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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 December 2007
Are we able to make objective moral judgments? This perennial philosophical topic needs often to be revisited because it is central to human life. Judging how people conduct themselves, the institutions they devise, whether, in short, they are doing what's right or what's wrong, is ubiquitous. In this essay I defend the objectivity of ethical judgments by deploying a neo-Aristotelian naturalism by which to keep the “is-ought” gap at bay and place morality on an objective footing. I do this with the aid of the ideas of Ayn Rand as well as, but only by implication and association, those of Martha Nussbaum and Philippa Foot.
1 For a fuller explanation of the nature of objectivity, see Machan, Tibor R., Objectivity: Recovering Determinate Reality in Philosophy, Science, and Everyday Life (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Co., 2004)Google Scholar.
2 Moral judgments here also cover political judgments, in other words.
3 Whether objectivity is possible, for instance, in journalism, self-understanding, or psychotherapy are issues of popular interest and not solely the concern of professional philosophers.
4 Truth is objective in any case. To add “objectively” to “true” serves to signal that no other kind of truth is possible. There can be subjective feelings or experiences or phenomena, but there can be no subjective truths. As to whether criticisms in philosophy qualify as ethical or moral, it seems to me that they do, as part of professional ethics.
5 See Wittgenstein, Ludwig, “A Lecture on Ethics,” in Philosophical Review 74 (1965): 11–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and the last sentence of Wittgenstein, 's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company; London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1922)Google Scholar: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” As Arto Tukiainen says, “Wittgenstein regarded the point of the Tractatus as ethical. His purpose was to show that there cannot be any meaningful ethical sentences.” So Wittgenstein is supposed to have denied that ethics is objective. See http://examinedlifejournal.com/articles/printerfriendly.php?shorttitle=wittmoralval&authorid=54. But see also Tibor R. Machan, “Heretical Essay in Wittgenstein's Meta-Ethics,” Analysis and Metaphysics (forthcoming).
6 Among those who have made this attempt within the naturalist, neo-Aristotelian school are Veatch, Henry B., For an Ontology of Morals: A Critique of Contemporary Ethical Theory (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1971)Google Scholar; Cooper, John, Knowledge, Nature, and the Good: Essays on Ancient Philosophy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004)Google Scholar; Nussbaum, Martha, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996)Google Scholar; and Foot, Philippa, Natural Goodness (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, as well as several others. Only Ayn Rand identifies herself explicitly as an Objectivist.
One of my own early efforts to defend a naturalist-objectivist metaethics appears in Machan, Tibor R., “Epistemology and Moral Knowledge,” Review of Metaphysics 36, no. 3 (September 1982): 23–49Google Scholar. I try to sketch the appropriate conception of human knowledge in support of this task in Machan, Tibor R., “Education and the Philosophy of Knowledge,” Educational Theory 20, no. 3 (1970): 253–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
7 Machan, Tibor R., “Why It Appears That Objective Ethical Claims Are Subjective,” Philosophia 26, nos. 1–4 (1997): 1–23Google Scholar. A recent critique of the is-ought gap is Putnam, Hilary's The Collapse of the Fact-Value Dichotomy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002)Google Scholar. Putnam's critique, not unlike Martha Nussbaum's and Philippa Foot's efforts, comes several decades after Rand briefly laid out her case for the objectivity of value judgments. (See note 11 below.)
8 I discuss a wide range of issues related to objectivity in Machan, Objectivity.
9 Gaita, Raimond, A Common Humanity: Thinking about Love and Truth and Justice (London: Routledge, 1998), 248Google Scholar.
10 There is a subtle difference between what Rand means by “objective” when it comes to ethics and what she means by the term in other, more straightforwardly epistemological, contexts. For more on this, see Raibley, Jason, “Rand on the Objectivity of Values” (2002), http://www.ios.org/events/advsem02/JRObjectivity.pdfGoogle Scholar.
11 Rand, Ayn, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (New York: New American Library, 1970), 54Google Scholar (emphasis added to indicate the source of objectivity apprehended by human consciousness).
Ayn Rand preceded Martha Nussbaum and Philippa Foot in making a case in recent philosophy for an objectivist, neo-Aristotelian metaethics. Both Nussbaum and Foot published their discussions of these metaethical matters three decades after Rand came out with her discussion of the topic in her essay “The Objectivist Ethics,” in her book The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism (New York: New American Library, 1961). Incidentally, this title is often misunderstood to indicate that Rand is defending some normative version of Hobbes's psychological egoism. In fact, her ethical egoism is more in line with Aristotle's eudaimonism, whereby ethics per se stands in service of living a good human life. Thus the subtitle's reference to “a new concept of egoism.”
