RoR: Forum

Nit-picking can be very illuminating. : ) (See here.)

Post 161

Wednesday, December 17, 2008 - 1:55pm

Steve is right. �Oh, but I did it before there was time to stop and think� is a terrible rationalization�the jump is immoral.

In any case, I wanted you to use whatever example you see as clearly immoral, and you came up with one, the stolen toothbrush. Good.

Now, what happens to the agent�s moral perfection?

I ask because I�ve noticed two viewpoints among those who like the idea of perfection for ethics.

One side says it just means doing one�s best. They would say the toothbrush thief must come to understand the immorality of what he did, and attempt recompense. And if he does that and �becomes a different person� or some-such, then he�s back on the moral perfection highway.

How many times can this happen? If he makes off with a tube of toothpaste tomorrow, rationalizing that he was two blocks away when he discovered his mistake and surely even the store owner wouldn�t have him walking around all day over a silly tube of toothpaste, etc., but then later realizes he was rationalizing the theft, so he makes up for this one, too, and so he�s back to morally perfect.

Why call it moral perfection when what they really mean is atoned breach after atoned breach? A carpenter who installs the wrong cabinets, positions walls in the wrong place, and so on, is not a perfect carpenter. He may see all his wrongs and fix all his wrongs, but why on earth would we call his carpentry �perfect�?

Post 162

Wednesday, December 17, 2008 - 11:14pm

In any case, I wanted you to use whatever example you see as clearly immoral, and you came up with one, the stolen toothbrush. Good.

Now, what happens to the agent�s moral perfection?

I ask because I�ve noticed two viewpoints among those who like the idea of perfection for ethics.

One side says it just means doing one�s best. They would say the toothbrush thief must come to understand the immorality of what he did, and attempt recompense. And if he does that and �becomes a different person� or some-such, then he�s back on the moral perfection highway.

But the example I gave did not involve an act of immorality. The absentmindedness was not immoral if it was not the result of an ongoing pattern that the moral agent refused to address. There was no theft in that case, if by "theft" one means the deliberate act of stealing another's property.

How many times can this happen? If he makes off with a tube of toothpaste tomorrow, rationalizing that he was two blocks away when he discovered his mistake and surely even the store owner wouldn�t have him walking around all day over a silly tube of toothpaste, etc., but then later realizes he was rationalizing the theft, so he makes up for this one, too, and so he�s back to morally perfect.

Again, if he doesn't choose to address the problem when he realizes that it's a habit, then, yes, he's being remiss and in that respect commits a moral breach. As to whether or not he should immediately return the toothbrush when he discovers it in his pocket two blocks away, that depends on whether or not the store would be damaged if he were to wait until later, say until the next day. If it were clear that the store wouldn't miss it, if it weren't returned until the following day, then he can return it the following day. Again, a moral breach involves a conscious choice -- in this case one that either does or could result in damage to the store owner's property.

Why call it moral perfection when what they really mean is atoned breach after atoned breach?

Of course, you wouldn't, if there really were a moral breach. Atoning for a moral breach doesn't negate its occurrence.

A carpenter who installs the wrong cabinets, positions walls in the wrong place, and so on, is not a perfect carpenter. He may see all his wrongs and fix all his wrongs, but why on earth would we call his carpentry �perfect�?

I can't imagine why on earth anybody would. If he installs the wrong cabinets, then he is not a perfect carpenter; fixing the installation doesn't alter that fact.

- Bill

Post 163

Thursday, December 18, 2008 - 12:30am

Bill,

You are such a smart guy, but it often seems like you put all your effort into stating what you are thinking (which you do so well) and zero effort into understanding what your interlocutor is thinking.

I wrote: �In any case, I wanted you to use whatever example you see as clearly immoral, and you came up with one, the stolen toothbrush. Good.�

You respond: �But the example I gave did not involve an act of immorality.�

Here is the example you gave: �A similar example is a shopper who absentmindedly puts a toothbrush in his pocket and walks out of the store without paying for it, not consciously intended to steal it. Is he guilty of a moral breach? No, but if having realized it once he's out of the store, he continues on his way without returning and paying for it, then he is guilty of a moral breach, because in that case his action is a conscious choice.�

So when I wrote �whatever example you see as clearly immoral,� you conclude I am thinking of your first two sentences?!? And I asked at the beginning to never-mind errors, let�s talk about clear breaches, etc.

