RoR: Forum

I came up with the idea of a Mountain of Moral Perfection. It is something that you climb but do not summit (until you've lived a whole life well). There are many paths up the mountain--each with their own pitfalls. Besides the different paths, there are different styles of climbing, and there are some who need frequent breaks during their climb. These 3 things create a climbing rate--but we're all climbing the same mountain.

I think that this analogous idea speaks well to the points made by Shayne, Adam, and I.

Ed

Post 41

Monday, April 18, 2005 - 1:40pm

Perfect, perfect, perfect � enough already! I prefer the word excellence to the word perfect. After all, there are degrees of excellence. And, you can be excellent in some areas but not in others, excellent in some respects but not in others. Yes, excellence is preferable. Indeed, it�s � perfect!

Post 42

Monday, April 18, 2005 - 4:11pm

Robert - you wrote:

My understanding is that, at least in Rand's usage, "moral errors" are to be distinguished from "errors of knowledge." "Moral errors" constitute acts of immorality -- e. g., irrationality, evasion, deception, rationalization, etc. -- while "errors of knowledge" are innocent factual mistakes, misunderstandings, mistakes in logic, etc.

If you're using "moral errors" in this Randian sense, then I'm baffled by your comment. That's because your definition of "moral perfection" seems implicitly to incorporate or allow for "moral errors." Which, if true, is a pretty generous notion of "perfection." Lowering the bar of "perfection" to include past acts of immorality would, it seems to me, render the concept "perfection" meaningless.

And I, in turn, am puzzled by your claim that perfection in the present is somehow spoiled by "moral errors" that have been identified and corrected in the course of arriving at one's present state. What Rand identified as "moral errors" - irrationality, evasion, deception, rationalization, etc. - are aspects of reality, and therefore subject to identification. The knowledge that results from their identification is applicable to the perfection of one's character. Moral perfection is the result having made proper use of one's past moral errors.

(Edited by Adam Reed
on 4/18, 4:14pm)

Post 43

Monday, April 18, 2005 - 5:44pm

Adam, the premise of my whole post was to disabuse Objectivists of the notion that they are living morally flawless (perfect) lives.

If you wish to redefine a "morally perfect life" to exclude every moment up to the present one -- or to allow admission of any and all immorality committed before the present -- then of course you can call almost any life, in any given instant, "morally perfect."

But of course, that elastic redefinition of "moral perfection" doesn't at all address the claim of my essay -- which was to say that I am unaware of anyone who has lived a morally perfect life over a lifespan, rather than just "now."

Post 44

Monday, April 18, 2005 - 7:57pm

Robert,

The purpose of moral judgement is to guide one's actions. Since the only actions one can guide are in the present and in the future, moral assessment of one's character should be based on one's character as it is. Past actions affect reasoned moral self-judgement only indirectly, through their impact and influence on one's present character. In judging one's own character, what I have done about my past moral errors is more relevant to my rational self-judgement than the errors in situ.

To judge the character of another person is more difficult, and in so far as one may lack reliable information about that person's character in the present, information about their past actions should be given more weight. But your article was about self-judgement, and I am responding to it in that context.
(Edited by Adam Reed
on 4/18, 8:23pm)

Post 45

Monday, April 18, 2005 - 8:01pm

MJ Adler likened moral life to a symphony (you don't know its true excellence--or its perfection--until you've heard the last note played). This speaks to my view that we can be "on our way" to moral perfection--but that we will always be passing through increasing "levels of excellence."

In this respect, morality is�a normative thing--and I really don't see�any problem with that.

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson
on 4/18, 11:26pm)

Post 46

Tuesday, April 19, 2005 - 8:00am

Adam is right about moral perfection being attainable, as well as about the judgment of moral perfection being in the here and now. Whenever Robert made his judgments about the people he has judged in his 55 years of life, he made his judgments in the moment on their concurrent actions and thoughts -- as well as any relevant past actions and thoughts. It is not "elastic" to define "moral perfection" with reference to current state of being; it is absolutely necessary. In fact, it seems disingenuous of Robert to suggest now that his original post somehow dealt with the entire lifespan of an individual -- which would of course exclude anyone from being morally perfect, and make it so forever, even if a person does actually attain perfect consonance of virtue and value after much intense cleaning up.

Having said this, I want to add that Robert made good comments about the hubris, oligarchy and seemingly endless evasion that pervades much of Objectivism. Nice job on that.