12 Ibid.
13 Accordingly, it would be a mischaracterization of Rand's view to suggest that she proposes to derive moral conclusions from nonmoral facts. The facts from which she proposes to derive moral conclusions do contain normative elements, but they are in no way disqualified as facts for that reason alone. The qualification of these facts as “moral” or “ethical” is, in crucial respects, similar to the qualification of other facts as “biological” or “sociological”; the qualification locates these facts ontologically.
14 Rand, “The Objectivist Ethics,” 18.
15 Nussbaum, Martha, The Therapy of Desire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994)Google Scholar.
16 Foot, Philippa, Natural Goodness (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
17 Thus, Eric Mack is correct when he writes that “[b]eing an objectivist with respect to claims about the effectiveness of means to chosen ends no more removes an advocate of the choice doctrine from the basic subjectivist camp than it removes Hume from that camp” (Mack, “More Problematic Arguments in Randian Ethics,” The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 7 [Spring, 2006]: 301). It is not this that removes the choice doctrine from the basic subjectivist camp; rather, it is the nature of the end chosen, namely, the ultimate end of human life. For Hume, that end appears to be anything one might desire, whereas in reality, Rand claims, it is only the one ultimate value that is possible for us: human life. Any other choice would amount, in time, to the annihilation of ends.
18 The happiness at issue here is not what so many contemporary social scientists take to amount to happiness—cheerfulness, even giddiness. See, for example, Pecqueur, Jean-Paul, The Case Against Happiness (Farmington, ME: Alice James Books, 2006)Google Scholar. On my own view, happiness is the self-awareness of living successfully.
19 Hume, David, A Treatise of Human Nature (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1961), 423Google Scholar.
20 For a recent effort to address Hume's concerns, see Bickhard, Mark H., “Process and Emergence: Normative Function and Representation,” Axiomathes 14, nos. 1–3 (2003): 121–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Bickhard also reads Hume as saying that one cannot derive “ought” from “is,” whereas Hume said that one cannot deduce “ought” from “is.”
21 Rand, “The Objectivist Ethics,” 19 (emphasis in the original). Did Rand claim to have derived an “ought” from an “is” in this essay, as Mack states (“More Problematic Arguments,” 297)? Let me reiterate that Rand is using the term “validation” in her discussion of value judgments. This idea of “validation” is not the same as the Humean idea of deduction; nor, it seems, is it the same as Mack's idea of derivation. What Rand seems to me to be doing is arguing (in some legitimate fashion or other) that moral judgments can (objectively) be shown to be true. She does not develop in detail just what such validation consists of. I surmise, from the full context of her approach to demonstrating the truth of her ideas, that hers is a type of conceptual rather than syllogistic “proof.”
At the risk of sounding heretical, Rand's form of validation smacks of the kind of reasoning we find in Wittgenstein or in criminal prosecution, akin to the argument to the best explanation. So her showing that moral claims can be objective rests on a different idea of what it takes to validate such claims from what Hume appears to have regarded as required for such a task (and then denied is possible). See Machan, Tibor R., Ayn Rand (New York: Peter Lang, 2001), 57ffGoogle Scholar.
It is also necessary to note here that when Rand and others in this tradition of naturalistic metaethics and ethics defend a principle, they do this “for the most part” and not “necessarily in every conceivable case.”
22 Journals of Ayn Rand, ed. Harriman, David (New York: Dutton, 1997), 683Google Scholar (emphasis in the original).
23 Ken Lucey has objected with the rhetorical question, “Does Machan think a fact is such that it can have implications?” Yes. For example, the fact that there is an ashtray on a table in a restaurant implies that smoking is permitted there. Or the fact of someone's racism implies the appropriateness of moral contempt for that someone.
