The Freedom of Human Action

Human action has several forms. Involuntary actions exist, such as reflexes and subconscious prompts like the involuntary recall of a memory. In the realm of voluntary action, we’ve established that the primary choices are focus and non-focus (as either drift or evasion). The choice to be completely out of focus prevents a person from carrying out a wealth of other actions that were otherwise possible to them. A mind fully out of focus can merely react passively to whatever stimuli reaches their consciousness. However, the choice to focus opens up endless possibilities, possibilities which can be explored only if the person chooses a goal and directs his mind and body towards its attainment.

I’ll elaborate a bit on the idea that untold amounts of actions, both mental and physical, become available once a person chooses to focus. Mentally, a person can choose what one wants to think about, whether it’s about the next day’s weather forecast, which math problem will be solved first, or what workouts will be included on a weekly fitness schedule. We can think and make decisions regarding our personal lives, social lives, family ties, and careers; in short, we can decide what we want to cognitively deal with. Physically, we control our bodies’ muscles and thus can decide where we want to go and what we want to do, whether it’s going to the movies, cooking a steak dinner, or investing in a promising company. Our control of our respective minds and muscles allows us to tie our thoughts to our bodily actions in order to perform a wide diversity of complicated actions, sometimes only lasting a few seconds (e.g. carrying food to throw it out in a nearby trashcan), sometimes spanning the course of years (e.g. training to compete as an Olympian) or even the majority of one’s life (e.g. a life-long career or raising a family).

I’ll start with the relationship between causality and the primary choices which I discussed in the previous essay. Following that, I’ll show how cause-and-effect operates with our choice to think and what causes can affect our thoughts. After that, the causality involved in human actions will be discussed. The conclusion will focus on this principle as another intuitive induction, and with a word of caution about “living” an unfocused life.

Hobbes and Hume on the Senses: a Response

This essay is a follow-up to “The Perceptual Level as Given.” It will discuss a philosophical school that tried to answer the question of what the mind starts with: the sensualists/empiricists. The bulk of this essay will be an extended presentation of the sensualist approach of consciousness and knowledge as expounded by key sensualists like Hobbes and Hume. That section will be followed by a couple of my own problems with sensualism as they relate to the perceptual level of consciousness. (My issues with the sensualist view of the conceptual level will have to wait until I work through the inductions of concept-formation. I’ve also modernized the words in Hobbes’ and Hume’s quoted statements.)

The Perceptual Level as Given

One of the questions that philosophy asks is, “what information does the mind start with, what is ‘given’ with regard to our consciousness”? To answer this question, let’s briefly survey the levels of information that the mind deals with from the Objectivist perspective. As this principle sort of encapsulates the Objectivist view of perception, I’ll elaborate on some aspects of perception that I covered in previous essays. After giving this overview, I’ll discuss this principle’s relation to the previous intuitive inductions I’ve written about. The conclusion will discuss some overall lessons to be learned about epistemology from the Objectivist principles about perception that have been explained.

The Senses as Necessarily Valid

Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that studies the nature and means of human knowledge.  The field lays out the rules and principles to guide the formation of concepts, the construction of logic, and generally how to gain knowledge and show its validity.  Objectivism holds that metaphysics and epistemology combined are the theoretical base of any philosophy.[1]

There is a little more context needed than metaphysics to fully confront the issues in epistemology. We must first discuss 2 topics that make the field of epistemology possible: sense-perception and volition (free will).  I’ll also cover the axiomatic concept of “self” at the end of this series, as I think it’s a subject that needs to be discussed for a complete understanding of Objectivism.

Now we can begin with the role and validity of human sensory-perception.

The Primacy of Existence

Previous: The Law of Causality (Cause and Effect)

Objectivism is named for one of its key concepts that it emphasizes and upholds—the concept of “objectivity.”  Ayn Rand said this about objectivity in part: “It pertains to the relationship of consciousness to existence. Metaphysically [by the nature of reality—my comment], it is the recognition of the fact that reality exists independent of any perceiver’s consciousness.”[1] In general philosophy, this “recognition” is a position called “metaphysical objectivity”; in Objectivism, it is known as the “Primacy of Existence.” 

Like the law of causality, it is a law inherent in existence, and it describes the precise role of consciousness in relation to existence.  It is the most important principle in Metaphysics, and is a further corollary of the axioms and the law of causality.  I will describe how one could reach the primacy of existence from experience.  Then I will explain the opposition to this view, the primacy of consciousness.  Afterwards, I’ll explain a process for reaching generalized knowledge like the axioms without using strict induction, using the process of Aristotle’s that has been named “intuitive induction.”  Lastly, I’ll answer an objection about the mind’s control over the body in light of the primacy of existence.

The Law of Causality (Cause-and-Effect)

Previous: On Axiomatic Concepts and Axioms

Causality is something inherent in reality; it is an inescapable law of existence. In Objectivism, it is the first principle of Metaphysics after the identification of the basic axioms. I will give an inductive investigation of sorts into how this law can be formed. Afterwards, I will show why it can’t be an induction strictly speaking, and is rather a self-evident corollary of the Law of Identity.

Inducing Cause-and-Effect

Causality, or cause-and-effect, is the view that the world is lawful, orderly, or uniform in its operations. To understand what this means, we’ll have to revisit a number of concepts I discussed previously in my essay on axiomatic concepts and axioms.

McCaskey, Private Concerns, and Induction in the History of Science

There's been quite a bit of discussion revolving around the issues brought on by Dr. John McCaskey's recent resignation from both the Ayn Rand Institute's (ARI) Board of Directors, and the Anthem Foundation for Objectivist Scholarship.

My goal in this essay is to present my own views on the whole matter, particularly what I think was the import of Dr. McCaskey's critical comments of Mr. Harriman's book The Logical Leap, and to weigh in on the issues revolving induction that this series of events has sparked.

Thoughts on McCaskey's Resignation and Private Matters

I found out from a friend that John McCaskey, Ph.D., resigned from the ARI Board of Directors and the Anthem Foundation for Objectivist Scholarship on September 3rd. According to his resignation message on his website, he made the decision after Dr. Peikoff sent a letter to the Board which contained his evaluations of Dr. McCaskey’s view of Mr. Harriman’s book, The Logical Leap: Induction in Physics, his own view of Dr. McCaskey, and his ultimatum to the ARI.

Dr. Peikoff's letter, Dr. McCaskey's resignation message, and his Amazon review, are required reading for understanding this post. They can be found here:

Resignation
Amazon Review

As I understand the history from reading his resignation message, Dr. McCaskey exchanged emails with David Harriman on issues regarding his book in progress, The Logical Leap (now published), including what he thought was a consistent problem with it. These emails were always privately discussed, and according to Dr. McCaskey, he never spoke about them to Dr. Peikoff. There was also a 2-1/2 day meeting in July between academics and professors (including Dr. McCaskey, but not the author, Mr. Harriman), where the members discussed issues surrounding the book's content; this was carried out with the understanding that they wouldn't discuss each other's views outside of the group until the speakers had time to "reflect upon, refine, write up and publish [the views]," as the resignation message states it. Between the July meeting and August 30th, someone violated the agreement, seemingly around the same time that Dr. Peikoff learned of Dr. McCaskey's emails to Harriman.

Dr. Peikoff believes that Dr. McCaskey is attacking Harriman's book, and in some way Dr. Peikoff's introduction to the book which praises it as an expression of Objectivist epistemology, and his lecture course "Induction in Physics and Philosophy." But I disagree: Dr. McCaskey says on his site that: "The historical accounts as presented [in The Logical Leap] are often inaccurate, and more accurate accounts would be difficult to reconcile with the philosophical point the author is claiming to make." Whether Harriman's historical narrative in his book is wrong or Dr. McCaskey's proposed revisions are mistaken wasn't really the point: the point of the emails and of the July meeting was to investigate ways that the book and theory could be improved. So if he thought Harriman erroneously used a scientific-historical narrative to reach a certain philosophical point, he was being helpful in pointing how the history of science might have actually occurred (backed up with scholarly publications), and then modified the philosophical point being made accordingly.

Whatever objections Dr. McCaskey made were tentative, made in an effort to help the author (whom wasn't present at the meeting) by offering criticisms of areas where the theory could be improved--they certainly were not firm, definitive judgments of Harriman's book. It was constructive criticism that may not even fully represent Dr. McCaskey's views, not an "attack." It would have been an attack to say: "Your theory is false, your historical record is bunk, etc." He clearly wasn't saying that. His criticism is an instructive point about being rigorous in one's research, and a suggestion that being objective here could mean reworking the theory, as it may conflict with the facts.

I haven't yet encountered any damning evidence which would justify the harsh treatment given to Dr. McCaskey. From his Amazon review, it appears to me that he was being helpful in general: Harriman's historical record is an important part of the book, as it integrates his theory with what scientists actually did. If that record is flawed (and Dr. McCaskey hasn't definitively said "yes" or "no" on this point), then it will hurt the theory: it will be too narrow to account for different historical records and different developments in the history of science, and will only be a partial theory or hypothesis as a result, if not outright contradicted. He offered the criticism so that Harriman would consider modifying his record (and/or his theory) to better account for what might have been the facts.

Most importantly, we should keep in mind that Dr. Peikoff made his judgment based on partial, out-of-context information about Dr. McCaskey's views. Dr. Peikoff seems to indicate that he hasn't read all of Dr. McCaskey's emails, and he must have heard about the July meeting from second-hand accounts. (Contrary to his description of the meeting as a "forum" in his letter to the Board, the meeting was not public, but private and confidential.) Because of the tentative nature of scholarly debate and discussion, and perhaps especially in email discussions which are often extemporaneously typed up, the views of the participants may change later, or they might offer an objection as a devil's advocate, etc., in other words, there could be a lot of factors involved; I'll note that my reading of Dr. McCaskey's resignation message gives me the impression that the ideas thrown about at the meeting were extemporaneous as well, and sometimes even "partly-baked," as Dr. McCaskey describes it. Given all this, it's my belief that Dr. Peikoff should have at least discussed these issues first-hand with Dr. McCaskey before taking any action, especially the drastic one he took.

(As an aside, but something that needs to be noted: this issue technically isn't about Objectivism. Objectivism does not have a theory of induction; rather, Objectivists who specialize in epistemology figure out ways to apply the philosophy to the area of induction. From the content of the Dr. Peikoff's letter, he seems to be reacting to his judgment that Dr. McCaskey thinks that either the way Harriman and himself applied the philosophy (i.e. his theory) is wrong, or that Objectivism is wrong due to its inadequacies in this area. Either reason appears good enough for Dr. Peikoff to deem a person unqualified for a position on the Ayn Rand Institute's Board. It should grab one's attention that this applies to not only public assertions of such judgments, which I could understand for obvious reasons like public image, but also for private judgments, such as those of Dr. McCaskey's. The implication of this is that any leadership role at the ARI would demand not just a commitment to advancing Objectivism in the culture (and beyond), but to Dr. Peikoff's theories as well.)

Issues Concerning Induction, the History of Science, and The Logical Leap

At the heart of this controversy are the issues raised by Dr. McCaskey in his emails and at the July meeting, a sample of which was presented to the public in his Amazon review. In his words, "[t]he historical accounts as presented [in The Logical Leap] are often inaccurate, and more accurate accounts would be difficult to reconcile with the philosophical point the author is claiming to make." The Amazon review makes it clear that he isn't 100% sure in every case whose interpretation of history's scientists are right, whether Harriman's or the scholars' who have produced works about those scientists. One case where Dr. McCaskey is correct seems clear-cut to me, however: how Galileo determined that all free bodies fall to the Earth at the same rate regardless of their material composition or weight.