Post 47

Tuesday, April 19, 2005 - 9:04am

Hi David,

One thing that is not getting stated around here about moral perfection deals with the future.

Nobody is immune from making a moral error (evil choice, whatever the hell you want to call it) in the future.

It happens to all of us.

The anal retentives say they are morally perfect, then turn around and stomp all over themselves with a whole assortment of evil doings (evasion on purpose, lying to themselves, uncalled for manipulation of others, senseless destruction and whatnot). The examples are too numerous to cite. We see them all the time.

If morally perfect means being able to recognize when this happens to yourself after the fact and correcting it - on a case-by-case basis, then it is possible to be morally perfect.

If morally perfect means being able to recognize this before it even happens, and never letting it occur not even once in a lifetime from now on forever, then there is a BIG PROBLEM with someone lying to himself/herself. And you normally get a sourpuss.

That is what he is talking about.

We strive to get better but nobody has given me the make-only-perfect-moral-decisions-from-now-on pill yet. I have become a master at cleaning up my own messes. And I am a highly moral person. Thank goodness the messes are not as bad as they used to be.

Michael

Post 48

Tuesday, April 19, 2005 - 10:59am

Hi Michael,

Let me define what I think "moral perfection" is. It is always being virtuous. ;-) Seriously, it is "acting virtuously all the time in regard to well-defined and hierarchical values, with the understanding that new experiences may alter values momentarily or permanently."

What this would mean existentially, I think, would be always being "on" in the sense of putting current experience into proper perspective concerning your omnipresent values and, of course, acting rationally. It would presuppose a completely clean psychoepistemology, with no nasty inner beasts rising up metaphysically to mutilate virtue and spur evasion. It would also mean having figured out exactly what your values are and having a general understanding of the time-allotment for each value with regard to the others. All of this is highly complex and even more difficult for all of us because we got a false start on reality.

But that is not to say that moral perfection is not possible. It is, by definition. Because we have volition, we can choose to blank out and be irrational once we've attained moral perfection, but I would imagine that any person who attained such a state would not choose to do so. ( We are always subject to errors of knowledge, of course.)

I'd like to address one more thing in this regard about such a person. I don't think he would be a sourpuss, Michael. I think he would be highly empathetic of others, since he himself would have the highest regard for his own life (being fully integrated and happy) and therefore wish to meet as many people of high regard as he can and keep in context their own attempt at perfection and happiness. In fact, I think you can measure a person's rationality to some degree by how benevolent he is.

One more thing, personally. I have found in my own life that when I act irrationally, it is because I have not dealt with yet another subterranean issue from my past or I haven't refined my values or I've gotten lazy about digesting new facts/emotions.

One of the problems we have imagining moral perfection is because we live in the kind of society we do. When it is a true Objectivist society, it will be easier to not only imagine moral perfection, but to be morally perfect.

Post 49

Tuesday, April 19, 2005 - 12:24pm

When I wrote this essay, I expected some to distort my words in order to dismiss them. But I've got to admit: I was blindsided by the sheer creativity of this particular distortion.

I had no idea that anyone could possibly define "moral perfection" in one's life or character in such a way as to erase a person's entire moral record up to the present moment. Nor do I think any careful (let alone common-sensical) reading of my essay would suggest that that's the meaning that I intended. Note, for example, the tense of the verbs used in the following quoted passage:

Now, does Bidinotto include himself in this ungenerous assessment of his fellow men? Has he ever acted against his best judgment, or rationalized, or been unjust?

Are you kidding?

Sure I have.

Past tense. In short, the "moral perfection" I'm referring to is that of a morally unblemished LIFE -- not a morally unblemished moment in the present. I said that I have never encountered an example of such a morally perfect LIFE in any of the people I've met within the Objectivist movement. I stand by that.

The term "morally perfect person" (which I used in the essay) is a judgment about character. Character is not established in a freeze-frame; it constitutes one's aggregate moral record: one's habitual or predictable actions, established over an extended period of time. "Moral perfection" thus pertains to actions one has taken characteristically.

But to judge someone's character by his current actions only, disregarding his entire past history, obliterates the very meaning of "character" -- that aspect of a person to which the label "moral perfection" would apply. Under such a non-demanding "standard," even Jeffrey Dahmer could have regarded himself a moral paragon...the moment he was finally locked up and no longer able to kill and cannibalize people. Especially since he acknowledged the errors of his ways. And to continue to label him a "serial killer" simply because of his past history would be completely unjust!