24 Machan, Ayn Rand, chap. 2.
25 Rand can be interpreted as holding that the kind of strictly formal deductions that others think exclusively deserve the term are simply very broad, symbolic models of logical reasoning. So she would argue that deductions do, in fact, obtain between judgments of facts involving concepts that are themselves contextually (as distinct from timelessly) defined, possessing essential attributes that make logical deductions possible. Her objection to Hume, then, is that Hume failed to see that concepts such as “ought to” and “ought not to” can be derived from definitions of “human goodness” as, in part, essentially involving choices and ultimate values. In other words, Rand would argue that a sound, valid theory of human goodness deductively yields moral conclusions, conclusions regarding what one ought to do, so long as by “deduction” one does not mean logical arguments involving closed definitions of concepts. For more, see Machan, Ayn Rand, and Machan, Objectivity.
26 I examine both Hume's and Moore's criticism of “naturalism” in Machan, Tibor R., Human Rights and Human Liberties (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1975)Google Scholar, and Machan, , Individuals and Their Rights (Chicago: Open Court, 1989)Google Scholar. For both Hume and Moore, definitions appear to amount to necessary truths, whereas in the neo-Aristotelian, Randian epistemological tradition they are understood to be contextual and open-ended. See Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.
27 Machan, Ayn Rand, chap. 2, and Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.
28 By “in which the principles of logic are followed” I am referring to the policy of being consistent, avoiding contradictions, and avoiding all the more specialized fallacies involved in bad reasoning. I do not, however, have in mind adhering to the strict requirements of formal or symbolic logic, wherein one aims for purely deductive reasoning. For example, substantive reasoning (including moral reasoning) need not result in conclusions that are logically impossible to deny. For more on this, see Machan, Tibor R., “Another Look at Logical Possibility,” The Personalist 51, (1970): 246–49Google Scholar. See also Rasmussen, Douglas B., “Logical Possibility: An Aristotelian Essentialist Critique,” The Thomist 47 (October 1983): 513–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
29 A fatal flaw of much of philosophical reflection about what it is to know has been (from Plato through Descartes to our own time) that knowledge has often been understood to require timeless certainty. If one knows, it must be impossible to even conceive that one is wrong. Knowledge must be absolute, perfect, incorrigible, finished, and, as it is sometimes put, in the final analysis. For a discussion of a different view of knowledge, see Leite, Adam, “Is Fallibility an Epistemological Shortcoming?” The Philosophical Quarterly 54, no. 215 (April 2004): 232–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
The Platonist view (not necessarily Plato's view) of what knowledge must be is an impossible ideal. This comes across when, for example, Socrates notes that he knows only that he knows nothing. Socrates is arguably invoking the idealist view of perfect knowledge of Forms and disclaiming having achieved it. Given the prevalence of the Platonist view of knowledge, the result has been a great variety of more or less skeptical ideas about knowledge, such as the prominent view that we cannot really know anything, or if we can, perhaps, it's just an approximation; maybe we can have probable or approximate or fallible knowledge. In contrast, I would say that sometimes we probably know this or that; sometimes we have approximate knowledge; sometimes our knowledge is fallible. At other times, however, we simply know, without qualification. It is only the model of ideal (Platonic) knowledge that inclines one to place the qualifiers before “knowledge” in every instance.
Currently, Richard Rorty's communitarian view of knowledge is widely respected, according to which one knows in terms of one's group and objectivity is not possible but solidarity is. For the full story, see Rorty, Richard, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991)Google Scholar. All this has been especially influential with regard to knowledge about right and wrong, good and evil, producing some disturbing practical results in crucial areas such as the way personal misconduct, professional malpractice, crime, and terrorism are widely understood and discussed. For more on this, see Machan, Tibor R., “Terrorism and Objective Moral Principles,” International Journal of World Peace 4, no. 4 (October–December 1987): 31–40Google Scholar. (The ideas of this paper are incorporated in Machan, Objectivity.)
What Rand has proposed is that human beings, if they do the hard work, can obtain knowledge just fine and dandy. There is, of course, ample evidence of this throughout the sciences, in technology, and, let's not forget it, in ordinary life. But what is this human knowledge? As the name of her system makes evident, the key to knowledge is objective validity (meaning that knowledge must be “reasonable or justifiable in the circumstances”). As she put the point in her Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, 46:
Objective validity is determined by reference to the facts of reality. But it is man who has to identify the facts; objectivity requires discovery by man—and cannot precede man's knowledge, i.e., cannot require omniscience. Man cannot know more than he has discovered—and he may not know less than the evidence indicates, if his concepts and definitions are to be objectively valid.