On pages 43-44 of The Logical Leap, Harriman presents Galileo's discovery as the result of experiments with dropping balls of the same material but different weight (the first experiment), and balls of the same weight but different material (the second), and thus induced that the rate at which a body falls is independent of its weight or material. He goes on to say, "Imagine that he attempted to drop the lead or oak balls through water instead of air . . . . The result would not have led to any important discovery." (p. 43) Dr. McCaskey points out that Galileo considers the difference between dropping balls through air and through water as the heart of his discovery, rather than water being an uninteresting case. A read through the relevant passages of Galileo's Dialogues Concerning the Two New Sciences (Day One, 8: 110-116) shows that Dr. McCaskey is correct:

Salviati [the character representing Galileo]: [...]But tell me now whether the density [corpulenza] of the water, or whatever it may be that retards the motion [of bodies falling], bears a definite ratio to the density of air which is less retardative; and if so fix a value for it at your pleasure. (Galileo Galilei, Dialogues Concerning the Two New Sciences. Translated by Henry Crew and Alfonso de Salvio. The Macmillan Company, 1914. Day One, 8: 110-111. p. 66. First two brackets, and the fourth, are mine.)

I shall now take one of those bodies which fall in air but not in water, say a wooden ball, and I shall ask you to assign to it any speed you please for its descent through air. (ibid., 8: 111)

Indeed there appears to be a considerable antagonism between air and water as I have observed in the following experiment. (ibid., 8: 115)

Those passages show Galileo's fictional characters working through issues relating to the resistance of media in relation to falling objects, buoyancy, and how the speed of objects falling is affected by such phenomena, whether the effect is their being slowed down, quickened, or halted. Air and water are the crucial data Galileo discusses, and they are repeatedly brought up in the progression towards his probable conclusion about all falling bodies. It's examples like this that support Dr. McCaskey's point that, "[r]eaders of [The Logical Leap] should be aware that the historical accounts presented here often differ from those given by academic researchers working on the history of science and often by the scientists themselves."

From the Amazon review, the philosophical point that Dr. McCaskey may disagree with Harriman on is how concepts develop into inductive propositional generalizations. I'll quote Dr. McCaskey himself for the comparison of the two views:

Generally, scholars who try to recreate the development of scientific concepts in the minds of great scientists are struck by how successful these scientists are in making propositional generalizations while still forming--and often themselves never fully forming--the concepts that constitute the generalizations. The narrative these scholars present (using Harriman's metaphor, not theirs) is not that a fully formed concept comes into the mind of the scientist who then uses it as a green light to an inductive propositional generalization, but that a partly formed concept serves as a flickering greenish light to a partial generalization, which acts as a less flickering, somewhat greener light to a better concept, which in turn improves the generalization, which then improves the concept, and so on, until well-defined concepts and associated propositional generalizations emerge fully formed together (at which point, the subjectivist says, 'See, it's all just a matter of definitions.') Most scholars find the process of scientific progress less linear than Harriman indicates and much more iterative and spiral.

So, the difference is that Harriman presents in the book a linear approach to inductive generalization-formation—using a conceptual framework and reasoning (and experiment when applicable), one forms a concept, which acts as a "green light" to form the inductive generalization—whereas Dr. McCaskey highlights the fact that scholars in the history of science would say that the process by which scientists learn concepts is more of a iterative process. This view of new knowledge as iterative brought up in my mind a number of technical issues regarding how our reasoning impacts our concepts, and vice versa, such as whether or not this is related to the Objectivist idea of "reduction." It was because of my research that I learned about the Objectivist idea of a "spiral theory of knowledge."

The spiral theory of knowledge is a technical aspect of Ayn Rand's philosophy, Objectivism. In the Objectivist view, all of one's knowledge should be tied together into an integrated sum, with the higher, more abstract knowledge resting on the lower-level knowledge, and with one's perceptual knowledge as the base. The spiral theory is the idea that gaining new knowledge is a process of rising from the perceptual level to higher abstractions to form concepts, and them moving back down to the perceptual level to validate, apply, and refine those concepts.

(For anyone still not sure what this "spiral theory" is all about, see this lengthy, but very informative post on examples of the spiral theory from Montessori teacher Dr. Deborah Knapp.)

Ayn Rand used this "spiral" method to clarify a number of concepts in her philosophy: her simple definition of "concept" which she later develops and defines as resulting from a process of abstraction she named "measurement-omission"; her non-sophisticated concept of "egoism" which lead to her technical theory of "rational egoism/selfishness"; her general definition of "government" which produced the only justified sort of government, one which respected individual rights; and her concept of value (as being the object of one's actions) resulting in Rand's technical conclusion regarding the nature of life and the objectivity of value.

In Dr. Peikoff's lecture course "Objectivism Through Induction," he frequently makes the claim that understanding Objectivism requires reaching non-philosophical concepts and inductions about a variety of issues in life before one can truly induce the principles of Objectivism themselves. This means that one reaches a non-philosophical account of "egoism," for instance, and after gaining more knowledge, one can then spiral back to this non-philosophical knowledge, integrate it with more of your knowledge, and thus reach the Objectivist understanding of egoism inductively. When all of your knowledge is integrated, new knowledge has implications for your old knowledge, and it redounds on it and strengthens it, leading to a new integration.

Even David Harriman implicitly refers to this "spiral theory":

I began this section by emphasizing that philosophy is the foundation of the specialized sciences, and yet now I have emphasized that some crucial philosophic knowledge is induced from the history of those sciences. Both points are true and consistent with one another. One must have the essentials of a this-worldly, rational approach in order to discover specialized knowledge; then, once a significant amount of such knowledge has been discovered, one can reflect on the process and come to a more explicit understanding of method. (p. 239)

As the "spiral theory" has so many applications in learning about Objectivism, why wasn't this idea discussed in The Logical Leap? My point in bringing all this up is because these are technical, scholarly questions about induction that should have been raised and answered, not brushed aside.

There are other issues as well:

How does induction relate to the spiral theory of knowledge, and how does the spiral theory relate to the case of concepts formed by a method of induction?

What is the relationship between induction, mistaken concepts, and the principle in The Logical Leap that "induction is self-corrective"?

What is the difference between forming a predicate concept (burns, rolls, is red, is hot) and forming a universal proposition? Is a theory of propositions needed to validate a theory of induction?

Does Aristotle's distinction of a nominal ("in name only") definition and that of a causal definition have any bearing on this issue? What is its relation to how Rand would define, analyze, and then causally redefine a concept?

There are other questions to ask, but I merely wanted to indicate how I would approach Dr. McCaskey's criticisms and how I am approaching Harriman's book: with critical thinking about the claims made by all sides, and my own understanding of the issues I think we would need to solve in order to reach a fully valid theory of inductive reasoning. Tackling these issues is the means to working out such a theory, and in my view, Dr. McCaskey was helping Mr. Harriman to make the book a stronger product than it was. It is a real shame that such an attempt at providing help seems to have been construed as an attack and a denunciation in Dr. Peikoff's view.

Reason as Man's Basic Means of Survival--A Reduction Attempt

In my unannounced hiatus from writing, I've been listening to Dr. Leonard Peikoff's "Objectivism Through Induction," and working through the main principles of Objectivism inductively, from the evidence in reality I see everyday. For the last two weeks, I've been on a "reason as a tool of survival" walk, observing all the ways that the faculty of reason is crucial to human life, and I'm ready to present some of my findings. The following is my attempt to reduce the basic principle of Objectivism that "reason is man's basic means of survival"--to show what identifications that principle depends on, and what these depend on, all the way down to sense-perception/observation.

Let's start with “reason”: what would we have to know in order to grasp the concept “reason”? One would have to reach the step of self-consciousness, of introspection, not only to understand that one has consciousness or a power of awareness, but to reach the more advanced notion that it has different states or manifestations. These manifestations have different powers, and reason's power is to allow us to comprehend the world. We learn that certain things are magnets, that things fall because of gravity, that imperceptible germs lead to disease in the body, that we love people because of our values. (This is a lead into the principle that “reason is man's means of gaining knowledge,” but won't be pursued here, merely noted.) And we know all of this because one of the powers of reason is thought, the ability to direct one's cognitive focus on a particular subject or issue for a purpose. It's thinking that allows us to make connections between our ideas and the facts out there, in reality, and this point is obvious to introspection. It's my prior thinking as a small kid which allows me to tie my shoes everyday; it's my thinking over the past four years that allows me to write this essay; it's my prior thinking that allows me to know what will happen if I eat rotten food, or if I sit in cold weather without heat insulation, or if I try to get to know someone. We think and reach conclusions everyday, on myriad issues, such as clothing options, whether or not we want to take a swim, or whether and how much we want to sleep at night. Lastly, in some sense, one would need to grasp free will, volition, at the very least as the power to direct one's own life and be in control of oneself. This notion has a huge overlap with being rational, with using reason, because to a regular person being “in control” of his life means being able to carry out whatever rational thinking he has engaged in. (For instance, cutting off your own leg is within your volition, but your subconscious and conscious mind won't even entertain the idea unless an emergency situation called for it, such that you would be far worse off or dead if you didn't amputate it. Examples like this also lead to the induction that “the faculty of reason is the faculty of volition,” thus connecting rational, logical deliberation and decision-making with voluntary actions as a whole class, but this won't be pursued, either.)

Next comes “man”: We know that man is an animal, a living thing with consciousness and locomotion. Both are observable facts: we can observe the motions of ourselves and others in our perceptual field, and we can observe our own consciousness directly. (We infer the existence of consciousness in others, since we can't be in their heads.) We know all kinds of biological facts about man and how similar he is to the other animals. But we also know about crucial differences. We drive cars, keep busy on the internet, read books, develop machines, and do countless other things that animals never do. And even the things that other animals do by their nature, like living underwater and flying, are possible to us by making and using inventions, like scuba gear, submarines, (de)pressurization tanks, and aircrafts. What explains the difference, more than any other factor? The fact that man has the power of reason. We use reason to comprehend, for instance, that it takes time and energy to cover long distances, and thus to reach enough scientific knowledge to know that a car would make us more efficient in reaching destinations; we use reason to comprehend that germs cause disease, so we invent hand soap and sanitizers to cleanse our bodies of such harmful agents. So before reaching the induction that “all humans have reason as their basic tool of survival,” one must grasp that “all humans are rational; they possess reason by their nature.”

Lastly, “basic means of survival”: All living things can go out of existence—we know this from observations of various living things dying in all sorts of ways, and generalizing to all living things in all places and all times. To prevent death, living things need to act so as to sustain and maintain their lives across time: they need a way to survive. Plants need to utilize soil, water, and sunlight; animals need speed, keen awareness, and their claws, fangs, and hunting ability. The use of these abilities do achieve the end of sustaining life—if a lion successfully hunts a gazelle, then it was his means of survival. If a plant turns its leaves up towards the Sun and uses photosynthesis to create energy to live, then it was its means of survival. If a worm breaks down the material of corpses, then that is its means of survival. All of these actions result in the furtherance of the organism's life—all of them are means of survival to the relevant organisms. So, the next question is: what constitutes a “basic” means of survival? It would have to be an ability that gives rise to all the different varieties of ways that living things carry out the actions needed for their survival. Based on everything I know about plants, I would say that assimilation is their basic means of survival—simply taking root and taking in whatever they can use from the environment. And I would say that an animal's basic means of survival is consciousness, an awareness directed at its environment; even its other distinguishing characteristic, self-initiated motion in order to change location (i.e. locomotion), is only made meaningful by an awareness of locations, by their possession of consciousness. In other words, foraging for food, hunting, scaring off other predators, hiding, finding a mate, finding a safe place to sleep, protecting one's territory, leading a pack or group of similar animals, and a host of other actions would be impossible without an ability to be aware of the external world. So to know for certain that “reason is man's basic means of survival,” it would strengthen one's induction to generalize that “all living things have a basic means of survival.”

