Aristotle for Everybody by Mortimer Adler

Aristotle for Everybody: Difficult Thought Made Easy
Mortimer J. Adler
Touchstone, (Reprint Edition, 1997) 

Mortimer J. Adler is superb at expressing complicated philosophical concepts in an uncomplicated language. His book Aristotle for Everybody is indeed for “everybody”—even those who are uninitiated in philosophy will benefit from his systematic and cogent presentation of all the major points in Aristotelian thought.

In his Introduction to the book, Adler says that it is important for people to learn to think philosophically because philosophy “helps us understand things we already know, understand them better than we now understand them.” He goes on to recommend Aristotle as the best teacher for learning philosophy. The book’s focus is not only on the major points in Aristotelian philosophy, but also on the process or the method by which Aristotle developed his ideas.

Adler provides a snapshot of Aristotle’s life in the Introduction itself, and devotes rest of the book to Aristotle’s ideas and method. Here’s an interesting paragraph from the Introduction:

“Aristotle’s thinking began with common sense, but it did not end there. It went much further. It added to and surrounded common sense with insights and understandings that are not common at all. His understanding of things goes deeper than ours and sometimes soars higher. It is, in a word, uncommon common sense.”

The book of 206 pages is divided into five parts, each containing several bite-sized easy-to-read chapters which touch upon the different segments of Aristotle’s thinking. The titles that Adler has given to the book’s five parts point towards Aristotle’s critical role in development of the foundational principles of a philosophical system which examines the nature of man and his place in the world: “Man the Philosophical Animal,” “Man the Maker,” “Man the Doer,” “Man the Knower,” and “Difficult Philosophical Questions.”

To give readers a glimpse of Adler’s way of explaining concepts, here’s a view of the method by which he explains Aristotle’s “theory of four causes” in chapter 6. He begins the chapter by saying that the “four causes” are the answers that Aristotle gives to four questions that can and should be asked about the changes with which we are acquainted in our common experience.

The four questions are:

1. What is it going to be made of?
2. Who made it?
3. What is it that is being made?
4. What is it being made for?

After a description of the background and significance of the four questions, he summarizes the four causes in these simple terms:

1. Material cause: that out of which something is made.
2. Efficient cause: that by which something is made.
3. Formal cause: that into which something is made.
4. Final cause: that for the sake of which something is made.

Adler uses examples throughout the book to explain the specific philosophical points that he is talking about. But he completely avoids the use of technical language—even a common Greek word like “eudaimonia” does not feature in the book. In the Epilogue, Adler, who is well known as an indexer of great ideas, offers a lengthy list of sources in Aristotelian corpus from which he has drawn for his book.

In my view, reading Adler's Aristotle for Everybody is worth the effort that one may put into it.

Can You Avoid Being Stalked by Reason and Reality?

“Reason” and “reality” are like a big bore; even if you rebuff them a number of times, they won’t stop pestering you. 

Toffler on Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World

In The Third Wave, Alvin Toffler offers the history of human civilization through the lens of technological and economic progress. He paints a comprehensive picture of a Third Wave civilization where there is boom in personal computing and information technology.

“For Third Wave civilization, the most basic raw material of all — and one that can never be exhausted — is information, including imagination.”

Toffler distinguishes Third Wave civilization from an industrial age civilization (which he calls Second Wave), and an agricultural civilization (which he calls First Wave). He regards the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution as the triumph of Second Wave, industrial civilization over First Wave, agricultural civilization.

While the First Wave civilization was tribal, the Second Wave was distinguished by mass movements, mass production, mass media, mass transportation, etc. George Orwell in 1984 and Aldous Huxley in Brave New World predicted a future in which things are excessively mass-oriented. But the Third Wave is not turning out to be a collectivist utopia; it is individualized.

Speaking of 1984 and Brave New World, Toffler says:

But Third Wave civilization is also no “anti-utopia.” It is not 1984 writ large or Brave New World brought to life. Both these brilliant books — and hundreds of derivative science fiction stories — paint a future based on highly centralized, bureaucratized, and standardized societies, in which individual differences are eradicated. We are now heading in exactly the opposite direction.

Barbara Branden's New Book

Barbara Branden's latest book Think as if Your Life Depends on It: Principles of Efficient Thinking and Other Lectures is now available in the Kindle edition. The book's print edition is expected to arrive shortly.

In his post on the book, Chris Matthew Sciabarra says that the Think as if Your Life Depends on It consists of a transcription of the original ten lecture series which Barbara Branden delivered in 1960 under the auspices of the Nathaniel Branden Institute. The lectures had Ayn Rand's blessings, and are regarded as part of canonical Objectivism.

Sciabarra has written the Foreword to the book, and the Introduction is by Roger Bissell.