Adam wrote (post 42): "...I, in turn, am puzzled by your claim that perfection in the present is somehow spoiled by 'moral errors' that have been identified and corrected in the course of arriving at one's present state." Dahmer would have taken solace in that.

But a point of clarification: In fact, I didn't "claim" that at all. I didn't say a person's present life is necessarily or completely "spoiled" by past moral failings (assuming they weren't horrendous). I also didn't suggest that one should not strive to improve, nor that such a change did not deserve praise. Nor did I even imply that one could not establish a better character, and a new record of moral reliability. Quite the contrary. I said: "By acknowledging such [past immoral] acts, I free myself from continued self-deception about them, and thereby empower myself to change course and improve."

But if someone were to ask me, "Bidinotto, are you a 'morally perfect person'?" I could only take that to mean: "Is your life [or character] an example of absolute moral consistency and integrity?" How should I answer? As Bill Clinton did: "Well, that depends on what your definition of 'is' is"?

That answer was sophistry in his case, and it would be sophistry in mine.

No, a person who has done bad things in the past shouldn't forever beat himself up about it; no, he shouldn't wallow in guilt; no, he shouldn't be a prisoner of his past. But I have too much respect for language -- and for concepts such as "moral perfection" -- to gut them of meaning, just so that they could apply to a life or character that has been morally inconsistent.

Finally, however: All of this, of course, obscures the wider point of the essay. The whole point was the complete wrongheadedness of focusing obsessively on "achieving moral perfection" -- of a Kantian virtue-focus, instead of a value-focus. The whole point of my essay was to argue that readers should liberate themselves from the meaningless , unhealthy self-monitoring of that "virtue" obsession.

With my intentions and meaning now as clear as I can make them, I'll now liberate myself...from any further parsing and elaborating on this topic, which would be to no apparent point.
(Edited by Robert Bidinotto
on 4/19, 12:41pm)

Post 50

Tuesday, April 19, 2005 - 12:54pm

Dave,

If we were merely talking about the rational side of living, I would agree with you 100% in everything you said.

But there is another issue that is usually not dealt with concerning moral perfection (like the future I mentioned), and that is the influence our emotional life has on it.

The whole quest to achieve moral perfection is to become happy and stay that way. Not to achieve some hypothetical mental standard of virtue. In other words, virtue is a means, not an end. It is a means to happiness on earth, not an end in itself.

If we take a look at the vast number of emotions that operate in us, we see that happiness is only one among many. Part of learning to take control of this marvelous human capacity to project goals and attain them is learning to keep our whimsical and negative emotions under control, while keeping our positive ones "up" and pushing us on. If the negative ones did not exist (and if the positive ones never went away), the whole concept of moral perfection would lose its meaning because people would simply choose the best - like they normally do when all things are equal (including emotional balance).

So this leads to why people - including Objectivists - know what the best is morally and choose the worst sometimes. The main reason is what I call emotional surges. For instance, here is a banal example. Everyone gets irritated at sometime in their life and takes the head off - or says something inexcusably cruel to - a loved one without provocation. This is not just a widespread generalization about behavior. You can see it all the time. I would not call this an error of knowledge.

If you don't call it a moral error, recognize that you stomped on yourself and apologize for it (while also getting a little pissed at yourself to try to learn not to do that anymore), how are you ever going to correct it? How are you going to preserve your greatest value, i.e. your loved one's love? The mere itch to scratch an irritation (a lesser "morally flawed" value) will most certainly destroy over time that which you value the most.

And of course you will not want your loved one to do that back to you at the same rate as you did, as they would have every right to do if you want to be fair about it. That to me is the real meaning of the "do unto others" rule in Christianity.

There are a whole lot of emotions that flow through us that are not too pleasant. Disciplining them (not repressing them, as Freud would have it) is one of the tasks of morality. My own inner emotional life serves as an example to me. Since I cannot share this with anyone in actual reality, I can and will only report what I observe.

I have done many stupid things in the past, but through it all, there has been oodles of time since I have felt envy. This is one tricky emotion because most people deny feeling it when they are in the throes of it. I am not above that denial either. (Some around here gleefully call this "evasion" while doing an outstanding job of evading it themselves.) But being brutally honest with myself, I think back to my childhood and let her rip, no holds barred. Let's see what was back there.