[Next post in the series: "My Basic Proof that 'Reason is Man's Basic Means of Survival'"]

Part 6: Tolerance

Introduction

In chapter 4, Kelley presents his view of tolerance, arguing that it is a virtue, and is required by the virtue of justice, and due to the nature of objectivity. (CLAR, p. 61) Strictly speaking, tolerance is not a virtue in Objectivism because Rand does not list it as one of the seven primary virtues that she incorporates into the Objectivist ethics. But this doesn't mean that intolerance in and of itself is the proper moral stance by contrast, something that Kelley wants us to believe is the case with Peikoff and anyone who agrees with him. My purpose is to indicate the morality or immorality of tolerance with Objectivism as a guide, and to identify the differences between my view and that of Kelley's.

Tolerance, Justice, and Objectivity

After his introduction, Kelley ties tolerance to justice, and afterward connects it with benevolence. (pp. 61-63) Regarding justice, he says that tolerance consists in not condemning individuals solely for the disagreeable ideas they hold, claiming that it would be unjust to do so. (He gives exceptions to this, as in the cases of clear irrationality from the content of a person's ideas.) Justice sets the limits of proper tolerance—and the limits are set by our consideration of the person's context, what evidence we've accumulated, and what level of tolerance we're considering. Are we tolerating an action, a trait, or the person as a whole? Later he relates tolerance to benevolence, stating that it's the "recognition and acceptance of the needs of a rational being, especially the recognition that rational knowledge is held contextually and acquired by independent thought." (p. 62) It means understanding another person's context, and realizing that they won't change their long-held philosophical views at a moment's notice, and that we should present ourselves as philosophical equals who are also open to persuasion by the facts. Interestingly, Kelley limits the discussion of tolerance to the area of honest errors: "The negative aspect of toleration is refusing to condemn people for errors that are honest; the positive aspect is valuing their honesty even when it is in error." (p. 63)

From practically the outset, Kelley is unclear on his fundamental views, as he says that, "[t]olerance is at root a negative concept; it means not condemning a person solely on the basis of his ideas." (p. 61) This is a very, very narrow definition—more along the lines of a definition of "intellectual tolerance," but even that isn't right. To see why, consider another description of tolerance by Kelley: "It means suspending judgment when we lack sufficient evidence." (p. 62) Neither of these statements capture the meaning of the term—for instance, refusing to condemn someone until one has sufficient evidence isn't tolerance per se, but strictly an aspect of objectivity and justice.

To fully appreciate this, consider the relationship between tolerance and justice. "To tolerate," Dr. Tara Smith remarks in an essay, "is to allow behavior of which one disapproves." (Tolerance & Forgiveness: Virtues or Vices?, p. 32) There has to be a conflict between the views of the person being tolerant and the action being allowed. In addition, there must exist for the relevant individual a moral right or prerogative to tolerate or not tolerate some action; what a stranger wears daily, or how a person chooses to study, are usually the kind of activities in which one is not even in a position to choose between tolerance or intolerance. An example of a circumstance in which the issue of tolerance does arise, by contrast, is when one discovers that a friend or business partner has systematically deceived one for years, because it is one's own stake in the relationship (the bond of friendship, a partner, etc.) that is questioned by considering tolerance, rather than an issue that is strictly the concern of someone besides oneself. To sum this all up, Dr. Smith reflects that a person, "extends tolerance when, holding the authority to disallow activity that he regards as wrong, he allows it." (p. 33)

How does this relate to the virtue of justice? At first glance: not favorably. Justice in the realm of morality (or moral judgment), let's again note, is the virtue of recognizing the facts and moral characters of others, evaluating them according to one's standards/principles, and acting accordingly, thereby granting to each person that which he deserves. The call for tolerance seems to fly in the face of this virtue: it essentially instructs one to identify and evaluate the actions and character of people and then not act in accordance with one's negative evaluations. "Tolerance directly contradicts the conviction that a person should be treated as he deserves. Extensions of tolerance declare (in kinder, gentler language): to hell with what a person deserves." (p. 33) In Rand's philosophical works, we see various examples of improper tolerance: the tolerance of the moral coward who abstains from moral judgment for the sake of convenience (Moral Cowardice); of the person who doesn't know how to apply his morality to others, and thus tolerates moral breaches he would never allow himself to practice; of the militant tolerationist, willing to tolerate without context or rational discrimination; of a person who represents the "sanction of the victim," who allows others to criticize him for his virtues and good character; of the person who substitutes mercy for justice, granting to the immoral or evil more than they deserve; and of the appeaser willing to tolerate the evils of others due to his own fear of them (Appeasement).

However negative this initial appraisal is, it is important to realize that tolerance is occasionally proper, and that it's propriety depends on the context. Is the disagreeable action an isolated incident, or one of many such transgressions? Does the individual attempt to own up to his mistake or moral breach, and try to make amends, or does he shrug it and/or you off as insignificant? Did the action occur while the person was under extenuating circumstances, such as a painful divorce, a mental breakdown, the influence of drugs, or a natural emergency? Is the action of such a negative scale as to be outside any rational possibility of tolerance? All of these questions (and more) are relevant to understanding the guilty person's context, and reaching a decision as to whether moral condemnation would lead one to sacrifice one's broader, well-considered interests. All such questions allow one to incorporate the benefits of being rationally tolerate while still conforming tolerant behavior to the principles of justice.

The up-shot is that tolerance is sometimes a virtue, and sometimes it is not, and this is determined by its conforming to the virtue of justice, as well as one's considered interests. Contra Kelley, there can be legitimate conflicts between justice and tolerance: to hold that there aren't any such, Kelley shrinks the meaning of tolerance in such a way as to make it fit within the broader theory of justice. (The exception is that we should be intolerant of outright irrationality.)

A closer reading shows that Kelley intends to replace some of the functions of justice with his view of tolerance. Specifically, he utilizes tolerance (instead of an element of justice) to demand that one does not reach moral judgments hastily without considering all the available facts, and the demand of justice that one hold the other person's context in mind when considering one's moral judgment of him. This, however, misunderstands the role of justice in a moral person's life. Dr. Smith reminds us that to reserve judgment until one has an adequate basis to condemn is not tolerance; rather, it is simply a realization that one is not in a position to come to a moral conclusion. This policy is neither an act of tolerance or a violation of justice, but rather is precisely the objective kind of judgment that the virtue of justice advises us to adopt. "The proper corrective to ill-founded intolerance is not the leniency of tolerance; it is a more rigorous dedication to justice," Smith advises. (p. 36)

Kelley's misunderstanding of tolerance permeates his entire chapter on it, including the section "Tolerance and Objectivity." The section is lengthy, but it can be summarized as: to reach certainty in the kind of issues being discussed, we must know and be able to refute all of the available evidence in support of alternative explanations; to access and assess such evidence, we must be tolerant and open to discussion on these alternative theories and principles with others, without condemning them for their differences or honest errors—this is the way in which objectivity requires tolerance. As one can see from reading CLAR, this is only a lengthy elaboration of the previously mentioned idea that tolerance is taking into account the context and ideas of others, including how they might have reached their conclusions. Tolerance only applies once one is certain of the actions or ideas of others with which one disagrees, and when that person is in a position to even tolerate anything. Objectively identifying and evaluating the theories and ideas of others, such as in open debate or discussion, persuading people through logic, considering alternative theories for justifying ideas that one holds—these are all aspects of justice and objectivity, not the domain of tolerance. That Kelley doesn't understand this, only reveals the depth of his knowledge on these concepts.

Conclusion

There are other issues involved that I won't discuss in relation to "tolerance." More than moral condemnation is a logical consequence of being intolerant, against Kelley's definition. Kelley's lengthy (and weird) tying of objectivity to tolerance through the ideas of integration, unit-economy, and certainty, is worthy of another essay in response. The main theme of my paper has been that Kelley misunderstands tolerance: we could certainly benefit from a much lengthier and more detailed presentation of tolerance and its connection to the philosophy of Objectivism. Kelley disagrees with Peikoff's interpretation of his own view (i.e., "fairness through skepticism"), but when everything's considered, Kelley's position amounts to, "fairness through context-induced skepticism." While I haven't taken up all of these issues, I hope I've addressed the fundamental conclusion in Kelley's chapter, that tolerance is required by justice and objectivity, in a way that suggests how those ideas relate to each other as approached from an Objectivist perspective. (Given what I've written about Kelley in this series, it shouldn't be a surprise that I don't consider him to be an Objectivist.)

Reference Works

Ayn Rand Lexicon: Appeasement. http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/appeasement.html Accessed May 18, 2010.
Ayn Rand Lexicon: Errors of Knowledge vs. Breaches of Morality http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/errors_of_knowledge_vs_breaches_of_morality.html Accessed May 18, 2010.
Ayn Rand Lexicon: Moral Cowardice http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/moral_cowardice.html Accessed May 18, 2010.

Kelley, David. The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand: Truth and Toleration in Objectivism. http://www.objectivistcenter.org/David%20Kelley – Truth and Toleration.pdf

Smith, Tara. "Tolerance & Forgiveness: Virtues or Vices?" Journal of Applied Philosophy. Vol. 14, No. 1, 1997. pp. 31-41.

Part 5: Errors vs. Moral Breaches

Introduction

Among all the issues that must be confronted in the Peikoff-Kelley split, the most difficult is surely the topic of error vs. evil, of errors of knowledge in contrast to breaches of morality. Fortunately, it is also the most philosophically revealing. As in the topics of my previous essay, I agree with Peikoff's view. To see why, I'll describe my understanding of the error/evil distinction, and compare it to the statements of both Peikoff and Kelley, adding my own comments and polemics when needed. As this isn't a topic that's discussed much, online or anywhere else, I hope my essay here improves the reader's understanding on this technical issue.

My View of Errors of Knowledge vs. Breaches of Morality

The Objectivist view is that an error of knowledge is not a moral vice and must be given every possible tolerance and allowance, while breaches of morality cannot be forgiven or tolerated or accepted. The basis for this view is an aspect of human nature, including our need to pursue our self-interests.

We are beings of volitional consciousness: we have the power of free will, of choosing our actions and thus of bearing the responsibility of our actions' results. We have to choose to exert the effort required to live our lives, and we have to do so by means of our reason, our fundamental means of dealing with reality. This means that we are not omniscient, and it means that we do not automatically live by reason. In Objectivism's view, reason is free will: acting in accordance with reason, and correctly or incorrectly applying one's reason, is a matter of choice. Having reason doesn't entail the possession of knowledge, or even the proper method of gaining such knowledge: the mind is born "tabula rasa" ("as a blank slate") in Rand's view: there is no mental content, and thus no method that is dependent on such content. Because reason isn't automatic, we are capable of errors, of evasion, of distorting what our reason is identifying. Accordingly, we have to choose to discover the proper means to be rational—we must learn how to reach correct conclusions, how to identify truths and falsehoods, and how to determine what counts as knowledge. (Ayn Rand Lexicon: Epistemology)

Whether it is the character and minds of others or of one's self, the Objectivist morality asks (and leads one to answer questions such as): how does a person use his tool of rationality? Is he focusing on the facts, applying his knowledge, forming principles and sticking by them? When he makes errors, does he strive to identify them and correct them, or does he ignore his mistakes or evade them or rationalize them into nonexistence? Does the person practice the Objectivist virtues (even implicitly)? These questions matter because the Objectivist morality is designed to promote those beings of free will who have chosen to use their reason to the best of their ability.