Related:

The Biography of The Goddess of Philosophy

The Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas

Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide
Edward Feser
Oneworld Publications, 2009

Edward Feser’s Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide is packed with information—this is a very systematic, comprehensive and easy-to-read presentation of Aquinas’s philosophy. I don’t think the book is meant for a neophyte, even though the subtitle claims that this is a “beginner’s guide.” Some initial knowledge of philosophy is necessary for reading this book, which I think can benefit everyone (except the professional philosophers) who is interested in studying Aquinas.

The book has five chapters. In the first chapter, Feser introduces the reader to Aquinas’s life and works and in the subsequent chapters he launches into an extended discussion on Aquinas’s metaphysics, natural theology, psychology, and ethics.

Feser emphasizes the importance of learning metaphysics because it serves as the foundation for Aquinas’s ideas in theology, psychology and ethics. The key concepts in metaphysics that the second chapter covers include: Act and potency, Hylemorphism, The four causes, Essence and existence, The transcendentals, Final causality, Efficient causality, and Being. By using the illustration of a rubber ball, Feser makes it easy for anybody with ordinary experience and knowledge to understand Aquinas’s arguments on metaphysics.

In the chapter on natural theology, Feser explains Aquinas’s five proofs for the existence of God. The proofs are: the proof from motion, the proof from causality, the proof from the contingency of the world, the proof from the grades of perfection, and the proof from finality. Aquinas offers the five proofs for God's existence mainly in his Summa Theologiae, but Feser also looks at Aquinas’s other writings to offer a composite picture of his arguments on God. In the chapter’s later sections, Feser describes the divine attributes of Aquinas’s God: simplicity, perfection, goodness, immutability and so on.

The first two chapters —on metaphysics and natural theology — are of great interest. For these two chapters alone the book is worth acquiring.

In the chapter on psychology, Feser begins with a description of what Aquinas meant by the concept of “soul” and how he saw the relation between the body and the soul. He points out that by “soul” Aristotle and Aquinas do not mean some immaterial substance or some weird thing that humans have—they “mean the form of a living being, so that anything with such a form has a soul by definition.”

The most interesting section in the chapter on psychology is the discussion on “intellect and will”. Feser points out that Aquinas held that “the natural end or final cause of the intellect, with its capacity to grasp abstract concepts and to reason on the basis of them, is to attain truth.” Also, Aquinas believed that the natural end of the will is “to choose those courses of action which best accord with the truth as it is discovered by the intellect, and in particular in accordance with the truth about human nature.”

Feser begins the final chapter, which is on ethics, by reiterating the idea that a grasp of metaphysics is crucial for understanding the other sub-disciplines of Aquinas’s philosophy, including his ethics. While discussing Aquinas’s view on the “good,” Feser takes into account Hume’s famous argument that “conclusions about what ought to be done… cannot be inferred from premises concerning what is the case. According to Feser, in the traditional Thomistic point of view there is no “fact/value distinction” and therefore there is no fallacy because “value” is built into the structure of the facts from the get-go.

The section on “good” is followed by a discussion of Aquinas’s theory of “natural law” and his conception of “religion and morality.” Aquinas’s fundamental principle for natural law is that “good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided.” Since man’s way of gaining insight into the end of human nature is reason, Aquinas posits that a good action is one which is in accord with reason. But Feser has not discussed the concept of virtue. I think it would have been beneficial to have an account of Aquinas's concept of virtue.

Overall, Feser’s Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide is an excellent introduction to the monumental contributions that Aquinas has made to philosophy.

Thomas Aquinas on Intellect and Will

“The natural end or final cause of the intellect, with its capacity to grasp abstract concepts and to reason on the basis of them, is to attain truth. The natural end of the will is to choose those courses of action which best accord with the truth as it is discovered by the intellect, and in particular in accordance with the truth about human nature.” ~ Thomas Aquinas in Sententia super Metaphysicam

(Source: Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide by Edward Feser; Chapter: Psychology)

There Is No Such Thing As Society ~ Margaret Thatcher

Today you can’t find a single conservative politician who will bluntly declare that there is no such thing as society. But Margaret Thatcher said this in her 1987 interview to Women’s Own magazine. Here’s an excerpt from the interview:

"I think we've been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it's the government's job to cope with it. 'I have a problem, I'll get a grant.' 'I'm homeless, the government must house me.' They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It's our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations. There's no such thing as entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation." 

Thatcher was not antisocial. She knew that when people are free to make money they are in a better position to help themselves and those for whom they care. A culture of free enterprise strengthens social relationships rather than weakening them. 

