Alex O’Connor’s Red-Herring Thought Experiment vs. Facts that Support Morality
In my LevelUp debate with Alex O’Connor about morality (video and Q&A below), I objected to his thought experiment in which he hypothesized human beings as immortal and sought to draw truths about morality from this alien context. I pointed out that, because morality pertains to and derives from human beings as they actually are, including their mortality, this approach is illogical and unhelpful.
Here I’d like to elaborate on what’s wrong with Alex’s thought experiment. Specifically, I want to show how it commits a red herring fallacy, distracting people from the facts they must focus on if they want to understand morality and how it can be objective.
I regard this subject as profoundly important because if leading intellectuals don’t come to understand how moral principles are derived from observable facts, our world will continue to be mired in the deadly false alternative of religion vs. subjectivism. Which means: Have faith in and obey an alleged supernatural tyrant who commands people to murder, enslave, love, and everything in between—or do whatever you, your tribe, or your culture feel like doing because there is no such thing as objective morality, so anything goes.
That’s a bad alternative. And that’s why this debate matters.
As I emphasized in both the debate and my follow-up Q&A, thought experiments can be helpful in examining moral matters, but only if they hypothesize scenarios in which human beings have the fundamental nature they in fact have. Otherwise, the hypothetical is not about human beings but about some other kind of beings. When someone poses such a hypothetical and insists that we must address it in order to understand human morality, as Alex did, he is deploying a red herring. We can see this in the exchanges below.
In my initial statement, I explained that values (and thus morality, which is the sphere of chosen values) are grounded in the requirements of life because life is the fundamental phenomena that makes values both possible and necessary. I pointed out that you can pursue values only if you are alive, and you need to pursue them only if you want to live. This observable fact about life, I argued, makes the requirements of human life the standard of moral value—the standard by which we can judge good and bad, right and wrong, how people should and shouldn’t act.
In response, Alex posed the following thought experiment:
I’d like you to imagine an immortality pill that is discovered or invented by scientists. And perhaps, to avoid some kind of overpopulation crisis, everybody is sterilized at the discovery of this miraculous wonder drug, and at least some people take it, and they’ll now live forever. And forget for a moment the sort of physical restrictions on this, the heat death of the universe. There’s probably some way to imagine avoiding this inevitability. These people live forever; they’re not going to die. . . . Does ethics cease to exist? Does it no longer matter how I treat my fellow creatures because the prospect of life and death is no longer on the table? . . .
Take Ayn Rand’s immortal robot but turn it into an immortal person who still has free will . . . can still suffer, still care, still have emotions. If we were suddenly immortal and I were causing somebody that you cared about to suffer in front of you, and you told me to stop, I’d say, well, your moral import is gone because none of us can die anymore, so the suffering that they’re experiencing can’t be called immoral. It might emotively matter to you, but then, of course, if you wanted to start using that as any kind of moral prescription, you’d be jumping over to my side of the fence.
I replied:
What’s the purpose of this thought experiment when we’re trying to figure out ethics for where we are—here in this world—living the way that we are? The first thing I would say to this request is that not a lot hangs on it, if anything hangs on it, because no matter how I answer it, we still are not immortal, and we have to figure out how to live as human beings. Ethics is a practical subject. It’s something that we need because we have to make life and death decisions, and decisions that are going to help us or harm us in life—how to set up relationships, businesses, societies, and all of that. So when we go to a wonderland of sorts and say, “Suppose that’s not the case, but this other thing is the case, what would you do then?”—we’re now really not dealing with ethics anymore. We’re dealing with a different situation.
That said, I’ll answer the question this way: If human beings could be immortal—so there’s no way they could die—and yet they still have feelings and desires and can experience pain and joy, I think ethics would still exist—but in a very different way than it does now. “Right” and “wrong” would not be about keeping you alive; it would be about making life the very best it could be. . . . If you were to take away the life-or-death element, I guess you would just be able to enjoy things forever. . . . It would become about maximizing flourishing.