Because humans are not omniscient, morality can't declare that a person is morally flawed for making errors and mistakes, and that he must be judged according to the standard of omniscience, of knowing everything at once. Such a principle would ignore how humans live in reality, and would ignore our need to reach conclusions through the fallible process of reason, even if we occasionally make mistakes and reach contradictions. Engaging in thought and making a mistake along the way is immensely more practical than evading the responsibility of thought, provided that the person continues along a reality-oriented train of thought, as this is the way in which mistakes are corrected. Objectivism is opposed to impractical theories and irrational standards such as omniscience: they contradict reality, and offer only genuine losses for those who try to adhere to them.

Objectivism's censure of irrationality has another form (among others): the refusal to advocate willful immorality. A breach of morality is an conscious choice to go against what one deems to be good, to act in some way that promotes what one regards as evil, to evade one's knowledge of the good. To act against what one knows to be the good, is to act against what one considered in the past to be beneficial behavior and against one's values. Such an action would necessitate that a person judge this person as (at least) immoral. To understand why, let's consider this distinction in regard to the virtues most concerned with the moral character of others and of oneself: justice and pride.

The virtues of justice and pride recognize the basic facts about humans I mentioned above, regarding our volition and need to discover how to use reason correctly. Justice tells us: other people's ideas and actions matter to one's self-interest and life, so determine what kind of person they've chosen to be and their personal context, determine whether they are good or evil according to your standards and principles, and act according to that evaluation. Pride tells us that our principles matter to our self-interest and life, and that we should strive for moral perfection, practicing our virtues and judging our own selves as good or evil according to our morality and our personal context, and pursuing only rational courses of actions, correcting ourselves when we deliberately do otherwise (whenever and to what extent this is possible).

Justice informs us to understand the people we deal with (or, at least, acknowledge the moral characters of people we learn about) due to their effects on our own lives and values. Intellectually, this means discovering facts about other people's lives, especially how they use their mind, and toward what ends. At first, one gives a stranger the moral benefit of the doubt, due to one's acknowledgment of another's nature as a human, that is, as someone who possesses a rational faculty and from whom benefits can be expected. As the relationship is extended or becomes wider in scope and relevance (for example, a daily acquaintance, a friend, a business partner), an awareness of the person's moral standing becomes selfishly obligatory. In the relevant context, this means determining whether the person makes mistakes honestly, struggling to grasp the facts and comply with them, or if the person is practicing evasion, and determining whether rationality or irrationality is the ruling factor in the person's character. This is another way of protecting one's clarity of vision: the rationality of giving one's car keys and car to a parking valet depends on whether the person is a dependable and reputable driver, is known to be (unintentionally) accident-prone, or is a suspected vandal or thief.

In action, justice here means respecting the fallible nature of human reason, and not altering the moral evaluation of those who make honest mistakes. This includes brushing the mistake off as insignificant, helping the individual to correct his actions, or changing one's goals in order to achieve your values (such as, kindly suggesting an honest (but bad) cook to let you do the cooking for an upcoming meeting, or offering cooking lessons). It also means not tolerating, "brushing off," or otherwise ignoring a breach of morality or an act of evasion; immorality, in the Objectivist view, is the path to failure, value-loss, destruction, and death, and is precisely the line where "allowance" and "permissibility" must be drawn. "Tolerating" a gangster, a pathological liar, a swindler, or a hypocrite is an assault on one's values and an injustice to those who are virtuous, including the honestly mistaken among them. "To abstain from condemning a torturer, is to become an accessory to the torture and murder of his victims," Rand says. (The Virtue of Selfishness, p. 83.) The proper response to breaches of morality is to withhold one's sanction of the activity, and even the person if he proves to not desire to change his behavior in hopes of bettering himself and earning one's forgiveness.

Pride is "moral ambitiousness," it is striving to adhere to one's moral code, creating one's optimal moral character, and taking the actions needed to make one's life worth living—to make one worthy of positive self-esteem. Pride is working towards moral perfection, which is, "an unbreached rationality—not the degree of your intelligence, but the full and relentless use of your mind, not the extent of your knowledge, but the acceptance of reason as an absolute." Intellectually, pride means taking moral issues seriously, seeking to understand them and acting as one's moral code dictates, to be "good" by one's moral standard and principles. By the same token, this means consciously refusing to engage in willful evil, to create flaws in one's character. The proud man is one who recognizes that one's virtuous or flawed character is a result of one's own volitional actions, and is therefore capable, in principle, of being changed for the better. As Peikoff puts the point (and several other points), the fact of volition's role on character and it's importance in regard to pride means that:

There is no excuse, therefore, for a man who resigns himself to flaws in his character. 'Flaws' does not mean errors of knowledge, which involve no evasion; it means breaches of morality, which do involve evasion. The moral man may lack a piece of knowledge or reach a mistaken conclusion; but he does not tolerate willful evil, neither in his consciousness nor in his action, neither in the form of sins of commission nor of sins of omission. He does not demand of himself the impossible, but he does demand every ounce of the possible. He refuses to rest content with a defective soul, shrugging in self-deprecation 'That's me.' He knows that that 'me' was created, and is alterable, by him. (Peikoff, Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand, p. 304)

In action, the proud person engages in rational actions unwaveringly, earnestly practicing the virtues he regards as true. He does not fault himself for honest mistakes, but rather accepts his fallibility and moves forward, correcting them whenever the means are available to do so. He doesn't accept unearned guilt, faulting himself for failing to fully practice something that is impossible to accomplish. Nor does he motivate his actions by evasion or other forms of evil. Despite this, Objectivism is opposed to the view that moral perfection is a "one-shot thing"; if a person does become guilty of a vice, he doesn't sit in moral helplessness, but rather uses his rationality to redeem himself. He, "condemns his improper behavior, analyzes its roots (identifying in the process the underlying evasions), makes reparation (where applicable), and works to reshape his mental policy; he thereby retrains his character for the future." (OPAR, p. 305)

In the cases of both justice and pride, moral innocence is the crucial virtue to consider. Whether a person thinks he's committed a moral crime or not, or whether he thinks this is the case in regard to someone else or not, are important facts to consider in determining errors of knowledge versus breaches of morality. Honest errors are not to be confused with evils, and Objectivism's moral code upholds the innocent, including the rational but mistaken, while condemning the willfully evil.

Ideas as True or False, Good or Bad

In several important respects I've maintained that Kelley is misrepresenting the Objectivist view in epistemology and ethics. This series of distortion is in full force in his chapter on "Error vs. Evil."

Kelley repeats his dual-standards of human life and rationality, now applying it to the evaluation of ideas, and states that there are two characteristics which apply to ideas, one more essential than the other: the content of an idea, and its relation to some action. He states:

Whether an idea is true or false, and whether it is good or bad, are related issues. But they are distinct, and the issue of truth is primary. The essential characteristic of an idea is its content, the claim it makes about reality. The first and essential question to ask about any idea, therefore, is whether the claim it makes is true or false. Truth or falsity is a feature that an idea has by virtue of its content. An idea is good or bad, by contrast, in virtue of its relation to some action. As I indicated in 'A Question of Sanction,' there are two categories of relevant action. We can evaluate an idea by its effects—the actions it leads people to take—as measured by the standard of human life. And we can evaluate an idea by the mental actions that produced it, as measured by the standard of rationality. In either case, the value significance of the idea is a derivative property, which depends not only on the content of the idea but on the nature of the relevant action. And in either case, as I said, 'the concept of evil applies primarily to actions, and to the people who perform them.' It applies only in a derivative way to the ideas themselves. (CLAR, p. 39)

I won't repeat my criticism of the standards of human life and rationality I made in part 2, but I will comment on some of his other views.

My first point is that Objectivism has no content/action dichotomy, in which the truth of an idea flows from the content, and the moral rightness (or wrongness) of an idea flows from its effects—the actions or consequences of the idea. If this is literally what Kelley believes, then he's completely abandoned the Objectivist view of truth, and thereby of objectivity. The truth of an idea depends not only on what it claims about reality (its "content"), but also the mental processes used to reach it by a given individual, and its practical consequences. (I'm opposed to Kelley redefining "content" here as basically the definition of an idea, since a lot more information than that is relevant to determining an idea's truth.)

An idea's relation to action, including its ethical significance, is part of the content of the idea. It's one's knowledge of the idea, including relevant practical consequences, the reasoning that led to it, and value-judgments made, that constitute the content of the idea. Speaking of this sort of integration, the same kind of reasoning applies to the truth of an idea—the effects in reality of an idea partly determine its truth or falsehood. There's no reason in Objectivism to separate a part of the content of an idea and declare it to be a derivative trait, as far as the value significance of that idea goes. In fact, there's no reason for the content/action split in the first place: Kelley merely introduces it, claims that one corresponds to a primary trait (truth), and that the other applies to the secondary trait (value significance).

Diana Hsieh presented the criticism that Kelley embraces the mind-body dichotomy in moral judgment: well, here it is, in full form, in his discussion of value significance and its application to actions. Notice what Kelley says: "Had the same actions [i.e. Stalin's mass-murder motivated by Marxism] been committed by an Attila, whose power did not rest on ideological justifications, the actions would have been equally wrong." (p. 40) That quote implies that ideas don't matter in evaluating actions; so long as the scale of destruction is the same, then the actions are equally evil, no matter the ideological justification (or lack of it). That's entirely opposed to Objectivism.

First, it's ridiculous to suggest that anyone could've performed the same actions as Stalin without any ideological justifications. Mass murder, conquering other nations—these could be actions of force-wielders without a specific philosophy. Erecting a command economy, contributing to socialist theory and then putting it into blood-soaked practice, purging one's ranks of potential enemies, forcing scientists into labor camps or outright killing them, and so on, couldn't possibly have happened without an ideology driving it, a very definite ideology. If not, then what does Kelley take to be the relationship between ideas and actions, between the mind and body?

Second, Kelley's ignoring the fact that the scope and level of evasion plays a significant role in determining the amount of evil in a given action; indeed, evasion is the source of evil, its basic form. From what I said in Part 3, it should be clear that I think that it takes a greater amount of evasion to believe and practice Marxism to the extent that Stalin did than to commit the actions of Attila. Precisely because of Stalin's ideas, and how he reached them, then, his actions would have been far worse than those of Attila, even if they led to the same number of deaths or other superficial similarities in reality.

Peikoff vs. Kelley on the Role of Philosophy in History

In the next section, "Ideas and Original Sin," Kelley presents what he takes to be his differences with Peikoff on the role of philosophy in cultural events.

The Objectivist theory of history is that philosophy, i.e. the realm of ideas, is the prime cause of the course of history, the cause that influences all of the other causes, social, political, economic, technological, and so on. This isn't to say that history doesn't have many factors which can account for historical events, but it does conclude that not all such factors are primary. Philosophy is capable of this because of its broad range of abstractions, because of the importance of philosophical issues to human life. (Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand, p. 452) A philosophy first influences a small group of individuals concerned with philosophical issues, commonly known as intellectuals, and these individuals pass the philosophy down in ways that begin to influence the culture, affecting the fields of art, science, government policy, law, and countless others, in both subtle and stark ways.

