rwsh@hound.UUCP (R.STUBBLEFIELD) (01/14/86)
CONCEPTS OF REASON AND FORCE
Reason as a Potential
Reason is the faculty that identifies and integrates the material
provided by man's senses. "Man is the rational animal" means: the
faculty of reason distinguishes man from other animals. To say man is
rational is to say he has the faculty of reason. The opposite of rational
in this sense would be to lack the faculty of reason. Although man in
general is rational, an individual man may be irrational--e.g., if he is
brain-dead or psychotic. Here irrational means incapable of reason.
Although Webster's allows "irrational" for this meaning, "non-rational"
is more commonly used.
When I say force is the opposite of reason, I am *not* saying the
victim or the initiator of force necessarily becomes incapable of reason.
(Although it is clear that force could destroy the victim's brain and his
faculty of reason.) To be precise, initiation of force to gain values is
*opposed* to the faculty of reason. I will argue, after some intermediate
steps, that initiating force to gain values is detrimental to the faculty
of reason--both to that of the victim *and* the initiator.
To speak of man's faculty of reason is to speak of his potential to
reason. Man also has other potentials, such as the faculty of vision--
meaning he has the potential to see. When certain conditions are met (his
eyes are open, etc.) the potential to see becomes the actuality of
seeing--or sight. Although man continues to have the faculty of sight
when his eyes are closed, he does not see without fulfilling its
conditions.
Reason as an Actuality
When the proper conditions are met, the actuality of reason can be
realized. Man reasons when his consciousness acts to identify and
integrate the material provided by his senses. Reasoning is an action of
a human consciousness.
There are two concepts sometimes identified by the word "force" that
can be contrasted with this aspect of reason. If you have to move a heavy
object, you might say you have to use force. You wouldn't attempt to move
it with reasoning but would use physical means to achieve a result in
reality. (This is not to say you wouldn't use reason to find the
most effective physical means.) I would not say that force in this sense
is the opposite of reason; the concepts are in two different categories.
Reasoning has to do with acts of consciousness; force deals with states of
existence. (The concepts are related, of course, because it is existence
that consciousness is aware of.)
Force is also used to name an act of consciousness. You have probably
said at one time or another, "I really didn't want to do that; but I knew
that I should; so I forced myself to." Here force is naming what you do
in your consciousness to cause yourself to take a physical action you know
you should take even though your emotions prompt you to do something
else. The more common name for this concept is "will." Again force in
this sense is not the opposite of reason even though both are acts of
consciousness because the concepts are in two different categories. The
result of reasoning is a conclusion--a mental content--a state of
consciousness. The result of will is action (sometimes mental and
sometimes physical). Reasoning is an act of cognition and can be used
to decide what physical means to use to achieve an end. The will is the
act of consciousness that puts those physical means into action. Reasoning
can tell you to do something, but until you will yourself to do it, it
won't get done.
When I say force is the opposite of reason, I am referring to a
concept of force that is *different* from "force is physical means" or
"force is my act of will causing me to do something I don't want to do."
The opposite of reason is "force is physical means used by someone else to
get me to do something I don't want to do." I will say more on this later.
What mental process is identified by the concept of reason? Such an
idea does not subsume daydreaming or wishing, for example. How can you
distinguish between reasoning and other mental processes? One distinction
between the process of reason and other acts of consciousness is the product
of the process--its output.
The Result of Reason
The output of reason is a state of consciousness--a mental product
--e.g., a conclusion--something that has the potential of being
knowledge. A conclusion that 2 + 2 = 4 would be knowledge; a conclusion
that 2 + 2 = 5 would be an error. Knowledge is an identification of a
fact of reality by a consciousness. This identification is a state of
consciousness--some mentala content--consistent with a fact of reality.
A conclusion identifying a fact of reality is reasonable; a false conclusion
is unreasonable or irrational. In this context irrational means inconsistent
with reality. More common synonyms are erroneous, mistaken, wrong, and false.
Notice that there is no concept to name a state of consciousness
achieved by physical means. A conclusion "forced by logic" comes from
actions of consciousness. A child might make a mistake in reasoning and
conclude that 2 + 2 = 5; but once he knows the truth, even though force
may get him to say a falsehood, physical means will not make him believe
it.
The decision to gain a value by force is irrational (i.e., in error)
because the conclusion is inconsistent with reality--the facts of reality are
such that correct reasoning would conclude that a policy of living by the
initiation of force is opposed to reason. Someone (with the knowledge
available to the average American) who valued a happy, long life and who
applied reason without mistake would conclude that creating and trading will
achieve that goal while looting will not.
(If you believe it is possible to live a life of crime and have a
happy, long life, I suggest you do two things to disabuse yourself of the
notion. First, do some serious introspection and ask yourself how happy
*you* would be with such a life. Second, do some reading of case studies
of criminals to see the actual emotional state of this those who choose a
life of crime.)
