[jamesellias]

During Sunday’s MotM, Harry discussed Pragmatism and contrasted it with Objectivism. As part of this discussion, we talked about the role values play in cognition, that the only purpose of identifying facts is to pursue values. I made a video on this subject a while back identifying what I took to be the core of the issue. I also talk about several immediate applications of the principle. I’m sure this will be controversial; I welcome your comments and objections! 

https://youtu.be/zsEIDEiPJwE?list=PL7mrYYFgBAuF-3bFw5Ea0m5vlv0415NUM

/sb

[imported_harry]

Re: James Ellias’ post 54752 of 5/25/25

Very interesting. In the end, I think it’s an equivocation between the what and the how.

An axiom is a statement that identifies the base of knowledge and of any further statement pertaining to that knowledge, a statement necessarily contained in all others, whether any particular speaker chooses to identify it or not. [Galt’s speech]

“Good” or, better, “purpose” is what drives cognition, but it is not a statement “contained in all others.”

In ITOE she puts forward the idea of “axiomatic concepts” and “goal” doesn’t fit the bill, at least of a “primary axiomatic concept” because “goal” is analyzable (as I did in The Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts). An axiomatic concept is “a building block”; the good isn’t a building block of further knowledge.

Any field has its purpose. That doesn’t mean its subject matter includes purpose, values, or the good.

Values motivate thinking; values account for what stored conclusions are most accessible, but those things, important as they are, do not pertain to the content of thought.
 

The actual role of values, as the driver of cognition, including ease of retrieval, doesn’t threaten objectivity. Thinking is not “value-laden” (that means illogically controlled by—i.e., biased); it’s just that values help get you the most relevant data.

What Jordan Peterson and others are saying is that you believe what you want to believe, what confirms your prejudices. But if you are honest, you believe what the facts say, after searching the full context,. You do not succumb to wishes because your supreme value here is: getting it right.

Think of how a rational man vs. an evader reacts to noticing a spot on him that might be cancer.

The discussion of “the way” we conceptualize is equivocal in the same way: the examples show how the form of notation is purpose-determined but not the object, not the “what.” E.g., 

Your reason for studying a topic influences and should influence the way you conceptualize its content.

The form you use, not the object. The subjectivists would say that James is here admitting that the rich man will necessarily conceptualize capitalism in a glamorized way, to gloss over the known evils of capitalism.

“Value-conditioned” epistemology is a dangerous term; the valid part of that is “value-driven epistemology”—including the supreme value of knowing the full, real truth.

/sb

[StephenGrossman]

Re: Harry Binswanger’s post 103717 of 5/26/25

“value-driven epistemology”—including the supreme value of knowing the full, real truth.

Right. Look where knowledge as an end, rather than means, has brought us. Democrats have virtually nothing to say. No “bias” there.

*sb

[KyleRatliff]

Re: James Ellias’ post 54752 of 5/25/25

This is an interesting video. I did have some thoughts regarding the axiom “The good exists.”

I don’t think we can take for granted that “the good” exists as an axiom. Many earlier identifications are necessary to make before one can even conceive of the concept “good.” For instance, babies can’t think about concepts like “good” or “bad,” but they do recognize pleasure and anticipate good experiences like receiving breast milk, eating applesauce, and so forth. Likewise, babies also recognize threats, like sudden loud noises that break from the normal equilibrium they are accustomed to, and cry for help. What motivates their anticipation or fear is the incoming pleasure or immediate pain from perceptually present experiences.

Given this, I think the most fundamental attribute to all values is pleasure or pain. One can’t argue that pain doesn’t hurt or that pleasure doesn’t please. At bottom, all values cash out in terms of pleasure or pain, whether physically or psychologically.

Now, even with this identification, one may still argue that pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain, or creating knowledge, or even continuing one’s own life isn’t good or worthwhile. A major role the science of ethics plays is to properly identify what the “good” constitutes as such. Once that has been established, then one can identify the principles that would acquire the “good,” including how one should use one’s mind (which, at that hierarchical stage, things like “value-driven epistemology” come into the picture).

I don’t have a firm view on this, though I think the closest statement to an axiom of ethics would be the following:

Pleasure pleases and pain hurts.

/sb

[GaryJudd]

Re: James Ellias’ post 54752 of 5/25/25

This is an extremely interesting discussion. Possibly, it may be informed by Ludwig von Mises’ theory of human action, praxeology he called it, which may be found in his Human Action (revised edition, 1963).

Praxeology deals with the actions of individual men. Human action is an offshoot of reason.

Actions are determined by the value-judgments of acting individuals, i.e., the ends they are eager to attain and the means they employ to attain those ends.

[Praxeology] is the science of every kind of human action. Choosing determines all human decisions. In making his choice man chooses not only between various material things and services. All human values are offered for option. All ends and all means, both material and ideal issues, the sublime and the base, the noble and the ignoble, are ranged in a single row and subjected to a decision which picks out one thing and sets aside another. Nothing that men aim at or want to avoid remains outside of this arrangement into a unique scale of gradation and preference.

Mises, Ludwig von. Human Action: A Treatise on Economics (Liberty Fund Library of the Works of Ludwig von Mises) (p. 29). Liberty Fund Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Praxeology does not judge human action. It says simply that action results from cognitive activity; hence it is an offshoot of reason.

Mises says the incentive that impels a man to act is always some “uneasiness.”

A man perfectly content with the state of his affairs would have no incentive to change things. He would have neither wishes nor desires; he would be perfectly happy. He would not act; he would simply live free from care.