As Kelley presents what he takes to be Peikoff's view, I can't help but notice that he treats "Fact and Value" as some sui generis article, as if Peikoff hadn't described his (and Rand's/Objectivism's) view of history in The Ominous Parallels, or even Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand. As we're about to see, Kelley is going to say things that Peikoff does not hold, and thus his critique will be that much weaker.

Kelley's portrait of Peikoff's view is a variant of ideological determinism: as soon as you inject a philosophical idea or system into a culture, the result will necessarily lead to certain consequences consistent with that idea, rendering the free will of the people who live under this idea or culture moot. The philosopher thus takes the blame for the transmission and effects of his ideas, as Peikoff notes in F&V with regard to Immanuel Kant. Kelley notes, "[t]hese individuals must, in effect, be helpless and unwitting carriers of the intellectual virus." (CLAR, p. 41) He also comments (rightly) that Peikoff's view is that the majority of people are not in the position needed to exercise their choice regarding fundamental philosophical ideas, and thus are shaped and influenced by these abstractions without their knowledge. Kelley draws the deduction: if such ideas are so embedded into the culture that they are never explicitly identified and challenged by the majority of people (the non-intellectual, the "ordinary"), that they are never issues about which one could choose to think about or not, then one cannot be accused of evasion or irrationality for accepting them. Trying to catch Peikoff in a contradiction, Kelley remarks that Peikoff holds those influenced by ideas they hadn't even thought about to be responsible for the consequences of the idea. Kelley ties this belief to Peikoff's (alleged) principle that an idea's falsehood "immediately implies" irrationality in the persons who accept the idea. Kelley then completes his "reduction to the absurd" argument, noting that if we hold them responsible, then we haven't negated their free will, and they are partially responsible for the disasters of practicing bad philosophical ideas; therefore, the originating philosopher does not really take the blame of such consequences, or only a diluted share of it. (p. 42) He then restates the argument:

In short, Peikoff cannot have it both ways. Ideas necessitate historical results only to the extent that people do not freely choose all of the intellectual contents that govern their values and behavior. Ideas necessitate results only to the extent that artists, journalists, politicians, and people in other walks of life operate within an intellectual context that they necessarily take for granted. But to this extent, they are not responsible for the effects of the premises that make up that context, and cannot be condemned as irrational. To the extent that people are responsible for thinking about their premises, and choosing to accept or reject them, the link between the originators of the ideas and the ultimate consequences is not one of causal necessity. We cannot hold the originators fully responsible for those effects, any more than we can hold a bartender fully responsible for the drunken behavior of his patrons. (ibid.)

Kelley concludes that Peikoff is espousing a form of original sin applied to culture: that Peikoff is claiming that ideas will influence individuals no matter what, free will aside, and that we share moral blame for the negative consequences of these ideas.

Unfortunately for Kelley, his argument has several flaws, some more glaring than others.

(1) Peikoff's discussion of history and philosophy in Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand:

Philosophy determines essentials, not details. If men act on certain principles (and choose not to rethink them), the actors will reach the end result logically inherent in those principles. Philosophy does not, however, determine all the concrete forms a principle can take, or the oscillations within a progression, or the time intervals among its steps. Philosophy determines only the basic direction—and outcome." (OPAR, 452)

Ideas necessitate certain results in reality due to the actual casual connection between ideas and action, a fact that is outside the power of human choice. Ideas, when practiced, can only lead to certain results, following the logic of the idea. What is open to human choice is whether and to what extent such philosophical ideas are practiced or rejected. Which brings us to the next topic:

(2) The limits of free will. In Objectivism, free will is the capacity to control and direct one's consciousness, to regulate it towards focus or non-focus, towards thought and non-thought, and direct certain physical actions that are under our conscious control. It's a very delimited faculty: exercised in a certain way, it can lead to great things, but it does not grant one the power to do everything or to be omnipotent. This is the basic reason why we must rely on the knowledge and trade of others who specialize in different fields in order to live, the basic reason for the need of the division of labor.

In "Fact & Value," Peikoff states that, "[t]o an individual in a division-of-labor society, it makes a life-or-death difference whether he is surrounded by producers or parasites, honest men or cheats, independent men or power-lusters." The implication of all of this is that if the specialists or experts are corrupt in their field, the innocent people who rely on them will pay the negative consequences for following their ideas. As examples in psychology, Freud's theories of the id, ego, and super-ego and the theory of behaviorism have been derided by Objectivists for decades precisely because of the damage to human life those ideas have caused, because the non-specialists rely on the faulty views of the specialists. It would be grave context-dropping to blame these negative consequences on the victims as much as those who should have known better. Free will does not mean: go out and discover and do everything by yourself, and if you act on someone else's mistake or deception, then it's your fault, you had free will and could have prevented/ceased the blame-worthy action, but you chose not to.

Peikoff is not dropping the context here: his position is that people can't be blamed for ideas that they couldn't have been expected to know, given their own time, energy, and need to work in some specialized field; this field will typically be something outside the discipline of philosophy or even the humanities. Since this is the case, once a certain philosophical climate sets into a culture, its consequences will influence the individuals of a culture, not due to determinism, but due to the limits of free will and knowledge. (I have to thank Paul Hsieh for quoting some of Peikoff's take on this issue from "The Art of Thinking, lecture 2" in a Noodlefood comment. Not only is the above what I take to be the correct response to Kelley's charge of Peikoff endorsing a version of idea-determinism with respect to a culture, but it also summarizes Peikoff's own words, in which he was showing how an argument about free will much like Kelley's can be met with integrating one's knowledge from other fields and disciplines, with the example being the division of labor and the knowledge of specialists.)

With that said, I'll comment next on the "reduction to the absurd" stage of Kelley's argument, where Kelley insinuates that Peikoff does hold the average person responsible.

(3) Peikoff's notion of "inherently dishonest ideas." To actually make his argument, Kelley has to take elements from Peikoff's section on "inherently dishonest ideas," expanding conclusions made regarding that set of ideas to all ideas in general, with the suppressed premise that this is what Peikoff does in his article (pages 41-42 of CLAR). In particular, he rips these sentences out of their context: "The mass base of such [inherently dishonest] movements are not evaders of the same kind [as the idea's originator(s), leaders, or intellectual spokesmen]; but most of the followers are dishonest in their own passive way. They are unthinking, intellectually irresponsible ballast, unconcerned with logic or truth.” On this count alone, this step in Kelley's argument should be considered context-dropping and summarily dismissed.

Peikoff's view is that unwitting followers of ideas typically are not to blame for relying on the ideas in their cultures, that they are not aware of the issues at stake. “Millions, billions, of men may be oblivious to the mind, they may be ignorant of philosophy, they may even be contemptuous of abstractions. But, knowingly or not, they are shaped ultimately by the abstractions of a small handful of individuals.” ("Philosophy and Psychology in History," Objectivist Forum 6 (Oct. 1985). pp. 14; quoted in CLAR, p. 41) But the followers of "inherently dishonest ideas" are a special case.

In Fact & Value, Peikoff says that "inherently dishonest ideas" are forms of openly rebelling against reason and reality, and in the 1983 lecture course "Understanding Objectivism" (UO) he states that such ideas can have no basis in reality. He says that, "[i]f the conscientious attempt to perceive reality by the use of one’s mind is the essence of honesty, no such rebellion can qualify as 'honest.'" (F&V) In UO, he specifies three kinds of "inherently dishonest ideas": (1) those explicitly against reason and reality, (2) those against values as such, and (3) those which advocate totalitarian states. In any event, Peikoff holds that the area of "inherently dishonest ideas" is filled with notions that couldn't be honestly understood and accepted. Even with such dishonest ideas, Peikoff excludes the very young, the retarded, the illiterate, and a small number of adults of the charge of evasion and irrationality; these are people who, for various reasons, cannot grasp the issues involved or the corruption that results from advocacy of these ideas. Kelley slyly forgets to mention the exceptions that Peikoff makes in F&V, but we should not follow suit.

The topic of "inherently dishonest ideas," as presented in "Fact & Value," is merely a summary of his views; these views are introduced and elaborated upon in the UO lecture course. This fact is something which Kelley also conveniently never discusses in the present issue. But the fact that F&V's discussion is only a summary doesn't mean that Kelley is free to quote statements out of the context that gives them meaning. Unfortunately for Kelley, his "reduction" falls due to Peikoff's actual views on the moral responsibility of cultural innovators/intellectual specialists versus that of ordinary people, and Kelley's quoting material out of context.

(4) Falsehood "immediately implies" irrationality. Kelley continues his "reduction," stating that (his misrepresentation of) Peikoff's views are a result of his general principle that "the falsity of an idea 'immediately implies' irrationality on the part of those who accept it." (CLAR, p. 42) This is false, as Peikoff doesn't hold this view. What he says is that falsehood is a contradiction of reality, and (within a certain range or scope) is the result of honestly mistaken, rational thinking; beyond this range, falsehood does imply irrationality, evasion, a process of vice. "Now we must note that falsehood does not necessarily imply vice; honest errors of knowledge are possible." (F&V) And later:

There is only one basic issue in philosophy and in all judgment, cognitive and evaluative alike: does a man conform to reality or not? Whether an idea is true or false is one aspect of this question—which immediately implies the other aspects I mentioned: the relation to reality of the mental processes involved and of the actions that will result. Truth is a product of effort and leads in action to value(s); hence, one says, the true idea is not only true: it is also good. Falsehood, assuming it reaches a certain scale, is a product of evasion [i.e. irrationality] and leads to destruction; such an idea is not only false; it is also evil. (Italics and brackets mine.)

Peikoff is saying that falsehood "immediately implies" irrationality only if his views are exaggerated, and this is precisely what Kelley does.

Relatedly, Kelley misrepresents Peikoff's views on honest errors, or falsehoods which imply rationality. Kelley says: "Honest errors, especially in regard to philosophical issues, are thus very rare; he suggests that they are essentially limited to the retarded, the illiterate, and the young." (CLAR, p. 40) Actually, the retarded, illiterate, and the young are the honestly mistaken followers of "inherently dishonest ideas" in Peikoff's view, not the representatives of honest errors in general. Indeed, the whole "reduction to the absurd" that Kelley's argument consists of is merely Kelley quoting Peikoff out-of-context and expanding his claims beyond their valid scope, outside the confines of Peikoff's notion of "inherently dishonest ideas."

Now, let's put it all together: Men have free will, but this doesn't mean omnipotence: for countless reasons and in countless situations, we need the specialized skills and labors of others, and we benefit greatly from this division of labor. But our reliance on corrupt specialists, particularly in philosophy, can lead to us creating disastrous events, disasters which are logically consistent with these ideas. This is the way that philosophy is the primary cause of history: the wrong ideas will be accepted and picked up, and people who don't know any better will act on them, to everyone's loss. In the case of "inherently dishonest movements" the philosophic originator of the movement is primarily responsible, as it is his ideas that are being carried out, and the blame is extended to his intellectual followers and spokesmen to a lesser extent, and base followers of the movement to an even lesser extent.