I remember often wanting to win a game at all costs and murderously hating a playmate who won (and, ahem... cheating sometimes), also, coveting a toy that belonged to another so much I lost sleep over it (and, ahem... stealing sometimes).

When I look into my heart now, I do not see anything that closely resembles that kind of feeling anymore. However, I am a human being. That was once in me and it could return at any moment, depending on many possible circumstances. If it does, I will probably want to do something really retarded. I refuse to rationalize all this away by calling it an error of knowledge. If I act on that emotion, I will want to destroy something or someone to keep a hated person from having something I want. Period. And that is really retarded, but there it is. If I don't properly identify it, I will never be able to control it.

I have enough "virtue" in me now to be able to recognize what is going on and try to catch it in time. If I don't, well voil�, one more mess to clean up. I have learned enough about myself to know that I will eventually get it and do something about it. My "sense of life" or "virtue," which I have actively sought to perfect - and honed to about as brutally self-honest as I can get - in order to be happy, will lead me to do just that. This is about as morally perfect as I can achieve.

When these emotional things go way out of whack, Objectivism-wise there is a wonderful body of work by Nathaniel Branden to help us work on them.

There are several other things that make us choose unwisely. I have sketched out some articles on this for SOLO - that is, if I don't kill some people around here first!

Michael

(Edited by Michael Stuart Kelly on 4/19, 1:13pm)

Post 51

Tuesday, April 19, 2005 - 1:03pm

Robert,

For the record, I didn't agree with Adam's latest description of moral perfection either. How disappointing that you conveniently used it to dismiss everyone who disagreed with you on the concept.

Shayne

Post 52

Tuesday, April 19, 2005 - 1:11pm

Robert,

I didn't mean to upset you. Judging oneself, and judging Dahmer, are done in different contexts, and therefore require different processes and different criteria. As I wrote, "To judge the character of another person is more difficult, and in so far as one may lack reliable information about that person's character in the present, information about their past actions should be given more weight. But your article was about self-judgement, and I am responding to it in that context."

Post 53

Tuesday, April 19, 2005 - 3:00pm

C'mon you guys. Life is a journey.

We all can (and should) evaluate ourselves by "how we travel" that complete journey. In this respect, all we can say is that we are "on our way" to moral perfection (taking the right steps, and the right paths, at the right time, in the right place, seeking out the right peers, etc).

Rational self-interest dictates that life ought to viewed as a seemless whole--centered around a moral agent that WILL BE GROWING in response to adversity. Here is a negative example to show that moral agents grow into more perfect beings (with experience and reflection):

It is not immoral for a wailing infant to scratch its mother (as the infant fails to see the scratch in perspective--besides, the mother should've clipped her kid's nails)--or even to stick itself with a needle, for that matter. It is not even immoral for a toddler to chop off the tail of a dog (toddlers don't yet comprehend that this action will cause the dog great pain)--or even to snip its own fingertip off, or stick its tongue in a moving blender. It WOULD be immoral for an adolescent child to chop the tail off of a dog--inch by inch--holding it down in the process, while it yelps in writhing, agonizing pain--or to chop off its own fingers, one at a time. The adolescent child ought to have had enough painful experiences to know what he's causing--and he also ought to have had enough exposure to an alternative view of existence--where joy is held as a worthy goal, not pain.

These 3 examples all involve causing harm. They are not all immoral. Morality implies volition (conscious choice). Experience provides the background for judgment of behavior. Experienced reality, plus an increasingly actualized potential for rationality (and the choices that this opens up) are, always were, and always will be the cornerstones of morality. Failure to integrate these, leads one to error in talk of morality.

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 4/19, 3:02pm)

Post 54

Tuesday, April 19, 2005 - 4:15pm

For those still on this thread, moral perfection is a reachable star and it pertains to what someone has become, not who they were, unless they choose to let who they were remain or unless by default their previous ways of being remain in place. Somebody CAN be morally perfect now, despite having had a rough beginning. In fact, if that person has attained that perfection, it would be unjust to call him morally imperfect, unless referring specifically to his past. The problem with many Objectivists particularly is that they believe they are morally perfect when they are not (this is one reason I've lamented Binswanger's or somebody else's lack of interest in doing extensive and groundbreaking psychoepistemological work). But this does not invalidate moral perfection.