But to make a man act, uneasiness and the image of a more satisfactory state alone are not sufficient. A third condition is required: the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness. In the absence of this condition no action is feasible. Man must yield to the inevitable. He must submit to destiny.

(Mises, p. 44). 

James Ellias argues that “The good exists” is an axiom and that valuing is axiomatic. He argues that valuing is part of any act of cognition, that every act of consciousness is goal-directed action, that man’s consciousness is a valuing consciousness. He says that the good is present in any act of consciousness, to think is to value.

Mises’ theory illuminates the distinction between human consciousness and human action. Whilst the latter proceeds from the former, they are nonetheless different. James Ellias may be conflating the two. Consciousness does not act. Consciousness is the generator of purposeful human action. (Whilst we may speak of an “act” of consciousness, to distinguish it from an unconscious act or, perhaps, a subconscious act, the usage is metaphorical.)

If Mises’ theory of human action is correct, value (per Objectivism, that which one acts to gain and/or keep) and (per Mises) “the psychological events which result in an action,” must be distinguished from each other. The psychological events may be equated with the Objectivist principle of valuing.

To take this a step further, the psychological events preceding action are the workings of the individual’s consciousness, which result in a determination that behaviour identified in that consciousness will, when acted upon, remove or at least alleviate felt uneasiness.

Existence, consciousness, and identity are the axioms at the base of human knowledge. However, axiom as a concept includes other self-evident concepts and propositions; volition as axiomatic is especially relevant in the current context. Axiomatic concepts and principles are also found in logic and mathematics.

That man responds to felt uneasiness with purposeful behaviour intended to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness may be an axiom or axiomatic principle of human action. Like Rand’s “immortal, indestructible robot, an entity which moves and acts, but which cannot be affected by anything,” a perfectly content man would not act. This is what may make the Mises proposition axiomatic.

Purposeful or goal directed human behaviour is generated by conscious choice; it cannot be purposeful or goal-directed without conscious choice. According to Mises, the specific choice is made because of a conscious decision that it will be efficacious in removing felt uneasiness either as an end in itself or as a step towards a more distant goal.

HB argued in The Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts that psychological value-significance and biological value-significance whilst not identical are fundamentally related.

[W]e may say that psychological value-significance is biological value-significance plus consciousness. This distinction between the two is retained in my general thesis: what vegetative and conscious action have in common is goal-directedness, not purposefulness. Purposefulness is the specific type of goal-directedness manifested in conscious action. A purpose is a goal that is consciously anticipated by the organism and whose value-significance is consciously experienced in the form of a desire for the goal. (p 136).

The addition of consciousness brings in desire for the goal, which leads to the question of why the goal is desired, especially when from an objective viewpoint the goal is harmful to survival and not of biological value.

If the individual’s choice to act in a particular way is motivated by the individual’s determination that the act will remove or alleviate felt uneasiness, the act may for that individual be described as a “good” despite the act being objectively harmful to the individual’s survival. The individual’s choice is subjective.

But we must avoid current misunderstandings. The ultimate goal of human action is always the satisfaction of the acting man’s desire. There is no standard of greater or lesser satisfaction other than individual judgments of value, different for various people and for the same people at various times. What makes a man feel uneasy and less uneasy is established by him from the standard of his own will and judgment, from his personal and subjective valuation. Nobody is in a position to decree what should make a fellow man happier.

Mises, p. 45.

Only if “the good” is defined in this subjective way could it be axiomatic, and then only in relation to human action, not in relation to the psychological processes that gave rise to the choice to act in that way.

/sb

[jamesellias]

Re: Harry Binswanger’s post 103717 of 5/26/25

“Good” or, better, “purpose” is what drives cognition, but it is not a statement “contained in all others.”

But it *is* contained in all others. Whenever one makes any statement, implicit in that statement is the conviction that it is better to grasp this fact than to not grasp this fact. One example of this I give is Dave’s statement “the good does not exist.” He is implicitly affirming that it is better (good) to believe in this fact as opposed to not believing it.

HB: I don’t think so. First off, “to believe” is a sophisticated, later perspective. At the beginning of knowledge, say up to age 4, the child has only 2 states: knowing and not knowing. He does not have even the implicit concept of “believing.” We from the outside can say, “He believes there is a Santa Claus, but he’s mistaken.” But the three-year-old does not and cannot conceive of treating something as knowledge when it isn’t—i.e., mistaken mental content. He may be corrected by a parent (“No, that’s a fox, not a dog”) but he wouldn’t be able to think, “I believed it was a dog but it wasn’t.” Giving the concept of “belief” primacy over the concept of “knowledge” is what’s wrong with the idea that knowledge is belief that meets certain conditions (such as being true and being justified in believing). He doesn’t begin with even the awareness that he can accept or not accept an idea.

 

He therefore reaffirms the existence of the good in the act of denying it.

HB: I’m not convinced. I accept that he has, from perhaps age 1, an implicit concept of choice, and that that is an axiom of the conceptual level, but not that he has a choice regarding what to “believe.”

 

In ITOE she puts forward the idea of “axiomatic concepts” and “goal” doesn’t fit the bill, at least of a “primary axiomatic concept” because “goal” is analyzable (as I did in The Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts).

I have not read all of BBTC, but I presume that what you do in that book is give an account of goals in terms of other existents out there in reality. In that sense you have analyzed goals, but you have not analyzed the axiomatic sense of “the good” that I talk about in this video.

HB: Let me do that now: to be “good” is to be a means toward a goal.

