Nathaniel Brandens Case Miscellaneous Objections, Nos. 1214 by James Kiefer Unpublished dot-matrix printout dated |
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Objections to the Argument
Let us now consider a series of objections to the argument just stated. I begin with what I take to be simple misunderstandings, and proceed to what I regard as more subtle and substantive objections. I have included no objections that I have not actually met, and have tried to include all that I have met from anyone even remotely sympathetic with Objectivist principles. Inevitably, some readers will complain that I have included what they regard as clearly trivial, while ignoring the real, the conclusive, the obvious objection, namely.... But that sort of dissatisfaction is inherent in any disputation that is not a direct one-to-one exchange. (1) The competence of our minds is an axiom; any attempted disproof is absurd.(12) Power and Goodness Is God good? I take it as agreed that moral judgements are assertions about the nature of objective reality, and that mans mind is a suitable instrument for the examination of moral questions. [01] It is then only a special case of the previous argument to conclude that Gods moral judgements are necessarily correct. Again, thinking (focusing) is the basic virtue, and refusal to think (blanking out) the basic vice. [02] But an omniscient being focuses on everything. In particular, John Galt lists seven virtues and defines each as the recognition of the fact When people ask whether God is good, they usually mean, Is he benevolent? In particular, is he benevolent to us? Does he will our good? Since he designed our minds, our basic tool of survival, we may conclude that he wills us to be rational, to live in the manner appropriate to men. And this, surely, is willing our good. (If there are intermediate designers, then we must say instead that he wills the good of beings who will the good ... of beings who will our good.) On the other hand, it does not appear that God regards all instances of human pain, fear, failure, or frustration as evils to be eliminated at all costs. But then, as we shall see, neither do Objectivists. How powerful is God? To begin with, he is the ultimate designer. By the definition of design as given about, the things he has designed have come about as a result of his intending them. Again, as we have seen, reality and Gods awareness of that reality are identical. If Gods thoughts are dependent on his will, then all reality is dependent on his will and he is omnipotent. Now, someone might object that not every thought is voluntary that a man who thinks that he has a toothache might prefer to be thinking otherwise. (I reserve comment on the validity of this objection.) But certainly the presumption is that any given thought of an agent of volitional consciousness is under that agents control. We therefore have, if not a proof that God is omnipotent, at least rational grounds for expecting him to be very powerful. Further discussion will be found in connection with It is a common practice to define God as a being of power, wisdom, and goodness, and clearly the three attributes are closely related. We know that evil is impotent. [04] Therefore, power implies goodness. Power also implies wisdom, as It may be asked: If God has designed our minds to enable us to learn the truth, why is it that our minds sometimes make mistakes? It will be observed that the Problem of Error is only a special case of the Problem of Evil. Since we shall be discussing the more general problem in connection with Miss Rand writes: Is [mans] judgement automatically right? No. What causes his judgement to be wrong? The lack of sufficient evidence, or his evasion of the facts, or his inclusion of considerations other than the facts of the case. [06] An agent that gathers data through its senses, or that gathers data at all, will by its nature sometimes lack some of the evidence relevant to a given question; and a being of volitional consciousness is by its nature free to evade evidence or to include irrelevant considerations. To ask, then, why God has not made man infallible is to ask why he has given man free will and a sensory apparatus. That men are fallible is a problem only for those who suppose that if the world is dependent on God for its existence, then the world must in some sense be God, that God is simply another name for the Universe itself, the sum total of reality, looked at in a religious way. This view is called pantheism. Those who take it say that all my thoughts are really Gods thoughts, an aspect of the Divine Mind, and that all my actions are really Gods actions, an aspect of the Divine Activity. This puts them in the position of maintaining either that there is no such thing as a false thought, or a wrong action, or else that the distinction between right and wrong, between true and false, is of no importance on the Divine level. [07] And that, I submit, is a sufficient refutation of pantheism. An adequate account of mans mind must account both for knowledge and for error. [08] Atheism leaves no room for the possibility of knowledge. Pantheism leaves no room for the possibility of error. Only theism, the belief that we are created by God but distinct from God, accounts for both. Objection: Objectivism teaches that reality is objective, that it is independent of any consciousness. Theism, as you have pointed out, holds that all of reality is dependent on Gods consciousness. Thus the two are fundamentally incompatible. Let us suppose for the sake of discussion that your argument is valid. Will Objectivists become theists on the strength of it? They had better not. Admitting that Reply: Admittedly, some Objectivist statements of the axiom put it that reality is independent of any consciousness. [09] On the other hand, some say only that it is independent of human consciousness, [10] and some straddle the fence. [11] Considering that Objectivist writers do not believe in any superhuman consciousness, it is natural that they should not always make it clear whether their statements apply to every mind or only to every human mind. (A man who believes that all crows are black will not always specify whether he is talking about all crows or only about all black crows.) What concerns us is not the exact wording that they may have used but the context of the assertion. Why is it essential to hold that reality is objective? What is the contrary position? What philosophical error is