Anyway, I got your answer toward the end, and thanks for answering. Seems you are in the �it means no moral breaches� camp. This viewpoint is coherent. It�s the other one I don�t get.

Rand seems to have gone back and forth between the two. She wrote, (I hope I paraphrase fairly) that �moral perfection is an unbreached rationality.� So the guy who can�t stop himself impulsively jumping into rivers to save stranger�s dogs is certainly failing to be rational, to raise his level of awareness, to think. Due to this breach of rationality, he is not and never will be morally perfect. All fine by me.

But other times she (and Peikoff, too) comes down on the �just keep doing your best� side, which holds that moral perfection is recoverable so long as the breaches are few, and small, and always �made right.� This is the view I just don�t get. Why call this �moral perfection�? It�s like the carpenter. Good for him that he never fails to acknowledge and fix every single fuck-up, but I�m not therefore buying his �perfection in carpentry.�

Post 164

Thursday, December 18, 2008 - 12:43am

Jon,

Could you provide a citation in which Rand or Peikoff says that moral perfection is compatible with few (or small) moral breaches that are corrected? I don't recall either of them ever saying that.

- Bill

Post 165

Thursday, December 18, 2008 - 1:04am

I knew this was coming.

I�ll try. I�ll admit my error if I can�t come up with it. My confidence is pretty high, though, so get ready!

Post 166

Thursday, December 18, 2008 - 2:00am

Partial Report�

I have Rand coming down very clearly on the �it means no moral breaches� position. That�s not what you asked for, Bill, but I had claimed it and I just found it, so�

It�s on The Raymond Newman radio show. She says that a person is immoral (not an action, a person) if there is a �major crime, for instance if you catch a person lying.� She says she would regard that person as immoral no matter what virtues they may also possess.

What you asked for, from her and Peikoff, I�m still looking.

Post 167

Thursday, December 18, 2008 - 10:48am

While Jon's looking for quotes, here are some for discussion:

But to pronounce moral judgment is an enormous responsibility. To be a judge, one must possess an unimpeachable character; one need not be omniscient or infallible, and it is not an issue of errors of knowledge; one needs an unbreached integrity, that is, the absence of any indulgence in conscious, willful evil. Just as a judge in a court of law may err, when the evidence is inconclusive, but may not evade the evidence available, nor accept bribes, nor allow any personal feeling, emotion, desire or fear to obstruct his mind�s judgment of the facts of reality�so every rational person must maintain an equally strict and solemn integrity ...

--http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/moraljudgment.html

Here, attaining moral perfection would mean unbreached integrity, defined by the absence of any indulgence in conscious, willful evil. That leaves open some moments of unconsciousness -- or of less consciousness -- where you do wrong actions. The upshot is that you can be wrong and still be morally perfect, if you weren't indulging in conscious, willful evil at the time. That's a discussion point where moral perfection is stated in the negative (what NOT to do). Here's a re-statement of moral perfection in positive terms:

Man has a single basic choice: to think or not, and that is the gauge of his virtue. Moral perfection is an unbreached rationality�not the degree of your intelligence, but the full and relentless use of your mind, not the extent of your knowledge, but the acceptance of reason as an absolute.

--http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/virtue.html

According to this quote, in order to attain moral perfection, you have to perform two, clear steps:

1) think, think, and think again
2) accept reason as an absolute

Those two steps are, according to the quote, the two ingredients of moral perfection.

Ed

Post 168

Thursday, December 18, 2008 - 11:53am

Still looking.

What I remember is even more explicit, but I do think Ed�s first quote hints strongly toward if not outright satisfies my claim on the part of Rand.

It is a clunky quote, though, so Bill can fairly choose to not count it as satisfying my claim.

I think Ed has her right when he writes �Here, attaining moral perfection would mean unbreached integrity, defined by the absence of any indulgence in conscious, willful evil. That leaves open some moments of unconsciousness -- or of less consciousness -- where you do wrong actions. The upshot is that you can be wrong and still be morally perfect, if you weren't indulging in conscious, willful evil at the time.�

But notice that in the quote she doesn�t say that �the absence of any indulgence in conscious, willful evil� makes for moral perfection. Rather, the entire quote is about the prerequisites for judging another! She says that �the absence of any indulgence in conscious, willful evil� is required before judging another, not that it makes one morally perfect.

Clunky. Bill will definitely reject it.

I�ll keep looking.