“The study of philosophy is not about knowing what individuals thought, but about the way things are.” ~ Thomas Aquinas in Exposition of Aristotle’s Treatise On the Heavens

“The nonsense written by philosophers on scientific matters is exceeded only by the nonsense written by scientists on philosophy.” ~ C.D. Broad

Ayn Rand Had Some Nice Things To Say About Ronald Reagan

Most Objectivists believe that Ayn Rand was always opposed to Ronald Reagan. But that is not the case. Chris Matthew Sciabarra explains that Rand initially saw Reagan as a promising public figure:

The country at large is bitterly dissatisfied with the status quo, disillusioned with the stale slogans of welfare statism, and desperately seeking an alternative, i.e., an intelligible program and course. The intensity of that need may be gauged by the fact that a single good speech raised a man, who had never held public office, to the governorship of California. The statists of both parties, who are now busy smearing Governor Reagan, are anxious not to see and not to let others discover the real lesson and meaning of his election: that the country is starved for a voice of consistency, clarity, and moral self-confidence---which were the outstanding qualities of his famous speech, and which cannot be achieved or projected by consensus-seeking anti-ideologists. 

As of this date, Governor Reagan seems to be a promising figure---I do not know him and cannot speak for the future. It is difficult to avoid a certain degree of skepticism: we have been disappointed too often. But whether he lives up to the promise or not, the people's need, quest for, and response to clear-cut ideas remain a fact---and will become a tragic fact if the intellectual leaders of this country continue to ignore it.

~ Ayn Rand in "The Wreckage of the Consensus" 

The Ultimate Objectivist Argument

“Orthodox Objectivism” works for folks who do not wish to do their own thinking. Their ultimate argument in any discussion is this:

Leonard Peikoff said it. I believe it. That settles it.

A Critique of the Objectivist Theory of Free Will

The idea that human beings are imbued with free will has considerable support among Objectivists, but as far as I know Ayn Rand never wrote any essays on this subject. The brief comments that she made on free will in a few articles and lectures are inadequate for elucidating the fundamental nature of “free will” which she had in mind.

Leonard Peikoff has explained the Objectivist theory of free will in chapter 2, “Sense Perception and Volition,” of his book, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (OPAR). Like Rand, he uses the word “volition” for free will. He argues that volition subsumes different kinds of choices and the most primary choice is the choice to focus one’s consciousness.

On page 58, he writes:

“To ‘focus’ one’s mind means to raise one’s degree of awareness. In essence, it consists of shaking off mental lethargy and deciding to use one’s intelligence. The state of being ‘in focus’—in full focus—means the decision to use one’s intelligence fully.”

On page 60, he writes:

“[It] is invalid to ask: why did a man choose to focus? There is no such ‘why.’ There is only the fact that a man chose: he chose the effort of consciousness, or he chose non-effort and unconsciousness. In this regard, every man at every waking moment is a prime mover.”

According to Peikoff, there is no reason for a man to focus. He claims that—“there is no such ‘why.’” But then why does a man choose to focus? He does not provide an answer to this and related questions. Therefore the conclusion can be drawn that in Peikoff’s theory of free will the choice to focus is delinked from man’s identity.

In his article, “Where There’s a Will, There’s a “Why”: A Critique of the Objectivist Theory of Volition,” Roger Bissell shows that the Objectivist model of volition is not compatible with the premises of Objectivism. He identifies four important premises which are violated by Objectivist claims on free will.

The article is of only 31 page long but it covers lot of territory—from Aristotle’s four causes, to critiquing the Objectivist view of free will, and finally to making a case for “soft determinism” or “compatibilism.” Here I can only provide a brief picture of the article’s key arguments to encourage potential readers to read Bissell’s article.

Bissell points out that when Peikoff says, “There is no such ‘why,’” he can only mean that one is focusing without any reason. He says that, according to Peikoff, “one’s choice to focus is free-floating; no aspect of the identity of oneself or of the world anchors and explains this choice. It has no cause and no explanation, except the brute, miraculous fact that one chose to focus, rather than not to focus. And it is miraculous, anti-identity, because nothing explains it.”

Peikoff’s position on free will is a form of “agency—indeterminism,” which holds that free actions are uncaused. This is certainly incorrect. If we believe that there is no “why” in a man’s choice to focus (as Peikoff says in OPAR, page 60), then it means that the man choses to do something—and he could have chosen some other course of action—without any apparent reason. This will lead to the absurd conclusion that free will actions are capricious and therefore uncaused, and that humans are not agents but acausal beings.

Bissell explains the problems in Objectivist position as follows:

“Orthodox Objectivism characterizes free will as an uncaused choice to think or not think. This is not a motivated choice, but instead a choice that is not made for any reason. A person chooses to think simply because he decides to, because he wills it, period.”