Imagine if, in the future, someone solves the hard problem of consciousness, he will have explained how inanimate matter gives rise to mind. If he did that, he will have (in some sense) reduced consciousness. But he would not have reduced the axiomatic sense of the concept. He would not have reduced the primary, irreducible fact of the individual experiencing consciousness. In this same sense, BBTC (nor any other work) could analyze the irreducible judgment implicit in every thought and action “this is better than that.” 

Values motivate thinking; values account for what stored conclusions are most accessible, but those things, important as they are, do not pertain to the content of thought.

But they do pertain to the content of thought. They are an element of the form of our awareness (though, as you point out, they don’t influence the object). I give two examples of this in the video: different forms of grasping quantities and different forms of grasping Newton’s laws of motion. These different forms are the way they are because of the motivations (the values) brought to the context in which we conceptualize. The content (the stuff in our minds) is different depending on our purposes. If we are trying to understand collisions, we will think in terms of momentum instead of forces. If we are thinking about the size of an atom, we will think in scientific notation instead of a full decimal number. The form of our awareness (and thus the content of our thought) is properly conditioned by our purposes.

HB: But all forms of awareness are equally valid, if they are indeed forms of awareness. That (vs. Jordan Peterson, et al.) is what I had in mind.

Another cool example of this that just crossed my mind: when explaining her theory of concepts, Rand focused on measurement omission. This aspect of her theory of concepts is essential, but only from the perspective of solving the problem of universals. When trying to grasp the day-to-day mechanics of concept formation, I find it much more helpful to hold in mind statements like, “measurement omission is measurement inclusion.” In this case, the motivation conditions what statements to hold in mind as essential. 

What Jordan Peterson and others are saying is that you believe what you want to believe, what confirms your prejudices.

What Peterson says on this issue is more subtle than that. He’s saying that the way you conceptualize things is conditioned by your values (which is true!);

HB: “way” is equivocal between form and object. It’s like saying “the way you perceive is dependent on the nature of your nervous system.” Yes, but that’s the “how,” not the “what.”

he goes on to say that you can’t get values from facts because the way you grasp the facts is dependent on your values. I think this argument is specious, but it is powerful in today’s cultural context and needs to be addressed. 

The form you use, not the object. The subjectivists would say that James is here admitting that the rich man will necessarily conceptualize capitalism in a glamorized way, to gloss over the known evils of capitalism.

Yes, that’s important to note, and I didn’t emphasize it here. My audience for this video was Objectivists and I took it as a given that they would not hold this misconception.

The issue I’m bringing up here is very important. Because values condition the form of our awareness, becoming aware of how they condition that form is one crucial aspect of how we gain objectivity. 

HB: It is? Give me an example.

Part of how we do that in the sciences is by explicitly identifying the value context we are working in (identifying our motivation before we ask a question and investigate it). A lot of academic philosophy papers would conceptualize their findings differently if their purpose were to clearly identify facts rather than to pass committees. This is a place where checking one’s motivation would have beneficial effects.

/sb

[jamesellias]

Re: Kyle Ratliff’s post 103723 of 5/26/25

Thank you for your thoughts. It is true that pleasure/pain form a key foundation in ethics; in my view, they are the inductive first level of ethics, they are our first acquaintance with the good and the bad. 

However, the thing that is axiomatic, that is, present implicitly in all of our grasps of reality, is “the good,” not pleasure and pain. When Dave denies the good in my video, he does not imply, “it feels good to deny the good,” he is implying, “it is good to deny the good.” 

Note that this axiomatic sense of “the good” does not entail anything specific that is good; it merely acknowledges that there is something good that one will pursue. 

/sb

[jamesellias]

Re: Gary Judd’s post 103726 of 5/27/25

Only if “the good” is defined in this subjective way could it be axiomatic, and then only in relation to human action, not in relation to the psychological processes which gave rise to the choice to act in that way.

The axiom does not pertain to the content of the good; it pertains only to its existence. The premise implicit in all thought and action is “something is good.” That’s the irrefutable part; the actual claims as to what is good are obviously not irreducible and irrefutable. 

/sb

[KyleRatliff]

Re: James Ellias’ post 103731 of 5/27/25

I’m glad to give my thoughts on this topic.

I do have a few objections to the argument laid out between you and Dave in that video. I’ll transcribe it here for easier reference:

James: “The good exists.”

Dave: “The good does not exist.”

James: “Are you going to believe in facts?”

Dave: “Yes.”

James: “Then you are valuing truth.”

Dave: “Fine, then I won’t chose to believe in facts.”

James: “Then you are no longer denying the existence of the good.”

Dave: “Blast.”

The first objection I have is that I don’t think David Hume would claim that the good doesn’t exist; rather, that descriptive statements regarding what is don’t lend credence to what ought to be. In other words, the leap from describing to proscribing things is simply taken for granted rather than justified by reason. So, I don’t think that Hume would claim that “The good does not exist”; rather that he would claim that the good could exist, but is outside the province of reason.

Regardless of Hume’s position on this issue, I still think there are other counter-arguments outside of what was presented in this conversation. A few may claim that the good cannot exist outright, though even so, the fact that they are using their mind to come to this conclusion in some capacity doesn’t mean they value the good. Instead of retorting the line “”Fine, then I won’t chose to believe in facts,” they could say, “Yes, I value truth, and the supreme truth is that the good can’t exist. Recognizing the fact that the good doesn’t exist doesn’t mean I implicitly accept the good.”

I think a different approach to this issue resolves this dilemma altogether. By the fact that human beings have a pain-pleasure mechanism and that they have a rational faculty, they can identify factual relationships between entities and then reorganize their environment according to their biological needs, which simply are other facts. Recognizing facts related to both their biological needs and their environment allows human beings to reorganize their surroundings to ensure their survival and happiness.