Ayn Rand's position is, I believe, the one that Gilbert Harman expressed well: namely, that we must “take care not to adopt a very skeptical attitude nor become too lenient about what is to count as knowledge” (Gilbert Harman, Thought [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976], 145). Another prominent contemporary philosopher who has advanced this understanding of human knowledge is J. L. Austin, in his essay “Other Minds,” in Austin, , Philosophical Papers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961)Google Scholar. Arguably, in his Austin, , On Certainty (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1969)Google Scholar, Ludwig Wittgenstein also suggests such a view of knowledge.
30 Thus, if one reasons, “I just left and locked my car in the faculty parking lot, and it is reasonable to hold that no one has moved it, so that is where my car is now, so that is where I will find it upon my return,” this is not quite the same sort of formal reasoning as “Since p strictly implies q, and q strictly implies r, and since p, therefore r.”
31 Can flourishing and justice conflict? I would say they can, in very exceptional cases—when, as John Locke is supposed to have said, “politics is impossible.” See Hart, H. L. A., “Are There Any Natural Rights?” Philosophical Review 64 (1955): 175–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Flourishing for human beings comes about through the practice of the virtues, including justice.
32 The precise way one makes this choice is a complicated matter because it happens incrementally in one's life, starting with tiny decisions reaffirmed over and over again, as well as neglected now and then (and, by some, even frequently). For more on this, see Machan, Tibor R., Human Rights and Human Liberties (Chicago: Nelson-Hall Publishing Co., 1975), 94ffGoogle Scholar. See also Machan, Tibor R., “Rand and Choice,” in The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 7, no. 2 (Spring 2006), 257–73Google Scholar.
33 Such an examination may take place in a survey of such animals or other living things after some natural calamity, such as a severe drought or flood.
34 I consider in some detail the oft-discussed problems with such naturalism—with the idea of an objective “nature”—in Machan, Individuals and Their Rights, chap. 1.
35 In some cases, seriously impaired persons can excel in certain very significant respects (e.g., astrophysicist Stephen Hawking), though no one could reasonably deny their being impaired.
36 For more, see Machan, Objectivity, chap. 1.
37 Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, chap. 5.
38 For more on this, see Machan, Tibor R., Putting Humans First: Why We Are Nature's Favorite (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004)Google Scholar. See also Austin, “Other Minds.”
39 This is not the place to develop a full case for the contextualist position. The position faces many challenges, especially with respect to how a contextual definition tracks the ontological features of what is being defined, the nature of the thing.
40 Austin, “Other Minds.”
41 For more along these lines, see Putnam, Hilary, Words and Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994)Google Scholar, esp. Part I, “The Return of Aristotle.” See also Rasmussen, Douglas B., “Human Flourishing and the Appeal to Human Nature,” Social Philosophy and Policy 16, no. 1 (1999): 1–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I too have addressed the issue in Machan, Individuals and Their Rights, 68–83.
42 For more on this, see Pols, Edward, The Acts of Our Being (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1983)Google Scholar; Sperry, Roger W., Science and Moral Priority (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983)Google Scholar; and Machan, Tibor R., Initiative—Human Agency and Society (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 2000)Google Scholar.
43 For more, see Machan, Tibor R., Classical Individualism: The Supreme Importance of Each Human Being (London: Routledge, 1998)Google Scholar. An Al Capone or an Adolf Hitler becomes individuated in destructive or obstructive ways.
44 Arguably, many so-called “self-help” books are, in fact, books of ethics, but they have not been treated as such under the influence of the prominent conception of moral philosophy according to which morality pertains only to interpersonal conduct. For a good critique of this position, see Falk, W. D., “Morality, Self, and Others,” in Morality and the Language of Conduct, ed. Castaneda, Hector-Neri and Nakhnikian, George (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1965)Google Scholar. Proper consideration of how one ought to act as the individual one is will be constrained by general principles based upon one's membership in the human species: e.g., rationality, respect for human rights, etc.
45 Some have objected that Rand does not manage to derive ought claims from true claims about what is the case. See, for example, David Friedman, “Some Problems with Ayn Rand's Derivation of Ought from Is,” posted on the newsgroup humanities.philosophy.objectivism (reportedly circa November 1996). The criticism rests on a formalist or Platonist conception of definitions and concepts. (See also Robert Nozick, “On the Randian Argument,” The Personalist 52 [Spring 1971].) As such, it misunderstands Rand and her neo-Aristotelian naturalist metaethics and the conception of definitions she adopts. (See also Putnam, Words and Life.)