In that imaginable yet metaphysically impossible context, would it be immoral to gratuitously cause someone to suffer? If maximizing personal flourishing were the standard, then, yes, such behavior would be immoral. To be moral in this context, each individual would have to pursue his own flourishing and respect the moral rights of others to do the same, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. But here’s the thing: All of this is moot because (a) human beings are mortal, (b) life and the possibility of death are what give rise to our need for values and morality, and (c) the nature and possibility of both flourishing and rights are rooted in and derived from these and related facts.
To hypothesize, as Alex did, that people can’t die is to hypothesize a contradiction. It is to hypothesize beings who are simultaneously people and not people. Contrary to the alleged analytic-synthetic dichotomy (which I think Alex accepts, and which I’ll write about separately), just because someone can imagine people being immortal doesn’t make it possible. Nor does the fact that mortality is not part of the definition of man mean that it is not an aspect of human nature. Mortality is an aspect of human nature. And this is the nature from which our need for morality arises.
More specifically, morality arises because:
- Human beings face the constant alternative of life or death.
- Life is conditional—in order to live, we must achieve certain goals or ends (knowledge, food, shelter, self-esteem, freedom, etc.).
- Unlike animals who survive by means of instinctual knowledge (e.g., knowledge of what’s edible or how to build a nest or which creatures are dangerous), we don’t automatically know what is good or bad for our life; if we want to know, we must observe reality and think; we must discover the requirements of our life and act accordingly.
- We have free will, the choice to think or not to think; thus we can choose either to activate our rational faculty and go by reason—which involves making decisions based on all the available and relevant facts (including our emotions, which are certain kinds of facts)—or to default on that vital necessity and thus act merely on the basis of emotions or desires and suffer the consequences.
The first of those four facts is the most basic. The constant alternative of life or death is the fundamental reason we need values and, by extension, morality, which is a code of values. Thus, if in the process of trying to understand the nature of morality, you hypothesize that “people can’t die but they’re still people,” you thereby sever your thinking from the basic fact that gives rise to the need and possibility of values. Your thought experiment then amounts to a series of floating abstractions—ideas detached from reality. Such a thought experiment is illogical and unhelpful because it disconnects your thinking from the world in which we actually live and from the nature that we actually have.
After I indicated as much in our debate, Alex posed a follow-up thought experiment—which was merely a variant of his original one and equally detached from reality. So I again pointed out why this is unhelpful toward the goal of understanding morality. The conversation proceeded as follows:
Alex: If you want a more imaginable, conceivable example, then suppose instead of living forever, everybody is immortal up to a point, and everybody knows their death date. Everybody on their 25th birthday gets killed, and they know there’s no way to avoid it for whatever reason. They know the time, the place, the date that they’re going to die, 100%. And they know they can’t die before, and they know they’re not going to live any longer. This doesn’t require this sort of strange vision of immortality and sort of universal conquest and avoiding the heat death. It seems to me that as long as it is even possible to say that there is such a thing as value and ethics in either of those situations, we cannot say that in principle ethics is about life.
Craig: You are posing fanciful thought experiments that do not happen and, as far as we know, cannot happen. You’re treating a metaphysical impossibility as the environment in which we need to investigate ethics. I think that’s the wrong way to go about it. So I want to give you a hypothetical. Suppose we lived in this world, and suppose human beings were mortal, and suppose that they could either live beautiful, happy lives if they acted in certain ways, or miserable lives if they acted in other ways, or simply die if they didn’t succeed in achieving their values. And there was a moral code that said the right way to live is in a way that enables you to live a beautiful, flourishing life—in harmony with other people, leaving each other free to do their own thing so we can trade with each other and all of that. So you’re given that alternative or any other alternative in this same world. You’re given the alternative of, “people should be forced to do things against their will,” or “people should suffer as much as possible,” or anything like that. Which of those alternatives would you choose?
Alex: The first.
Craig: See, if we’re here in this world, thinking about the real facts that are before us, and we have a bunch of young people here from all over the world, what they need to know is: “How am I supposed to act in this life?” They’re not jonesing for: “How am I supposed to act in those made-up worlds.” Made-up stuff is fun. Harry Potter is fun. But it’s not the thing we need to focus on.
