Levi Asher Writes Book on Ayn Rand

Levi Asher of Literary Kicks e-mails:
 
Your blog is just about my favorite philosophy blog on the web — not because I often agree with your political opinions (I don't) but because you write with clarity, humor and just the right amount of personal touch.  Salut!  I also write about philosophy on my blog Literary Kicks, and you may remember a cross-blog interchange between Litkicks and the Maverick Philosopher over the meaning of Buddhism late last year.
 
I'm writing you now to ask if I could send you a PDF or Kindle copy of my new book Why Ayn Rand Is Wrong (and Why It Matters), which is currently #21 on the Amazon Politics/Ideologies Kindle bestsellers list.  This book offers an unusual and original approach to Ayn Rand's ethical philosophy, and aims to present an alternative conception of practical ethics that cherishes individual freedom while allowing a greater regard for the important place of the collective soul in all our lives. Since you haven't paid much attention to Ayn Rand on your blog, I gather that she is not very present on your philosophical radar, but I hope you'll consider spending a few minutes checking out my short book regardless, because I think this book has wider value as an original approach to popular ethical philosophy.
 
Here is a brief explanation of why I wrote it.  Thanks for your time, and please let me know if I can send a PDF or Kindle version of "Why Ayn Rand is Wrong" for your consideration and/or review.  Have a great day!
Thanks for the kind words, Levi, and do send me the PDF file.  Actually, there has been a fair amount of discussion of Ayn Rand on this blog.  It is collected in the Ayn Rand category.  In early 2009 there was a heated debate here about Rand.  The posts with open comboxes drew over 200 comments.  There were numerous other comments that I deleted.  Rand attracts adolescents of all ages and they tend to be uncivilized.  I was doing a lot of deleting and blocking in early aught-nine.
 
But I agree with you: Rand's ideas ought to be discussed, not dismissed.

Eric Hoffer, Contentment, and the Paradox of Plenty

Eric Hoffer as quoted in James D. Koerner, Hoffer's America (Open Court, 1973), p. 25:

I need little to be contented. Two meals a day, tobacco, books that hold my interest, and a little writing each day. This to me is a full life.

And this after a full day at the San Francisco waterfront unloading ships.  And we're talking cheap tobacco smoked after a meal of Lipton soup and Vienna sausage in a humble apartment in a marginal part of town.  Hoffer, who had it tough indeed, had the wisdom to be satisfied with what he had. 

Call it the paradox of plenty: those who had to struggle in the face of adversity developed character and worth, while those with opportunities galore and an easy path became slackers and malcontents and 'revolutionaries.'   Adding to the paradox is that those who battled adversity learned gratitude while those who had it handed to them became ingrates.

Is College for Everyone?

When I was in the 7th grade my teacher told me I was 'college material,' the implication being that not everyone is.  She was right on both counts.  I was and not everyone is.  But times have changed, and pace Obama, change is not always for the better.  Part of the change for the worse is that the very phrase 'college material' has fallen into desuetude. 

The conceit that everyone can profit from a college education is of course foolish – which is perhaps why it is is so warmly embraced by liberals, those whose egalitarian instincts are rarely constrained by common sense.  It was foolish when college was affordable and it is multiply foolish now when it isn't.

I now hand off to 'Professor X' whose Atlantic piece, In the Basement of the Ivory Tower, is one of the best things I have read on this topic. 

Obama in Cloud Cuckoo Land

People say that Obama is intelligent.  I'll grant you that he is well-spoken: unlike Bush II he doesn't stumble over his words.  Trouble is, Obama's words are mainly  blather.  I fail to discern the substance of intelligence in them.  The man lives in a dream world. He's incoherent and irresponsible, an empty suit, a disaster.  The Anointed One has turned  out to be an emperor without clothes.  The audacity of hope has given way to the mendacity of empty hope and change rhetoric.

Part of the documentation for these assertions is provided by Victor Davis Hanson here.  Study it carefully.

Seneca on Books and the Library at Alexandria

De Tranquillitate Animi, IX, 4 (tr. Basore):

What is the use of having countless books and libraries, whose titles their owners can scarcely read through in a whole lifetime? The learner is not instructed, but burdened by the mass of them, and it is much better to surrender yourself to a few authors than to wander through many.

