Last fall I finished reading Atlas Shrugged. I had wanted to read it for a while, having heard it mentioned by many people withing similar political ideologies to myself, and I was really excited when I finally found it on the shelf of a Goodwill for $1. At ~1200 pages that's quite the bang for the buck.
I have to say that overall I am not entirely impressed. Ayn Rand seems to suffer from the same problem handling concision as Noam Chomskey.
Obviously she is a smart person, but perhaps she could express things in less words? Several times in the book I felt quite anxious for things to progress, and instead the same themes were getting pounded on over and over again.
From one point of view, this was exactly what she wanted. Atlas was supposed to be her grand philosophical exposition on Objectivism, and she surly did beat in the basics. When I finished the book and read the section in the back which explained what objectivism was I really didn't find too many surprises. Still, I was a little surprise by the shallowness of the philosophy. The basic idea is certainly interesting - it's basically rational self interest. This looks to be very similar to John Piper's Christian hedonism, but falls short of encapsulating the richness of the human experience in a similar manner.
A recent post on the Mokingbird blog talks about the consequences of this partially developed world view. If a philosophical system leaves no room for the pleasure that comes from helping other people, some of whom many not deserve it, even as a selfish motive for a better world for yourself or your children, there is something seriously amiss.
Now, I don't think Ayn Rand completely missed this. In Atlas there are several incidences of people helping each other, but she seemed a bit unable to address this in any formal manner, and thus it seems many of her adherents ignore this component of her philosophy and stick to strict surface-level self interest.
I think this is akin to adopting a surface level philosophy of utilitarianism. Even introductory level philosophy class discussions quickly show how we all object to the idea of killing one to save a few (see below). So is utilitarianism not at all valid? I don't think so. I think we have to go a bit further to look at the full implications for a set of actions. What are the larger societal consequences? How does this change the choice of maximum utility? Unless we go far past the immediate surface level variables defining our problem, we cannot hope to really address something so complex as a moral choice with any degree of rigor.
Still, I would say its best not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There are parts of the book that were inspiring and genuinely interesting, and I really did enjoy the story at large. The idea of striving for self dependence and owning up to our own self interest were very refreshing to me, but it is also important not to adopt a system of morality without making sure you fully understand what it is and why its set up the way it is. Anything less is simply morally irresponsible.
Showing posts with label Objectivism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Objectivism. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Metaphysics and perception
A few things I have read, seen, and discussed lately have pointed me in this direction. Metaphysics is defined on Wikipedia as the study of "the fundamental nature of being and of the world." It's really a fairly vague term, and sometimes it is difficult to understand what metaphysics really encompasses.
I understand metaphyics more generally to be the study of the relation between the mind and reality, which is really just a decomposition of the word into "meta" (beyond) and "physics" (the laws of reality). I have to admit that metaphysics is a subject that I am really fairly poorly informed about in any formal way. I have never taken a class or read a textbook on metaphysics. The good thing, though, is that I think this is true of most people. Most people would probably say that the topic of metaphysics is too erudite and disconnected from everyday thought to be of any interest to them. I wanted to share, then, how some metaphysical ideas and concepts have made their way into popular thought.
One of the post recent and popular examples is the movie Inception. In my opinion, this film is really a study on the blurring of the lines between dream (an analogy for perception) and reality. A central theme of the movie is that in dreams our subconscious perception and expectation actively shapes the world around us.
One idea that I thought was very interesting was that the main characters actually developed methods to help them determine whether or not they were in a dream. If it was a dream that they were in control of, their subconscious automatically filled in all the little details their mind searched for to see if they were dreaming. So even down to the smell of a room or the color of fibers on a rug, their dream would be accurate. This meant it was very difficult for the main characters to decide whether or not they were in a dream, and they had to develop ways to disconnect their physical perception of an object from their expectation of it, and when they found a difference that was when they knew they were awake.
The idea that a difference between perception and expectation signals reality is pretty interesting. It ensures that our world is not wholly a product of our mind, but is influenced by things outside of ourselves.
Another metaphysics example I thought of when watching this movie was the book (also a movie) A Scanner Darkly by Phillip K Dick. In this book, the main character is investigating a group of people as a government spy, and as a part of the process begins taking a drug that has serious effects on his cognitive abilities. The mix between his reality of living two lives (his government job and his "cover" identity) and the fact that the drug is causing the two hemispheres of his brain to become disjointed and compete lead to some interesting observations about what reality is, or whether there are even multiple realities. In case you think that this syfy stuff may be too heavy for your taste, PKD's short stories also inspired Total Recall, Blade Runner, and Minority Report, so you may already have a taste for his work.
On a completely different plane, the recent craze of "the power of positive thinking" is another example of metaphysics. The basic idea of this is that you can, in effect, project your positive feelings onto the world around you. By feeling positive yourself, your perception of reality changes enough that your actually picture of the world changes. You are changing your reality. As a Christian, I can tell you this works: if you start off a day in a prayer of thankfulness, your reality does seem to change. This begs the question: if our reality is so sensitive to our thoughts, is it really that simple to define what reality itself truly is?
