The article, "Property and Principle: A Review Essay on Bernard H. Siegan's Economic Liberties and the Constitution" by Larry Salzman totally kicks ass.
Check it out!
Update: If anyone is interested in property rights and legal history, do take a moment to check out the footnotes -- there are some great recommendations out there.
I have recently finished reading Craig Biddle's book, "Loving Life: The Morality of Self-Interest and the Facts that Support It" and loved it. I think it should be compulsory reading for any just-discovering Objectivist who is looking to understand and integrate the philosophy of Ayn Rand into his life. I've read a lot of Biddle's articles from his quarterly journal,The Objectivist Standard and think of his work as completely awesome. He specializes in bringing complex abstract problems to the readers in extremely simple terms. This book was the first book of his I've ever read and really enjoyed it.
I had written sometime earlier that, "What we need today is not just a defense of the free market from economists; people like Henry Hazlitt and Von Mises did that decades ago but we still see socialism and fascism around us every day. It is the notion of altruism that we need to dismantle and bomb away. Until it is accepted that a person has a duty to live for somebody else, the growth of the mixed economy will not stop nor the growth of regulations until we get to a point of no return. To fix it, its not just free market economics we need but cultural change that will show that a person should be selfish and pursue his chosen values as he sees fit."
Craig Biddle does exactly that. He demonstrates that morality is not a matter of divine revelation, social convention or personal opinion-but, rather, is the factual requirements of human life and happiness. My favorite parts from his book are the early chapters where he is setting the context of the rest of the book. He starts off by explaining the false alternative of religion v. subjectivism and very plainly and clearly reasons that both – religion and subjectivism – uphold sacrifice as the moral virtue and selflessness as the moral ideal.
But what I take away from the book – the thing that made the cut – was his explanation of the is-ought problem and the nature of values. I had never been aware of the is-ought problem or David Hume's theory until now. The theory says that one can never go from the realm of facts to the realm of values – that there is nothing in the what is that tells us the what we ought to do. As Biddle puts it, "But reason allows us to identify facts and only facts, which alone does not seem to tell us about anything about what we morally ought to do. There simply is no fact labeled "ought" out there." If one witnesses a murder, then the relevant facts are that one man is stabbing the other while the other is trying to resist or run away. Hume asked, in essence, where is the notion or concept good in facts? How does one get from facts to values? By analyzing such a premise, Biddle sets a context to the discovery of Ayn Rand and why her discovery was so fundamental in nature. The answer to the is-ought problem lies in the nature of values.
Biddle notes that Ayn Rand did not start out by asking what are values but asked why does man need values in the first place? The need for values arises from the fact that life – any life is conditional. The notion of good stems from acknowledging this fact and doing everything that sustains and promotes life. The only morality that grasps the fact that genuine happiness comes from the achievement of one's values is Ayn Rand's theory of selfishness. The notion of value is not a primary; it presupposes the questions: value for what? and value to whom? Rocks, for example, don't value staying in one piece or not whereas I definitely do. I value food and shelter precisely because my life is ultimately at stake. It is precisely because one's ultimate value -- life -- is at stake – that at each moment one may or may not exist – one has to take life affirming actions if they seek the stuff of good living. The standard for which one judges a thing to be good or bad is: man's life. Thus, all that promotes man's life is good for man and everything hinders it is bad for man.
The other question a value presupposes is a value to whom? I was always unclear what value to whom precisely meant and Biddle gave me a lot to chew on and process. Biddle writes, the question value to whom, put another way is asking: Who should be the beneficiary of values? Should the beneficiary of values be the subject himself or some other person or entity? If we are to take actions that promote life we must grasp the fact that life is the attribute of an individual. To promote life, the beneficiary of a value should be the individual himself. The morality that holds that the individual himself is the beneficiary of values is the morality of rational egoism.
Resolving the is-ought gap, Ayn Rand wrote, "The fact that a living entity is, determines what it ought to do." In other words, she said that concept of values like all other concepts is the grasp of certain facts: it is the fact that life is conditional that make the transition from facts to values – possible and necessary – if one chooses to live.
