Morals and the Free Society: 8. Ayn Rand

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Here is the eighth chunk of the argument. To return to the seventh chunk, click here. To advance to the ninth chunk, click here. The complete essay is posted here.

Ayn Rand claimed that her system of ethics “is the moral base needed by…Capitalism” (1961, 33, all citation emphases original). Her moral defense of a free society can be stated very briefly as follows. Human beings must live by reason. Other animals may be able to get by on instinct, but the human animal cannot. This point is made particularly clear by considering economic activity since the industrial revolution. The exponential growth in quality of life by essentially every indicator—from life expectancy to population to nutrition to health to education to comfort and leisure opportunities to you-name-it—since the industrial revolution has been made possible not only by the application of scientific and technological knowledge but by innovation and entrepreneurship. These are the achievements of a rational animal and only a rational animal. But the achievements of advanced economies are only the most dramatic demonstration. In every aspect of life, at any level of civilization, we can and must employ reason to determine our interests, goals, and actions, if we want to be successful in the game of life.

Now, reason is a faculty of individuals. Continue reading →

Morals and the Free Society: 6a. Addendum on Cultural Group Selection

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Apropos of Hayek’s claim that the mores needed to sustain the extended order (namely, several property and personal responsibility) evolved by a process of cultural group selection, I want to add a note about the origin of the prosocial attitudes (or values, behaviors, etc) needed to support the operation of the free market. To return to part 6 (on Hayek), click here. To advance to the next chunk of the main argument, click here. The complete essay is posted here.

Bowles and Gintis, in A Cooperative Species: Human Reciprocity and Its Evolution (2011), provide a helpful chart of the different theories of how prosocial behavior might have evolved (page 53). The main division is between some form of genetic evolution and cultural evolution. Genetic evolutionary theories basically depend either on some sort of kin selection mechanism (organisms are benevolent toward family members because they share their genes) or on group selection (prosocial traits like honesty spread because groups of honest individuals out-compete groups of dishonest individuals). Cultural evolutionary theories generally depend on some sort of mechanism of reciprocity, either direct (tit-for-tat) or indirect (benefits of having a good reputation).

None of these provides a good explanation of how the sort of virtuous behavior that brings the free market into existence could have evolved, especially in large scale societies. Continue reading →

Another Day, Another Assault: Everyday Life in Hebron

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I’m practically counting the days until I can get on a plane and head back into stuff like this. It sure beats grading! Of course, the problem is that I’ll have a lot of grading to do, too. I just hope my pedagogical responsibilities don’t interfere with my tourist activities (NB: tourist, not terrorist). 

Yes, don’t worry: I’ll have a camera, so I’ll be sure to take lots of pictures, maybe even do some filming! A PoT exclusive: you can watch me get beat up by young men who really ought to be doing something more productive with their free time than assaulting people for fun. Instead of doing that, why not register for my political philosophy seminar at Al Quds U? You have permission to audit the class if you behave. But leave the dog at home.

Moral of the story: the Israel Defense Forces aren’t occupying Hebron’s H2 zone to protect wogs. The’re in Hebron to protect thugs. Just so that we’re clear on that. Continue reading →

Paging Miss Anscombe

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Here’s my writing assignment for week 3 of Phil 250 EL, “Making Moral Decisions” (fully online section). All of the material covered in class was about the advisability or not of drug use; none of it focused on questions of legality or politics.

Directions: Write a 750 word essay outlining the basics of your views on the use of mind- or mood-altering chemical substances for recreational purposes. At one extreme, someone might argue that you ought never to take drugs for recreational purposes. At the other extreme, you might argue, with Sullum, that there’s nothing wrong with doing so. Where do you end up? In particular, how does autonomy figure into your answer?

Representative answers, Type 1 (all emphases added): Continue reading →

AC/WTF in Lisbon: A Requiem Mass

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I don’t understand this. I will never understand this. I try to come to terms with it, but words fail me. In my grief, I can only call upon the words of others, wiser than me.

“Mysteries like these can no man penetrate…”
–Voltaire, from “Poeme sur le desastre de Lisbonne,” on the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755

“Oh Voltaire! Oh humanity! Oh idiocy!”
–Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, II.35

“You been…thunderstruck!”
–AC/DC

It’s a long way to the top if you wanna rock and roll. A long way down, too.

Postscript, May 9, 2016: OK, Axl/DC is starting to grow on me in a weird-ass musical Frankenstein’s monster guilty-pleasure sort of way. I mean, it could have been worse, but then, it could have been better (cf. Lizzy Hale).

Norman Finkelstein on Naz Shah’s “Anti-Semitism”

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I just happened to read Norman Finkelstein’s recent interview with MintPress News, discussing the British Labour Party’s fundamentally ridiculous “anti-Semitism” scandal involving MP Naz Shah and others. I highly recommend it. I don’t agree with every last thing Finkelstein says (read it for yourself and decide for yourself), but I certainly agree with general point he’s making: the accusations of anti-Semitism being made against Shah are almost complete nonsense, and reflect an amazing double standard when it comes to the standards that govern acceptable political speech in the Anglophone world. No one seems to feel the need to make an argument for why Shah’s actions were anti-Semitic; the accusation is supposed to be too obvious to require argument. But there isn’t a particle of evidence to support the accusations in question: they seem literally to have been generated out of whole cloth, and accepted at face value despite that. Continue reading →

Allah Save the Queen

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So London just got its first Pakistani Muslim mayor.

I’m a Londoner, I’m European, I’m British, I’m English, I’m of Islamic faith, of Asian origin, of Pakistani heritage, a dad, a husband.

Why do I feel such a powerful impulse to throw cold water on this? Is it because, as an apostate Muslim, I find something problematic about a supposed Muslim who lists his religious commitment fifth on a list of politically expedient identities that helped him win an election? Or is it because, as a person of South Asian descent, I just find loud public expressions of South Asian–sorry Indian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, Nepali, Kashmiri, or Bengali identity really embarrassing?  Continue reading →

Ignorance Is Strength

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Representative Peter T. King of New York, whose Long Island district Mr. Trump won overwhelmingly in the April 19 primary, echoed other Republicans in pledging to vote for Mr. Trump even though he had reservations, calling Mr. Trump “a guy with no knowledge of what’s going on.”

–Patrick Healy, Jonathan Martin, and Maggie Haberman, “With Donald Trump in Charge, Republicans Have a Day of Reckoning,” The New York Times, May 4, 2016. Continue reading →

Our Friend, the State

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I’ve just received three letters in the mail that prove that in the end, truth and justice do triumph, and dreams do come true. These letters restore to me, through the beneficence of The State, two of the dearest objects of my heart’s desire–justice and a wife! They’re from the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office. The three letters are all identical to one another; their having been sent to me in triplicate is, I suppose, symbolic of the bounty and riches of my new estate. I’m blessed thricefold. Continue reading →