San Diego Objectivist Study Group

A couple of us took a road trip this past weekend to Santa Monica, California to attend the invitations-only screening of We The Living. The invitation from Duncan Scott states:

In celebration of its upcoming DVD release, Duncan Scott Productions invites you and a guest to join us Saturday, April 18th at 7:00 p.m. for a rare big-screen presentation of the 1942 Italian feature film adaptation of Ayn Rand’s We The Living starring Rossano Brazzi and Alida Valli.

Duncan Scott, who co-produced the restored film will introduce. Immediately following the screening we will show the original ending to the film. Duncan will explain why Ayn Rand insisted that the scene be removed. This clip, along with almost 40 minutes of additional deleted scenes, will be included as an extra on the new DVD to be released in late May.

We have limited seating in the screening room, so please RSVP for yourself (and up to one guest), as soon as possible.

Duncan said that when Ayn Rand first watched the original ending with him and with the Holzers, and as the Italian word “Fine” appeared and grew out from the center to fill the screen, she reportedly joked, “Well, it certainly is not fine.”

The deleted scene is no more than two minutes long, but it does change the whole sense of life of the movie. It shows Kira walking away from the viewing perspective, uphill toward a hillcrest, in the snow, in her white wedding dress, toward the supposed border. Several rifle shots rang out. She slumps to her knees, gets up, climbs the hill some more, reaches the summit as the music crescendos, and then collapses and dies!

The film action in this sequence does not reflect the psychological triumph Kira achieved in the final pages of the book. I definitely agree with Rand that the scene had to be cut.

I enjoyed watching We The Living on many levels. It certainly is a romantic film. The actors are certainly pretty to look at. The climax is especially suspenseful and tearful (at least for me). A dialog that put a lump in my throat is by Andrei to Kira: “You are my highest reverence.” Now how often do you find a line like that in a movie?

The capacity-filled audience had an extended chat with Duncan after the screening. The DVD should come out next month but not before the third DVD of the history project.

“‘Value’ is that which one acts to gain and/or keep. The concept ‘value’ is not a primary. It presupposes an answer to the question: of value to whom and for what?” (TVOS “The Objectivist Ethics” 16a)

Given this objective theory of values, there can be two basic ways of valuing, which depend on the presupposition:

Of value to whom:
egoism: that each man is an end in himself, and that the beneficiary of an action ought to be the man who acts. ( TVOS  x-b)
altruism: that each man is a means to the ends of others, and that the beneficiary of an action ought to be someone other than the man who acts. ( TVOS viii-c)

For what:
egoist primary moral purpose: [each man aims for] the achievement of his own life and happiness. (TVOS “The Objectivist Ethics” 30a)
altruist primary moral purpose: [each man aims for] the fulfillment of the wishes and needs of others.

Requiring:
acting selfishly: acting for one’s own rational self-interest, which is applicable only in the context of a rational, objectively demonstrated ethics. ( TVOS x-d)
acting selflessly: acting for one’s irrational self-interest or others’ interests, by either sacrificing others to oneself or sacrificing oneself to others. ( TVOS xi-a-b).

Thus, to value,

• an egoist acts selfishly (for his own benefit) with the aim of his own life as the ultimate end.
• an altruist acts selflessly (for the benefit of others) as a means to serve their ends.

Quick, somebody in the comic books industry, make Steve Ditko an editor, an authority, to re-right super heroes in comic books! The article “Toyland” —recently released into the public domain—is a refreshing analysis of what is philosophically wrong with the American comic books industry. It affirms and gives voice to my decision long ago to stop buying and reading super-heroes comic books. My reasoning at the time was that it was as if all my favorite super heroes “jumped the shark.” Well, Steve Ditko has a much better explanation, and it is an Objectivist one.