The real issue with the so-called “is-ought problem” is that those who advance this argument fail to realize that biological needs are facts. Once those are recognized, we reorganize our surroundings accordingly. No subjectivity required that makes a claim upon “the good.”

/sb

[JoseDonis]

Re: Kyle Ratliff’s post 103736 of 5/28/25

Speaking of David Hume, here are the online class notes of my colleague at Florida International University.  Hope this helps.

https://faculty.fiu.edu/~harrisk/Notes/Ethics/David%20Hume’s%20Ethics.htm#:~:text=of%20moral%20predicates.-,Hume%20Sum%20Up,form%20our%20basic%20value%20judgments.

*sb

[StephenGrossman]

Re: Kyle Ratliff’s post 103736 of 5/28/25

biological needs are facts.

Values are facts relative to life.

/sb

[imported_harry]

Re: Gary Judd’s post 103726 of 5/27/25

It’s not a pleasant task to criticize Mises, who is a giant in economics and a towering defender of capitalism, but here I must.

Gary Judd writes:

This is an extremely interesting discussion. Possibly, it may be informed by Ludwig von Mises’ theory of human action, praxeology he called it, which may be found in his Human Action (revised edition, 1963).

“Praxeology” is not a valid concept; there is no science of action separate from psychology and ethics. Mises invents it because he unfortunately holds two wrong premises: that ethics is ultimately subjective and that action is fundamentally negative (to remove “felt uneasiness”).

Praxeology deals with the actions of individual men. Human action is an offshoot of reason.

Well, “offshoot” is a funny term to use here; it suggests a by-product or a secondary consequence. In fact, reason evolved because it enables survival-promoting action. Reason is for the sake of guiding action.

Gary J. points out that “Praxeology” doesn’t judge action. But that’s because Mises is firmly committed to the subjectivity of values. That’s a bug, not a feature. 

Tragically, this wrong philosophic idea brought, at the end of Mises’ life, the total collapse of his entire defense of capitalism. I am referring to the environmentalist, climate-stasis movement. That movement, contrary to Mises’ assumption about human action, actively opposes economic progress as such.

Marxists used to pretend that they wanted economic progress, but the environmentalists want to stop progress and return to “a simpler time when man lived in harmony with nature.” This takes out of Mises’ hand his only weapon: the constantly repeated idea that interference with the free market leads to consequences that even the socialists don’t want. That’s the best that one can do if one believes that morality is not the province of reason (“there is no science of ends.”)

Ayn Rand nailed it in her 1970 article: “The Left Old and New”:

The old-line Marxists used to claim that a single modern factory could produce enough shoes to provide for the whole population of the world and that nothing but capitalism prevented it. When they discovered the facts of reality involved, they declared that going barefoot is superior to wearing shoes. [Return of the Primitive]

We see the hatred of economic advancement all around us, from rolling blackouts and forest-fires in California, to the glamorization of the American Indian (and all primitive people), to the claim that technological development has “fouled our own nest,” is “destroying the planet,” and can only be “fixed” by anti-growth policies, worldwide.

Incidentally, the segment of the American people who don’t buy into this vicious fraud are overwhelmingly now in the MAGA movement, which itself will sooner or later turn anti-technology because of its religious base. The whole tariff/onshoring idea is premised on “Our country, efficient or costly.” It places some sort of collective “pride” over economic progress.

Now I turn to what Ayn Rand or one of her associates christened as “the nirvana premise”: the view that the ultimate spring for action is to remove a negative: “felt uneasiness.”

A man perfectly content with the state of his affairs would have no incentive to change things. He would have neither wishes nor desires; he would be perfectly happy. He would not act; he would simply live free from care.

Can you see that applying to Howard Roark?

This “nirvana” premise is one of the worst things in Mises.

Putting aside for the moment its degraded view of man, to consider the idea just in terms of simple logic, we can easily see that Mises’ statement devolves into circularity. The phrase “a man perfectly content” has to be interpreted to rule out any desire for renewed achievement, greater joy, any desire for anything new. So the claim means: a man who has no further desires for anything will not act. Yes, that’s true—by definition. But it has no psychological reality.

The claim cannot be concretized, because obviously, continued happiness but not getting out of bed is impossible. Continued happiness while doing the same old things forever is impossible. Consciousness is a difference-detector: old sources of enjoyment pale; new achievement is necessary just to keep “content.” Life is growth, and happiness itself requires setting new goals and new challenges.

Finally, “contentment” as the absence of discomfort, pain, and suffering is easy to achieve: suicide ensures it. 

Mises was very firm in advancing this idea that human action is about eliminating uneasiness. That means making zero-worship the essence of life. Thus, the term “nirvana premise.”

Mises is not alone in holding this premise; many, perhaps a majority, of intellectuals since Kant, have held the same premise. That’s no doubt why Ayn Rand has Galt speak to it in his speech:

You who are worshippers of the zero — you have never discovered that achieving life is not the equivalent of avoiding death. Joy is not ‘the absence of pain,’ intelligence is not ‘the absence of stupidity,’ light is not ‘the absence of darkness,’ an entity is not ‘the absence of a nonentity.’ Building is not done by abstaining from demolition; centuries of sitting and waiting in such abstinence will not raise one single girder for you to abstain from demolishing — and now you can no longer say to me, the builder: ‘Produce, and feed us in exchange for our not destroying your production.’ I am answering in the name of all your victims: Perish with and in your own void. Existence is not a negation of negatives. Evil, not value, is an absence and a negation, evil is impotent and has no power but that which we let it extort from us. Perish, because we have learned that a zero cannot hold a mortgage over life.

