Post by HPO Jury = MalenoidOn Thu, 16 Oct 2003 12:45:06 +0000 (UTC), "James E. Prescott"
[..E]ven Toohey would have deserved a slightly higher rung of hell
than the man described by Peikoff.
To the contrary, Ellsworth Toohey was the archetype of evil in
Rand's world; but Roark felt only indifference even toward him,
not condemnation.
Ayn Rand was not indifferent. And the plot of that novel really is about
Roark discovering and at the end (and a few points along the way) exposing
the nature of evil. Roark gradually comes to realize what's wrong with
Keating (he has no self; he lives through others), and then what's wrong
with the world (perishing from an orgy of self-sacrifice).
Post by HPO Jury = Malenoid[...] Surely you are not implying, are you?, that some "ability"
to feel shame is some sort of achievement along the road to full
development. [...]
[...] I am speaking here psychologically in that certain emotional
mechanisms must take shape before morality is even applicable.
I'm a developmentalist, also, but what develops right along with emotional
mechanisms is the ability to reason and, with it, the capacity and necessity
of choosing between independently and scrupulously exercising one's
reasoning capacity or occasionally blanking out, evading, and/or just
accepting and depending upon the judgements of others. Exercise of reason
entails apprehending and selecting proper values and principles of actions.
Morality lies in whether one does this and then adheres in one's choices and
actions to the selected values and principles, or fails to do so. Morality
is not about feelings. It is about choices and actions.
Post by HPO Jury = Malenoid[...]
Feeling guilt, as related to shame, has been an element of every major
moral theory that I can think of.
Well it's not an element of mine.
Post by HPO Jury = MalenoidBoth emotions inform you that you did something wrong.
Not true. Emotions are just automated responses arising from beliefs. They
do not tell you whether you did something wrong because they do not tell you
whether the beliefs from which they arise (the beliefs to which they are a
response) are true or false. If children come to believe that it is morally
wrong -- and, let's say, punishable by God -- to selfishly refuse to share
their things with other children, they may quite naturally feel shame and
guilt and fear when they do. But it is not morally wrong. On the contrary it
is morally right to selfishly demand that others pay for what you give them
or else receive nothing from you. A child who, like Roark, understands and
believes this, will feel no shame or fear or guilt ignoring other children.
But emotions will not "inform you" whether this is so. Emotions are not
tools of cognition. Only reason can apprehend right and wrong.
Post by HPO Jury = Malenoid[...It is possible that doing the wrong thing may yet bring emotional
satisfaction through the acquisition of earthly achievements. The
prudent predator obviously has no need for shame, but he has not given
up the need for happiness.
Earthly achievements are right, not wrong. Predation when prudent is right,
not wrong.
Again, emotions themselves are mere consequences of beliefs not tools of
cognition. What you believe comes first. Emotional response follows. And
what you believe is determined by the thinking you have done or failed to
do. That free choice, to think or not, is the essence of the difference
between moral good and moral evil.
Post by HPO Jury = Malenoid[...] A being without morality is a being without reason, and vice
versa.
Post by HPO Jury = MalenoidIn other words, you are not a developmentalist, and young children are
simply tiny adults who just lack life experiences.
Reasoning ability develops over time. Young children lack the ability to
guide their actions by reason in accordance with a moral code. This is
acquired as they develop their thinking ability and as they identify and
select values and principles of action, i.e., acquire a moral code.
Post by HPO Jury = Malenoid"Unless shame is an integral part of one's purpose, there is no need
of it in morality." It is left obscure what you mean by "morality." If
you mean, "moral code," then since you include emotion in your own
theory of morality, avoiding shame could be an element that goes along
with pursuing happiness as its opposite, "to pursue happiness and
avoid moral shame."
It's enough to attain happiness. I don't think a man ashamed of his actions
is a happy man, so that goes without saying. By morality, I mean the
practice of identifying and adhering to a moral code (values and principles)
as the means by which to guide one's actions successfully toward happiness.
I don't think I left this unspoken or obscure, but if I did, sorry.
Post by HPO Jury = MalenoidIn that case, the small child who has not developed the ability to
feel shame would have no use for a moral code because there would be
no emotional basis (emotional rewards and punishments) by which to
guide his actions and tell him when he has either succeeded at
following the code or failed.
Ugh! There again you seem to have a mindset that emotions somehow "inform."
They do not. Yes, they reward and they punish. Yes, a being without any
emotional capacity whatsoever would have no need of a moral code, but this
is for a far simpler reason than you suggest. It is not that such a being
would not know whether it has succeeded or failed in adhering to the
selected values and principles. It would know -- as any thing is known -- by
reason, not by emotion. But more simply, it would have no need of morals
because success or failure in adhering to the code would have no purpose,
would be in no sense success or failure in life. If you cannot experience
emotional joy, cannot know happiness, then what would morality be for?