From my perspective, there are three kinds of people who call themselves Objectivists: the miming Objectivists, the denying Objectivists, and the thinking Objectivists. Mimers don’t know Objectivism; they believe it as dogma. Deniers don’t know Objectivism; they feel it and reject parts they don’t like. With “Toyland,” and without ever saying so, Mr. Ditko reveals himself as a thinking Objectivist.

I like the way he introduces the readers to such notions as “standard of value”; values as either “intrinsic, subjective, or objective”; the distinction of the natural vs. the man-made; anti-concepts “the public,” “the right to know,” and the anti-hero “hero”; the philosophy of education, mentioning Montessori’s teaching methods; the laws of identity, noncontradiction, excluded middle; free will and responsibility, versus determinism and passive wishing; and the primacy of existence. Once you let pass the awkward writing style of the article, this is pretty substantial. Not bad for an artist!

One thing I don’t get fully is the inclusion of the two artworks. It is not clear to me what are the two contradictory “operating principles” that caused Mr. Laszlo Toth to strike his hammer.

Applied ethics concerns your actually living your life; it concerns the actuality of living a concrete, specific life. You can study ethics as much or as little as you want, but in the end it is you who has to choose whether you live your life, and if so what kind of life you choose to live.

From my perspective, I see applied ethics, or moral living, as having three phases: 1) choosing the correct standard, 2) choosing and ranking values, and 3) pursuing values. The most difficult phase is the last. (By “phase” I do not mean simply a temporal duration, in which one succeeds another, because all phases occur iteratively simultaneously; nor do I mean a process that may be optional for some or may be skipped without consequence. I mean strictly a certain layer of analysis in decision making toward the purpose of living. Every action in life however significant involves these layered considerations.) These phases of applied ethics need elaboration and concretization. But before doing so, I will first locate the literature and identify the terms for understanding.

Among the Objectivist literature so far examined, Ayn Rand makes a passing mention of the three phases altogether, but only doing so in her work on epistemology:

A moral code is a set of abstract principles; to practice it, an individual must translate it into the appropriate concretes—he must choose the particular goals and values which he is to pursue. This requires that he define his particular hierarchy of values, in the order of their importance, and that he act accordingly. Thus all his actions have to be guided by a process of teleological measurement. (The degree of uncertainty and contradictions in a man’s hierarchy of values is the degree to which he will be unable to perform such measurements and will fail in his attempts at value calculations or at purposeful action.) [ITOE 33b]

Elsewhere, about the first two phases, Rand writes: ” ‘That which is required for the survival of man qua man’ is an abstract principle [a standard] that applies to every individual man. The task of applying this principle to a concrete, specific purpose—the purpose of living a life proper to a rational being—belongs to every individual man [forming a hierarchy], and the life he has to live is his own.” (TVOS 27b) It is in the third phase that volitionally rational beings need to acquire virtues in order to avoid acting immorally. In particular, Rand advises that egoists cultivate the cardinal virtues of rationality, productiveness, and pride. (TVOS 27d)

In studying “The Objectivist Ethics,” I find it helpful to pay special attention to certain of Ayn Rand’s technical concepts:

hierarchy: [pertaining to concepts of evaluation] a teleological measurement in the psychological processes of evaluation identifying the ordinal ranking in accordance to a generic standard that serves to establish a graded relationship of means to end. ( ITOE 32d-33a)
moral code: [or in TVOS, code of values:] a set of abstract principles [serving as] a system of teleological measurement which grades the choices and actions open to man, according to the degree to which they achieve or frustrate the code’s standard of value. (ITOE 33a)
standard: an abstract principle that serves as a measurement or gauge to guide a man’s choices in the achievement of a concrete, specific purpose. (TVOS 27b)
standard of value: 1. a normative end toward which man’s actions are the means. ( ITOE 33a-b) 2. the standard by which one judges what is good or evil. (TVOS 25a)
good: that which is proper to the life of a rational being, given that reason is man’s basic means of survival. (TVOS 25a)
evil: that which negates, opposes, or destroys the life of a rational being, given that reason is man’s basic means of survival. (TVOS 25a)
code of morality: a code of values accepted by choice—a moral code accepted by choice. (TVOS 25a)
hierarchy of values: a particular man’s translation of a moral code into the appropriate concretes—through his choices of the particular goals and values, in the order of their importance, which he is to pursue—such that he can practice the morality and can act accordingly. ( ITOE 33b)
ethics:¹ 1. a science devoted to the discovery of the proper methods of living one’s life. (ITOE 36c) 2. a science dealing with discovering and defining a code of values. (TVOS 13d)
ethics:² 1. a code of values to guide man’s choices and actions—the choices and actions that determine the purpose and the course of his life. (TVOS 13d) 2. an abstract, conceptual code of values and principles to guide man’s choices and actions. (TRM 145a)
ultimate value: the end in itself which is a man’s own life, if he chooses it. ( TVOS 27c)

And now, to the task of elaborating on the three phases:

If a man chooses to live, then he enters Phase 1 necessitating his choosing a standard of value. There are many standards from which to choose. He can choose to live like a vegetable, a fish, a brute animal, etc.; or he can choose to live in the manner of a man. Each is a legitimate standard of value.

Which one is the best standard for him? At this premoral level, can there be such a question? Yes, but the answer is a metaphysical one. In accordance to the laws of identity and of causality, a man should live in accordance to his nature. If a fish lives best as a fish (in water), then a man lives best as a man. Thus, the best or objective standard of value for a man is “man’s life, or: that which is required for man’s survival qua man.” Nevertheless, because man is a volitional being, he is free to choose whichever standard of value by which to live.

How will he personally decide which standard is the best for him? That is his personal problem, a problem not of ethics but of epistemology. But assuming that he does know how to decide and does decide to accept some standard of value, then an entire moral code opens up and is implied in that decision. And he enters Phase 2, choosing a hierarchy of values.

On entering Phase 2, a man is held morally by a code of morality—the particular moral code he accepted by his choice in the previous phase. From here on, any choice or action he makes can be judged as moral or immoral by the standard of value integrated in that code of morality. In this phase, one part of his task is to choose concrete things that can be of value to him. These are the things that will constitute the content of his life. Another part is to rank these things into a hierarchy of values.

Must he figure out what he wants in life? Yes, this task belongs to every man, by the nature of man. Man is born without innate concepts and talents. He has to determine which facts and values to hold. He can be mistaken with either.

Does he have to examine his life and fill out its content? No, he does not; he is free to fill it out or to leave it sparse, and the history of mankind shows that most men do not have examined lives. Whether he does much or does little, the result is a hierarchy of values, his own, for good or for evil.

Can’t others figure them out for him? Yes, that is his choice also as a volitional being. Many men have cookie-cutter lives. Whole nations have hierarchies of values preset, prearranged, from cradle to grave.

It is not an easy job, this lonely task of iteratively, recursively choosing values. Rand advises, “Teleological measurement has to be performed in and against an enormous context: it consists of establishing the relationship of a given choice to all the other possible choices and to one’s hierarchy of values.” (ITOE 33c)

So too the choice for hierarchy of values can be judged morally. A man’s hierarchy of values may be more or less correct, relative to the standard of value chosen. For example, if a standard calls for man to take reason as his only absolute; then if a particular man’s hierarchy places reason as a mere backup to faith, then his hierarchy of values is inappropriate by that standard.

With a starter-hierarchy of values, a man enters Phase 3, acting to gain and keep values. Prior phases involve choosing (i.e., acting mentally). This phase is all about acting (i.e., acting existentially); it is about the actual business of living one’s life, about experiencing the joys and sufferings of life.

A man always has the choice to revisit the prior phases. Indeed, every moment of his waking life involves making the choice to live, which entails affirming or denying the standard of value chosen in Phase 1.  And throughout his life, a man can revisit Phase 2 to re-order, re-rank, re-affirm, or replace his values. This too is a choice he can make, if he values his choices and purposes as such.