You seek escape from pain. We seek the achievement of happiness. You exist for the sake of avoiding punishment. We exist for the sake of earning rewards. Threats will not make us function; fear is not our incentive. It is not death that we wish to avoid, but life that we wish to live.

You, who have lost the concept of the difference, you who claim that fear and joy are incentives of equal power — and secretly add that fear is the more ‘practical’ — you do not wish to live, and only fear of death still holds you to the existence you have damned. You dart in panic through the trap of your days, looking for the exit you have closed, running from a pursuer you dare not name to a terror you dare not acknowledge, and the greater your terror the greater your dread of the only act that could save you: thinking. The purpose of your struggle is not to know, not to grasp or name or hear the thing I shall now state to your hearing: that yours is the Morality of Death.

/sb

[JimAllard]

Re: Harry Binswanger’s post 103727 of 5/28/25

Mises was very firm in advancing this idea that human action is about eliminating uneasiness. That means making zero-worship the essence of life. Thus, the term “nirvana premise.”

Mises is not alone in holding this premise; many, perhaps a majority, of intellectuals since Kant, have held the same premise.

A version of this premise repeatedly comes up when discussing production, technology, immigration and jobs It’s the widespread belief that production is about being free from want. On this premise, there’s a limited amount of work to be done, because once one’s basic needs and wants are met (food, clothing, cellphones?), there will be nothing more to do.

HB: Yes! Great point. Without this “Don’t bother me, don’t bother me, don’t bother me” premise, it’s hard to understand how they could think the number of jobs is limited.

Thus, once the goal of being free from want is met, either by technology advances (robots, automation, etc.) or immigrants, we will have reached “nirvana” — the goods will be here and there won’t be any need for workers. 

But then we won’t have jobs and won’t be able to purchase all these goods. What then?

/sb

[DavidBeisiegel]

Re: James Ellias’ post 54752 of 5/25/25

I posted this video here last year and here is what I thought then:

A: The good exists.

B: The good does not exist.

A: Is that a fact?

B: Yes.

A: So you’re going to believe in facts.

B: Yes.

A: Then you’re valuing facts.

B: Fine then, I won’t choose to believe in facts.

A. Then you’re no longer denying that the good exists.

The problem that I see with this is that B can respond to A’s “So you’re going to believe in facts?” with “Maybe. I’ll believe in some facts if I feel like it and disregard others if I don’t. But the truth is the truth whether I choose to believe it or not” and thereby deny the existence of the good without valuing the good.

So I think it fails as a philosophical axiom but there does seem to be something true about it, namely, that a commitment to the truth entails valuing the truth, which by implication accepts the existence of the good.

So whereas Existence, Identity and Consciousness can’t even be dishonestly denied without relying on them, the existence of the good cannot be honestly and consistently denied.

*sb

[GaryJudd]

Re: Harry Binswanger’s post 103727 of 5/28/25

Ethics is normative: what should I do? In Human Action, Mises makes no judgments at all about what a man should do. About that he is agnostic. Observing reality, he notes that men act in many ways — for example, from the ways of Galt and Roark to the ways of Jim Taggart and Peter Keating. That does not mean endorsement of subjectivism in ethics. It means recognition of what happens, how men act. It is an exercise in objectivity, of observing what is.

Mises does say that value judgments are subjective. “Value judgments are subjective, and liberal society grants to everybody the right to express his sentiments freely.” Kindle edition, p 263. Surely, he is right. E.g., HB makes a value judgment about immigration, Trump’s is different. Not all Objectivists agree with HB’s view.

Human judgments are subjective. That’s an observable fact. Ideally, they ought not to be subjective. Each potential decision should be subjected to judgment against the facts of reality but at the end of the day, like it or not, it is still subjective for it is the deciding individual who makes the decision according to his own assessment of what the facts of reality indicate to him is the right decision for the specific case.

Then he acts.

HB conflates what ought to be (according to Objectivist ethics) with what is. That’s a flaw in HB’s rejection of praxeology.

I came to study Mises after studying Objectivism. Mises appealed because he was applying Objectivist thinking to the development of his economic framework. Not that he was relying on Rand’s thinking (the first edition of Human Action was published in 1949). Just that it was the same sort of approach — looking at reality to obtain knowledge.

HB is ostensibly on slightly sounder ground in claiming that Mises has an erroneous premise that action is fundamentally negative, but even so it represents a misunderstanding. Action is negative or positive according to a judgment of what is negative or positive. Mises is not judging action. In postulating felt uneasiness, he is attempting to explain why men act irrespective of whether the action is negative or positive.

I have some difficulty with the felt uneasiness idea, but it is surely a fact verifiable by introspection and observation that conscious action results from an act of will, a decision by the conscious mind. That is why human action is an “offshoot of reason.” The reasoning may be in error according to Objectivist ethics or some other standard of judgment, but erroneous or not it is still the product of human reason.

/sb

[jamesellias]

By making in-line comments, HB made some thought provoking arguments against my perspective in post 103728 of 5/27/25. 

“to believe” is a sophisticated, later perspective. At the beginning of knowledge, say up to age 4, the child has only 2 states: knowing and not knowing. He does not have even the implicit concept of “believing.”

Agreed, the child is choosing to focus on reality then he has some content, he’s not choosing to believe. But such an action is still goal-directed action; the child’s aim is awareness. Later, an evader might subvert this aim, but his acts of cognition still have a goal (comfort, avoidance of fear, etc.) 

Give me an example. [Of how objectivity depends on becoming aware of how our values condition the form of our awareness.]