After identifying the flaws in the Objectivist view of free will, Bissell presents a much better compatibilist theory of free will which is consistent with the core metaphysical premises of Objectivism. The arguments that he offers for proving that free will is compatible with determinism are quite convincing.

Any suggestion of a connection between “determinism” and “free will” will be odious to most Objectivists because they are fervent believers in the idea that ethics is impossible unless there is radical free will. But Bissell rejects the view that unless people have full freedom to chose, they can’t be ethical. He says, “if there is not some personal “value” actually determining one’s choice in a given context, then one’s choice is arbitrary and thus devoid of moral worth.”

Bissell makes a convincing case for integration of what he calls “value-determinism” and “conditional free will.” He ends his article by urging the readers that it is past time to recognize the Objectivist model of volition “for the illogical, quasi-religious dogma that it is and to purge it from the philosophy of Objectivism.”

--------------------------------------

Where There’s a Will, There’s a “Why”: A Critique of the Objectivist Theory of Volition 
By Roger Bissell

The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, Vol. 15, No. 1, 2015

Once Upon A Time Ice Age Used To Be The Propaganda

30+ years ago this was the propaganda. Now it's "Global Warming" and "Climate Change" caused by human Co2. So who are you gonna believe? Leonard Nimoy or Al Gore? How about neither.

Eric Hoffer on Poverty and Crime

"Poverty causes crime! That is what they are always shoving down our throats, the misbegotten bastards! What crap! Poverty does not cause crime. If it did we would have been buried in crime for most of our history." ~ Eric Hoffer

(Source: Hoffer's America by James D. Koerner; Open Court, 1973, Page 57)

Eric Hoffer is right. The liberal/leftist theory that poverty causes crime is complete nonsense. Poverty does not cause crime just as wealth does not cause morality. 

Eric Hoffer On Intellectual And Political Elites

Here are three quotes from Eric Hoffer's article, “The Young And The Middle-Aged," (NYT, 1970):

“Scratch an intellectual, and you find a would-be aristocrat who loathes the sight, the sound and the smell of common folk.”

“But the elites are finally catching up with us. We can hear the swish of leather as saddles are heaved on our backs. The intellectuals and the young, booted and spurred, feel themselves born to ride us.”

“We must deflate the pretensions of self-appointed elites. These elites will hate us no matter what we do, and it is legitimate for us to help dump them into the dustbin of history.” 

The Young And The Middle-Aged by Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer

Here's an excerpt from Eric Hoffer’s 1970 essay “The Young And The Middle-Aged,” which proved to be prophetic:

In order to feel rich, you have to have poor people around you. In an affluent society, riches lose their uniqueness—people no longer find fulfillment in being rich. And when the rich cannot feel rich they begin to have misgivings about success—not enough to give up the fruits of success, but enough to feel guilty, and emote soulfully about the grievances of the disadvantaged, and the sins of the status quo. It seems that every time a millionaire opens his mouth nowadays he confesses the sins of our society in public. 

Now, it so happens that the rich do indeed have a lot to feel guilty about. They live in exclusive neighborhoods, send their children to private schools, and use every loophole to avoid paying taxes. But what they confess in public are not their private sins, but the sins of society, the sins of the rest of us, and it is our breasts they are beating into a pulp. They feel guilty and ashamed, they say, because the mass of people, who do most of the work and pay much of the taxes, are against integrated schools and housing, and do not tax themselves to the utmost to fight the evils that beset our cities. We are discovering that in an affluent society the rich have a monopoly of righteousness. 

Moreover, the radicalized rich have radical children. There is no generation gap here. The most violent cliques of the New Left are made up of the children of the rich. The Weathermen…have not a member with a workingman’s back ground. The behavior of the extremist young makes sense when seen as the behavior of spoiled brats used to instant fulfillment who expect the solutions to life’s problems to be there on demand. And just as in former days aristocratic sprigs horse whipped peasants, so at present the children of the rich are riding rough shod over community sensibilities. The rich parents applaud and subsidize their revolutionary children, and probably brag about them at dinner parties.

Definition Are Important

“A careful definition of words would destroy half the agenda of the political left and scrutinizing evidence would destroy the other half.” ~ Thomas Sowell

"The beauty of me is that I'm very rich" - Donald Trump

Donald Trump is immune to the disease of Political Correctness which inflicts most politicians and businessmen. He is not “ashamed” of his wealth. Here’s a good line by Trump:

The Academia Is Breeding Irrational Parasites

James Delingpole writes in the article, "Do penises cause climate change?":

"In the US, at Pomona College, black students recently argued that ‘truth’ was a tool of white supremacy aimed at ‘silencing oppressed people’. South African students have called science a ‘product of racism’ which should be scratched from the curriculum because it rejects traditional alternatives like witchcraft."