Well said. But Seneca continues with something that strikes some as dubious:

Forty thousand books were burned at Alexandria; let someone else praise this library as the most noble monument to the wealth of kings, as did Titus Livius, who says that it was the most distinguished achievement of the good taste and solicitude of kings. There was no "good taste" or "solicitude" about it, but only learned luxury — nay, not even "learned," since they had collected the books, not for the sake of learning, but to make a show, just as many who lack even a child's knowledge of letters use books, not as the tools of learning, but as decorations for the dining room.

It was only for learned luxury? The books were collected non in studium sed in spectaculum? And only forty thousand were burned? See here. Excerpt:

The actual number of books destroyed that Seneca gives is matter of some controversy that we will need to briefly address. In ancient manuscripts it is common for large numbers to be expressed as a dot placed above the numeral for each power of ten. Clearly in copying it is easy to make a mistake with the number of dots and errors by a factor of ten are frequent. That may have happened in the case of On the Tranquillity of the Mind. The manuscript from Monte Cassino actually reads 40,000 books but this is usually corrected to 400,000 by editors as other sources such as Orosius give this figure for the number of scrolls destroyed. I have not seen the manuscript, of course, so do not know if this way the number is expressed. However, even if it was given in words the difference between 40,000 and 400,000 is also pretty small. I propose therefore that the number given by Seneca, and indeed all other ancient sources, should be ruled as inadmissible as evidence because we cannot be sure of what it was originally.

On Comments

From the mail:

. . . I also wanted to thank you for hosting a blog where you disable comments half the time, and I mean that sincerely. I'm very tired of comment-culture, and it's nice to go to an interesting blog where the blogger seems focused on producing thoughtful and interesting things to read, rather than providing raw meat for comment-warriors to spar over.

Looking forward to more, as ever.

 

Never Bullshit! Mitt Romney on Non Sequiturs and the Null Set

Thinking about the mendacity of Obama, Schumer, and Kyl, I was put in mind of a post of mine dated 6 June 2007 from the old Powerblogs site in which I expose some bullshitting by Mitt Romney.  Here it is again.  If you want to be taken seriously by intelligent people, you must never use words you do not understand in an attempt to impress.  The only people you will impress will be fools.  By the way, some feel Romney is a viable Republican pick for 2012.  I wonder.  His being Mormon may not be a problem, but how remove the albatross of RomneyCare about his neck?  We have moved too far in the socialist direction.  We need to move back the other way, toward liberty and self-reliance, and I rather doubt that Romney is the one to lead us.

…………..

Governor Mitt Romney was asked the following question during last night's debate:

     We've lost 3,400 troops; civilian casualties are even higher, and
     the Iraqi government does not appear ready to provide for the
     security of its own country. Knowing everything you know right now,
     was it a mistake for us to invade Iraq?

Romney replied:

     Well, the question is kind of a non sequitur, if you will, and what
     I mean by that — or a null set. And that is that if you're saying
     let's turn back the clock, and Saddam Hussein had opened up his
     country to IAEA inspectors, and they'd come in and they'd found
     that there were no weapons of mass destruction, had Saddam Hussein,
     therefore, not violated United Nations resolutions, we wouldn't be
     in the conflict we're in. But he didn't do those things, and we
     knew what we knew at the point we made the decision to get in. I
     supported the president's decision based on what we knew at that
     time. I think we were underprepared and underplanned for what came
     after we knocked down Saddam Hussein.

Romney's response was quite good especially given the pressure he was under. But why did he spoil it by inserting unnecessary terminology that he obviously doesn't understand? It makes no sense to refer to a question as a non sequitur. A non sequitur is a proposition that abbreviates or 'telescopes' an invalid argument. For example, 'If the war in Iraq were serious, then we wouldn't be trying to fight it with an all-volunteer force.' That is a non sequitur in that the consequent of the conditional proposition does not follow from the antecedent. Non sequitur just means 'It does not follow.' But an interrogative form of words does not express a proposition. (Possible exception: rhetorical questions; but the question posed to Romney was not  rhetorical.) So to refer to a question as a non sequitur show a serious lack of understanding.