Elements are categorized based on the number of protons in their nucleus. In the modern context of knowledge this might seem like just one of many modes of categorization: we could categorize atoms based on their number of electrons, neutrons, or total nucleons. Why did we choose the number of protons? The reason is because the number of protons is the primary causal factor in forming the atom’s electron shell, which in turn is the primary causal factor in determining the atom’s chemistry (the way it combines and discombines with other atoms). Categorizing based on chemistry is a logical choice because understanding the chemistry of atoms is the motivation for atomic classification. The values here dictate how we classify. 

We must hold this in mind to maintain objectivity. By being aware of the way values condition this classification, we understand that different classifications might be more conducive to other value contexts. For example, in nuclear chemistry, we differentiate hydrogen from deuterium. (deuterium is hydrogen, but with an extra neutron in the nucleus.) Why classify this atom differently if it is really just hydrogen? After all, it has one proton, so its chemical properties are almost identical to that of hydrogen. Because for nuclear reactions, deuterium behaves differently. Therefore in nuclear physics, differentiating these atoms is important while in chemistry, it is not. By understanding the value-conditioned nature of categorization schemes, we gain a kind of objectivity, we can embrace the alternate conceptualization because we understand that different values can result in different valid conceptualizations.

[StephenGrossman]

Re: David Beisiegel’s post 103745 of 5/28/25

the existence of the good cannot be honestly and consistently denied.

In the focused, not the unfocused, mind.

[StephenGrossman]

Re: Gary Judd’s post 103747 of 5/29/25

Human judgements are subjective. That’s an observable fact. Ideally, they ought not to be subjective

You can observe acting man. Then, abstracting from observation, you can (mis)conceptualize acting man as metaphysically subjective. But you can’t literally observe subjectivity or any other consciousness.

Ideally? Beyond reality and reason, i.e., in the unfocused mind, the source of your “ought?” Your comments are rationalist, i.e., split from observation, i.e., split from the focused mind, i.e., split from reason.

[imported_harry]

Re: David Beisiegel’s post 103745 of 5/28/25

Like David B., I also think denying that the good exists is not quite a re-affirmation through denial, but I see the problem earlier in the James E. dialogue:

A: The good exists.

B: The good does not exist.

A: Is that a fact?

B: Yes.

A: So you’re going to believe in facts.

What does it mean to “believe in facts”? I’m not sure. Why is this a fair question for A to ask B? B could answer: “Not necessarily.”

In Galt’s speech, AR has Galt say: 

An axiom is a statement that identifies the base of knowledge and of any further statement pertaining to that knowledge, a statement necessarily contained in all others, whether any particular speaker chooses to identify it or not. 

Does that apply to “The good exists”? It isn’t the base of knowledge, but it is a fact used in all knowledge. 

“Not the base”: knowing that there is something is the base of all knowledge because to know that S is P is to know that S exists, P exists, and facts exist. But I’m not convinced that knowing that S is P is knowing, even implicitly, that something (knowledge?) is good.

“Used in all knowledge”: to make a claim is to take a stand—in one’s own mind—it is a sort of commitment. You have to care about a subject to turn your attention to it and reach that state of integration that “knowing” refers to. So, anytime a person commits his consciousness to the acceptance of something, he is implicitly saying: “This is something good to recognize and file in memory.”

Re-affirmation through denial is only a technique of showing that something is inescapable—i.e., that it is contained in all knowledge and all claims to knowledge. It works by showing that the axiom cannot be avoided even in the hardest case: the attempt to deny that axiom. But you could show universal “containment” in other ways, such as by giving enough examples that one could hardly avoid getting the principle. Let’s try that on “The good exists.”

1. Butter is yellow. Grasping it requires that something exist, it requires that one be conscious, it requires that things have an identity. To take a further, non-primary axiom: it requires that action exists, because your grasping that butter is yellow is an action.

Does grasping that butter is yellow require that the good exist? Your grasp of it depends on your isolating butter from the other things in your visual field, doing the mental work to learn to speak and to form the concepts of “butter” and “yellow.” Such simple concepts might be formed without special volitional effort, but it still has to be motivated, and the motivation comes from valuing. 

Can consciousness function without values? If nothing were good or bad, would consciousness, especially memory, function at all? I doubt it could. Values are the fuel of awareness. If nothing mattered, if everything were as “flat” as statistics about average grass height in southeastern Bulgaria, then nothing would be isolated or stored.

2. (3 x 7) x 4 = 84. It’s easier to see that without desire, no consciousness could know this. And desire is a consequence of value-judgments. Any kind of knowledge like this, where one has to concentrate and use place-holders, requires too much effort to occur if one had no values, interests, purposes. A person without any sense of good and bad, better and worse, would not be motivated to do the work.

Okay, I’m getting the principle that values are necessary for consciousness to do the work, but that’s not the same thing as the knowledge of a fact containing knowledge of some other, basic fact.

Having a brain is necessary to know anything, but the knowledge of the brain is not implicitly contained in knowing that butter is yellow or that (3 x7) x 4 = 84.

So, unfortunately, I leave it at that—for now.

/sb

[imported_harry]

Re: Gary Judd’s post 103747 of 5/29/25

Human judgments are subjective. That’s an observable fact. Ideally, they ought not to be subjective. Each potential decision should be subjected to judgment against the facts of reality but at the end of the day, like it or not, it is still subjective for it is the deciding individual who makes the decision according to his own assessment of what the facts of reality indicate to him is the right decision for the specific case.

“Like it or not”—i.e., objectively. You are here reporting what you think is objectively the case.