If one chooses to remain in existence, then one must use the faculty of reason that arranges the data gathered from our senses in conceptual form, by the method of logic. Reason, like life, is the attribute of the individual since it is only the individual who can observe, think, make deductions and understand the world around us. If the individual chooses to sustain his life, then, in short, he must be productive. I really enjoyed Biddle's desert island examples to concretize higher abstractions. On the point of productivity, if one were on a desert island one would have to produce to live, the relationship with reality doesn't change even in a specialized society because one still has to produce to live. Other lively examples involving desert islands scenarios occur when he explains the nature of rights and the requirements of a civilized society. Desert island examples, I think, reduces the perceptual data one has to hold in their RAM thus making the reasoning easier to follow.
The chapter on Objective Moral Virtues is wonderfully written and is filled with examples underlying the principle that one can never fake reality and get away with it. The primary virtue is rationality. As Miss Rand puts it, "it is the recognition and acceptance of reason as one's only source of knowledge, one's only judge of values and one's only guide to action." Since rationality as such does not offer specific guidance, it is narrowed down into other virtues like independence, productiveness, integrity, justice, honesty and pride Examples given range from the dishonest manager who occasionally promotes his employees on the basis of seniority or gender or race and to the "selfish" activity of cheating on a test. The book does a great job of analyzing higher level abstractions and concretizing them into great examples.
Loving Life engages and introduces complex principles for readers who have no prior knowledge of philosophy. If anybody is looking for a genuine book on self-improvement, this is it.
[Update: The first two chapters of the book are available for the subscribers of The Objectivist Standard here and here.]
I've received my copy of the latest edition of The Objectivist Standard and I couldn't resist recommending two excellent articles in it.
The first is "Justice Holmes and the Empty Constitution" by Thomas A. Bowden [accessible for free]. It surveys the dissenting opinion of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. in the case of Lochner v. New York. The article introduces the reader to early 20th century New York and the Bakeshop Act of 1895. The case challenges one of the first few regulations that were set on bakery shop owners. "The Act made it a crime for the owner of a bakeshop to allow a laborer to work more than 10 hours in one day, or more than 60 hours in one week." Lochner, a bakery owner was found guilty for violating the provisions of the said law. He decided to challenge it on the ground that his contract rights were being violated. Although his claim was rejected by the lower Courts, it was upheld by the Supreme Court -- on fickle grounds conceding the principle of liberty. Justice Holmes reframed the issue and asked a more fundamental question: What if, the constitution doesn't specify the relationship between the State and the individual itself? As he saw it, it is the opinion of the majority that subjectively shapes and shifts the law and that the constitution does not support any political theory.
Each time, the validity of the constitution is thwarted for the opinions of the majority, I find myself asking, "What is the whole point of writing a constitution in the first place?" The purpose of a constitution is to limit the power of the majority -- to make sure that democracy or mob-rule does not exist. To claim that a constitution does not limit the power of the government is absurd; it means annihilating the essence of the document while retaining the word. It is absurd to deny that Americans do not have individual rights even when the right to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness are clearly enumerated.
I highly recommend the article or maybe it is the fact that I am a law student that I could not let it pass without mention.
The interview I recommend is, "An Interview with a "Capitalist Pig" Jonathan Hoenig on Hedge Funds, the Economic Crisis and the Future of America". Until I'd read this interview, I had absolutely no idea what a hedge fund was and never really understood what "speculating" was all about. Although it is relatively easy to prove that the financial mess was not caused by capitalism (thanks to Yaron Brook), it gets pretty tough to really understand and comprehend the articles and posts that delve deep into the economic crisis. However, this interview is free of such jargon and makes for an excellent introductory piece to a layman.
Enjoy!
For the better or worse, I've watched Angels and Demons twice. I felt the first review didn't address the central question the movie asks over and over again: Could one ever bridge the gap between religion and science? Here is my take:
Metaphysically Speaking
Science is the product of observation and the application of reason to understand the physical and natural world around us i.e. understanding the natural world which is independent of our consciousness. Now what does it mean for a thing to be "supernatural"? Nature is all there is even including everything that there is in the outer space. If a star ends at a particular point, then it ends at that point. It is not limitless. For that matter, any entity be it on earth or outerspace or wherever, if a part of the natural world and exists, then cannot shrug the restrictions placed by identity. It has to act in accordance with its identity and properties. If a thing exists, it has to follow natural law that to be is to be something. A thing that is not something specific cannot exist. If there is nothing, then there really is nothing.