Alex’s thought experiment(s) diverts your attention away from the facts you need to observe and integrate if you want to understand what morality is and how it can be objective. His hypothetical not only fails to clarify anything that matters toward answering the question at hand; it also obfuscates fundamentally important issues—such as why people need values in the first place.
To see this from yet another angle, consider some analogies. Alex’s thought experiment in a nutshell is: “Suppose people can’t die. Does morality still exist? If so, then morality can’t be about life.” That’s like saying:
- “Suppose people can’t get sick. Does medicine still exist? If so, it can’t be about keeping people healthy.” Agreed. In that case, medicine would have to be about something else, such as optimal performance.
- “Suppose engines can’t malfunction. Is engine maintenance still a thing? If so, then engine maintenance can’t be about avoiding engine malfunction.” Agreed. In that case, if engine maintenance did exist, it would have to be about something else, perhaps maintaining engine aesthetics.
- “Suppose fish can’t swim. Do their fins still serve a purpose? If so, their purpose can’t involve propulsion.” Agreed. In that case, their fins would have to serve some other purpose—or perhaps no purpose.
- “Suppose babies can’t fail to live and thrive. Is parenting still necessary? If so, it can’t be about helping babies to live and thrive.” Agreed. In that case, if parenting were necessary, it would have to be about something else.
What hangs on such hypotheticals? What do they help us to understand about engine maintenance, medicine, fish fins, or parenting?
Nothing at all.
If you engage in thought experiments that fundamentally change the nature of the things you’re trying to understand, you sever your thinking from reality on the matter at hand. If you are trying to address the question, “What facts of reality give rise to our need for values or morality?” and if you accept the stipulation, “While thinking about this, let’s suppose people can’t die,” then you are no longer thinking about people, and you are no longer focused on the actual context in which our need for values and morality arises. Alex and others are free to do this, but they are not free to understand morality by doing so.
Mortality is an aspect of human nature. Human life—along with its capacity to end—is what gives rise to our need for values. If our nature were different, our needs would be different, and morality would be different (if it existed at all). But our nature is what it is. And our need for values and morality arises from it accordingly.
We can pursue values only because we are alive; and we must pursue them if we want to live. This is the factual basis for morality.
For elaboration on why human life is the standard of moral value, see “Secular, Objective Morality: Look and See” or Rand’s essay “The Objectivist Ethics” in The Virtue of Selfishness. For a concise presentation of the “is–ought dichotomy,” see “The Is–Ought Gap: Subjectivism’s Technical Retreat.” For an overview of how Ayn Rand solved the is–ought problem, see “How Morality is Grounded in Reality.” And for a book-length treatment of all of this, see Loving Life: The Morality of Self-Interest and the Facts that Support It.
Our LevelUp Debate
Follow-Up Q&A
Reason and Rights: The Logic of Liberty
Conservatives claim rights come from God. “Progressives” claim rights come from government. In fact, however, rights come from reason—i.e., from perceptual observations and conceptual integrations of facts about human nature and the requirements of human life.
The following table provides a concise indication of those facts, their relationships to each other, and how our integrations of these facts and relationships give rise to the rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. I hope you find it helpful.
(Click the image to open a readable PDF.)
The Meaning and Purpose of Your Life
To live a meaningful, purposeful life, you need a solid grasp of the core concepts involved in this lifelong project. Key among them are “meaning” and “purpose.”
What exactly do these terms mean? What purpose do they serve?
Like so many important terms (e.g., spiritual, reverence, soul), these concepts have been co-opted by religionists who claim that meaning and purpose have no objective basis without “God.” Such claims are not merely false; they are dangerously false—even murderously false. Throughout history, people, tribes, and nations in thrall to an alleged God’s alleged purpose have caused all manner of mayhem—from Crusades to Inquisitions to “witch” burnings, fatwas, “honor” killings, genital mutilations, and the atrocities of 9/11 and 10/7. God knows what’s next.
The fact is that there is no God or “supernatural” being, which is why no one ever has presented evidence of his existence—much less evidence that meaning or purpose emanates from his will. (Nor could anyone present evidence for an “all-powerful” or “unlimited” being, as that’s a contradiction in terms.) What does exist is the natural world (aka existence, reality, or the universe) in which we live, including all the wondrous things in it, from atoms to waterfalls to hummingbirds, people, concert halls, planets, and galaxies. So much to explore and enjoy!
