Subject: personal: direct reason

From: Mark Sulkowski <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Feb 1994 21:04:28 -0500 (EST)

From: Bryan Douglas Caplan <[email-masked]>
>What's important is that, on your account, you
>derive the fact that the argument ad hominem is a fallacy from the nature
>of truth.  And how do you come to learn about the nature of truth?  THAT
>is where direct reason is clearly coming in.  If you re-read your explanation,
>it is a classic case of simply giving a clear statement of an evident truth,
>and relying upon my direct reason to see that you are right.  (You are, of
>course.)  I don't see a proof; I see a clear statement of a proposition which
>you verify with the intellect.
>So yes, I think you are using your direct reason here.

	Okay.  Interesting.  I'll admit that you may be onto something here.

>We need all of the double-checks we can get, fallible
>creatures that we are.  But notice that it works both ways: the intellect
>can serve as a reality check on OBSERVATION.

	Hmmm, I hadn't thought of that.  You're right.

>But I would disagree if you thought (do you?) that observation has veto power
>over the intellect, in the sense that we always go with observation over
>the intellect when there is a conflict.  I think that we must weigh the
>respective evidences provided, and decide accordingly.

	I agree with you on this point.

>Thus, when I decided that Rand's validation of
>morality was erroneous, and the route of direct reason was valid, there wasn't
>any exact moment when my mind changed.  I just thought and re-thought the
>question, and gradually I came to a new position.  Interesting.

	Indeed.

	I'm still confused about what role direct reasoning can play in
morality and ethics though.

>   a. "Happiness is good."  Well, I think about it and see that it is true.

	?  This is a puzzling one.  I suppose there may be something deep
within us that desires happiness.  But *I* would prefer to understand how
happiness relates to our well-being.  I'd rather not get into the trap of
confusing just any desire with our good.

>Also, I think about its opposite ("Happiness is evil"), which is absurd.

	Well, happiness would have to be bad for us to be evil.  There is
no apparent reason why this might be the case, so I suppose your conclusion
is reasonable on the face of it.

>On a moral claim as basic as this, I'm not sure what more to say.  Except:
>other's attempts to "prove" it are hard to believe.

	For you maybe.  :)

	Actually, I think that we need more information about the brain
to really clinch statements like this.  Ayn Rand drew her conclusions
from very simple abstractions of human nature.  It doesn't incorporate
enough information to convince some people -- at least given her seeming
demand for 100% certainty about such things.

	So I'll agree that Ayn Rand didn't completely convince me either,
though I _do_ think that answers of this sort are possible without relying
TOO much on direct reason.

>For example, you have
>Rand's attempt to say that "life and happiness are just two sides of the same
>coin," and derive the goodness of happiness from the value of life. Well, since
>a miserable life is not only possible but fairly common, this argument isn't
>very convincing.

	I'm going to get picky and state that I don't think you have quite
captured her argument.  Perhaps she didn't explain herself very well in the
part you paraphrase, but she didn't say that life=happiness.  Rather, she
believed that pursuing and achieving objective values (satisfying real,
personal needs) leads to happiness as a kind of psychological reward.  This
reward encourages us to live further because life feels like it is worth
living.  Thus, happiness acts in the service of life (happiness is good, QED).

	Of COURSE people can be unhappy, but then people can also be quite
immoral and still manage to live.  Ayn Rand would never have denied that.

>It would be far better to affirm "A happy life is better 
>than an unhappy one" as an insight of direct reason than to torturously argue
>that "life" actually "requires happiness" or something like that.

	Well, it's better depending on what you are looking for.

>Do you have any particular moral claims in mind?

	Well, how about "murder is immoral"?  What can be said about the
role of direct reason here?

	Anyway, thanks for discussing this with me so far.  I'll admit
that direct reason does not look quite as bogus to me as it did at the
start.

Mark       | "It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty
Andrew     |  gods or no god.  It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
Sulkowski  |                                      -- Thomas Jefferson