If my presentation of Peikoff is correct here, then Peikoff's view here certainly doesn't represent a "cultural version of the doctrine of original sin," as Kelley claims. (p. 42)

Kelley on the Degree and Kind of Moral Responsibility

Kelley, in the next section "The Role of Ideas in History," reintroduces the topic of Soviet tyrants and academic Marxists, an issue he initially discussed in "A Question of Sanction." He states that Stalin and his henchmen are primarily responsible, as they're the proximate cause of the mass deaths in Russia. The intellectuals were responsible for creating the cultural conditions (or shaping the ones which already existed) making it possible for Stalin and his kind to gain power, and abuse it on a monstrous scale. But there's an important difference in degree of responsibility, Kelley warns. Stalin was personally responsible for the deaths, as he used his political power to instigate the murders and torture. But the intellectuals are not in such a position: it took the effort of many Marxist intellectuals to create the cultural climate suited for Stalin's machinations. As a result, the charge that the academic Marxist is guiltier than Stalin is fallacious on two counts: "first in attributing causal agency to the ideas themselves, and secondly for investing that agency in every individual adherent of the ideas, treating each one as fully responsible for effects that occurred only because millions of other people embraced the same ideas." (p. 49)

Actually, the claim that Marxist intellectuals or academics are guiltier than Stalin or any dictator (which I agree with) doesn't involve either of those fallacies—both are non sequiturs. The Marxist intellectuals are guiltier than the dictators because of their practice with the ideas, not due to any causal efficacy on the idea's part. The intellectuals and dictators share varying degrees of responsibility, with the intellectuals holding the greater share. There's a number of reasons why the intellectuals are guiltier than the dictators.

(For some of the reasons stated below, see Diana's Hsieh's post Marxist Dictators Versus Marxist Intellectuals)

-The Marxist intellectuals presented the moral rightness of the rise of the proletariat, and the takeover of the means of production. They argued that it was morally obligatory, the rational, scientific thing to do, even historically inevitable. Even anti-Marxist practices, like Lenin's New Economic Policy (i.e. which brought private profits to the agriculture industry, instead of outright nationalization), were justified on grounds of historical necessity: it was argued that such policies were needed to implement "state capitalism" (fascism), the last stage before the evolution of socialism could be completed. On economic grounds (and on moral grounds pertaining to the proletariat's historical struggle), it was supposed to bring about prosperity and wealth beyond any of the capitalist's countries' wildest imaginations. The opponents of Marxism were thus faced with the nearly impossible task of combating a carefully crafted doctrine, one that was defended on moral, social, political, economic, and historical grounds. The fact that there were many Marxist intellectuals doing this only made the task of standing against the seemingly universal support for Marxism that much more difficult—their numbers do not absolve them of moral culpability or the degree of blame that they individually deserve, which is what I take Kelley to be implying.

-The dictators, soldiers, and force-wielders in general, merely cashed-in on their position's moral superiority, as established by the intellectuals. As a consequence, the intellectuals rationalized the delusions of grandeur held by corrupt men, bringing them into power over hapless citizens.

-The intellectuals manipulated people's understanding of altruism, history, economics, and political systems. In a response to supposed fears of potential espionage, Stalin began the "Great Purge," rounding up alleged saboteurs, "corrupt" members of the Communist Party, and social groups which were accused of acting against the Party, all with the intellectuals' full support and sanction. They preached historical determinism and involuntary altruism, topics that ordinary people couldn't be expected to know or defend against. Together with their economic criticisms of capitalism and advocacy of communism and socialism, the citizens were not intellectually prepared to combat these ideas—anyone that was surely would have died in the Purge and similar political persecutions, if that person were foolish or careless enough to let that kind of intelligence become public knowledge. If the citizens didn't accept the intellectuals' arguments due to confusion, evasion, or faith, then they most likely accepted it due to fear, fear of being killed for not conforming.

Given that, I find Kelley's distinction between the intellectuals who persuade versus the dictator who uses force to be complete dropping of the context:

More important, however, there is a difference in the nature of their responsibility. Stalin was a murderer; he intended to kill, and he carried out his intention. His victims had no choice in the matter; he did not have to persuade them to volunteer for immolation. The academic, by contrast, was an exponent of ideas. Even though his ideas were incompatible with man’s nature as a rational being, the office he occupied in the causal chain was consistent with that fact: he was engaged in persuasion, in the effort to provide reasons for his political views. Even if he was intellectually dishonest, and his views were caused by evasion, his advocacy of Marxism could have an effect only by eliciting the willing assent of his listeners. If we believe in free will, we must assume that they freely endorsed and adopted his position, that his arguments were not causes affecting them willy-nilly. I am not denying that such advocacy is a form of action, as Peikoff seems to think. I am simply noting the difference between two kinds of action: murder and persuasion. Objectivists, of all people, should be alive to that distinction. (p. 49)

Note the rationalism at work here. Force-users such as Stalin are presumably more culpable than intellectuals because force negates the mind and can kill us. The intellectuals, by contrast, espoused ideas and engaged in persuasion, providing reasons for his beliefs; unlike Stalin, they didn't use force and allowed people to decide for themselves, in effect.

Even if the citizens had a choice, it's preposterous to conclude that they could uncover the evasions and distortions committed by their intellectuals. But it's not more absurd than Kelley's belief that, because of free will, we must assume that they "freely endorsed and adopted [the intellectual's] position." (p. 49) This was a totalitarian state: whatever the nature of their "agreement" with the intellectuals, there was always the threat of physical force, even in private conversations with friends and family. Further, it's important to stress that Marxist intellectuals are certainly not advocates of "persuasion," Kelley's points to the contrary: all Marxists advocate the initiation of force on a massive scale, engulfing the entire globe. That's essential to the moral and political philosophy of Marxism: it's Marxism 101. Consequently, the intellectuals posed as advocates of civilization, using the methods of persuasion and open debate while actually advocating mass murder, and sanctioning the political oppression of dissenters.

Kelley criticizes Peikoff's claim in F&V that a young follower of an "inherently dishonest idea" (Kelley fallaciously expands this to "bad ideas" in general) would seek to make amends for his honest errors as a follower. Kelley appears indignant, calling Peikoff an "intrinsicist" for suggesting that the follower should feel guilt and seek to atone for his past transgressions, even if undertaken honestly. (pp. 49-50) But Kelley is mistaken: Peikoff isn't resorting to religion or intrinsicism in making this point, but rather causality and social objectivity. When a person does make a mistake with regard to "inherently dishonest ideas," it's an expression of causality for others to pay attention and determine if the person is seeking to correct his errors. If they've known of his previous support of communism or ideas of that sort, they can't simply take on faith that he's changed for the better, and they shouldn't tolerate a stance akin to "I've got nothing to prove to anyone." They have a self-interested reason to know if the person was honestly mistaken, and if he truly is trying to reform (even if, in the full context, he's done nothing morally wrong). A perfectly moral man can still have qualities that will turn people away from him, including honest errors of the scope being discussed. In accordance with that, it isn't religion but objectivity and justice that demands that he make his change of view known to those who associate with him, as it is pertinent for them to consider changing their views regarding him just as it was in his own case.

Lastly, Kelley refers to Peikoff's stance that academic Marxists can not be honestly mistaken. In Understanding Objectivism, Peikoff mentions the fact that Marxism rejects Aristotelian logic, and also points to the academic Marxist's necessary evasion of historical knowledge about socialism, fascism and communism. Scholars are supposed to know the historical facts about their field of study, and the history of Marxism is filled with failed states and the deaths of millions of lives, whether the lives of the capitalist bourgeoisie or the proletariat. I agree with Peikoff—there is simply too much literature in history, in economics, and political theory for any knowledgeable Marxist to be actually honest—too many facts to ignore, too many dictators, too many actual tactics of the intellectuals of the past, and far, far too much blood.

I won't discuss most of Kelley's criticisms of Peikoff in the sections "The Scope of Honest Error" and "Inherently Dishonest Ideas" because I've more-or-less answered them when I elaborated on Peikoff's notion of "inherently dishonest ideas." Kelley notes that he isn't clear on what Peikoff means when he discusses philosophical errors and evasions, and their relation to "inherently dishonest ideas." Indeed, I think the same belief applies to a lot of supporters of Kelley's views. But that doesn't stop him from grossly ignoring or misstating Peikoff's views on such ideas, expanding his view of evasion far beyond what he genuinely holds.

Conclusion

"Errors of honest vs. breaches of morality" is a technical topic in the Objectivist ethics, but no less important to understanding the morality's role regarding a person's character and moral judgment. The issues of philosophy's role in history, the moral evaluation of ideas, and the Objectivist idea of free will are no less difficult to understand and appreciate. A thorough study of Objectivism, however, can reveal valuable knowledge pertaining to these ideas and their interrelationships, their larger context, and their applications. I think such knowledge leads to the conclusion that Peikoff has accurately represented Objectivism on all of these issues, while Kelley continually shows himself to stray—perhaps in accordance with his earlier thesis that Objectivism has little to say on judging a person morally in terms of his motives, such data being relevant to the verdict of an honest error or willful evil. More than anything, I hope this essay has given readers enough reason to consider listening to Peikoff's lectures again (or for the first time, as will be my own case) to consider his more detailed views on subjects like "inherently dishonest ideas," and why a non-expert can blame an expert for bad or destructive advice or instruction. The main problem with Kelley's chapter here is his ignorance of Peikoff's actual views on the topics being debated, as it is these criticisms that make up the bulk of it.

Reference Works

Ayn Rand Lexicon entry: Epistemology
Ayn Rand Lexicon entry: Errors of Knowledge vs. Breaches of Morality

Branden, Nathaniel. The Vision of Ayn Rand: The Basic Principles of Objectivism. Gilbert: Cobden Press, 2009.

Kelley, David, The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand: Truth and Toleration in Objectivism. 2000 (1990)

Peikoff, Leonard. Fact & Value. Accessed May 2nd, 2010.
Peikoff, Leonard. Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand. New York: Meridian, 1993 (1991).
Peikoff, Leonard. "Philosophy and Psychology in History," Objectivist Forum 6 (Oct. 1985).
Peikoff, Leonard. Understanding Objectivism. 1983.
Peikoff, Leonard. The Art of Thinking. 1992.

Rand, Ayn. The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism. New York: Signet, 1964.

Part 4: Moral Sanction

Introduction

The issues that constitute the Peikoff-Kelley dispute are very difficult to understand, and require a very technical grasp of Objectivism to confront and answer. This applies to moral sanction as any of the other topics. To determine which side represents the Objectivist position here, I'll follow the methodology I used in Part 3: I'll state my interpretation of the genuinely Objectivist position, and then compare and contrast the statements made by Kelley (and those who side with him) and Peikoff (including those who side with him). During the comparisons, I'll also add relevant points about Objectivism that might have been out of place in my succinct summary of the Objectivist position.

My Interpretation of Objectivist Moral Sanction

As I said in my section on moral judgment from Part 3, the Objectivist view of moral judgment consists of two aspects: consciousness and existence, or its intellectual and existential demands. Intellectually, moral judgment is the identification of facts about other people and evaluating the morally salient facts in reference to the morality of rational selfishness—that is, the moral standard of man's life and principles of egoism. Existentially, moral judgment is using one moral evaluations to guide one's actions, granting to each person that which he deserves, in the form of rewards and punishments. In Objectivism, there is one fundamental kind of recompense for (that is, an action in response to) the characters and actions of others, for their virtues and vices: the granting or withholding of one's moral sanction.

To morally sanction is to regard someone (or action, ideology, organization) as morally good and to endorse, support, approve, and generally promote that person (or action, function). In essence, it is acknowledging the good (that is, good people, practices, etc.) for what it is and choosing to deal with it, giving it one's spiritual and material support. The Objectivist theory of moral sanction holds that it is the good, as defined by the morality of rational egoism, who create and sustain the kind of world that is beneficial and conducive to human life; thus they deserve our support, our cooperation, the practicing of our virtues, and our recognition of the virtues that the good themselves practice.

