The Genesis of Objectivism
My diagnosis of the ills of moralism has been that we objectify what is fundamentally subjective, transforming our beliefs and desires into facts and (objective) values. Thus, if we believe something, we take it to be true; and if we desire (or like) something, we take it to be right[1] (or good).[2] The resultant “ills” are therefore twofold: We are overconfident in our judgments, and as a result of these hardened attitudes, we take actions that are both stultifying and aggressive. Thus, wars are fought because the opponents consider each another not simply to have different or conflicting beliefs and desires, but to be wrong and evil. If the differences were only the former, there would be more possibilities for mutual tolerance, negotiation, and change.
But
where does the faux and noxious objectification come from? I have
previously noted that it lends a certain advantage in certain circumstances,
which may have been instrumental in assuring the survival of our species such
as it is. The most obvious just-so Darwinian story is that individuals who hold
tenaciously to their views may be more likely to prevail over those who harbor
uncertainty.[3]
In this essay I would like to put forward an even more fundamental explanation
(hypothesis).
Some
decades ago it hit me that I was living in a state of continual astonishment at
other people’s beliefs and desires. Prior to that I had assumed other people,
or at least others of my acquaintance and milieu, thought about things pretty
much as I did. With increasing age there came, however, one shock after another.
This led to a double realization, then: not only that others were sometimes exceedingly
different from what I had assumed, but also, and hand in hand with that, that I
myself had been extremely naïve about the world. It finally reached the point
where I conceived myself as involved in a lifelong project of disillusionment
(and in both senses of dispelling illusions and finding reality to be disappointing).
I
also came to diagnose the cause of my condition as having been brought up in a parochial
environment. By parochial I mean with a narrow perspective. At first this
seemed paradoxical, in that I grew up in an extremely cosmopolitan location:
New York City. But the more I learned about the world, the more I could
understand how such a situation is quite commonplace, and the particular ways I
had been outfitted with blinders while being surrounded by a vast variety of
things that thereby remained invisible to me.
Now
I would go further and surmise that this is nothing but the human condition,
for we all begin with some sort of (largely)[4] undifferentiated experience
of the world, and only over time learn to distinguish others from ourself. I often
tell the following episode from my days as stepfather to a little boy. Little
Sean would be sitting at the dining room table poring over one of the Garfield
the cat cartoon books he loved, while I was somewhere in the vicinity. A
particular cartoon would tickle his funny bone and I would hear his soft,
high-pitch giggle. Then he'd say something to the effect: "Isn't that
funny?" He was almost demanding my concurrence. Laughter loves company.
But from my position there was no way I could see the cartoon; I might even be
in a different room. At the very least I might be on the other side of the
table and have to ask him to turn the book around so that I could read it.
I came to
interpret these events as revealing an aspect of the young mind: It does not
distinguish between itself and the rest of the world. Sean -- like everyone --
was seeing the world from a point of view. But as far as he was concerned that
was the way the world was, not just his perspective on it. Thus, if he could
read the
I
suspect that most and perhaps all of us never escape this condition entirely: For
even as we come to recognize that others are not ourself, we still fail to
wholly grasp the full implications of that, which are that others may be
profoundly different from ourself. And the thesis I am now putting forward is
that this failure in turn helps to account for our objectification of
everything subjective, since our prevailing assumption is that others see
things just as we do, and hence (this being the most parsimonious explanation of
that) we are all seeing an objective reality that corresponds exactly to our subjective
experience.
Clearly
at some level of abstraction we do all see things “the same way.” But
this “level” may be so abstract as to be meaningless for all practical purposes.
For example, of even ardent pro-lifers and pro-choicers it could be said that
they (we) are all alike in being ardent about their beliefs regarding abortion.
And I suppose I must immediately qualify this assertion by acknowledging that such
similarities could also have practical implications. Indeed, my
very call for amoralism is premised on the noxiousness of our all (or most of
us) being so very ardent about things (because of our faux
objectification of them).
So
in the end: Of course we have significant similarities and significant differences.
In this essay I have suggested a way that this fundamental fact leads to a faux
and noxious objectification of our subjective experiences.
[1]
Or permissible.
[2]
Granted there is not a perfect symmetry between belief and truth on the one
hand and desire and good on the other. Truth is commonly taken to be part of
the very meaning of belief: to believe something is precisely to believe it is
true. Contrast this to desire, where to desire something is not necessarily to
believe it is right (“I want to eat another scoop of ice cream even though I
know it’s not good for me”). I finesse this difference by claiming that as a
matter of empirical fact we tend to deem right or good whatever we desire
or like. And therefore, since my goal is to de-objectify all of our attitudes,
I am in effect calling for a universal skepticism, that is, a moderation of the
intensity of our beliefs, along with a recognition of our desires as only
desires. (Another option would be to craft a notion of belief that does not
imply believing something to be true, in which case we could retain our
beliefs as well as our desires without being objectivists. It’s all a web of
beliefs that, à la Quine, we are free to tweak, provided we make adjustments in
several of them and not only one.)
[3]
A contemporary demonstration of this, if one is of a Democratic frame of mind,
is how the minority of MAGA Republicans, who appear capable of fanatically holding
the most outlandish beliefs (Biden stole the election) and desires (every man
woman and child should own an assault weapon or two or ten), are able to hold
sway over the majority of more moderate and peaceable and sensible liberal-minded
folk.
[4]
Although I also still assume that we innately make a number of fundamental distinctions
from the very start of infancy.
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