Actually, Friedman focuses not on ethics per se but on politics, complaining (as does Mack) that Rand cannot show, based on her ethical egoism, that one ought to respect another's right to life, liberty, property, etc. For a very good discussion of why Rand's ethical egoism is often misunderstood along similar lines, see White, Robert, “A Study of the Ethical Foundations of Ayn Rand's Theory of Individual Rights” (Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland, a thesis submitted 2005)Google Scholar. White shows, among other things, that Rand's egoism is peculiar in that it sees ethics as such as egoistic or eudaimonist.
46 Mack, Eric, “Problematic Arguments in Randian Ethics,” The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 5, no. 1 (Fall 2003)Google Scholar; and Rasmussen, Douglas B., “Rand on Obligation and Value,” The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 4, no. 1 (Fall 2002)Google Scholar.
47 Douglas Rasmussen makes the following challenging point about this issue: “Rand's derivation of an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’ seems of limited value: if I choose to live, then I ought to do such and such, but since there can be no obligation without this choice, there is nothing, either logically or morally, that obligates me to choose to live and thus no reason to be moral. Possibly, there was something to Hazel E. Barnes (1967) including a chapter on ‘Objectivist Ethics’ in her book, An Existentialist Ethics. Morality seems to be based on an irrational or arational commitment—the very thing Rand vehemently rejects” (Rasmussen, “Rand on Obligation and Value,” 75). The claim, however, that this makes Rand's view “of limited value” assumes that “objective” must mean exactly what Rand denies it must mean, namely, “intrinsic”—that is, that for a moral standard to be objectively true, it would have to amount to a set of categorical imperatives and could not amount to a set of conditional imperatives. For more, see Machan, “Rand and Choice.”
48 Or, to put it as I would, it is possible for us (that is, for each normal human individual) to keep up the initiative to live and to think. Let me stress that the choice to live is a fundamental or first choice, or is best so conceptualized. It may be envisioned as being made, in the initial stages of one's life, haltingly, implicitly, gradually, over and over again, expressing (as one might put it) the will to live, to be the human being one can become. The choice—or initial emergence of conceptual consciousness—I am considering is a logical first step in action and thus cannot be motivated by some desire or knowledge. It is not a choice in the sense of a selection process, going into force with prior information at hand; rather, it is the exertion of an initial effort by a rational agent who at that stage of its development lacks other decisive prompters to action. This initiative is, as it were, the act of free will. (For more on this perennial topic, see Machan, Initiative—Human Agency and Society.) As one commentator has noted, what I am defending is a view of morality that is reminiscent of its characterization as “a system of hypothetical imperatives.” Only in this case, as the comment goes, “the hypothetical can only really go one way. We might think of the decision to live as one that is inconceivable to reject….” Only the decision is unlike others, since it is not considered but commences or initiates any and all considerations. I should note, also, that although the choice to live commits one to flourishing, it does not necessitate it. One can start off with the choice to live but then default on what it implies, namely, to think and act virtuously. But a consistent alternative to choosing to live with this implicit commitment to aiming to flourish still would amount to implicitly choosing to wither away. Indeed, if one chooses to live—to survive as a human being—instead of to perish, the implicit choice does involve attempting to flourish. For human beings, the choice to live is not merely the choice to survive—as one survives a plane crash by merely not dying in it—but the choice to live as human beings can.
49 Kelley, David, “Choosing Life” (unpublished paper, 2005)Google Scholar.
50 Neuroscientists, of course, have made observations of the brain's behavior in infancy that correlate with what (in later life) turn out to be mental activities, thus suggesting that such activities do take place in infancy and perhaps even before. Bernard Baars, author of In the Theater of Consciousness (London: Oxford University Press, 1996), made some interesting observations to me via e-mail on this topic: “My friend Stan Franklin, who is a mathematician/computer scientist, talks about ‘autonomous agents.’ Humans are nothing if not autonomous agents—not in a mystical sense, but in a very specific and causal sense. One of the ways we are autonomous is in terms of substitutability of resources. On the level of food, we like to eat meat, but if that runs out, potatoes will do. So there are options. In terms of human relationships, we'd like to have Julia Roberts as our playmate, but there are other fish in that sea. In terms of making a living, we'd all like to be paid for our books, but … (etc.). I think that's one of the keys to autonomy, substitutability of resources. Another is flexibility in acquiring knowledge. Humans are by far the best learners in the animal kingdom, obviously. But acquired knowledge also shapes who we are and how we define our purposes and interests. Gerald Edelman … makes a big thing about the distinctiveness of the individual human brain. His Neural Darwinism gives a conceptual account of individuality from solid biological evidence.”