That’s not a refutation, but it shows that contained in any statement of fact or of value is an implicit commitment to the objectivity of one’s judgment. It’s a contradiction to think, “This will remove my ‘felt uneasiness’ but I have no idea if it will.” It’s no use going to the “maybe”: “This may help but I have no idea if it may.” To say “X may help” is to make a claim about the way things are, objectively. 

But that’s high-level polemics; let’s get to the actual confusion here. 

The fact that people decide doesn’t mean they decide irrationally. There is such a thing as a rational decision. The objective-subjective distinction is pretty much the same as the rational-irrational distinction.

People make value-judgments. There are no value-judgments in the external world, only in the mind of the individual. In other words, values are not intrinsic. But it is up to an individual’s free will whether he forms his value-judgment by an honest, in-focus, logically validated process of thought or by anything less. 

Mises explicitly rejects the idea that value-judgments can be irrational. He says that all judgments of value are rational. I submit that that is absurd, and that he must have been driven to it by some a priori preconception. No one can really believe that the decision to take drugs, believe in God, or be “woke” is made on the basis of adherence to reason and logic.

/sb

[imported_harry]

Re: James Ellias’ post 103755 of 5/29/25

By understanding the value-conditioned nature of categorization schemes, we gain a kind of objectivity, we can embrace the alternate conceptualization because we understand that different values can result in different valid conceptualizations.

Although I understand the physics perfectly, the chemistry perfectly, and the relation between the two perfectly, I need a simpler example of how objectivity (and the validation of one’s ideas generally) depends on “the good exists.”

/sb

[StephenGrossman]

Re: Harry Binswanger’s post 103778 of 5/30/25

[Asking James] how objectivity (and the validation of one’s ideas generally) depends on “the good exists.”

Validation is motivated, but not epistemologically justified, by the good. Morality is an application of epistemology.

*sb

[StephenGrossman]

Re: James Ellias’ post 103755 of 5/29/25

different values can result in different valid conceptualizations.

Different values result in different views of validity. The focused and unfocused mind have different validities. Kant’s unfocused mind contained an incomprehensible sense of duty “which announces a divine origin.” Thus incomprehensibility validates a real God. Not exactly a syllogism.

*sb

[GaryJudd]

Re: Harry Binswanger’s post 103777 of 5/30/25

The first sentence of “Rationality and Irrationality; Subjectivism and Objectivity of Praxeological Research,” is “Human action is necessarily always rational.” This is because conscious *action* is always the product of an act of will. As such it is *necessarily* always rational, i.e., a product of a reasoning process no matter how flawed the process may be.

Like Rand, Mises recognizes that man may err and evade, although I don’t think he specifically uses the latter term. He says, e.g.:

It is a fact that human reason is not infallible and that man very often errs in selecting and applying means. An action unsuited to the end sought falls short of expectation. It is contrary to purpose, but it is rational, i.e., the outcome of a reasonable—although faulty—deliberation and an attempt—although an ineffectual attempt—to attain a definite goal.

I am unaware of any Mises pronouncement that the psychological processes and the value judgments that result cannot be irrational. What I have just quoted indicates the antithesis.

To reject Mises’ praxeology as unworthy of application to issues such as those raised by James Ellias is to deprive the thinker of potential enlightenment.

/sb

[jamesellias]

Re: David Beisiegel’s post 103745 of 5/28/25

The problem that I see with this is that B can respond to A’s “So you’re going to believe in facts?” with “Maybe. I’ll believe in some facts if I feel like it and disregard others if I don’t. But the truth is the truth whether I choose to believe it or not” and thereby deny the existence of the good without valuing the good.

If B chooses to be wishy-washy in this way, he is still choosing a certain cognitive course of action (to hold his feelings as the standard); he is engaged in choosing one thing among alternatives; he is engaged in an act of valuing.

As Geddy Lee sings, “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.” And you have chosen to value something. Free will and valuing are part of every act of conceptual cognition and as such are both axioms. 

/sb

[jamesellias]

Re: Harry Binswanger’s post 103776 of 5/30/25

What does it mean to “believe in facts”? I’m not sure. Why is this a fair question for A to ask B? B could answer: “Not necessarily.”

All that is going on here is that A is drawing attention to something that B has already implied: that he is choosing to believe this thing he just said. It’s irrelevant whether A asks it or not; B is choosing to believe a thing instead of not believing it; he is engaged in a choice to pursue one alternative over others. If B says, “I’ve said this thing, but I’m not necessarily going to believe it,” then either he’s not going to believe it, not, or start thinking about something else, or just stand there in a stupor; whatever he chooses, he is pursuing one alternative above others; he is engaged in an act of valuing. 

In Galt’s speech, AR has Galt say: 

An axiom is a statement that identifies the base of knowledge and of any further statement pertaining to that knowledge, a statement necessarily contained in all others, whether any particular speaker chooses to identify it or not. 

Does that apply to “The good exists”? It isn’t the base of knowledge, but it is a fact used in all knowledge. 

The existence of the good *does* lie at the base of all our knowledge, but not epistemologically; it lies at the base ethically. The purpose of gaining knowledge is to pursue the good. Even for someone who has no idea what the good is, all their actions presuppose some good, and they contradict themselves on this moral level if they say that the good does not exist. 

When I was a teenager, I would come across arguments that knowledge was impossible and I rejected them on the grounds that they were impractical. Part of what led me to this video was an exploration of whether there was some deep kernel of truth in my primitive teenage reasoning; whether skepticism could be rejected purely on ethical grounds. I believe it can; the ethical purpose of thought is to pursue the good, whatever that may be. The statement that knowledge is impossible is an act of cognition turned against its purpose. Even if one genuinely has no idea how to get the facts, the only non-contradictory choice from there is to keep looking, or to give up on the judgment that the effort is not worth it. If one makes this second judgment, then one is not saying that knowledge is impossible; he is asserting the knowledge (or at least the probability) that the effort won’t pay off. 

