This is really late in responding to, but quite some time ago, you posted on SOLOPassion about getting kicked off HBL. I was skimming through your comments, and this caught my attention:

"Integrity is the act of adhering consistently in action to moral principles. Whether moral principles adhere to facts involves separate moral and epistemological questions. A court can execute a man unjustly, but the injustice does not lie in the court putting its money where its mouth is. In this context, the court showed integrity to its decision. The morality of its *decision*, on the other hand, is what's in question. There are multiple examples in Ayn Rand's novels of characters with integrity but mistaken principles (i.e., not corresponding with facts). Andrei in "We the Living" comes to mind; Gail Wynand is another example. One can applaud integrity even while disagreeing with the moral principles."

This is disturbing to me. Remember who else "adhered consistently in action to moral principles", albeit "mistaken" ones? Jim Taggart from Atlas Shrugged. Unless you meant, instead of "mistaken principles", something equivalent to "errors of knowledge", it sounds as though you are saying that a Jim Taggart, like a Gail Wynand (or a Dominique Francon) can be "applauded" for being consistent with his principles even if they are wrong.

I would not say that Wynand or Dominique had "mistaken principles". Their primary mistakes, if I remember correctly, were believing that there were no good men in this world (Wynand) and that even if there were good men, they were doomed to being broken by an indifferent culture (Dominique). I would not say that these are principles because the error has nothing to do with their respective senses of good and evil, which, as is shown in the book, are actually quite sound.

Neither hates the good for being good (as with Jim Taggart). Both respond positively to Roark. Wynand, if I remember, sees the error of his ways after he realizes that Roark is indeed a morally perfect man, and of course Dominique's fear of Roark's failure is proven wrong.

My point is that characters such as these, and the real life men and women who unknowingly take after them, at least have some reality-based values, and it is because of this that they can never be totally corrupted, that they possess some integrity. But Jim Taggart had no real sense of values, and therefore, no integrity. Yet, he was consistent about his lust to destroy values.

To take an example in real life, we might say about an Islamic suicide bomber that he is loyal to his ideals, but we would not applaud him for that and say that he has integrity. That would be a corruption of integrity. Why? Because if all integrity means is consistently adhering to any principles, whether rational or no, then integrity as a concept ceases to have normative properties. In effect, if I say you have integrity, you can't tell whether I'm condemning you or praising you.

When a person, like a suicide bomber, severs principles from reality, he soon acquires the desire to destroy values, and the steps to corruption, to total lack of integrity, are complete.

In contrast to the example of the suicide bomber, we might say that a Westernized Muslim who respects individual rights and has a real sense of this-earth values has integrity, BUT ONLY TO THE DEGREE THAT HE ADHERES TO THOSE VALUES. To the degree that he adheres to Islam, he possesses a lust to destroy values, and so has no integrity.

On one level, I'm certain that praise of value-haters isn't what you meant by integrity at all. Yet still, the sentence "one can applaud integrity even while disagreeing with the moral principles" sounds vaguely like something from a Kelleyite pussy. Please tell me you haven't crossed over to them.

Editor's Note: Yes, when I said "mistaken principles", I meant to differentiate honestly derived principles from dishonest ones. Let me use a slightly different example, leaving out execution since intelligent people can disagree about its morality. If a court imprisons an innocent man, it's not "imprisoning guilty criminals" that's in question, but the means by which they're found guilty. Similarly, the concept "integrity" identifies the putting of principle into action, as distinct from the process of identifying the principle. In order to be moral, one must possess both honesty and integrity, but each of these concepts refer to distinct virtues.

By no means did Jim Taggart adhere consistently to moral principles. He made every effort to avoid taking action consistent with the conclusions of his mind; furthermore, he never organized his conclusions into principles. As to the question: did Dominique and Wynand have "mistaken principles" or simply "errors of knowledge"? I think the first was caused by the second. Wynand did not simply believe that there were no good men in the world. This belief led to specific views of proper human action. He believed that living with others in the world required dominance over them. He put this into action as consistently and successfully as was possible. However, if he had believed it, but somehow "sensed" that it wasn't "right" and chose not put it into practice, Roark would never have respected him. It would have been a sign that Wynand did not understand the essential role of ideas in human life. I think your example of the suicide bomber is a package deal. No, we wouldn't applaud him. But could he, in the act of killing himself, show integrity? Yes. At the same time, he also displays the massive dishonesty required to believe that for which there is no evidence, namely everything he is dying and killing for.

I think the error is shown in your statement: "if all integrity means is consistently adhering to any principles, whether rational or no..." Yes, this is the point: integrity as a concept identifies the consistent adherence to principle. As mentioned above, other virtues are identified by other concepts (honesty, etc.) If my explanation of integrity doesn't sit well with you, keep in mind that virtues are interconnected, and one can't be virtuous by adhering to one virtue and not the others. Applauding integrity to mistaken principles should always be done in context. E.g., "he's wrong, but at least he put his money where his mouth is". The key words being: "he's wrong, but". When Bill Maher praised the 9/11 hijackers for their courage (it was praise because he simultaneously denounced a lack of courage by US military personnel), it was an example of context-dropping. It was tantamount to the common example of praising Hitler for being nice to cats. Even if it were true, it's irrelevant in the full context.

My view of ideas is the opposite of what David Kelley has written. He has divorced ideas from reality, declaring that "Truth and falsity, not good or evil, are the primary evaluative concepts that apply to ideas as such." This is wrong. Ideas that lead to evil are evil. What I would say, however, is that to evaluate the morality of someone who puts an evil idea into action, one must know more than the fact that the person has committed the action. Because morality bridges the conceptual world with the world "out there", the evaluator must know both "the what" and "the why" of the action.(JR)

September 16, 2006 at 01:42:24