51 The word “choose” can mislead because it is often used to mean “select,” and for selections there need to be several alternatives. This fundamental choice, however, is of the “on versus off” type, so “taking the initiative,” which involves moving from rest to motion, more accurately characterizes what may well be going on here.
52 Strauss, Leo, Natural Right and History, 2d ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 127Google Scholar.
53 For a detailed discussion, see Machan, “Rand and Choice.” At this point, I should make clear that the choice not to live, made at the initial stage of one's life (that is to say, the choice not to initiate one's living) is premoral. One must embark upon life before one is bound by the principles that guide it. Yes, one's flourishing human life is potentially one's end, but it is not one's end in fact without one's having embarked upon living. I should also note that not choosing to live, not initiating one's life process, as it were, is not the same as embarking upon suicide, which is done when one has lived for quite a while and is certainly open to moral criticism by that stage of one's life. Should one decide to commit suicide—maybe justifiably—the method used would also be subject to moral evaluation.
54 This is why objecting to conclusions on these matters on the grounds that it is logically possible (i.e., that there is no formal contradiction in the denial) that they aren't so is irrelevant. As Wittgenstein puts it, “The reasonable man does not have certain doubts” (Wittgenstein, On Certainty, 29e). That is, some doubts are unreasonable.
55 For more on this point, see Machan, Tibor R. and Chesher, James E., A Primer on Business Ethics (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003)Google Scholar. See also the introductory essay, “Ethics and Its Uses,” in Machan, Tibor R., Commerce and Morality (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1988)Google Scholar.
56 Martha Nussbaum, in contrast, seems to be concerned with the human good without giving a central role to choice. I discuss Nussbaum in Machan, Tibor R., Libertarianism Defended (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006), chap. 19, “Two Philosophers Skeptical of Negative Liberty.”Google Scholar
57 Of course, if (in fact, in the realm of ontology) everything is the same type or kind of being (e.g., matter-in-motion, sense data, spirit, or whatever), then objectivity will involve just what it takes to properly grasp this one type or kind of being.
58 In this account, truth is a property of judgments or statements, not of abstractly existing propositions. An unknown or unknowable truth is, accordingly, nonsense.
59 Nagel, Thomas, “The View from Here and Now,” London Review of Books 28, no. 9 (May 11, 2006)Google Scholar. (For my purposes, Nagel's summary captures the critical point that Williams voices.)
60 Ibid., 10.
61 For more on this, see Machan, “Why It Appears That Objective Ethical Claims Are Subjective.”
62 Pitkin, Hanna F., Wittgenstein and Justice: On the Significance of Ludwig Wittgenstein for Social and Political Thought (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Machan, Tibor R., “Can There Be Stable and Lasting Principles?” International Journal of Social Economics 32, no. 1/2 (2005): 218–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
63 Machan, “Can There Be Stable and Lasting Principles?” 225.
64 Nagel, “The View from Here and Now,” 10.
65 For an example of how context matters in formal disciplines, see Lakatos, Imre, Mathematics, Science, and Epistemology, ed. Worrall, John and Currie, Gregory (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
66 Ayn Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, 54.
67 Friedman, Milton, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), 12Google Scholar.
68 Rand, Ayn, Philosophy: Who Needs It? (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1982), 118Google Scholar. But see also her hero's statement in her novel Atlas Shrugged (New York: Penguin Putnam, 1992): “This, in every hour and every issue, is your basic moral choice: thinking or non-thinking, existence or non-existence, A or non-A, entity or zero” (1020). This suggests that even what Rand takes to be the premoral choice is subject to moral evaluation. I take her here, however, to be referring to the choices one makes following having made the basic choice that, so to speak, constitutes one's entry into the moral universe. One might see it, again, on analogy with someone having made the choice to be a doctor, after which he or she is committed to paying close attention to medical matters. But prior to that choice, no such obligation exists.
69 This is a crucial point stressed by Ayn Rand throughout her discussion of objectivity in all her writings, but especially in her Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.