I’m bringing this up to demonstrate the deeper principle: the good is not a derivative aspect of philosophy, it has its place alongside the fundamental principles. Now of course the specific identification of what is good (the science of ethics) of course is more derivative and is conditioned by a great many facts in metaphysics, epistemology, man’s nature, etc, but this core element of morality — that the good exists — is part of the foundation of thought. It is an axiom; it conditions our grasp of all other facts, not epistemologically, but ethically. 

I’m not convinced that knowing that S is P is knowing, even implicitly, that something (knowledge?) is good.

You don’t necessarily *know* that something is good; my point is that to know a thing is to treat something as good. 

Having a brain is necessary to know anything, but the knowledge of the brain is not implicitly contained in knowing that butter is yellow or that (3 x7) x 4 = 84. 

What I said above answers this comment: “the good exists” conditions the grasp of this fact ethically; knowledge that the good exists is not involved in validating these facts, it is the ethical reason for bothering to grasp them; and since it is the reason to grasp any fact, it lies at the base of our knowledge. 

/sb

[jamesellias]

Re: Stephen Grossman’s post 103780 of 5/30/25

Validation is motivated, but not epistemologically justified, by the good. Morality is an application of epistemology.

Yes, and because validation is motivated, that process of validation (the application of epistemology) is also an application of ethics. The moral justification of validating knowledge is to help pursue the good.

[jamesellias]

Re: Harry Binswanger’s post 103778 of 5/30/25

I need a simpler example of how objectivity (and the validation of one’s ideas generally) depends on “the good exists.”

In ITOE, Rand says that it would be absurd to have a separate concept for beautiful blonde women who are 5, 4’ (or something like that.) But she also mentions that it would be worth forming a concept for such people if there was something special about them warranting special study. If you were a casting director, you might form such a concept; “let’s cast one of them Marylin Monroe types, that type of woman will elicit a certain response from the audience.” 

My understanding of objectivity is that, we must become aware of the way the form of our awareness conditions our awareness so we can differentiate parts of our awareness that are contributed by the nature of our consciousness from the parts which are contributed by the things we are aware of. For example, when we see that the stick is “bent” in water, we come to understand that this is not an aspect of the stick’s shape, but rather an aspect of how the light from the stick reaches us, and the perceptual integrations we use to determine an objects shape based on the light it reflects. Becoming aware of this issue allows us to gain objectivity, we see that the perceptual integrations surrounding light will not work because of this different context where light bends. 

In a normal value context, the “Marylin Monroe type,” concept is absurd, in another, it is crucial. Being aware of the way values condition this conceptualization choice helps us determine whether it is a valid concept or not; helping us gain objectivity in a totally different way; based on other factors which condition our consciousness. 

Similarly, in the chemistry example, we must be aware of how different value contexts (different conditions on the form of our awareness) will demand a different conceptualization of the facts. 

The connection to “the good exists,” as axiomatic: Identifying “the good,” as axiomatic makes us aware that it is an issue which is ever-present in our cognition As a result, we must be aware of how it sometimes plays a role in the form of that cognition. 

[JimAllard]

Re: James Ellias’ post 103797 of 5/31/25

The existence of the good *does* lie at the base of all our knowledge, but not epistemologically; it lies at the base ethically.  

I don’t know what it would mean to be at the base of all knowledge, ethically, because ethics is a branch of knowledge that depends on prior knowledge.

At any rate, the good can’t be at the base of all knowledge because that would make values intrinsic. It would mean that the good is out there in reality to be directly perceived. But it’s not. The good has to be learned. And I don’t just mean some advanced knowledge of what is rationally good, I mean even an implicit grasp of such a thing as the good has to be learned.

The good is not a thing out in reality, it’s a relationship between reality and man. Grasping this relationship requires prior knowledge. It requires the knowledge that something exists, that one is aware of it, that one can move about in the world and alter one’s environment. It requires the knowledge (on some level) that reality has rules, that one’s desires can be frustrated or aided and that some things are “for” or “against” one’s desires. (Desires are not expressions of “the good,” they are the initial data that allows one to grasp such a thing as the good.) 

The point is that there is much knowledge at the base of “the good.”

The purpose of gaining knowledge is to pursue the good.

This is true, but the good is, itself knowledge, which has to learned. And it is learned, to increasing degrees, from the very beginning, as part of one’s intellectual development. Values and facts go hand in hand. But the good is not at the base of all knowledge — it’s not an axiom of knowledge, as such.  

Even for someone who has no idea what the good is, all their actions presuppose some good, and they contradict themselves on this moral level if they say that the good does not exist.

It’s not true that all actions presuppose some good.

A newborn’s actions do not presuppose some good. A newborn is simply reacting to what’s around him and trying to figure out his basic relationship to reality. There’s no issue of “the good” at this stage. There are pleasure-pain mechanisms, but nothing that could be called the good. This is a case of ignorance. Some knowledge is required before one can have even an implicit grasp of the good.

As for the case of irrationality, a drug addict’s actions do not presuppose some good, they are just reactions to physical desires and emotional pulls. They are not acting on some notion of the good, they are blanking-out.

Values are types of facts, thus evasion and immorality wipe out both. 

It is true, though, that values and knowledge go together. To the degree one is thinking, one is valuing and vice versa. But this doesn’t make the good an axiom.  

[Author]

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