indiscriminate as to why it’s party members hold this ideology, it merely requires that they hold it. That ideology need not be based on ration in order to still function. It is similar, as Peter said, to the term atheism. An atheist is an atheist, even if they have faith that God does not exist. That faith is blind, and irrational. They are making the logically correct decision, for the wrong reason. They have reached the right conclusion, but their path to it is flawed. I assert that in the realm of politics this does not matter. If everyone that is a libertarian acts in a way which upholds liberty at all times, it does not matter why they act this way; they are still doing the right thing. Even if what they believe is wrong, that does not harm me in my pursuit of happiness, because by doing the right thing and believing the wrong thing, they harm only themselves. Since it does not inhibit on my rationality, pursuit of happiness, or political ideology (or anyone else’s for that matter) in any shape manor or form, I am not concerned with their own individual beliefs–they do not matter to me. If a person does not support liberty and freedom, then their claim to be a libertarian would be false. Since in order to be a libertarian you must support liberty and freedom, I do not think it is possible to logically say, because the pretense (philosophical backing) of libertarianism is left ambiguous, it is impossible for libertarianism to protect liberty because, protection of liberty is the libertarian party’s explicit objective. This means anyone opposed to it that claimed to be a libertarian would not truly be a libertarian at all. They would only be claiming to be a libertarian which is meaningless. There is a difference between claiming to be a libertarian and being a libertarian. What dictates whether claims at libertarianism are valid are the actions take–if these actions promote liberty, then the person would be a libertarian. If someone holds beliefs which prevent them from acting only in a way that promotes liberty and freedom, then they would not truly be a libertarian, because their actions would not fit up to the libertarian standard as I have stated it. Otherwise, philosophical background etc. is irrelevant because it does not inhibit their functionality as pursuers of liberty and hurts no-one but themselfs.

  29. Paul McKeever on June 17th, 2008 10:02 pm

    Hi Shawn:

    Thanks for your thoughtful comment.

    Let’s take the most benign case: a person who simply does not yet know why he supports the non-aggression principle, but does so anyway. You will not hear, from me, any argument that such a person is harming the prospects for freedom due to his ignorance. That some people do not have a good defence for their own position is not the issue when it comes to libertarianism.

    What is at issue is the libertarian notion that it doesn’t matter why nobody should initiate the use of coercive physical force. It most certainly does matter, even if those who advocate freedom have not yet figured out why they are, as a matter of fact, correct. It matters because any argument for freedom that is not rooted in the demonstrable facts of reality is demonstrably arbitrary. An arbitrary claim is one that cannot be proven, hence it is one that is rightly dismissed out of hand. Such claims include: the claim that a supernatural being exists, the claim that a man made of cheese is living on Saturn and is controlling everyone’s thoughts via radio waves, etc.. No rational person accepts such arbitrary assertions as fact.

    Consider Peter’s argument. His epistemology is one which necessarily states or implies that it is impossible to have knowledge about the facts of reality. If I’m not mistaken, Peter also ascribes to the Humean notion that one cannot derive an “ought” from an “is”: that the facts of reality (including facts about the nature of man), imply nothing about what decisions a person should make. If one is incapable of such knowledge, one is actually admitting that one is incapable of knowing that it is wrong to initiate the coercive use of physical force. My recommendation: if a person says to you “I have no knowledge about the facts of reality”, believe him, and then ignore every assertion he makes about the rightness of freedom.

    To advocate freedom – or anything at all – successfully, one cannot deny the possibility of knowledge. Yet Peter is essentially arguing that, without knowledge being possible, one can still make an effective case for freedom; that one can effectively argue for freedom by arguing that it is what fairies want us to have; or that it is what tradition demands; or that it is what a majority of people want, etc. None of those arguments stand up to rational scrutiny because, in fact, they are all non-essential and false.

    Reason is the horse, freedom is the cart. To argue that “it doesn’t matter why we should have freedom” is to put the cart before the horse, yet that is exactly what libertarianism sets out to do. And it does so for mathematical reasons: it hopes to build a political movement comprised of the greatest possible number of “liberty”-loving people, so as to have an effect on elections. In practice, its only effect can be to demonstrate that libertarians ultimately do not have a sound defence for freedom, and do not care that they lack one.

  30. “Atlas Shrugged”, Objectivism, and the Reincarnation of Whitaker Chambers : Paul McKeever on August 2nd, 2008 8:40 am

    […] have condemned Jaworski’s advocacy of libertarianism elsewhere, but he is more or less correct in this part of his response to Yoshida. As an Objectivist, as a […]

  31. Atlas Shrugged, Freedom, and the Reincarnation of Whitaker Chambers : Paul McKeever on August 2nd, 2008 9:20 am

    […] have condemned Jaworski’s advocacy of libertarianism elsewhere, but he is more or less correct in this part of his response to Yoshida. As an Objectivist, as a […]

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