Thinking on Principle or Common Sense?

I was recently asked what was the difference between thinking on principle and thinking with common sense.

Now, a lot can be said about what we term Common Sense. In order to put forth a simple definition we might say that common sense is a basic application of reasoning, a ground-level use of correct premises whose scope only encompasses a concrete problem of slight complexity. Usually it consists of a process of observation, simple induction, the formation of a very basic principle or rule, and then the elaboration of deductions starting from that basic principle.

One of the long-touted virtues of American culture used to be its common sense, or what some call the 'down to earth' approach many Americans had towards life. Common sense is not an incorrect tool by any means, and it is perfectly useful when it comes to problems of simple complexity, but unfortunately Common Sense simply isn't enough for an individual or a culture to survive. The great problems that an individual faces in the world today, the problems that directly touch upon his life and his liberties are very complex, and such problems - to be addressed correctly- require the direct application of a method capable of addressing many different degrees of abstraction, a task for which our valued 'Common sense' is simply not ideal.

The reason for this is that the way our minds work is hierarchical: as children we begin absorbing basic concretes such as our mother's nursery chair, our grandmother's rocking chair, and little by little we begin to create concepts based on the concretes to which we have been exposed, each becoming more abstract and subsuming more and more concretes and concepts underneath- so we moved from treating the nursery chair and the rocking chair as unique phenomenons unlike each other to treating both as concretes subsumed under the abstraction of 'chair'. Then, we began to include the abstraction of 'chair' under the abstraction of 'furniture' which encompassed many more concepts of different household items united by common characteristics ('tables', 'counters', 'couches'), and so on and so forth.

We do this because it is simply impossible for us to think in terms of every single phenomenon we have ever encountered at once: when we think of 'chair' we think of the abstraction that holds the characteristics that would classify something as a chair, we do not think of every single chair we have ever encountered. We end up understanding 'fire' as every kind of fire, we do not consider the fire of a furnace as different from the fire of a candle as far as basic attributes go- we don't need to stick our hand in the furnace to see if it will burn us like the candle did. The process of abstraction works like a system of references under which our intellect can access broad or specialized information quickly and efficiently.

This concept of abstraction and complex abstraction is very important to understand principle, because a principle is a proposition that integrates the total sum of your knowledge as it pertains to an important issue. Because of the nature of our minds, we really can't help creating abstractions - our minds need abstraction in order to deal with all the information with which it will come into contact - but we have a choice in whether we consciously integrate cohesive principles through self-examination and logic, or whether we take a completely passive role and have our principles formed, as Ayn Rand put it, from "a grab-bag of notions snatched at random, whose sources, validity, context, and consequences [we] do not know."

When it comes to several disciplines, many of us are more familiar with principles than we suspect: the entire field of computer software and hardware is based on principles of mathematics and electrical engineering, architecture works with the principles that evaluate the properties of metals and other materials in relation to the laws of physics, and so on and so forth. However when it comes to the most important fields- the fields of human life - ethics, politics, aesthetics- it seems as if the majority of us ignore principle altogether and almost consider it a four-letter word.

From what we can observe in the world, most people take the grab-bag approach to principle whenever it is applied to their personal lives - even a brilliant engineer who deals with concrete scientific principles during the day will fail to apply principle whenever he is not dealing with an engineering problem. Suddenly the decisions he makes for his private life or what political causes he supports become disconnected, contradictory or completely illogical. The greatest culprit of this is, of course, modern philosophy and post-modernism, but we can trace it back to Kant and Hume, and even further back to Plato. None of these philosophers were ever capable of establishing a very simple fact that has eluded their kin (with the exception of Aristotle, who was Plato's prize disciple and who, ironically, ended up disagreeing on everything with his old master), and which is at the very core of the problem of principle today: Morality is neither mystical nor arbitrary (and certainly not a 'categorical imperative'), but necessary.