The concepts of meaning and purpose are our means of identifying certain things and relationships in reality, especially those pertaining to our needs, goals, and intentions. These concepts are closely related but significantly different, so we’ll take them in turn.
The Meaning of Meaning
Consider a few representative uses of the concept of “meaning”:
- “He struggled to decipher the meaning of the poem.” Here the concept means “theme,” “message,” or “overarching idea.”
- “Teaching science to children adds great meaning to her life.” Here it means “psychological value,” “productive significance,” or “spiritual depth.”
- “What is the meaning of ‘belief’?” Here “meaning” means “referent,” as in: “To what does the concept of ‘belief’ refer?”
We use the concept of meaning in various ways and on a regular basis: We speak of the meaning of a holiday, a hand gesture, a wink, a nod. We learn the meaning of a punctuation mark, an equation, a premise, a theory. From such usage, we can see that the concept of meaning refers to relationships among things here in the natural world—the elements of a poem and what they add up to, the work someone does and the value she gains from it, and so on. The concept is rooted in the requirements of human cognition, communication, and earthly pursuits. There’s nothing “supernatural” about it.
Religious people are (properly) free to believe or say that meaning has no objective basis without God. But they are not free to make sense while doing so. To make sense means to make it to the sensory level—facts we can see, touch, hear, etc. Whereas the natural world is teeming with facts that give rise to our need for the concept of meaning, zero facts support the notion that God exists, much less that the concept of meaning depends on his existence.
The Purpose of Purpose
Likewise for the concept of “purpose.” Either we need the concept, or we don’t. If we don’t need it, then there’s no point in discussing or using it. But if we do need the concept, then the natural facts that give rise to our need for it will shed much light on the source, meaning, and purpose of the concept.
Why do we need the concept of purpose? What use is it? To what in reality does it refer?
Again, a quick look at everyday usage provides an indication of its nature and value:
- “The purpose of a business is to produce goods or services and trade them at a profit.” Here the concept means “mission” or “reason for being.”
- “The purpose of thinking is to understand the world and our needs so we can live and love our lives.” Here the concept means “intention” or “goal.”
- “The only moral purpose of a government is to protect individual rights.” Here the concept means “function” or “job.”
As with meaning, we use the concept of purpose in various ways on a regular basis. We identify the purpose of a heart, an app, a trip, a moral code. We distinguish between doing something on purpose or by accident, between a purposeful approach and a haphazard approach, and so on. From such usage (which often overlaps), we can see that the concept of purpose identifies important things and relationships here in the natural world. The purpose of “purpose” is to help us identify and think clearly about such things and relationships. It has nothing to do with “supernature.”
Here, too, religious people are (properly) free to believe and say that purpose ultimately is rooted in God. But they are not free to make sense while doing so. The notion of something above, outside of, prior to, or beyond nature makes no sense. And whereas countless facts here in the natural world give rise to our need for the concept of purpose, evidence in support of the notion that purpose is rooted in “God” or “supernature” amounts precisely to nil.
The Meaning and Purpose of Your Life
The broadest and most profound importance of the concepts of meaning and purpose lies in their application to your life as a whole.
People often pose the question, “What is the meaning or purpose of life?”—rather than, “What is the meaning or purpose of your life?” But without that “your” (or “my” or “his” or “her”) included, the question is logically invalid: It commits the fallacy of the loaded question (e.g., “Have you stopped beating your wife?” or “What company are you shilling for?”).
As Ayn Rand pointed out, a question such as “What is the meaning or purpose of life?” presumes that some outside source, such as “God,” imposes meaning or purpose on our lives and that we are supposed to discover and uphold it. This is not only logically fallacious; it is morally obscene. It implies that your goals are not yours to choose, that you are a slave or servant of some “supernatural” dictator, and that you must do as he bids. But your goals crucially are yours to choose. Your life belongs to you—not to an alleged (and nonexistent) God. The meaning and purpose of your life are precisely what you choose to make them—by choosing how you will live your life and why you will live it that way.