Does a man know how to act to pursue his values? Ethics is the science devoted to defining guidelines for choosing and for acting. Acting without some guidance of knowledge is evil. One example should illustrate the point.

Sacrifice is an act that presumes a prior knowledge of a hierarchy of values. Suppose, right or wrong, a mother values her baby higher than a bunny rabbit. Then, when while driving in a car with her infant, she veers off the road suddenly in order to avoid colliding a crossing bunny at the cost of crashing the vehicle and killing the baby, she is in effect surrendering a higher value, the baby, in exchange for a lower value, the rabbit. Relative to her particular hierarchy of values, she has made a sacrifice.

It is in the third phase that having knowledge and practice of the virtues become relevant to the life of the person. In particular, the possession of the virtue of integrity can help a man to avoid valuing one way but acting another. Its becoming second-nature would have helped the woman above to keep her value, the baby, from sacrifice.

Each code of morality encourages a distinct set of virtues, and, obversely, discourages a distinct set of vices on the standard of value integrated. Some virtues in one ethics become vices in another ethics, and vice versa. Pride as a virtue, for example, in the ethics where the standard of man is man, becomes a sinful vice in the ethics where the standard of man is a brute. And mercy as a vice in the rational ethics, becomes a virtue in traditional morality.

Regardless, if practiced virtuously in Phase 3, a man will achieve his standard of value, be it man qua man or man qua brute. And he will achieve his ultimate value, be it life or death. It all depends on his hierarchy of values that is chosen in Phase 2, which then depends on his standard of life that is chosen in Phase 1. Thus, by the causal nature of reality, a man achieves exactly what he deserves in Phase 3.

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Advocating for a rational standard of man’s life qua man, Ayn Rand writes, “Man must choose his actions, values, and goals by the standard of that which is proper to man—in order to achieve, maintain, fulfill, and enjoy that ultimate value, that end in itself, which is his own life.” (TVOS 27c) And on this standard, Rand advises that egoists choose as their cardinal values: reason, purpose, and self. Why only three? Three, because valuing presupposes knowing, which can err, and presupposes the answers to—of value to whom and for what? Why these? Simple: reason, because it is the means of survival; purpose, because it is the end of any action; and self, because as beneficiary of action, it must equal to the action in value. The rest is up to each person.

“Value” is a relational concept. For example, “daughter” is a relational concept. If I begot a child, and if the child were female, then she would be a daughter relative to me, and I a father relative to her. Of course, apart from me and our relationship, she would still be a human being, a primate, an omnivore, a biped, a rational being, etc. In the same way, certain concrete things (tangible or intangible) can become values relative to me or to anyone belonging to the species of man.

Objectively, there are four criteria a concrete thing has to meet before it can become a human value (relative to me, etc.):

1. It must be capable of filling a human need—the lack of which could degrade or even terminate human life. A need arises out of a human capacity, be it biological or psychological.
2. It must be recognized to have such capability—through a discovery of knowledge—by the person or persons. (Forcing something on someone for his own good, when he doesn’t know that it is really good for him, will not make it a value to him.)
3. It is something within the power and range of the person(s) to choose and to obtain.
4. It must be actively pursued by the person(s) to gain or keep.

(And in the economic realm [per George Reisman (pdf) CATOE 40c], 5. It requires productive effort to acquire and must be expended in the form of purchasing demand.)