Post by HPO Jury = MalenoidThe small child may be capable of
happiness (an emotion they naturally develop long before shame), [...]
Remember, happiness is the joy of contemplating one's whole life and
realizing with great confidence that the pleasures which fill one's life
will continue far into one's future. A child can experience pleasure,
enjoyment, and many wonderful emotions, but happiness comes -- if at all --
only after reason, and after adoption of and adherence to moral principles,
and after attainment of and the self-knowledge/recognition that one has
indeed attained a significant degree of health, wealth and security.
Post by HPO Jury = Malenoid[...] but it is only based on satisfying the desires of the
moment, rather than being a satisfaction, as you described, which
comes from intellectually contemplating the span of one's entire life
in terms of accomplishments, goals achieved, and the like.
Exactly.
Post by HPO Jury = MalenoidI don't see where the latter is moral anyway, since even a small
child, who has no capacity to contemplate his own life, can feel
happiness.
Joy and happiness are not the same. What a child experiences, good as it is,
is not happiness.
Post by HPO Jury = MalenoidAnd the difference between the child and the adult is only
a matter of degree, so that the latter's happiness may be more
profound, but it is only an advance over the child's smaller, more
immediate, perspective on things, not somehow metaphysically distinct.
What distinguishes joy in general from happiness in particular is precisely
that the latter is not a small, immediate perspective on things. How could
something small be one's ultimate purpose in life? Well, I suppose for some
it could.
Post by HPO Jury = Malenoid"The difference between the men and the boys is the price of their
toys."
That's a bit better. The difference between joy and happiness is the range
of the perspective involved. A child cannot yet contemplate his whole life.
A man can, and when he feels joy in response, that particular feeling of joy
is happiness.
Post by HPO Jury = MalenoidI don't recall at the moment whether or not you said WHY it was
moral to choose happiness and life -- but as I recall, you omitted
"life" from that moral formula in favor of happiness.
I said it, and then I quoted it in another post, calling particular
attention to it -- I thought! -- with the words, "Please remember how I
expressed it last." Here, I'll quote it again for you, a third time.
[...Pleasure is good and pain is bad] are prior to the ideas of
right choices and wrong choices but since they are not chosen
they are not any sort of "pre-moral choice." Morality guides
human choices, which come in the existential context of the
goodness of pleasure and badness of pain.
So simple it is easily overlooked. Life to happiness, I say, is as means to
an end. Ayn Rand's problem was that she effectively tried to reverse this
proper order, taking "life" as an end-in-itself, as if happiness were just
one's method of staying alive, when what she really meant, or should have
said, was that happiness is an end-in-itself, and staying alive is a means
(good when it leads to happiness; bad when it doesn't; suicide is moral!).
Biologically the order is reversed, but only metaphorically since
bio-chemical activity does not actually pursue ends in any literal sense.
Post by HPO Jury = MalenoidIt may actually be more consistently Objectivist, however, since that
theory allows for suicide in certain circumstances, when man's life
qua man becomes impossible thus obviating any possible for pursuing
moral principles.
Exactly.
Post by HPO Jury = MalenoidYour idea that one should choose the purpose of pursuing
happiness, as a moral choice, was not based on any reasoning,
it is only asserted.
Well, that's close. It is an assertion, yes, but I explained my
reason/justification for asserting it. The goodness of pleasure is
axiomatic, not derived or justified by reference to anything but itself.
Good and pleasing are synonyms, like 'A' and 'A', until false philosophy
drives a wedge between them by claiming there exists some higher purpose
than the enjoyment of life on earth.
Post by HPO Jury = MalenoidAt least Objectivism makes more sense (even if incorrect) in that, IF
you want to live, THEN you need a code of morality to guide your
choices and actions through life.
If you want at all you need to guide your actions by reference to a moral
code. But a moral code is not, itself, moral just because it is one's code.
The code is only a set of values and principles to which one refers. Those
values and principles might easily be the wrong ones, and then the code
itself would be evil. All things, including values and principles of action,
are thus properly judged by reference to the -- intrinsically,
axiomatically, as stated above -- proper moral purpose of any man's life,
happiness.
Post by HPO Jury = MalenoidI don't recall where Rand said that man's need for morality was
inherent in the metaphysical sense that you describe. That sounds
Kantian to me.
In her lecture/essay "The Objectivist Ethics" she explained how the need for
morality is inherent in man's nature as a conceptual being. Man, like any
animal, has no choice, she said, about his need for certain values, and yet
man, unlike other animals, has no automatic, pre-programmed standard of
value. The values and principles he needs must be discovered, she said, and
adhered to, by the work of his reasoning mind.
Best Wishes,
Jim P.