Post 169

Thursday, December 18, 2008 - 1:13pm

Jon,
I think this quote from Rand will satisfy Bill's request (The Virtue of Selfishness, p. 22):
The virtue of Pride can best be described by the term: "moral ambitiousness." It means that one must earn the right to hold oneself as one's own highest value by achieving one's own moral perfection�which one achieves by never accepting any code of irrational virtues impossible to practice and by never failing to practice the virtues one knows to be rational�by never accepting an unearned guilt and never earning any, or, if one has earned it, never leaving it uncorrected�by never resigning oneself passively to any flaws in one's character�by never placing any concern, wish, fear or mood of the moment above the reality of one's own self-esteem. And, above all, it means one's rejection of the role of a sacrificial animal, the rejection of any doctrine that preaches self-immolation as a moral virtue or duty. [Bold emphasis added.]
I read this as saying that one can achieve moral perfection even if one earns guilt but corrects it.
Thanks,
Glenn

Post 170

Thursday, December 18, 2008 - 1:54pm

Of course, a lot of this presumes that perfection is a path, rather than a direction -- a perfect path with no mis-steps, rather than a perfectible direction.

Think of a race car driver. She only knows when she's not perfectly straight after her car has moved away from the middle of the road. She counter-steers -- she corrects or "rights" the deviation; she "perfects" the car's path -- only after it was seen that she hadn't been in possession of a perfect path in the first place.

To my knowledge, no race car driver is able to drive on the straights without any corrections -- though all race car drivers strive for perfection. Perfect driving is a really good goal for them (rather than something "half-ass").

Ed

Post 171

Thursday, December 18, 2008 - 2:03pm

Glenn,

Thanks for the quote. Good detective work! That satisfies my request. Jon, you may now rest secure in the knowledge that your memory was "perfect." :-)

So, I guess that, according to Rand, one can attain moral perfection if one "corrects" one's flaws. So, to return to Jon's example, the carpenter can attain productive perfection by correcting his mistakes.

I suppose there's a sense in which that's true. He makes a mistake -- forgets to put the handles on the cabinets -- but corrects it, after its pointed out to him. So, the finished job winds up perfect, even if it wasn't perfectly executed, to begin with. Maybe that's what Rand is referring to here.

- Bill

Post 172

Thursday, December 18, 2008 - 7:31pm

Bill,

�Jon, you may now rest secure in the knowledge that your memory was "perfect." :-)�

Far from it. A memory persists, of Peikoff, very clearly stating the �perfection can survive real moral breaches� viewpoint. It�s probably in one of his Q&A tapes from the early eighties. (I�ve been listening to a lot of Peikoff! I have one and a half tapes left to listen to.) If I can�t find it then my memory is not perfect! (Or maybe my memory�s perfect status can be re-attained after I redouble my memory retrieval efforts NEXT TIME.)

At least my fashion sense and overall demeanor is still perfect.

Bill wrote, �I suppose there's a sense in which that's true. He makes a mistake -- forgets to put the handles on the cabinets -- but corrects it, after its pointed out to him. So, the finished job winds up perfect, even if it wasn't perfectly executed, to begin with. Maybe that's what Rand is referring to here.�

Sure, but I would call that �it worked out in the end, but boy oh boy, what a jacked-up carpenter he is.� �Perfect carpentry� doesn�t quite capture it all, does it? All that wasted time and material. Why use �perfect�? Another carpenter bangs out the same work without the miss-steps and wasted time and material, and we call him, what? �Also perfect�? �Perfection without the infuriating imperfections�?

It�s incoherent.

Post 173

Thursday, December 18, 2008 - 9:20pm

Jon,

In accusing Rand of being incoherent, you seem to be using a common definition of "perfection":

1 c: the quality or state of being saintly
2 a: an exemplification of supreme excellence b: an unsurpassable degree of accuracy or excellence

--http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/perfection

However, I'm sure I could make a good case that Rand wasn't using this definition of perfection when she spoke of "moral perfection" -- a good case that she was using it another way, instead:

1 : to bring to final form
2 : to make perfect : improve , refine

--http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/perfecting

On this second sense of the term, "perfection" is when you perpetually improve or, said another way, progressively eradicate your imperfections.

Rand decried moralities that were impractical because of their being impossible to put into practice. Using that information about her views, and applying it to each sense of the term, perfection -- one of them being either impossible or next-to-impossible to put into practice -- it gets clear which sense she meant. She meant the one that is possible to practice (not the "saintly" one; or the one involving "supreme excellence").