Romney should have replied simply as follows. 'It was not a mistake to invade Iraq since at the time the decision was made, that was the right course of action given what we knew.'

It is also nonsensical to refer to a question as "a null set." For one thing, there is only one null set. Talk of 'a' null set suggests that there are or could be several. More importantly, a question is not a
set, let alone a set with no members. "But isn't a question a set of words?" Well, there is for any question the set of words in which it is formulated, but that set is not identical to the question. But I
 won't go any further into this since, although it leads into fascinating question in metaphysics and the philosophy of language, it  leads away from the point I want to make.

 
"And what point would that be?" Never bullshit! You make yourself look stupid to people who really know. Never pretend to know what you don't know. Don't try to impress people with fancy jargon unless you really  know how to use it. Concern for truth dictates concern for precision in the use of language.

Call me a pedant if you like, but language matters!

Seeds of Hypocrisy

One who strives for the ideal but falls short is no hypocrite, but at a certain point the quantity and the quality of his fallings short must plant in his mind a seed of doubt as to whether he really avoids hypocrisy.  He preaches continence, say, but finds it hard to contain his thoughts, which are not particularly seminal, let alone his sap, which is.

Why Lie When You Have Good Arguments?

Last week I pointed out Senator Charles Schumer's blatant lie about Tea Partiers.  Apparently, Senator Jon Kyl has also lied and then gone on to justify his lie in a  manner most creative:

. . . Arizona senator Jon Kyl used his time on the Senate floor during a budget debate to claim that abortions make up "well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does." When it was pointed out that, in fact, abortion funding constitutes about 3 percent of the organization's budget, Kyl shrugged it off. "It wasn't intended to be a factual statement," he said.

One question is why anyone would lie when they have he has decent arguments.  The use of tax dollars to fund abortion is morally wrong whatever one thinks of the morality of abortion itself.  It doesn't matter how many or how few tax dollars are used.  That's one argument.  A second is that funding outfits like Planned Parenthood is not among the essential functions of government, and that in a time of dire fiscal crisis, government must be pared back to its essential functions.  That's a second argument.  Properly exfoliated, they are powerful arguments.  They won't convince leftists, but then no conservative argument will.  But they will reinforce conservatives in their view and bring some fence-sitters over to our side.

Arguments appeal to our better nature, our rational, truth-seeking nature.

So what does Kyl do? He tells a lie thereby badly injuring his credibility.  Even if Kyl doesn't care about the truth, he ought to care about his credibility, and he must know that to be caught in a lie is to harm it.

So why lie when you have good arguments?

Perhaps it is like this.  "All's fair in love and war" and one of war's casualties is truth.  Politics has nothing to do with truth; it has everything to do with defeating your enemies and gaining or maintaining power.  Politics is about power, not truth.  Politics is war conducted by other means. (I call this the 'Converse Clausewitz principle.')

So perhaps when Schumer and Kyl et al. lie, they make a calculation:  the positive propaganda effect of the lie will offset the negative effect of being caught in a lie, and so lying is conducive to the end in view, namely, defeating the enemy.  Also to be considered is that when politicians  lie they are primarily addressing their constituencies many of the members of which do not care about truth either.  Proof of this is the crap that people forward via e-mail: scurrilous and unsourced allegations about Obama, Pelois and whoever.  When you point out to them that it is drivel, they are unfazed.  For again, it is about winning by any means, and truth doesn't come into it.

Mendacity pays.  Perhaps that is why politicians are so practiced in the arts of deception and prevarication.  They get away with their mendacity and we let them.  They don't care about truth because the people don't and they represent the people.  Maybe we get what we deserve.

Universal Health Care

I'm for it: I want everyone to have health care. But the issue is not whether it would be good for all to have adequate health care, the issue is how to approach this goal. I can't see that increasing   government involvement in health care delivery is the way to go.

Phrases like 'universal health care' and 'affordable health care' obscure the real issue. Who doesn't want affordable health care for all? If you visit the Democrat Party website you will see that they are for 'affordable health care.' That's highly informative, isn't it? It is like saying that one is for peace and against war. Except for the few in whom bellicosity is as it were hard-wired, everyone wants peace. The issue, however, is how to achieve it and  maintain it without surrendering that which is of equal or greater value such as freedom, self-respect, and honor.  And there is where the real arguments begin.