What kind of life do you want to live? What core mission or central purpose do you want to set for yourself? Do you love science? Writing? Construction? Tennis? Management? Dancing? Farming? Making movies? What kind of soul-fueling career might you build around your interests? What kind of hobbies or recreational activities do you like? Hiking? Sailing? Knitting? Gardening? How can you work them into your life? What kind of friends do you want? Where can you meet such people, and how can you develop rich, rewarding relationships with them? What do you want in a romantic partner? What can you do to find someone who meets your standards and desires? How can you build a beautiful relationship with him or her—a relationship full of laughter, pleasure, intensity, ecstasy?
Only you can answer such questions. Of course, you can get help from others in thinking about them. But your choice of values and how to design your life is ultimately up to you. Thinking about these issues carefully and regularly—and pursuing the values that you think will fill your life with wonderful experiences, achievements, relationships, love, and joy—that is the meaning and purpose of your life.
Don’t let false conceptions of meaning and purpose undermine your capacity to think clearly about your life and happiness. Keep the true, fact-based, reality-oriented meanings of these concepts clear in your mind. Defend them against efforts to undermine their vital significance. Use them for your earthly pursuits. And live a deeply meaningful and purposeful life.
That’s your mission—should you choose to accept it. And the incentives couldn’t be better.
(You’ll find a global community of other people who take their minds and lives seriously here.)
Understanding and Loving Life
If we want to live and love our lives, we need to keep our minds connected to reality. We must commit ourselves to accepting ideas only when they are rational—which means: supported by perceptual observation, conceptual integration, and logic.
Think about what it means to understand an idea. It means to grasp what stands under it, what supports it, what connects it to reality. If we know what stands under an idea, if we know the observations and integrations that give rise to it, then we understand it; in which case, we can use it to think clearly about the world and our needs. If we don’t, we can’t.
For instance, we know that a good friendship depends on shared interests, mutual respect, and enjoyment of each other’s company; thus, we have an understanding of the idea and can use that understanding in our efforts to establish and maintain good friendships. If we didn’t have that understanding, we couldn’t use it.
By contrast, if someone says “social justice is a moral imperative,” and if I don’t know the actual referents of “social justice”—that is, the concrete instances of this (alleged) thing that give rise to the need of the abstraction—then I don’t know what social justice is, much less whether it’s a moral imperative. My lack of understanding makes the idea meaningless in my mind and useless in my thinking.
Similarly, if someone says “you should serve something greater than yourself,” and if you don’t know what supports the claim, then you don’t know it’s true. To know a claim is true is precisely to know the ideas and evidence that stand under it and connect it to reality.
Even if others’ claims happen to be true, if we don’t understand why they are true, then we don’t know they are. If someone says “the fossil record supports the theory of evolution,” and if I don’t have sufficient understanding of the fossil record and how it supports evolution, then I don’t know that it does. As John Locke observed:
[W]e may as rationally hope to see with other men’s eyes, as to know by other men’s understandings. So much as we ourselves consider and comprehend of truth and reason, so much we possess of real and true knowledge. The floating of other men’s opinions in our brains makes us not one jot the more knowing, though they happen to be true.
In this same vein, think about what it means for an idea to make sense. It means that the idea makes it to the sensory level—that it’s supported by sensory evidence. If we don’t know the evidence that underlies and supports an idea, ultimately connecting it to perceptual reality, then the idea doesn’t make sense to us. And if we accept ideas that don’t make sense, we’ve accepted “the floating of other men’s opinions in our brains.”
Understanding ideas—making sense of ideas—is vitally important. It is essential to thinking clearly, living fully, and supporting liberty.
Take any important area of life. Career, for instance. What makes for a wonderful, soul-fueling career? Are there any truths or principles that can help us answer this question? If so, what are they? What facts give rise to them? What undergirds and connects them to reality? If we know the answers to such questions, we have significant understanding and thus can use it in our thinking about our options and efforts to develop a career we will love. If we have no such understanding, we can’t.