If the total of one's character (one's current state of mind and actions) is morally perfect, then to take into account previous immoral actions in summing up that person's current mental state and happiness would be unjust. By the way, Jeffrey Dahmer's conversion to cow meat instead of human flesh would not constitute moral perfection, even if the monster believed it so, and it is hard enough for rational folks such as ourselves to "get right," much less a cannibal.

Post 55

Tuesday, April 19, 2005 - 4:15pm

Michael,

Emotions can certainly be a very difficult part of the human landscape to work with. When I talk of the morally perfect person, I'm including happiness and other emotions in that -- no dichotomy there. When a person has achieved moral perfection, he has organized his life in such a way as to eliminate moral anxiety and to create such a stability of mind as to be free from improper negative emotions. When I say "improper," I mean anxiousness, second-handed worrying, unjust anger, general nervousness, etc. It's certainly proper to have some "negative" emotions such as just anger, mourning, sadness, fear, etc.

All of that said, as we are trying to clean up our minds and emotions, we can recognize the negative emotions and use that recognition in Sherlock Holmes fashion to root out our problem areas. That, of course, is hard work, but we don't have to have improper negative emotions as contrast for us to cherish our proper emotions.

Post 56

Tuesday, April 19, 2005 - 4:25pm

[Robert] "When I wrote this essay, I expected some to distort my words in order to dismiss them."

There is a difference between "distort" and "misunderstand." The first word suggests something deliberate - either: evasion--fooling yourself-- or: dishonesty --trying to mislead others, such as the readers of a post.

The second word would instead suggest any of a number of possibilities: Someone read your essay too hastily and misinterpreted something or took a formulation out of context, Or maybe you didn't write in a way no one could misread. Or maybe the person arguing with you expressed -his- view clumsily.

When you presume too quickly and with too little evidence that honest differences of opinion or even misreadings or misstatings are matters of immorality, when you do not cut others any slack IN PRACTICE - in spite of your THEORETICAL protestations that one should cut them slack and that one should not focus obsessively on moral perfection or flawlessness - you are far more likely to come up with the conclusion that you are surrounded by infuriatingly flawed people who continue to act immorally despite all they should know. Not just in the past but as recently as today and on this thread.

I get that sense from many of your posts, Robert (it's partly tone and partly things you actually said such as the above. You are undercutting your own position - which is one reason people are confused sometimes by what your position is, not dishonesty. And this characterization and dismissal of yours -- and the fact that you now think you have been crystal clear and no one could possibly legitimately misunderstand -- is an example.

(Of course, you are now quite free to deal with -this- post with contempt, as distortion, willful failure to understand if you wish and to classify me as an evader and ignore it if you choose).

Your central mistake in judging people is the *failure of a benevolent, charitable interpretation* of many of their actions.

Spineless Evader Phil
(Edited by Philip Coates
on 4/19, 4:39pm)

(Edited by Philip Coates
on 4/19, 5:02pm)

Post 57

Tuesday, April 19, 2005 - 4:56pm

"The term "morally perfect person" (which I used in the essay) is a judgment about character. Character is not established in a freeze-frame; it constitutes one's aggregate moral record: one's habitual or predictable actions, established over an extended period of time. "Moral perfection" thus pertains to actions one has taken characteristically." [Robert, #49]

Despite my disagreement with the consistency of Robert's attitudes, I think his theoretical statement here is excellent, very well-stated and resolves a lot of confusions: One can be morally *unblemished, sound or unflawed* (I don't like the word *perfect*) based on an integration of past and present. This is very close to the position expressed by Aristotle regarding moral habits and argued for by Shayne on another thread? using his example of the child who lies and keeps lying and develops a character trait vs. the one whose pride makes him develop past it, learn from it.

(I believe Diana Hsieh also gave a talk on the subject of "moral habits" at TOC several summers ago...should be on the website.)

Is George Washington in the cherry tree episode morally unflawed? I would argue that he was because of how he emerged from the episode and what became a permanent part of his soul.

Post 58

Tuesday, April 19, 2005 - 5:17pm

Philip,

Is George Washington in the cherry tree episode morally unflawed?

Yup. He sure is. And what's more, the story is completely untrue.

Michael

Post 59

Tuesday, April 19, 2005 - 7:19pm