Or it is like saying that one is for gun control. Almost everyone wants gun control. I want it, the late Charlton Heston wanted it, Charles Schumer wants it. That's not the issue. The issue concerns the nature and extent of gun control.  Or it is like saying one is for government.  Except for a handful of anarchists, everyone is for government including libertarians and conservatives.  The issue is not whether we will have government.  The issue concerns it size and scope, power and limits.  When slanderous leftists like Charles Schumer portray conservatives as anti-government we need to call them on their lies. 

And note that health care affordability is only one value. Availability and quality are two others. If health care is provided to all 'for free' just what sorts of care will they receive and what will be the quality of that care? What good is a 'free' hip replacement if you have to wait two years in pain before you receive it? Or a 'free' quadruple bypass operation if you are dead by the time your number is called?  The Canadian snowbirds I talk to don't give me much encouragement as to the desirability of socialized medicine.

Availability of health care  is also affected by the willingness of young people to submit themselves to the rigors of medical school, internship and day-to-day practice.  Remove the incentives (high pay, high social standing, professional status and independence) and you can expect fewer entrants into the field.  Everyone's being insured will not 'insure' that there will be an adequate number of properly trained health care prroviders.

And 'free' to whom? To the unproductive, no doubt. But why should hard-working middle-class types subsidize the bad behavior of those who refuse to take care of themselves?  The primary provider of health care is the (adult) individual, who provides it for himself by taking care of himself: by eating right, getting proper rest, exercising, etc.

The problem here is the liberal mentality. Faced with a problem such as obesity, the liberal wants to classify it as a public health problem — which is absurd on the face of it. No doubt there are
public health problems, and some of them are getting worse because of a failure to control the borders; but obesity is an individual problem to be solved (or left unsolved) by the individual and perhaps a few significant others. If obesity counts as a public health problem, then how could any health problem not count as a public health problem?

You can see from this example the totalitarian nature of the Left: it would intrude itself into every aspect of your life.  If you let them expand their control of the health care system, they will not rest until they have total control.  Power, as Nietzsche understood, does not seek merely to maintain itself but always to expand itself.  And then the powers that be  will have an ever-expanding rationale for dictating behavior.  Ride a motorcycle?  Then you must not only wear a helmet, but a full-face helmet.  After all, it's for your own good, and since the government pays the bills, they can justify such limitations on liberty on the ground of keeping medical costs down.  Eat red meat? The government might not ban it, but they could very easily slap a sort of 'sin' tax on its consumption.  The more socialized the health care delivery system, the more justification for such behavior-modifying disincentives and incentives.  And so on for any number of activities and dietary preferences. 

The liberal cannot imagine a solution to a problem that does not involve an expansion of the power and intrusiveness of government and a concomitant restriction of the liberty of the individual.

Here is the straight skinny on obesity: if you consume more calories than you burn, then you gain weight. If you burn more calories than you consume, then you lose weight. So if you want to lose weight, eat less and move more. Try it. It works. Of course there are people with special conditions. But I'm talking about the general run of the population. For the most part, people are fat because they refuse to discipline themselves. Liberals aid and abet them in their indiscipline. I am tempted to say that that is part of the very definition of a liberal. The liberal tendency is to shift responsibility from the agent and displace it onto factors external to the agent. So it's Burger King's fault that you have clogged arteries, not your fault.

The problem with liberals is not that they are stupid, but thay they stupefy themselves with their political correctness. The profiling question is a good example of this. Anyone with common sense can see that profiling is an effective and morally acceptable means of both preventing crimes and apprehending criminals once crimes have been committed. But the liberal tendency is to oppose it. Since these opponents don't have a logical leg to stand on, one is justified in psychologizing them.

But I'll leave that for later.

Why Dennis Prager Didn’t Major in Philosophy

Just now I heard Prager say on his radio show that he didn't major in philosophy because on the first day of a philosophy class he heard the professor say that what would be discussed in the class was whether we exist.  I'll leave it to you philosophy teachers out there to make of this what you can, though I suggest an important moral or two can be extracted from it.