The reason that people deserve one's moral sanction (or the withholding of it) is the fact of the effects of their volitional action (potential, if not actual) on one's own life and well-being. The people who employ the virtues of Objectivism--being rational, honest, productive--they are the ones who create the values that further our lives, and so it is an act of rationality on our part to repay such virtues with values, especially moral sanction, and vices with disvalues (particularly the withholding of such sanction). (Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics, p. 144) In addition, granting one's moral sanction is a way to protect the clarity of one's awareness of people, and the rationality of the ends and courses one chooses to pursue. (Rand, Virtue of Selfishness, 84-85) Moral sanction is a way to express the acknowledgment of the moral values that one perceives in another, and thus is a way to gauge the rationality of the areas of one's life that directly involve others. "It makes a difference whether one thinks that one is dealing with human errors of knowledge or with human evil." (The Virtue of Selfishness, 84-85)

The policy of moral sanction has important implications for how one deals with the morally good people one encounters, this much is certain. It also has an important implication in regard to human evil: the refusal to sanction it.

In essence, the evil in the Objectivist view is evasion, the willful rejection of one's reason and the rejection of reality, on the premise that if only one doesn't acknowledge something, then it doesn't exist. Due to the nature of evasion, evil is necessarily impotent—closing one's mind off to reality, and substituting one's wishes for it, is not the path to practicality. The nature of existence means that it has primacy over consciousness: conscious wishes, in and of themselves, are fruitless. Such a course of evasion can only end in the frustration of one's goals, the adoption of methods incompatible with the achievement of such goals, and the destruction of values—those of the evader and those of others with whom he deals, and this pertains especially to moral values. Indeed, destruction is the only power of the evil. The crazed dictator who starves millions and ruins his country's economy, the manipulative liar who wrecks his business plans and reputation, the hypocrite who eventually loses his friends and political endorsements—as a principle, the actions of evil are detrimental to human life. "Evil men, though impotent, can disappoint, deceive, and betray the innocent; if they turn to crime, they can rob, enslave, and kill." (Peikoff, Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand, p. 331) It is due to the (in many cases, obvious) threats to one's self-interest that evil men and actions pose that constitutes the case against sanctioning evil. The immoral characters and actions of men deserve our refusal to sanction them, our moral condemnation, ostracism, and the discussion of the moral judgments made with others when this is appropriate (such as when someone is starting to befriend the immoral person).

Evil is impotent, but it can feed off of the virtues of the good, such as the thought and productive effort of slaves, the genuine benevolence of unsuspecting friends, the sense of justice of those who cannot fathom the deliberate evil that can exist in the characters of others. "Evil left to its own devices is powerless, but evil has not been left to its own devices. It has been able to survive by harnessing and placing the power of the good in its service." (Nathaniel Branden, Vision of Ayn Rand, p. 485) In response to such evil, the Objectivist position is that:

The weapon necessary to defend against evil is justice: the unequivocal identification of the evil as evil. This means the refusal to grant it, by word or by deed, any moral respectability. It is by scrupulously withholding from the irrational even a crumb of a moral sanction—by rejecting any form of accommodation with the irrational—by forcing the irrational to stand naked and unaided—that one keeps evil impotent. (Peter Schwartz, "On Moral Sanctions")

The failure to refuse to sanction evil takes a particularly painful form when the victim of evil concedes his moral stance to that of his enemies, his destroyers. In Objectivism, this is known as the "sanction of the victim." Nathaniel Branden (writing as an Objectivist in the 60s) states:

There is another form, perhaps the most tragic one, of the manner in which the good supports the evil and makes the success of evil possible. These are the countless situations where men of virtue help evil not because of their own evasions, weaknesses, or flaws, but because of their own virtues—because of their own innocence, honesty, generosity, endurance, and sense of justice. Innocence is the key virtue in such cases, the virtue most viciously exploited.

Men who are fundamentally rational are unable to conceive of the kind of motives that prompt the irrational. They do not understand the nature of evil and do not know how to identify its symptoms. Their own honesty makes them regard the wrong actions of others as mere errors of knowledge. Their generosity makes them feel benevolence towards others and reluctant to suspect the worst. Their endurance makes them willing to bear out a good deal of undeserved pain, on the assumption that those who caused it didn't do it intentionally. Their own sense of justice makes them unable to condemn others without understanding, and leads them to give others too much 'benefit of the doubt' for too long. This is the error which Ayn Rand calls, 'the sanction of the victim.'

'The sanction of the victim' means: the willingness to let one's own virtues be used by others against oneself. It means the willingness to bear injustice, to takes actions which help others against one's own rational self-interest, and to concede moral validity to the claims of one's own destroyers. (The Vision of Ayn Rand, 488)

Just as justice is the weapon needed to defend against evil, so it is one's defense against giving evil the sanction of the victim. Two of the characteristics of such sanction are (1) a moral double standard, in which a moral man mistakenly tolerates evils in others that he would condemn in his own character, and (2) an ignorance of the fact that evil men count on and condemn the victim's virtues--his honesty, integrity, productivity, and pride, among other positive traits—not his moral flaws. The solution to (1) and (2) is moral objectivity: being able to articulate one's moral code, to prove it to any honest inquisitor, to understand it, and to apply it to one's own life. In regard to (1), moral objectivity means justice: it means not tolerating what one regards as evil, but applying the same abstract standards and principles one practices in one's own life to the characters and actions of others, and judging them accordingly. "Whenever you are able to say about some immoral action, with full rational knowledge of your reasons, 'I would not permit myself to do this,' do not accept, tolerate, forgive, or sanction it, when it is done by others."(The Vision of Ayn Rand, 491) In regard to (2), moral objectivity means reminding oneself that virtue should be rewarded with values, not disvalues. Upon detecting that one's virtues are being exploited and simultaneously condemned, one should make this injustice apparent to the guilty party: one presents the objectivity of one's case and of one's judgment.

Obviously, there's a lot more to be said about moral sanction, but I think this covers the essential elements of it, as well its importance in the present controversy, i.e. What moral sanction is and how it is applied according to the philosophy of Objectivism.

Objectivism, Existential Aid, and Pragmatism

Peikoff and Kelley certainly differ on the topic of moral sanction. In addition to that, in Truth and Toleration (as well as The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand), Kelley introduces the subject of existential aid, a point on which he claims that he disagrees with Peter Schwartz and Peikoff; I'll note that I agree with his judgment here: their disagreements here reveal philosophically relevant differences. To understand why, let's consider what they say.

Existential aid is benefiting something or someone in some material form, such as funding an event, increasing voter turnout, or even buying a movie ticket, insofar as one increases the movie's prospects for a great financial return on the production crew's expenses. The special case of aid that is being disputed is that of contributions to the morally evil.

Kelley's very first point about evil contributions is that, "it's impossible to avoid every such contribution." He elaborates on this point, claiming that we can't control the actions of others, and thus cannot control what they will do with the benefits we give to them. (CLAR, p. 32) In economics, we give such aid to evil totalitarian countries and groups indirectly, through our savings; in the "marketplace of ideas," we give such aid to magazines by benefiting them at the expense of helping to promote one's ideological enemies, and gaining Ph.D.s at the expense of fostering a graduate program that can continue to promote ideas that one is opposed to. These unavoidable contributions to evil aside, we must pursue our values, Kelley holds; negative consequences cannot deter us in living our lives and pursuing our values. With this in mind, we must "avoid aiding evil any more than necessary." We should make sure that any such aid is an unavoidable byproduct of a rational purpose." (p. 33) We should minimize our aid to evil as much as possible, and avoid granting such aid when the evil's magnitude outweighs the positive effect of our actions.

The first point I'd like to make is that the pursuit of values does not necessarily lead to the benefit of evil, contra Kelley. If the moral state of the people around us, and the world at large, is so corrupted that any given action towards a value may contribute to the morally evil in some way, that says a lot about the current state of things. It also makes the issues of morality, of justice and moral judgment, more urgent in our lives. (Ayn Rand's active philosophical career, for example, is a testament to this need for urgency, as she devoted vast amounts of her energy arguing for the good and rational, and making her judgments about irrationality and immorality known in countless instances. Typically this consisted in analyzing some morally corrupt expression or idea and identifying its relationship to Objectivism, and how a rational person should respond to it.) Kelley here seems to be forgetting the distinction between the metaphysically given and the man-made (Ayn Rand Lexicon: Metaphysical vs. Man-Made). The amount of evil in the world, and the possibility of our contributing to it, are both man-made facts, and accordingly are capable of being judged and changed for the better. As Objectivists, we are not content with minimizing our impact on the ends of evil, and living with the way things are—we are radicals for objectivity, for justice, for a rational society in which the evil is left unaided and condemned for what it is.

(Another way to combat any contributions to evil is practicing moral judgment and especially withholding one's moral sanction, but this will be discussed in the next section.)

In accordance with these ideas, which he calls "commonsense standards" (but aren't they technical details of Objectivism, in his view?), he states that we weigh the costs and benefits of an action, stressing the degree of the good or bad we think may result. As I said in the essay on moral judgment, the Objectivist position is not to merely to assess particular degrees of anything and then consider the "foreseeable consequences" or what "may result." What Kelley is saying is a variant of consequentialism—specifically, a form of pragmatism.

Kelley, of course, denies the charge of pragmatism, first raised by Peter Schwartz in "On Moral Sanctions." (CLAR p. 33) Since his denial is important here, I'll quote it in full:

A benefit is a value, and a cost is a disvalue. The essence of pragmatism is not its concern with costs and benefits; that concern is shared by any value[-]oriented, teleological ethics, including Objectivism. The essence of pragmatism is its claim that costs and benefits can be measured without the use of principles. That is why, as the old joke says, pragmatism doesn’t work.

Moral principles tell us what kinds of things are valuable or harmful, beneficial or costly to our lives. They tell us which traits of people are virtuous and vicious, and thereby tell us whom it is in our interest to deal with. To pursue our interests, therefore, we must act on principle: the moral is the practical. This point is not in dispute. But Schwartz writes as if every action we consider is governed by a single principle. In fact, this is almost never the case. The circumstances in which we act are normally complex, and the consequences various. We use principles to identify the goods and ills at stake, but we must then weigh the good against the ill, in the manner I’ve indicated. This normally requires that we consider specific degrees of good or harm. For example, we do not hesitate to put our money into savings instruments, despite the fact that we thereby lower the cost of loans to evil governments, because the benefits are substantial and the harm negligible. These are quantitative judgments, and they are not always this obvious. Such weighing of costs and benefits is the only possible method of acting on principle, and it is therefore morally required of us: the practical is the moral. (CLAR, pp. 33-34)

It's important to note here that in Objectivism, any sort of "cost-benefit analysis" does not have the kind of importance that Kelley here is stating it does. Objectivists are primarily principled, they live by and according to their principles—the issue of costs and benefits only arises after it's been decided that an action (or policy or function) is in accordance with one's principles. The reason is that principles are general truths on which a number of other truths depend, and thus integrate vast amounts of inductive data. (Though some principles are deductively formed as well.) We exploit the integrations made thereby, judging our actions by their long-range consequences and effects on our other ends, as gauged by the facts we know concerning the principles. If an action is deemed to be against one's principles, that rules it out—there's no need to further consider the case, as if one had to act without the benefit of principles: there's no point in such "cost-benefit" analysis. Objectivism holds that its moral principles identify the kinds of actions that are conducive to human life, and the ones which are detrimental to it—acting against one's principles must resort to courting disaster, and jeopardizing one's values.