In her book "Viable Values" Dr. Tara Smith, analyzing the philosophy of Rand, draws the conclusion that morality is necessary for the individual not because of a whim, a divine mandate or some other reason, but because a rational human being *cannot* survive without a code of morals. Smith goes further by saying that not just any code will succeed, but an *objective* code of morality, a code that will guide a human's choice and actions based on the standard of value of his life, a code obtained not through a divine mandate whose rules are hard -if not impossible- to glean, but through reason and logic, in accordance with the observable nature of a human being. Any system of morals that goes against the logically observable nature of a human is, therefore, evil since it is the antithesis of his existence, and that which goes in accordance with the nature of man is good- as it helps determine the purpose and course of his life.

Thus, just as it is with everything else, principle is absolutely necessary when dealing with the issue of morality and how a human is to live (and how a human is to live with other humans). A common mistake is that most people think that instead of principle, morality requires commandments. A morality accepted through logic and reason (as opposed to one imposed through mysticism or tyranny) does not accept compulsion or coercion- the basic stance of reason is proof and argument, not imposition. A moral principle is the sum of all knowledge of an individual's understanding of the nature of man, his place in the universe and the ways in which he can live to further his life and his goals while at the same time respecting the individual rights (a principle that addresses what is necessary for the individual to live) of others, and therefore it is only through the understanding of these concepts, and their validity, that the individual can apply them to his life and to his choices.

Commandments are non-contextual, whereas principles are. Let us examine, for example, the commandment "Thou shalt not lie." It is implied that lying is forbidden and wrong in any and all instances. There is no explicit contextual consideration, we must be truthful to everyone regardless of who they are. In contrast, Objectivism's stance towards honesty is very clear: since a rational man must first recognize the existence of a reality that is the standard of truth, to attempt to falsify that reality through deceit is a denial of this, as it would imply that the falsehood has more value than the truth.

However, this stance changes when the context is not an exchange between honest and rational individuals but instead it becomes a situation where one is dealing with non-rational thugs who attempt to use force- and this applies to physical force users such as criminals, or political coercion and force users such as tyrants and dictators: These individuals have already denied the aspect of reason by initiating non-rational force against the individual's rights, and if a rational man can survive by lying to tyrants and thugs, it is within his moral bounds to do so.

To require the rational man to be truthful to those who are irrational and who would destroy him would essentially imply that telling the truth to a criminal is more valuable than the life of an honest individual. This is not to say that standards are relative, rather they are relational and contextual: you cannot expect the same treatment from a criminal who seeks to destroy you as you would from someone who treats you as an intellectual equal, and you cannot react to both in the same way. To pretend to do otherwise is to falsify a fact of reality.

Commandments are rigid imperatives that seek to mandate a very specific moral conduct in all situations and, by being non-contextual, do not allow for the integration of concepts into principles. By adopting the standard view that morality is reduced to a series of commandments, we have alienated the concept of principle from moral life. This is reflected everywhere in the private and political spheres, where there is either an arbitrary set of commandments or an approach that proclaims that there are no standards whatsoever - this in the manner in which someone accepts being commanded or rebels against the idea of it.

Those that rebel against commanded morality either come up with 'soft codes' of their own, or simply attempt to cram in as many (often contradictory) standards into their repertoire as they can, thinking that they are displaying tolerance and open-mindedness when in truth they may be sanctioning a large number of moral atrocities they do not have the courage to condemn. How could they condemn them, if they lack any principle whatsoever as a moral standard?

Acting on principle comes down to acting on an abstraction because you have been able to understand the facts of reality surrounding the issue at hand, not simply because you are conforming to a command given to you by someone whom you regard as a moral authority. It is the act of thinking for yourself on a level of high abstraction, as opposed to letting someone else do the thinking for you.

Think about another popular Commandment: "Thou shalt not steal." In Objectivist philosophy, we understand that the private property of others, when acquired honestly, is inviolable. What considerations do you think should be kept in mind when, for example, we become aware of someone having stolen something from another person. If there are no authorities nearby and there is a risk of flight from the thief, is it moral to (safely) 'steal' the property from the thief in order to render it unto its proper owner? If it is, why is it so?

Most of you probably answered yes, it is moral in this case to 'steal' from the thief, and if you did you did so because of either a conscious of unconscious principle that incorporated the concept of respect for the property of others and the wrongness of depriving others of that property through illicit means. You may not have known why it was moral, but you somehow knew it was. That is a principle in action.