To say that in normal circumstances the initiation of force to gain
values is irrational, is not to say force is irrational in all contexts.
It would be rational to pull your lover from the path of a car if there is
no time for reason. Here you are preserving, not gaining, a value.
Stealing a car to prevent World War III might be rational. Here you
temporarily gain a value to allow you to preserve your own and your
"victim's" values. Using force in self-defense is rational. Stealing a
loaf of bread in Marie Antoinette's day may have been rational. It is
certainly possible for man to devise political systems that make it
difficult to distinguish the rational from the irrational.
Whether initiating force is irrational requires an analysis of the
context. Principles apply only within the context of their derivation.
Within that context they are absolute. Outside of it they are irrelevant.
The context necessary to derive the principle that the initiation of force
to gain values is irrational is that it is possible to survive by the
values you create.
It is, of course, a non-sequitur to claim that someone did not use
reason just because his conclusion is false. A mental activity may be
reasoning even if the result is unreasonable because man is fallible.
Man's knowledge does not automatically correspond to reality; he must
apply a method and he may make mistakes. What conditions must a process
of consciousness meet in order to be classified as reasoning?
The Method of Reason
Reason is a process of consciousness that has the potential of
producing states of consciousness consistent with reality. Some of man's
states of consciousness are automatically consistent with reality--his
perceptions. But most of man's knowledge is held as abstractions--as
integrations of percepts into first order concepts and lower order
concepts into higher order (more abstract) concepts.
Reason is the only process of consciousness that produces abstractions
consistent with reality. To do this, it must meet two essential
criteria. First, to qualify as reasoning, a process must deal in
abstractions ultimately based on the evidence of the senses. Second, it
must integrate new conclusions non-contradictorily with all previous knowledge
of the reasoner.
A process that knowingly starts with an arbitrary assertion--i.e., a
state of consciousness that has no sensory tie to reality, such as a
whim--does not qualify as reason. (Someone may mistakenly reason from
such a starting point; but his conclusion will say nothing of reality; and
when the arbitrary nature of the starting point is shown to him, he cannot
reasonably continue.)
Similarly, a process that knowingly tolerates contradictions is not
reason.
When I say you are not reasoning if you justify your initiation of
force by pointing to your desire--an emotion, I am alluding to the fact
that the first criteria of reasoning is violated. An emotion is not a
primary as is the evidence of your senses. Emotions are products of
consciousness with somatic consequences. In brief, an emotion is your
lightning fast, automatic response to something you have identified as
having a particular relationship to you and your values. You feel fear of
things that threaten you, anger at things you consider unfair, sadness at
values you lose, pleasure when you gain values, etc. Note that values are
also states of consciousness and abstractions. As such they may be
correct or incorrect identifications of facts of reality. A method of
reaching conclusions by treating as a primary whatever you happen to value
is not reason.
Emotions are a valuable and enjoyable aspect of being human. An
examination of your emotions may give you information on what you think
about reality; but emotions give you no independent information of
reality. Emotions are not tools of cognition.
Reason vs. Force
All the aspects of reason discussed thus far apply in society or in a
desert island environment--i.e., for a single human in isolation. But the
concept of force that is the opposite of reason does not arise except in
social situations--i.e., when more than one person is involved.
Force is the use of physical means by one person (or group) to cause
another person to act against his reason. Force is contrasted with
reason--getting someone to act by transferring knowledge (states of
consciousness consistent with reality) from one person's mind to another.
Reason, in this context, refers to the process by which you get
someone else to reach a conclusion. A process of reason would use
abstractions ultimately based in reality (the one reality there is, the
one you both are aware of with your senses). If you use a process of
reason, you would point out contradictions in the conclusions of the other
person *and* correct your own conclusions when contradictions are revealed.
Force bypasses reason. Force says some private inaccessible-to-others
state of consciousness justifies using physical means to make someone act
as if they had reached a conclusion by reason. Reason is based on knowledge,
which rests ultimately on evidence available to the senses. A threat of
force rests ultimately on the will of the forcer to use physical means to
get his way.
This is the sense in which force is the opposite of reason. Force
cannot even be defined or grasped except in opposition to reason. Your
earliest concept of force might refer to having to do things you don't
want to do. As you mature you will learn that not everything you want to
do is necessarily reasonable. Later you will differentiate instances
where you change your actions because you are influenced by physical means
from instances where you are influenced by the force of an argument--by
reason.
It is in dealing with others that force--physical force--is the
opposite of reason. If you deal with someone with brute force, you deal
with him as the brutes deal with one another.
Attempting to gain values by the use of force because you feel you can
do so violates the essence of reason that says to start with reality--not
arbitrary states of consciousness.