In her chapter on integrity, Objectivist Tara Smith makes similar remarks on being principled:

To commit to a principle is to decide in advance how one should act when confronting certain kinds of choices. The reason to do that is the realization that a person will make better decisions that way. By stepping back from the immediate pulls and pushes of a decision-making situation, a person can better grasp what actions will be, all things considered, best for him. Adopting a principle means committing to staying that predetermined course, to taking the kinds of action that the principle prescribes when the relevant occasions arise. (Smith, Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics, p. 180)

Kelley doesn't explicitly deny the role of principles, but he does misunderstand them. He states that the role of principles is to inform us of the good or ill that is at stake, but that's all they do; we then must act on principle by means of cost-benefit analysis. That is not their only purpose, and the analysis of costs and benefits is not the follow-up of every consideration of actions and the principles governing them, as I've made clear.

As another indication of this misunderstanding, Kelley criticizes Schwartz's view, implying that it's simplistic: "...Schwartz writes as if every action we consider is governed by a single principle. In fact, this is almost never the case. The circumstances in which we act are normally complex, and the consequences various..." (p. 33) By implication of Kelley's statements, Objectivist principles are normally at war with each other in practical reality, and actions often have multiple principles governing them, offering conflicting moral estimates. In other words: principles are unhelpful in reality; cost-benefit analysis is necessary precisely because principles do not (and cannot, by his reasoning) allow us to determine the moral permissibility of an action, and thus cannot motivate our actions either way.

Kelley is criticizing principles for the same reason that explicit pragmatists have derided principles for nearly a century now. Principles are vast integrations and thus are highly abstract, and this very fact disqualifies them as offering practical guidance in this complex world we live in. As Rand once put it, describing the essence of pragmatism: "Their dogmatic agnosticism holds, as an absolute, that a principle is false because it is a principle—that conceptual integration (i.e., thinking) is impractical or 'simplistic'..." (Ayn Rand Lexicon: Pragmatism) The consideration of reality's complexity, and the seeming conflicts that can occur between principles, leads to a hypothesis that principles are indeed false, at least in some contexts: the cost-benefit analysis works in a way so as to solve the conflict and determine what action a person should take or judgment he should make.

The use of practical methods--cost-benefit analysis or otherwise--in response to the recognized failure of ideologies and principles, however, is quintessential pragmatism.

Kelley states that his position is not pragmatism because that school of philosophy endorses the view that costs and benefits can be measured without use of (or reference to) principles. But this lack of principles is one of the Big Lies spread by pragmatist theorists. The truth is that pragmatists typically plagiarize the popular philosophical ideas outside of their own philosophy, not crediting their sources, all the while criticizing those alien ideas and the philosophies upholding them. Dewey promoted a combination of racism, social subjectivism, and altruism without mentioning them (see his "My Pedagogic Creed"). William James's pragmatic theory of truth is in part the correspondence theory of truth melded with the coherence theory of truth (see his "Lecture VI. Pragmatism’s Conception of Truth"). Kelley is merely a pragmatist who explicitly incorporates (badly understood) Objectivist ideas into his philosophy.

An honest pragmatist is still a pragmatist.

On Sanction and Libertarianism

Kelley's section on sanction doesn't add much to the discussion. He adds that sanction involves a conscious judgment which is typically expressed in words, though there are cases where action would betray sanction even if the person consciously doesn't sanction a certain person, group, or organization. (p. 34) Kelley describes various degrees of association, ending with a short explanation of why a speaker's appearance is not a sanction of the group's ideas—that an Objectivist speaking at a libertarian function is not sanctioning libertarianism. He compares the speaker events of ideological groups to that of more open-forum venues, like that of the Ford Hall Forum, which Rand famously attended. It is mistaken to hold that a speaker agrees with the ideology of whomever he is speaking to. (p. 35)

His footnote #5 gives an important quote from Rand, one which Kelley thinks agrees with his view. Here is his footnote in full:

Several people have drawn my attention to the fact that Ayn Rand dealt with precisely this point in connection with a charge by Senate liberals that Justice William Rehnqulst once spoke to a right-wing group: “This is an insidious kind of intimidation: it equates a speaker’s views with those of the discussion’s sponsors. A man of integrity is conscientiously precise about the nature of his views on any subject. If his views are going to be judged, not by his own statements, but by the views of those who invite him to speak... then his only alternative is to accept no speaking engagements. If so, what happens to our freedom of speech?” “The Disenfranchisement of the Right,” The Ayn Rand Letter I (Dec.20, 1971), p. 26.

Rand is correct: it is intellectually dishonest to judge a speaker by the view of those who ask him to speak, instead of his own statements. But Kelley is grossly mistaken if he believes that this is what Peikoff and Schwartz were doing, or that this was the reason why the ARI ended its association with him. Part of the reason was his refusal to denounce The Passion of Ayn Rand, as Kelley claimed, and this is true. Barbara Branden was guilty of psychologizing and rationalization on a massive scale (which I've only learned about in these last few months), and had succeeded in her destruction of the value of Rand's character in the minds of many, and still does so today (check out the Objectivist Living forum and The Atlas Society, for more on that). (My opinion of her has dropped even lower as my reading of The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics continues.) The other part of the reason was the presentation of his philosophical views justifying his action at the Supper Club as contained in "A Question of Sanction," not his speaking there as such. (Though his failure to articulate what he thinks libertarianism is in contrast to Schwartz's view, and his dealings with libertarians regardless, certainly didn't help.)

Schwartz, in his two essays on moral sanction, didn't equate Kelley's views with those of his libertarian audience. He criticizes Kelley for arguing for Objectivism in a format endorsed and structured by libertarians, under their "auspices." There was a well-reasoned argument for this:

If one wishes to reach those who have been defrauded by Libertarianism, it cannot be done by speaking under the auspices of the defrauders. It cannot be done even if one’s topic is why Objectivism offers the proper foundation for genuine liberty. Such a talk grants Libertarianism precisely the moral sanction it seeks and thrives on. Libertarians will readily listen to a talk on Objectivism and liberty—and the next day they will invite someone to speak on why the Bible is the only basis for liberty—and the next week they will hear someone argue why only skepticism and amoralism can validate liberty, etc. They lap this up. It is all entirely consistent with Libertarianism. It is consistent with the philosophy that philosophies and reasons are irrelevant to a belief in 'liberty.' By speaking under the roof of an organization dedicated to purveying Libertarianism, one concedes that Libertarianism does in fact value liberty (and is simply confused about the proper means—i.e., Objectivism—by which to gain that end). Once that fatal concession is made, Libertarianism has obtained the basic moral sanction its survival requires. (On Moral Sanctions)

Kelley is focused on his own motivations for speaking there: "I am therefore on record as having refused to endorse, approve, or sanction any subjectivist variety of libertarianism. It would be entirely irrational to attribute to me a moral judgment that I not only haven’t made, but have explicitly and publicly rejected." (p. 36) He fails to mention that the motives of the libertarians may have something to do with Schwartz's claims: namely, the intellectual promiscuity that libertarianism relies on and fully encourages, the desire to incorporate a host of philosophical viewpoints and adherents to a "common cause." To sanction libertarianism, all one needs to do is claim that they genuinely value "liberty" and that they are a positive force in the cultural (and global) fight for liberty and a proper society—exactly what Kelley did then, and does now (see William Thomas's and Kelley's "What Is the Objectivist View of Libertarianism?") Kelley's actions betray his conscious judgments.

Kelley objects to Schwartz's charge that it is a form of nihilism and subjectivism. But he has no way to identify the political philosophy as a positive alternative to the image formed by Schwartz's arguments. At best, he says: "It is one thing to hold that the advocacy of liberty does not require any objective philosophical basis. It is another thing—and in my experience a more common view among libertarians—to hold that liberty does have an objective basis, but that one may make common cause with those who subscribe to a basis other than one’s own." Since when was Objectivism the common view held by libertarians—or does Kelley now believe that other philosophies can give objective bases for liberty? He also says that the motivation for libertarians isn't what Schwartz says it is, but is more likely an attempt to figure out which philosophy is correct, and therefore which philosophy offers the defense for liberty. (p. 38) "Why would a group bother to invite philosophers at all if they thought philosophy irrelevant?" Kelley asks. The answer in my mind is: to keep up the pretense of being considered a serious political philosophy.

There's never going to be a final answer for libertarianism as to which philosophy offers the best, or only, defense for liberty, because its basic method is to deny that any definitive defense is necessary or desirable. Libertarianism presented itself as a big tent political program, and the subsequent decades haven't lead to a philosophically reasoned consensus, but to further divisions and disagreements. For proof of this, consult the vast and varied works of libertarian authors, and consider their arguments, which I predict will only continue to grow and become even more disparate. (I'll caution that the amount of libertarian works produced has long since became too much to read in a lifetime.) If Kelley's vision was a libertarianism in agreement with (or largely in favor of) Objectivism, as philosophical and political allies, then I truly believe Kelley's hopes are in vain.

Conclusion

Moral Sanction is an important topic in the Objectivist ethics, and understanding it is necessary for not only understanding this debate, but for applying the philosophy in one's own life and for one's own benefit. I certainly hope my essay has helped in both regards. On this topic, as in others, Kelley hasn't represented the Objectivist view in any significant way, and has made claims that are clearly opposed to it, such as our pursuit of interests necessarily benefiting evil. I've also given my reasons for thinking that Kelley is guilty of the very pragmatism he's been denying, largely due to his lack of appreciation for the underlying method of that school of philosophy. Finally, I've argued that Kelley was indeed sanctioning libertarianism, and that his behavior towards libertarianism over these past two decades is no different than it was before his split with the ARI, and is quite the opposite of not sanctioning them.

Reference Works

Ayn Rand Lexicon: Evil
Ayn Rand Lexicon: Metaphysical vs. Man-Made
Ayn Rand Lexicon: Moral Judgment
Ayn Rand Lexicon: Pragmatism
Ayn Rand Lexicon: Sanction
Ayn Rand Lexicon: Sanction of the Victim

Branden, Nathaniel. The Vision of Ayn Rand: The Basic Principles of Objectivism. Gilbert: Cobden Press, 2009.

Dewey, John. "My Pedagogic Creed" Accessed April 22, 2010.

Hsieh, Diana. Documents, Sanction, and Confusion Accessed April 17, 2010.

James, William. Lecture VI. Pragmatism's Conception of Truth

Kelley, David. 'A Question of Sanction." March 1989. http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=722 Accessed March 27, 2010.
Kelley, David, The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand: Truth and Toleration in Objectivism. 2000 (1990)
Kelley, David, and William Thomas. "What is the Objectivist View of Libertarianism?" http://www.objectivistcenter.org/showcontent.aspx?ct=591&h=54 Accessed April 21, 2010.

Peikoff, Leonard. "Fact & Value." http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=objectivism_fv Accessed April 14, 2010.
Peikoff, Leonard. Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand. New York: Meridian, 1993 (1991).

Rand, Ayn. The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism. New York: Signet, 1964.
Rand, Ayn. The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought. Edited by Leonard Peikoff. New York: Meridian, 1990.

Schwartz, Peter: On Moral Sanctions Accessed April 13, 2010.
Schwartz, Peter. On Sanctioning the Sanctioners Accessed April 13, 2010.

Smith, Tara. Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: the Virtuous Egoist. Cambridge U, 2006,