Believing CO2 controls the climate ‘is pretty close to believing in magic’

Worth reading!

Orthodox Objectivist Strategy

When you lose an argument (which is quite often because philosophy and logic is not your forte), you question your opponents morality, sanity, agenda, and knowledge. 

Trump on Global Warming Hoax

Trump has shown real leadership by walking away from the so-called Paris accord on climate change.  He has been consistently speaking against Global Warming and Climate Change even before he became active in politics.

Here's his tweet from 2014:

“This very expensive GLOBAL WARMING bullshit has got to stop. Our planet is freezing, record low temps, and our GW scientists are stuck in ice.”

A few days later, he tweeted:

"NBC News just called it the great freeze - coldest weather in years. Is our country still spending money on the GLOBAL WARMING HOAX?"

In 2013 and 2014 he also tweeted:

"Snowing in Texas and Louisiana, record setting freezing temperatures throughout the country and beyond. Global warming is an expensive hoax!"

"Ice storm rolls from Texas to Tennessee - I'm in Los Angeles and it's freezing. Global warming is a total, and very expensive, hoax!"

In a 2015 interview, he said:

"I believe in clean air. Immaculate air.... But I don't believe in climate change."

In 2015, he said during a rally:

"Obama's talking about all of this with the global warming and...a lot of it's a hoax. It's a hoax. I mean, it's a money-making industry, OK? It's a hoax, a lot of it."

In 2016, he said:

"Well, I think the climate change is just a very, very expensive form of tax. A lot of people are making a lot of money. I know much about climate change. I'd be—received environmental awards. And I often joke that this is done for the benefit of China. Obviously, I joke. But this is done for the benefit of China, because China does not do anything to help climate change. They burn everything you could burn; they couldn't care less. They have very—you know, their standards are nothing. But they—in the meantime, they can undercut us on price. So it's very hard on our business."

The Rise of Political Correctness

Angelo M. Codevilla's essay on political correctness is essential reading.  Here's the opening paragraph:

“Comrade, your statement is factually incorrect.”
“Yes, it is. But it is politically correct.”

The notion of political correctness came into use among Communists in the 1930s as a semi-humorous reminder that the Party’s interest is to be treated as a reality that ranks above reality itself. Because all progressives, Communists included, claim to be about creating new human realities, they are perpetually at war against nature’s laws and limits. But since reality does not yield, progressives end up pretending that they themselves embody those new realities. Hence, any progressive movement’s nominal goal eventually ends up being subordinated to the urgent, all-important question of the movement’s own power. Because that power is insecure as long as others are able to question the truth of what the progressives say about themselves and the world, progressive movements end up struggling not so much to create the promised new realities as to force people to speak and act as if these were real: as if what is correct politically—i.e., what thoughts serve the party’s interest—were correct factually.

Tibor R. Machan on The Moral Vision of Ayn Rand

Tibor R. Machan

The Philosophic Thought of Ayn Rand
Edited by: Douglas J. Den Uyl and Douglas B. Rasmussen 
University of Illinois Press, 1984

For those who are interested Ayn Rand’s ideas, The Philosophic Thought of Ayn Rand is a must-read. This well organized book contains 10 essays which cover Rand’s premises in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and politics. I find the book intellectually stimulating because along with explaining Rand’s arguments it also conducts a meticulous scholarly critique of her ideas.

In this article, I am looking at the book’s 10th chapter, “Reason, Individualism, and Capitalism: The Moral Vision of Ayn Rand,” by Tibor R. Machan. A follower of Rand for many decades, Machan was convinced that Rand’s ideas are vital for mankind, but he never lost sight of his critical task as a philosopher and he offers a completely objective discussion of her philosophy.

His essay has a threefold agenda: first, to investigate the philosophical weaknesses in capitalism which Rand has tried to address in her ethical theories; second, to answer the critics of her ideas; and third, to explain her moral vision for capitalism.

In the beginning of the article, he says that Rand’s literature and philosophy provide “a philosophical foundation for a rational moral and political system and a vision of human life lived in accordance with such a system, superior to all other systems.”

Capitalism lacks a system of philosophical ethics and it is mainly regarded as an economic system, even though, as Machan points out, “capitalism is quite attentive to values, for it fosters personal responsibility and excludes force from human relationships.”

The contemporary intellectuals address the lack of ethical base in capitalism in two ways: some intellectuals advocate religious ethical traditions, while others argue that culture rests on human drives, vested interests, and economic, psychological, or social instincts. Both categories of intellectuals make compromises between liberty and slavery, and are spiritual or welfare statists.

Machan says that Adam Smith has observed that “modern philosophy is defective, and the defect to which he pointed suggests that a better philosophical approach to morality would be supportive of the free society.” Rand’s ethical theory offers a solution for this defect in modern philosophy.