Consider romance. Are there any principles that can help us create and maintain a deeply meaningful and rewarding romantic relationship? If so, what are they? And what deeper ideas support those principles? And so on—all the way down to the perceptual level, the base of all knowledge. If our ideas about romantic love are grounded in perceptual reality—including our experiences of smiles, touches, desires, kisses, and the integrated meanings and significance of such things in relation to our deepest personal values—then our ideas about romance can help us think clearly about this crucial aspect of life. If our ideas about love are not grounded in reality, our efforts at romance will be frustrating at best.
The same analysis applies to every area of life and every question we face:
- How can I get and stay physically fit? Are there evidence-based principles that can guide me here? If so, what are they? How can I understand and apply them?
- What kind of government should I advocate? Do we need a government at all? If so, why? What facts about human beings and social relationships give rise to the need for a government?
- What is spirituality? Do I need it? If so, why? What facts give rise to the need for it? And what do those facts say about the source and nature of spirituality?
“Understanding” is one of my favorite ideas because it’s one of the most helpful for thinking clearly and living fully. It’s about keeping our minds connected to reality so we can succeed and thrive in reality.
Here, on this blog, and in my new OSI podcast, Under Standing, I’ll be focusing on the nature and importance of understanding, including the principles that foster it and how to apply those principles in the grand project of loving life.
Objectivism vs. “Open Objectivism,” Part One
Young people discovering or trying to understand Ayn Rand’s philosophy, Objectivism, can easily be confused about the nature of the philosophy and its relationship to “true philosophy” or “philosophic truth.”
“True philosophy” or “philosophic truth” is a broad and ever-expanding umbrella or category of ideas. It includes all philosophic truths identified by people, past, present, and future—truths identified by Socrates, Aristotle, Epictetus, Thomas Aquinas, Francis Bacon, John Locke, Baruch Spinoza, Ayn Rand, and whatever is to come. “Philosophic truth” is an open file folder into which all truths discovered in the realm of philosophy are properly put.
But philosophic truth is not the same thing as Rand’s philosophy, Objectivism. If the principles of Objectivism are true, and I think they are, then they fall under the broad umbrella of “philosophic truth”—but they are not the equivalent of that umbrella. To treat them as the equivalent is to commit the fallacy of the frozen abstraction, which consists in substituting a particular conceptual concrete for the wider abstract class or category to which it belongs. In the case at hand, it consists in substituting a specific true philosophy, “Objectivism,” for the general class or category of “true philosophy.” This substitution is fallacious because, although Objectivism is true, its principles are not the only truths in philosophy. Other philosophic truths include, for instance, Aristotle’s principles of syllogistic reasoning, Leonard Peikoff’s principles of the mechanics of induction, and any philosophic truths that you or I or others might identify in the future.
Just as we don’t treat “math” as the equivalent of “algebra” and thus exclude geometry, calculus, and other kinds of math from the field—just as we don’t treat “religion” as the equivalent of “Christianity” and thus exclude Judaism, Islam, and other religions from the field—just as we don’t treat “government” as the equivalent of “theocracy” and thus exclude democracy, constitutional republicanism, and other types of government from the field—so we should not treat “true philosophy” as the equivalent of “Objectivism.” It is not.
To use a perfectly parallel example: We don’t add our own educational discoveries or principles to Maria Montessori’s educational system and call them part of her system. Likewise, we shouldn’t add our own discoveries or principles to Rand’s philosophical system and call them part of her system. They are not.
Objectivism—the fundamental philosophic concepts and principles identified by Ayn Rand and integrated into a system of ideas by her in her lifetime—is not the equivalent of philosophic truth. Rather, it is one set of ideas under the broader umbrella of philosophic truth.
Objectivism is not open to additions or revisions. It was "closed" when Ayn Rand died. Philosophic truth is forever open to additions and refinements. And much work remains to be done.
I’ll say more on this subject in the coming weeks, either here, on my blog, or on my soon-to-launch podcast, Under Standing.
If you have questions or comments about the matter, please share them via my contact form. I’ll address any that I think would be helpful to readers or listeners generally.
Also, I’ll be debating Stephen Hicks about whether Objectivism is a “closed system” or an “open system” at NICON in Serbia this April. Details about that conference and the debate will be announced soon on Ayn Rand Center Europe’s website.