The values needed to sustain human life must be created by applying
reason to the problem of survival. A policy of trying to gain values by
initiating physical force lowers the productivity of the victim--and
the victimizer produces nothing. Initiation of force to gain value
cuts one little tie to reality in the mind of the forcer (as he acts
against the cause--the victim's use of reason--while desiring the
effect--the values produced) and one link to reality of the victim (whose
actions but for the intervention of the forcer's arbitrary contents of
consciousness would have yielded him a value).
If you want to know the results of such a policy carried to its logical
conclusion, see psychological case studies of the victims and guards of the
Nazi concentration camps. If you want to see the existential effects on
productivity, compare the relative productivity of the more free (from force
initiated by others) countries with culturally similar but less free countries--
say West Germany vs. East Germany, Red China vs. Taiwan, or South Korea vs.
North Korea.
In the field of social interaction, reason produces values and force
destroys productivity. In the field of individual action--ethics--a policy of
trying to live by force is unreasonable if you value happiness.
FORCE IS THE OPPOSITE OF REASON.
QED.
--
Bob Stubblefield ihnp4!hound!rwsh 201-949-2846orb@whuts.UUCP (SEVENER) (01/23/86)
Mr. Stubblefield has certainly presented an elaborate opus of the foundations of his moral philosophy. But both that foundation and the conclusions he somehow incredibly flies to, are muddled. He and other Libertarians would certainly be enlightened by a study of philosophy, economics and society beyond the narrow circle of Ayn Rand and her cohorts. Mr. Stubblefield makes a number of basic confusions which were pointed out by other philosophers a long time ago. For one thing his whole *moral* philosophy (and Ayn Rand's) is based on a number of assumptions which make no sense in reality. The deification of Individualistic "Reason" is merely a variation of Hegel's grand theories of Zeitgeist and the progress of the Ideal in history with which Hegel made such grand apologies for the social order of aristocratic rule by the few in his own day. Marx said then that he would "turn Hegel on his head" and he did. Let us now see how we can do so for this argument. Very late in his elaborate exposition Mr. Stubblefied admits: > All the aspects of reason discussed thus far apply in society or in a > desert island environment--i.e., for a single human in isolation. In the first place we must recognize that "reason" is not some disembodied innate ability but something culturally learned and intimately connected with language. We have no evidence whatsoever that an infant left on a desert island will learn language - indeed it will not survive at all without human care. Moreover as Piaget has shown even learning such elementary principles as conservation of mass requires activity *within* the world. This was what Marx meant when he spoke of "turning Hegel on his head". Not to speak of some abstract supernatural "Reason" independent of our material and social existence but to realize that ideology itself is transmitted through physical means - the electrons on this terminal for example, printing in books, vocal expression,etc. Even our most basic perception, sight, is to some extent *learned* - people who have been blind and suddenly gain their sight must learn how to focus, how to distinguish objects, etc. Piaget's studies show how children must physically interact with the world to learn the most reasonable physical principles. Vygotsky's studies in "Mind and Society" go further and show how conceptual thinking is intimately connected with language via "inner speech". And that such "inner speech" is socially learned. Piaget had noted that at a certain age children will talk to themselves as they solve a problem. He had assumed that this was a symptom of an autistic, social isolate stage of development. Vygotsky realized that this was not the case at all - children in talking to themselves aloud were simply *reasoning* aloud and applying the language skills they had learned from their peers and adults to solve problems. Later they would no longer talk aloud because they would internalize their speech - the process which we call reasoning. Peter O'Toole uses this fact that "reasoning" is simply internalized speech in the movie the Ruling Class. In this movie Peter O'Toole plays a young eccentric heir who believes he is Jesus Christ and God. When asked how he came to this farout conclusion, he answers: "Simple. I found out that when I pray I am talking to myself." So "reason" itself is no socially isolated absolute. But this same problem plagues another part of Mr. Stubblefield's argument when he says: > Reason is the only process of consciousness that produces abstractions > consistent with reality. To do this, it must meet two essential > criteria. First, to qualify as reasoning, a process must deal in > abstractions ultimately based on the evidence of the senses. Second, it > must integrate new conclusions non-contradictorily with all previous knowledge > of the reasoner. Does scientific knowledge really depend upon my own personal evidence of the senses? Of course not, it cannot be so dependent or else we would spend all our lives trying to discover *anything*. I have never seen Betelguese and yet I have every confidence that it is there. I have never seen the Galapagos turtles or finches with my own eyes and yet I believe they are there as well as the mountains of evidence supporting the theory of evolution. I have gained this "knowledge" not directly through my own senses, for that would be impossible, but through the reports of others in books, articles, etc. In other words through *social communication* and through trust that others will accurately report what they have seen, heard, or perceived. Again, then we find that even scientific knowledge, which strives to be as objective as possible, is still based upon social interaction. If reason and scientific knowledge cannot be divorced from social interaction then *how* can the problems of ethics? this will be continued later ....... tim sevener whuxn!orb