Thinkers like Michael Novak have criticized Rand’s ethics because they believe that to ask humans to seek their own flourishing is insufficient inspiration and is, thus, socially and politically self-destructive. But Machan argues that “Rand’s ethical theory… enables each of us to construct our own personal—but always human—ideal; and her philosophical inquiry demonstrates that that is everything there can and should be to a moral vision.”

Rand’s ethics, Machan says, does not aim at making mankind perfect; rather, it promises the possibility of self-perfection—in context of his existence an individual has the chance of being the best person. “This requires, however, that humans undertake the supreme moral effort to think conscientiously and to live by the judgement of such conscientious thought—and nothing else.”

At first sight Rand appears to be reducing all human relationships to exchange value. For instance, John Galt, in his speech, says: “We who live by values, not by loot, are traders, both in matter and in spirit. A trader is a man who earns what he gets and does not give or take the unearned.” But Machan points out that Rand’s trader image of man is not purely materialistic.

“For Rand emphasis is on the terms of human relationships, not on their motivation or the alleged economic impetus for all human conduct. A rational egoist is not a utility maximizer, a calculating hedonist, but an individual who acts on principle, by reference to a code of values that is not reducible to, but merely subsumes (within a certain social domain), market values.”

Machan defends Rand’s view that in the marketplace where people know very little of each there, the exchange value may be the best way of measuring personal worth. He points out that in societies where free trade is banned people loose the ability of measuring personal worth and they start regarding with suspicion and hostility. “To fantasize about a closer relationship is to build utopian dreams that are the stuff of fairy tales, not of political philosophy.”

Towards the end of the essay Machan comments on the intellectual community’s failure to recognize Rand as an advocate of the philosophical and ethical base of a free society. “Although her novels have been bestsellers since their original publication, intellectuals have merely alluded to her ideas in asides.” 

Quotes from P. J. O'Rourke's 'Parliament of Whores'

"Imagine if all of life were determined by majority rule. Every meal would be a pizza. Every pair of pants, even those in a Brooks Brothers suit, would be stone-washed denim. Celebrity diet and exercise books would be the only thing on the shelves at the library. And — since women are a majority of the population — we'd all be married to Mel Gibson."

"Authority has always attracted the lowest elements in the human race. All through history mankind has been bullied by scum. Those who lord it over their fellows and toss commands in every direction and would boss the grass in the meadows about which way to bend in the wind are the most depraved kind of prostitutes. They will submit to any indignity, perform any vile act, do anything to achieve power. The worst off-sloughings of the planet are the ingredients of sovereignty. Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy, the whores are us."

"The collegiate idealists who fill the ranks of the environmental movement seem willing to do absolutely anything to save the biosphere, except take science courses and learn something about it."

Kelley’s Review of Peikoff’s OPAR

Leonard Peikoff’s Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (OPAR) enjoys a high status in Objectivist circles. Most Objectivists believe that everything Peikoff has said in OPAR is beyond reproach. But the book has several imperfections, a few of which David Kelley has identified in his review, “Peikoff’s Summa”.

Kelly published “Peikoff’s Summa” in 1992—about 3 years after Peikoff published his article, “Fact and Value,” which accuses Kelley of betraying the fundamental principles of Objectivism and committing intellectual and moral improprieties. But in his review of OPAR, Kelley does not return the favor by tearing into Peikoff. His review is fair and informative. He praises many features of the book, and he justifies with evidence and logic his criticism of Peikoff’s vague, confused and at times flawed presentation of some of the material.

In what follows, I will focus only on the flaws that Kelley finds in OPAR. I don't need to mention the good things that he has to say about the book because its virtues are already overhyped in Objectivist circles. Here’s a list of the flaws that Kelley finds in OPAR:

Inadequate discussion of epistemological principles
Peikoff places a lot of importance on hierarchy and context, but his treatment of epistemological principles is inadequate. For instance, on page 179 Peikoff says: “A conclusion is 'certain' when the evidence in its favor is conclusive." But if the evidence is conclusive when it adds up to a proof, when does the evidence add up to a proof? Kelley says, “[Peikoff] says nothing on this subject beyond alluding to the standards employed in particular areas of knowledge, such as the legal requirements for proof of criminal guilt.”

Failure to deal with the hard cases for the contextual theory
On page 173, Peikoff says that “knowledge at one stage is not contradicted by later discoveries,” but he does not explain how this applies to the legal cases where a suspect who has been pronounced guilty on basis of available evidence is found to be innocent when new evidence becomes available. Peikoff goes on to qualify his formulation: “Within the context of the circumstances known,” suspect S is guilty. But Kelley points out that “the suspect's guilt or innocence is a fact of the matter — either he committed the act or he didn't — and it is not dependent on anyone's context of knowledge.”