Lets consider another angle. Leonard Peikoff tells us in OPAR, there can be no fact of this reality and this world that transcends everything we know. Thus, any inferences from the natural can only lead to more of the natural, not to something that does not exist. Take rocks. If we decide to research rocks, then all inferences drawn from it will lead to only more of the natural world. For instance, a discussion on rocks may lead us to understand that there are different kinds of rocks viz., igneous rocks, sedimentary rocks, metamorphic rocks and so on. There can be no evidence that will arise that will lead us an entity beyond the whole of existence itself. The realm of evidence itself then becomes inapplicable.
Craig Biddle nails it in his book, "Loving Life: The Morality of Self-Interest and the Facts that Support It" when he says:
"But that raises the question: How can anyone know anything about that which is "not an aspect of nature" or "greater than the universe" or "beyond our sensory abilities"? Nature is all there is; the universe is the totality of it; and our senses are our only source of information. In other words, such "knowledge" would require understanding of a non-thing from a non-place by the means of non-sense.
This is why religionists of all walks ultimately echo the famous words of Saint Augustine: I do not know in order to believe, I believe in order to know."
Epistemological Stand
If man wishes to survive on Earth, then his survival entails a long chain of factual requirements he has to fulfill in order to live. Ayn Rand summed up the factual requirements succinctly as, "One cannot place an 'I wish' above 'It is'". These 8 words sum up such a vast quantity of knowledge that one needs to delve a little deeper into the issue. To refrain from placing an "I wish" above "It is" presupposes that one acknowledges that a world exists "out there" and exists independently of our wishes, feelings and desires. It acknowledges the responsibility that it is the duty of the individual to conform to facts and not the other way round. This view towards reality is known as the primacy of existence viewpoint according to Objectivism. It acknowledges the fact that a reality exists out there independent of our consciousness and that it is our duty to conform to facts through the faculty of reason. The opposite kind is exhibited by the primacy of consciousness viewpoint. It is the view that reality should shrug off the restrictions placed by identity and conform to ones whims and feelings. To them, it's not the duty of the individual to conform to the identity of things to live but the duty of things to act according to their wishes. True, nobody actually states it in such explicit terms but the primacy of viewpoint is assumed in any argument for religion or subjectivism.
Reason is the faculty that helps us draw relationships, deduce, induce, connect ideas, observe data and build it up into a consistent sum of knowledge. Using the faculty of reason presupposes the fact that one acknowledges the primacy of existence of viewpoint; that there is a world independent of us which requires observation and study. On the opposite side of reason stands faith. Faith is precisely this: the belief of the existence of a thing for which no evidence exists. Having faith presupposes the primacy of consciousness viewpoint; that one can close their eyes to facts and pray that reality conform to ones desires. Application of reason, leads us to knowledge and progress while the application of faith leads us voluntary blindness and ignorance.
If reason is our faculty of knowledge, then one looks outwards for knowledge and corrects his mistakes through a span of time. It is pertinent to ask then, what is the means of knowledge of the faithful? Since metaphysically speaking, God doesn't exist or since in fact, God doesn't exist, it is metaphysically impossible for God to inject knowledge into an individual head through the means revelations, intuitions and whatnot. A person disavowing his distinguishing characteristic of reason, has only one other guide to action: feeling. He does a thing and acts in a particular fashion because he feels so. He feels that God magically appeared in his head and told him to take a course of action. He obviously cannot prove the existence of a god, let alone entering his head but that doesn't concern him – it is not consistency that matters to him but having "a little faith" totally does.
Coming back to the question: can one bridge the gap between religion and science? To state the question differently: can one bridge the gap between reason and faith? Can one bridge the primacy of consciousness viewpoint and primacy of existence viewpoint? Can one bridge the rational means of knowledge with revelations? Can one bridge emotionalism with reason as our primary means of knowledge? Can one take two extremes [science and religion], extremes from all different angles and claim to bridge them? Could one bridge clear logic with the twistedness of the arbitrary? Could one bridge the method that furthers man's life and the method that hinders it?
The answer is painstakingly obvious: a resounding, "No!"
Update: Minor edits.
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