To wrap up, I wanted to mention that I think many philosphers are overly dismissive of the topic of metaphysics. I think if many of them would approach the subject with a but more leeway for deep though and self questioning they may bump into some interesting ideas.
One rather frustrating example for me was Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand's fictional exposition of her philosophy of objectivism. Objectivism is a very pratical philosophy that focuses on immediate physical reality as the only true nature of the world. Her metaphysics are summed up in two words: objective reality. This combination of dismissal of all but the immediate and her clearly atheistic inclinations causes her arguments to really fall flat when it comes to some of the big questions.
One example is the source of this objective reality. To the Chistian, God is the ultimate reality. To the atheist, matter is the ultimate reality. Both have the same question to answer: what is the source of this ultimate reality? To the Christian, the answer is God is eternal and sourceless. But what is the answer of the atheist? Is it simply that matter is eternal, having always existed? Perhaps a better answer is that time itself is an illusion, a simple consequence of the physical laws dictating matters creation and evolution. But what about these laws, these constructs for matter? Does this view of matter as a timeless mix of law and energy, intimately subject to our perceptions of it, really fit within the narrow framework of objective reality. I'd say it's a tight fit at best.
I understand metaphyics more generally to be the study of the relation between the mind and reality, which is really just a decomposition of the word into "meta" (beyond) and "physics" (the laws of reality). I have to admit that metaphysics is a subject that I am really fairly poorly informed about in any formal way. I have never taken a class or read a textbook on metaphysics. The good thing, though, is that I think this is true of most people. Most people would probably say that the topic of metaphysics is too erudite and disconnected from everyday thought to be of any interest to them. I wanted to share, then, how some metaphysical ideas and concepts have made their way into popular thought.
One of the post recent and popular examples is the movie Inception. In my opinion, this film is really a study on the blurring of the lines between dream (an analogy for perception) and reality. A central theme of the movie is that in dreams our subconscious perception and expectation actively shapes the world around us.
One idea that I thought was very interesting was that the main characters actually developed methods to help them determine whether or not they were in a dream. If it was a dream that they were in control of, their subconscious automatically filled in all the little details their mind searched for to see if they were dreaming. So even down to the smell of a room or the color of fibers on a rug, their dream would be accurate. This meant it was very difficult for the main characters to decide whether or not they were in a dream, and they had to develop ways to disconnect their physical perception of an object from their expectation of it, and when they found a difference that was when they knew they were awake.
The idea that a difference between perception and expectation signals reality is pretty interesting. It ensures that our world is not wholly a product of our mind, but is influenced by things outside of ourselves.
Another metaphysics example I thought of when watching this movie was the book (also a movie) A Scanner Darkly by Phillip K Dick. In this book, the main character is investigating a group of people as a government spy, and as a part of the process begins taking a drug that has serious effects on his cognitive abilities. The mix between his reality of living two lives (his government job and his "cover" identity) and the fact that the drug is causing the two hemispheres of his brain to become disjointed and compete lead to some interesting observations about what reality is, or whether there are even multiple realities. In case you think that this syfy stuff may be too heavy for your taste, PKD's short stories also inspired Total Recall, Blade Runner, and Minority Report, so you may already have a taste for his work.
On a completely different plane, the recent craze of "the power of positive thinking" is another example of metaphysics. The basic idea of this is that you can, in effect, project your positive feelings onto the world around you. By feeling positive yourself, your perception of reality changes enough that your actually picture of the world changes. You are changing your reality. As a Christian, I can tell you this works: if you start off a day in a prayer of thankfulness, your reality does seem to change. This begs the question: if our reality is so sensitive to our thoughts, is it really that simple to define what reality itself truly is?
To wrap up, I wanted to mention that I think many philosphers are overly dismissive of the topic of metaphysics. I think if many of them would approach the subject with a but more leeway for deep though and self questioning they may bump into some interesting ideas.
One rather frustrating example for me was Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand's fictional exposition of her philosophy of objectivism. Objectivism is a very pratical philosophy that focuses on immediate physical reality as the only true nature of the world. Her metaphysics are summed up in two words: objective reality. This combination of dismissal of all but the immediate and her clearly atheistic inclinations causes her arguments to really fall flat when it comes to some of the big questions.
One example is the source of this objective reality. To the Chistian, God is the ultimate reality. To the atheist, matter is the ultimate reality. Both have the same question to answer: what is the source of this ultimate reality? To the Christian, the answer is God is eternal and sourceless. But what is the answer of the atheist? Is it simply that matter is eternal, having always existed? Perhaps a better answer is that time itself is an illusion, a simple consequence of the physical laws dictating matters creation and evolution. But what about these laws, these constructs for matter? Does this view of matter as a timeless mix of law and energy, intimately subject to our perceptions of it, really fit within the narrow framework of objective reality. I'd say it's a tight fit at best.
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