To be ale to arrive at a conclusion based on principle on, for example, whether it is proper or not for the government of a country to be able to nationalize businesses that belong to private individuals, you have to operate on a high level of abstraction: the issue at hand is whether or not the government should have the authority to annul the property rights of an individual. In order for this to be properly answered you need to have integrated all the necessary concepts that are subsumed under the label of individual, which includes the metaphysical nature of 'man' (as well as the definition of what a man is, as opposed to -say-a nonrational animal), his relationship to the world in accordance to his nature (which will in turn bring up the issue of individual property), what is the proper attitude he should have in order to be true to his nature and reach fulfillment, also he would have to integrate all the abstractions subsumed under government: the nature of government, its purpose, its limitations, et cetera...

Only when a person has been able to integrate the necessary concepts into complex abstractions he will know, for example, that a man is a rational being unlike the rest of the animals in the world, that he has a specific nature, which is that of being able to be a rational creature capable of complex abstractions beyond simple troubleshooting, who can only survive in the world by using his rational mind to circumvent obstacles; that the means by which he can survive is to establish ownership of his property, which is the fruit of the labor he receives from using his rational mind in one way or another; that said property cannot be acquired by force (because force is a denial of the rational nature of a man, it implies that a man is incapable of using his rational brain to interact with another man and that his only recourse is force- this, of course, becomes an exception when a rational man is aggressed upon and has to defend himself, which proper and moral) or that this property cannot be acquired through deceit either (with the earlier contextual exceptions applied to tyrants, as we mentioned before).

He will understand, because of the concepts he has integrated, that to be deprived or relieved of his rightful property through force is a direct attack against his ability to live as an honest, productive individual. At this point by this alone the answer to the person's question can be seen, but let us go further and say that this rational person would also have come to understand that the government, being an elected group of individuals possessing no greater number of rights than the individuals who form part of it, has only one proper function if it is to remain ideologically constant: To protect man’s rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence against himself and against his property. It is only an executor of defense against those who start the use of force.

When these abstractions have come into place, then the individual will be able to correctly formulate an answer to the question at hand. Because he knows the nature of man, the nature of his survival, and the nature of government, he understands that no matter what, no matter where, the use of force from the government enacted against an individual to deprive him of his private property when said property has been acquired without the infringement of the individual rights of others and that person is also morally blameless, is immoral. This answer is arrived at through principle, the principle of Property Rights. Thinking on this principle can also tell us what is the most likely outcome should the government step forward and break this principle: increase in governmental power, the creation of a legal precedent which the government can use to infringe upon the rights of others again, the blurring of the property rights within that society, and the precarious position all other rights enter the moment this happens. Once principle becomes compromised, the ideological structure becomes weaker and weaker.

Common sense, on the other hand, does not operate at this level. Without access to higher abstraction, common sense seeks a direct path to address the problem on a primary level. While this may be useful on the more basic of problems, issues such as the one mentioned earlier suffer greatly from a lack of principled thought.

On a surface, basic level it might seem perfectly acceptable to a man operating from the premise of common sense for the government to nationalize a failed company. After all, he reasons, by nationalizing a bankrupted company the government will be saving many jobs that would have been lost, as well as the economy by preventing a crash. Because this response does not incorporate the complex abstractions of industry, individual rights, property rights, a free market system and competition, the person in question does not see that by allowing nationalization he is not only infringing upon the rights mentioned earlier, but that he is also condoning the reward of failure: after all, if businesses that fail end up being rewarded by either being bailed out or 'purchased' by the government, why should any business owner worry about competition, profit or efficiency? Why should any successful business owner wish to remain successful, if his or her hard-earned money will be used by the government to finance his failed competitors?

Common sense's only preoccupation is solving an immediate problem, seldom a long-term one, and the only level it focuses on is the here-and-now, and what is the most efficient solution for the time being. In order to address problems of any important magnitude the use of principled thought is an absolute essential. A human needs principled thought in order to make accurate decisions on concrete problems.

 Countless important concepts and concretes are subsumed under principles that common sense, working on an elementary level, cannot consider in its scope. The current state of our society, with its government interventions, government rulings on whether or not certain people can marry, or its attitude towards immigration can all be traced back to a lack of principled thought and  a great deal of "common sense" politicians.