What justifies these criteria? The justification is that values are objective (and not either subjective or intrinsic). The objective is that which is to be “determined by the nature of reality, but to be discovered by man’s mind.” [CTUI 23c] Criterion 1 is independent of my personal desire or subjective whim. The nature of being human entails certain biological and psychological conditions for proper survival qua man. Criterion 2 is an affirmation of my relationship to reality—that nothing is given for free, not even the knowledge of what I need to survive, namely, the standard of man’s survival. Nothing can be an intrinsic value without a knower knowing it. Maybe God knows. But then “God” does not exist. Maybe society knows. But then society is merely a number of individual men, each with his own knowing mind. Criterion 3 pertains to a knowledge of me as a valuer, of my hierarchy of values, of my purpose in life; just as the previous criterion pertains to a knowledge of concrete things as candidates (and constraints) for valuing. If I were born male, a career in motherhood would be beyond my range and would not be a value relative to me; and I should not waste time pining about it even in my dreams. Criterion 4 affirms the causal nature of free will—that I am my own cause in thinking, choosing, and acting—and that nothing is of value to me if it isn’t I who seeks to gain and keep it.

An analysis of valuation in practice is posted here, and a critique of intrinsic valuation is posted here.

This weekend, if you are going out socially, say, to the beach bonfire or to a desert hike or to a culturo-ethnic film festival, there will certainly be people engaging in conversations on the topics of the day: politics, economic crisis, and so on. You might want to bring in the following points to the discussion:

Before getting deep into the technical details of whatever social problems, Walter E. Williams, in a recent column, bids us to ask our potential interlocutor two level-set questions:

1. Do you believe that it is moral and just for one person to be forcibly used to serve the purposes of another?
2. And, if that person does not peaceably submit to being so used, do you believe that there should be the initiation of some kind of force against him?

The principle Dr. Williams asks us to lay out explicitly is, man’s rights. This is the moral precondition for a free society. To the extent that any discussion of politics or economics rejects a man’s right to think and act, to that extent the discussants are rejecting the only way toward a return to civilization.

And if you get deep into the technical details about tax issues, political programs, and so on, Dr. Williams, in an earlier article, reminds us always to frame the issue by grounding the terms of discourse to perceptual concretes.

1. As “redness” is not a predicate of Wednesdays, or “sharpness” is not a predicate of minds, so “paying taxes” is not a predicate of corporations.
2. Which man has more capital: the man moving dirt with a shovel or the man opeating an earthmover? Which man is more productive and earns more wages? What happens when capital is taxed?

No matter how deep or how abstract the topics get, as long as you ground your ideas, you will gain clarity for yourself and your acquaintances. That is enough for you to gain credibility, enough perhaps for you to identify to your listeners a possible source of the economic problem:

“You might wonder how congressmen can get away with taxes and other measures that reduce our prosperity potential. Part of the answer is the anti-business climate promoted in academia and the news media. The more important reason is that prosperity foregone is invisible. In other words, we can never tell how much richer we would have been without today’s level of congressional interference in our lives and therefore don’t fight it as much as we should.”

And if you persevere in getting your acquaintances and bystanders to maintain cognitive contact with the terms of the political issue, you may even get to quote Charles Krauthammer’s latest analysis:

“If Obama has his way, the change that is coming is a new America: “fair,” leveled and social democratic. Obama didn’t get elected just to warranty your muffler. He’s here to warranty your life.”

With the popularity of Atlas Shrugged resurging on account of governmental fascism, the movie deal is reviving, again. This article, mentioned on Drudge Report today, details the principal players for the Hollywood project.

Ryan Kavanaugh of Relativity Media is being reported as the new financier. Randall Wallace continues to be the scriptwriter, as are the Karen and Howard Baldwin the producers, and Lionsgate Films the distributor. David Kelley, according to Ed Hudgins in a radio interview, continues to be the co-producer and has final say about the script and its philosophical implications. Film shooting, if it is going to happen, must take place before the end of 2010; otherwise the film-rights option, currently held by John Aglialoro, will expire and revert back to the Rand estate.

The recent effort, with Vadim Perelman as director and Angelina Jolie as Dagny Taggart, fell through in late September 2008.  It has been in limbo, until now, only with the threat becoming real of reality imitating art.