Flawed discussion on of the hierarchical theory of knowledge
As knowledge is hierarchical, the validity of a concept or the truth of a propositional conclusion can only be established by the process of reduction, which is the tracing of a concept of conclusion back to its perceptual bases. But the only example of such reduction that Peikoff gives — an analysis of the concept “friend” — is incoherent. Kelley has conducted an autopsy of Peikoff’s exercise of reducing the concept “friend” in a sidebar to the main article, “What is a friend?”

Flawed definition of proof
On page 120, Peikoff defines proof as "the process of establishing truth by reducing a proposition to axioms, i.e., ultimately, to sensory evidence." Here’s what Kelley has to say on this definition: “This definition suggests that our knowledge has the following structure: Sensory evidence tells us that something exists, that it is what it is, and that we are aware of it (the axioms of existence, identity, and consciousness); from these axiomatic propositions we then infer everything else that we know. This picture is wildly inaccurate. Axioms are involved in any proof, since they underlie the canons of logical inference. But the substance of any conclusion is derived from sensory observation of particular objects and events, from which we form generalizations by induction and scientific hypothesis.”

Peikoff’s rationalism
On page 218, Pekoff says that with a few exceptions (the exceptions he has in mind are presumably the axioms), fundamental principles are supported by induction. But on page 406, he declares: “Capitalism is a corollary of the fundamentals of philosophy. Whoever understands capitalism sees it as the social system flowing from the axiom that "Existence exists” —just as whoever understands the axiom sees it ultimately as the principle entailing capitalism.” This comment makes no sense. Kelley says, “Comments of this kind lend credence to the common misconception that Objectivism is a form of rationalism in the manner of Descartes or Spinoza.”

Choice to live as a kind of higher-order duty
In Galt’s speech Rand says: "My morality, the morality of reason, is contained in a single axiom: existence exists—and in a single choice: to live." This means that the choice to live precedes all morality—it is the foundation of all normative claims, and so cannot itself be morally evaluated. But on page 248, Peikoff asserts: "A man who would throw away his life without cause ...would belong on the lowest rung of hell." (248) Kelley says that “the reason for this inconsistency is that he does not really regard the choice to live as a moral primary. Since life is existence, the choice to live is subsumed under the wider principle of adhering to existence, which Peikoff implicitly seems to regard as a kind of higher-order duty.”

Kelley further explains:

“The problem here is of more than theoretical significance. The duality which Rand identified at the base of ethics runs throughout her moral code. The choice to live is the fundamental source of motivation, the axiom of existence the fundamental principle of cognition. The choice sets our goal-seeking nature in motion; the axiom directs us to look to reality for guidance, to identify the natures of things, including our own human nature and needs, and to identify the types of actions required to achieve our goals. The choice to live is the fountainhead of that passionate energy, that love of life, which characterizes Rand's heroes. The commitment to reason and reality is the source of their confident command of themselves and their world. In his quest for theoretical unity, Peikoff collapses the choice into the axiom, with effects that are evident throughout his presentation of the Objectivist ethics. He tends to elevate principles over goals, virtues over values, in a way that gives the flavor of a duty ethic.”

Flawed conception of morality
On page 284, while discussing justice, Peikoff declares: “morality is man’s motive power.” But this is a flawed view of morality. Here’s Kelley’s perspective on this issue: “Since morality is a code of values accepted by choice, and a code in turn is a system of principles, Peikoff's statement suggests that we are motivated not by the desire to achieve our goals, but by the desire to conform to our principles. But one's motivation flows from one's purpose. One does not live for the sake of being moral; one acts morally in order to make the most out of his life. We obey nature in order to command it.”

An uninviting picture of life in Objectivism
Kelley says that he would not recommend OPAR to anyone who is unfamiliar with Objectivism because the book creates an uninviting picture of a life in accordance with the Objectivist code.  He points out that in the chapter on virtue, which is the longest chapter in the book, Peikoff presents the virtues “as forms of rationality and as constraints on the ends we can choose, rather than as means for living a happy life.” He does talk about happiness in a section in the chapter, but he does not grant primacy to happiness.

Best student and designated heir?
In his Preface to OPAR, Peikoff claims that he is qualified to present Rand’s philosophy as he is “her best student and designated heir.” My personal opinion is that such an assertion is not only in bad taste, it is also unbelievable. Kelley says that OPAR is not a scholarly analysis of Rand’s thought. “[Peikoff] writes in his own voice, and puts philosophical propositions forth as true of reality; his writing is therefore properly subject to the customary standards of clarity, rigor, and truth by which a work in philosophy must be judged.”