While it's true that Rand seems incoherent when you view her words as commonly defined, it is your own analysis of her that becomes incoherent -- when integrated with other things that she had to say on the matter. Other things which narrow down what it is she must have meant when she used the words "moral perfection."

Ed

Post 174

Thursday, December 18, 2008 - 10:04pm

Well, rather than goring each others straw men, why not focus on the question? What is the point of moral perfection? Is it happiness? Or is it having lived perhaps a miserable life, but being able to say - at least I held to my explicitly stated code of conduct?

The obvious answer is that morality is not some external code with which one achieves perfection by approaching perfect compliance. Morality is a tool. A "compass" if I can make up that analogy from scratch. And, no, the perfect mariner is not the one who most closely adheres to a perfect compass setting. The perfect mariner is the one who arrives in port. He may find that he has veered off course. He does not pretend that the compass reading is not important. He does not deny that he is off course. He corrects what needs to be corrected - including perhaps checking the accuracy of the compass. The port is the goal. Happiness is the proof.

(Edited by Ted Keer on 12/18, 11:10pm)

Post 175

Thursday, December 18, 2008 - 10:11pm

Ed,

�While it's true that Rand seems incoherent when you view her words as commonly defined, it is your own analysis of her that becomes incoherent -- when integrated with other things that she had to say on the matter. Other things which narrow down what it is she must have meant when she used the words "moral perfection."�

�Other things she had to say on the matter�? Hasn�t that been point of the recent search for quotes? In the quotes from the above posts we have her clearly stating two, incompatible meanings of �moral perfection.�

The first meaning (No Moral Breaches) is the interpretation with the stronger textual evidence. I have more quotes aligned with this interpretation if you want them. She comes down very hard saying that if one commits a single breach, then one is a pig�forever.

And we also have her saying much softer things.

You may know what �she must have meant when she used the words "moral perfection,�� but what I see is that she said at least two distinct and incompatible things.

Regarding incoherence, allow me repeat: I regard the �No Moral Breaches� interpretation as coherent. That is to say, if you are fond of �perfection� as a concept in morality then you are clear and coherent when you say that it�s gone upon any real moral breach. Bill went for this when he saw it, as well he should. It makes sense in morality and in carpentry, too. It means no mistakes, no breaches, no mismatched cabinets, no wasted material or time in fixing errors, etc.

What I call incoherent is the viewpoint that is fond of �perfection� as a concept in morality, and which goes on to say that moral breaches are OK so long as you knock on wood, or whatever. Just as with the carpenter who never did anything right the first time, it is odd to me that one would observe one corrected lapse after another and call it �perfection.�

Once more to be sure: I am not calling Rand incoherent. I am saying that she is quite coherent when she sticks with moral perfection as absence of any breaches. I am saying that it is incoherent to speak of �perfection� when one really means �wrongs galore, with perpetual improvement and progressive eradication of imperfections.�

Post 176

Thursday, December 18, 2008 - 10:59pm

I sanctioned Ted for his post above. How can "perfect" have any meaning out of context - in this case, the purpose of moral philosophy - a flourishing life.

You can talk about "perfecting" but that isn't really helpful since it depends upon the root meaning of "perfect" and there you go - right back to some almost religious sounding argument about perfect with no context.

And by the way, as a sailor, I can tell you that navigation is usually about correcting your course. It usually isn't practical or even possible to hold a "perfect" course. You have to periodically redetermine your position and then recalculate the best course to take. And it isn't an attempt to get back to your old course, but rather to plot a new course from your current position. Getting back to where you would have been on your old course, if the currents hadn't moved you off it, would feel like an obsessive, almost religiously dogmatic kind of ritual. Which, by the way, is what extended discussions of moral perfection seem like. But maybe that's just me.

Post 177

Thursday, December 18, 2008 - 11:13pm

I sanctioned Steve because he sanctioned me and that's the way it works. I mean, because his religious conception of perfection allusion was dead on and the more I think about it his correcting course analogy is quite helpful. Who was it that came up with this compass analogy?

Post 178

Thursday, December 18, 2008 - 11:26pm

Ted, Steve,

Are you defending any particular use and meaning of �moral perfection� or are you arguing for ditching it? I can�t tell.

If you are defending it, would you state what you mean by �moral perfection�? Would you tell me whether moral perfection, as you use it, is compatible with moral breaches? And if it is, why call it perfection?

Post 179

Thursday, December 18, 2008 - 11:56pm