Surely the point is sufficiently made. If we say, Reality is whatever References [Editors notes are in blue.] * The title refers to Nathaniel Brandens lecture The Concept of God, from his lecture series The Basic Principles of Objectivism. That lecture is fully transcribed in his book The Vision of Ayn Rand: The Basic Principles of Objectivism (Gilbert, Ariz.: Cobden Press, 2009), chapter 4. Partial and perhaps complete audios seem to be available throughout the Internet, especially here. See also [01] A. Rand, What Is Capitalism? 4/12/55ff. [References of this form refer to The Objectivist Newsletter, so that volume 4, number 12 would be December 1965. After The objective theory holds that the good is neither an attribute of things in themselves nor of mans emotional states, but an evaluation of the facts of reality by mans consciousness according to a rational standard of value. (Rational in this context, means: derived from the facts of reality and validated by a process of reason.) A. Rand, What Is Capitalism? 4/12/56e. [December 1965] If one knows that the good is objective i.e., determined by the nature of reality, but to be discovered by mans [02] A. Rand, AS 944d-i (1017aa-gg [hardback]). Thinking is mans basic virtue, from which all the others proceed. And his basic vice, the source of all his evils, is that nameless act which you all practice, but struggle never to admit: the willful suspension of ones consciousness, the refusal to think not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know. AS 394x (418e-f, hb) & 396t-u (420f-g, hb) & N. Branden, Emotions and Repression 5/8/14. [August 1966. The passage was removed from The Psychology of Self-Esteem, where it should have appeared on There are no evil thoughts except one: the refusal to think. N. Branden I.A.D.: What is psychological maturity? 4/11/53jj [November 1965] ... Objectivism holds that the act of thinking is the root of all virtue.... VOS 25. [The Virtue of Selfishness, paperback edition (New York: Signet Books, 1961-1964), Mans basic vice, the source of all his evils, is the act of unfocusing his mind, the suspension of his consciousness, which is not blindness, but the refusal to see, not ignorance, but the refusal to know. A. Rand, The Cult of Moral Grayness 3/6/21cc and VOS 76. [paperback edition]. There are many reasons why most people are morally imperfect, i.e., hold mixed, contradictory premises and [03] AS 944vv-947R (1018gg1021l). [The parallel passage in A. Rand, For the New Intellectual (New York: Signet Books, 1961) is on [04] A. Rand, WIAR 175. [N. Branden and B. Branden, Who Is Ayn Rand (New York: Paperback Library, Inc., 1964). Barbara Branden is quoting Ayn Rand. The passage occurs on page 176 of the paperback edition; page 220 in the hardback edition (New York: Random House, 1962).] Evil, left to its own devices, is impotent and self-defeating. AS 950ff-hh (1024hh-ii). [The parallel passage is in For the New Intellectual (pb), is on page 135.] Evil, not value, is an absence and a negation, evil is impotent and has no power but that which we let it extort from us. A. Rand, The Anatomy of Compromise 3/1/4ff. [January 1964. The parallel passage is in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (hardback), The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. Whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles. [05] N. Branden, The Concept of God, [in The Vision of Ayn Rand: The Basic Principles of Objectivism (Gilbert, Ariz.: Cobden Press, 2009), page 97. Also in the Atlas Societys YouTube recordings, beginning at 14:42.] Observe that the attribute of omniscience is necessitated by the attribute of omnipotence. [06] A. Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology 5/11/4g [References of this form refer to The Objectivist Newsletter, so that [07] L. Peikoff, Nazism and Subjectivism 10/1/10d. [January 1971] Although strenuously protesting his devotion to objectivity, [Hegel] denies that there is any reality independent of mind, and claims that the physical world is a creation or a projection of an Absolute Mind, whose highest stage and expression is human consciousness. L. Peikoff, Nazi Politics¸ 8/4/1e, 2c. [April 1969] Reality, declares Hegel, is inherently contradictory, it is a systematic progression of colliding ... At that point, i.e., at the apex and climax of reality, it turns out, in Hegels view, that distinctions of any kind including the distinctions between mind and matter, and between one man and another are unreal (opposites are identical, [08] A. Rand, Intro. to Objectivist Epistemology 5/1/4g & IOE 67. [Jamess citation here is in error. The passage is in February 1967. In the monograph it is on page 70; in the Expanded Edition, it is on page 79.] [09] N. Branden, WIAR 49. [Who Is Ayn Rand (New York: Paperback Library, Inc., 1964), page 49. The passage occurs in the hardback edition (New York: Random House, 1962) on page 56.] The name that Ayn Rand has chosen for her system is FNI 22. [For the New Intellectual] ... that there is only one reality, the one which man perceives that it exists as an objective absolute (which means: independently of the consciousness, the wishes or the feelings of any perceiver) that the task of mans consciousness is to perceive, not to create [10] A. Rand, Introducing Objectivism 1/8/35j-bb. [August 1962] In the space of a column, I can give only the briefest summary of my position, as a frame-of-reference for all my future columns. My philosophy, Objectivism holds that: 1. Reality exists as an objective absolute facts are facts, independent of mans feelings, wishes, hopes or fears. FNI 22. Platos [11] A. Rand, IAD: Who is the final authority in ethics? 4/2/7f-k. [February 1965; the essay is also available on-line here, and is included in The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought (New York: Meridian Library, 1990), the quotation appearing on page 18] Objectivity is both a metaphysical and an epistemological concept. It pertains to the relationship of a consciousness to existence. Metaphysically, it is the recognition of the fact that reality exists independent of any perceivers consciousness. Epistemologically, it is the recognition of the fact that a perceivers (mans) consciousness must acquire knowledge of reality by certain means (reason) in accordance with certain rules (logic). [12] L. Peikoff, Nazism and Subjectivism 10/1/11e. [January 1971] [13] A. Rand, The Comprachicos 9/9/6e. [September 1970] [14] A. Rand, IAD: Who is the final authority in ethics? 4/2/7cc-ee [February 1965. See note 11 above.] [15] L. Peikoff, Nazism and Subjectivism 10/1/3d, f, h, 9a-c, e. [January 1971; Where James has infallible mark, the original reads infallible sign] [16] L. Peikoff. See Note 7 |
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