It is noteworthy that Kelley has identified these flaws (barring the last one) by focusing solely on a theme that Peikoff regards as central to the book: epistemological self-awareness. Kelley declares in the beginning of the review that he is not offering a complete inventory of the book. Can there be any doubt that if he were to go through the entire book with a fine-tooth comb many more flaws will come to light! Several commentators, including the philosopher Henry B. Veatch, have excoriated Peikoff for using vague and at times flawed arguments in OPAR.

Free Will: A Response to Sam Harris

Free Will: A Response to Sam Harris
Kurt Keefner 

Sam Harris’s Free Will (Simon & Schuster, 2012) crams lot of ideas that I find irrational. Consider these lines from the beginning of the book:

“Free will is an illusion. Our wills are simply not of our own making. Thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control.”

Harris claims that a murderer may not be responsible for his choices, and that a brain tumor may transform a normal man into a murderer:

"Imagine this murderer is discovered to have a brain tumor in the appropriate spot in his brain that could explain his violent impulses. That is obviously exculpatory. We view him as a victim of his biology, and our moral intuitions shift automatically. But I would argue that a brain tumor is just a special case of physical events giving rise to thoughts and actions, and if we fully understood the neurophysiology of any murderer's brain, that would be as exculpatory as finding a tumor in it.”

Kurt Keefner’s monograph Free Will: A Response to Sam Harris offers good arguments to show that Harris’s ideas on free will make no sense. In what follows, I will give a brief account of Keefner's philosophical case. In the first chapter, “Why It Matters,” Keefner points out that if we take free will as an illusion and the rational world as deterministic then hardworking and enterprising men will not get the credit for their success, and the serial murderers won’t be blamed for their depravities.

According to Keefner, the roots of Harris’s denial of free will lie in his dualism. While Harris does not believe in body and soul dichotomy like Descartes, he is still a dualist in a broader sense because he believes that the self constitutes of pure consciousness and unconscious processes. The idea of separating the pure consciousness from the unconscious, says Keefner, is “a philosophical move, even a theological move, but not a scientific one. His preposition that consciousness is “pure” is what underwrites his version of determinism.”

Consciousness is an attribute of an organism—it cannot exist on its own. The separation between pure consciousness and unconscious processes has no basis in science. In the chapter 3, “The Integrated Self,” Keefner identifies four levels of consciousness:

“There are non-conscious processes, such as the filtration of blood by the kidneys and the neural process that give rise to perception. Next there are the unconscious processes, such as our knowing how to speak our own language without being able to enunciate the rules of grammar explicitly. Third are the preconscious processes, such as remembering my sister’s name when I’m not thinking about her. Fourth are the conscious processes such as looking at my computer or taking about free will.”

All four processes of consciousness are fully integrated with the organism. “To act consciously is also to act preconsciously, unconsciously and non-consciously. They are a nested hierarchy. Being conscious intrinsically involves processes one is not directly conscious of. The idea of a “pure” consciousness is a fiction unrelated to real awareness.”

But with his idea of a dichotomy between conscious self and the unconscious self in place, Harris goes on to deduce the argument that “if any factor outside our awareness determines any part of our thoughts and actions, we don’t have free will.” This is an invalid argument and Keefner points out that “there is no reason why unconscious forces could not shape part of our mental lives while we consciously exercise some kind of decisive control.”

To defend his theory that the brain makes decisions before consciousness becomes aware of them, Harris uses the experiments conducted by the physiologist Benjamin Libet. But Keefner questions the validity of Libet’s experiments—he points out that it is illogical to see consciousness separately from the brain. “On the integrated view of the self, a conscious decision is something a person makes, not parts or aspects of a person, like a brain or a consciousness.”

On Harris’s controversial contention that murderers are not responsible for their actions, Keefner says that “such men often have exceptional disorders that diminish their power of choice so that their situation is not relevant to rest of us. Also, criminals are not known for their power of introspection—which may be part of the reason they become criminals in the first place—and thus their cases cannot be generalized to ours.”

While refuting Harris’s idea that free will is illusion, Keefner does not aim to prove the existence of free will. This is because “free will” is an axiomatic concept, like consciousness—you can’t prove the existence of free will for the same reason for which you can’t prove the existence of consciousness. Free will cannot be proved, but it can be observed. In the chapter, “Conclusion,” Keefner says:

“Apparently, for Harris if human beings are not created in the image of God, they are squalid animals driven by dark urges for things like beer and murder. Reason is not worth considering as a motivation. For Harris we not only do not have the dignity of being free, we do not even have the dignity of being intelligent. This diminution of man is actually worse than that of some religions.”

I will end this article with a question to Harris: Does he enjoy the fact that he is a successful writer and not a murderer? Well, I am sure he does.