Please rationally support this decision


mpp

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I follow the Anglo-Saxon tradition of assuming that the goods held by others are properly theirs, unless evidence exists to the contrary. Do they respect their own lives? Why not contract with a polling agency?

If there is such a thing as too much self-interest, I doubt you'll find mention of it in the works of Ayn Rand.

In this thread I have not submitted an example of "a worthy ethical system." Such is not required to show that Rand's system leaves a loophole open for the prudent predator.

Failure to use the term "rational egoism" is equivalent to avoiding the real issue? Then we must regard Rand herself as an avoider. She used the term not once in her major essay on ethics.

Moreover, I have already shown in this thread how it is possible to be rational and egoistic and still be a predator.

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Given that MPP's ethical *purpose* as an individual man is *MPP's own life*--and certainly not the life or well being or affluence of the legal owner of the tickets, why should MPP concern himself with anyone's skin but his own?

FF,

Why?

Maybe because, should he be concerned enough, he understands the difference between a standard and a goal or outcome (a purpose)?

Conflating the two (standard and purpose) is a cognitive error I see you constantly make--even as you quote where this came from (see here in The Objectivist Ethics):

The Objectivist ethics holds man’s life as the standard of value—and his own life as the ethical purpose of every individual man.

The difference between “standard” and “purpose” in this context is as follows: a “standard” is an abstract principle that serves as a measurement or gauge to guide a man’s choices in the achievement of a concrete, specific purpose. “That which is required for the survival of man qua man” is an abstract principle that applies to every individual man. The task of applying this principle to a concrete, specific purpose—the purpose of living a life proper to a rational being—belongs to every individual man, and the life he has to live is his own.

Man must choose his actions, values and goals by the standard of that which is proper to man—in order to achieve, maintain, fulfill and enjoy that ultimate value, that end in itself, which is his own life.

You harp on the term "purpose" and imagine it means the standard. You treat "man's life" as if it meant "his own life."

It doesn't. They are two different things in Rand's meaning.

A standard is a unit of measurement. It can be bigger (more inclusive) or smaller (i.e., a part) than the whole thing. But it is used by people as a mental tool to compare it against a concrete. A standard is a unit universal to a bunch of such concretes, but, as a unit, it is isolated according to selective parameters.

A goal or outcome (a purpose) is a concrete state of a whole individual thing--an existent within context--at a point in time.

"Man's life" is a unit of measurement applicable to ALL humans. "His own life" is an individual existent--a temporary one at that.

Here's a hint. An individual human is a human (genus) before individual (differentia). In other words, individuals are individual humans, not individual blobs cut off from the rest of the universe or the rest of the species.

In your argument, the human species has no identity. Only temporary individual blobs do.

Rand used the term "survival of man qua man" to make this apparent. In other words, "man (the individual human) qua man (the standard)." As a writer, she went for the pithy way of using the same word "man" for both meanings. She didn't use my terminology (human species), but conceptually, this is what "life proper to a rational being" refers to.

People who don't understand this difference always deduce reality from semantics rather than looking at reality and inducing the principles.

The human species exists. Maybe not as an individual entity, but it does exist. The law of identity governs it just as surely as it governs the individual human being.

Going from the axiomatic concept (identity), now we can deduce. That which is proper to individual members of the species has to be proper for all members if morality is to apply to the set. That which is proper to humans cannot apply just to some humans over others and still be proper for humans. You can't be a human and not a human at the same time.

Thus one human who treats other humans as prey is using an evil standard of what being human means. Why? Because, if using others as prey were a moral good, and he is a human, being prey himself is thus a moral good. And that is both destructive to his individual life and a contradiction even according to your conflated logic.

You can say that, in reality, people actually do treat each other as prey and that would be correct. But to call this a moral good would mean that it is a moral good to eat others and a moral good to be eaten. How can being killed be a moral good for oneself if survival is the goal?

When a person treats others as prey, he is committing species suicide, to speak in metaphorical terms. What's more, it goes beyond the normative and straight into the cognitive. As an individual, he is undercutting his own genus.

He might benefit himself as an individual blob for momentary comfort or pleasure by being a parasite on other humans, but he is not benefiting himself as a member of the human species. He is literally stepping outside the realm of humanity. A rational approach starts by understanding ones full nature, not just part of it.

You can't treat the differentia as the composite of the genus plus differentia without destroying correct identification.

Rand rejected hedonism precisely because of this.

Also, one cannot judge correctly what one misidentifies.

You keep claiming that Rand meant your misunderstanding of her words. She didn't. Disagree with Rand if you will, but to pretend she meant what she didn't is just plain wrong.

Michael

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You say we should regard "man's life" (as in universal man's life) as the standard. You say that we should not treat "man's life" as if it meant "his own life."

Yet Rand in her essay does use "standard" in the particular sense of the word: "The capacity to experience pleasure or pain is innate in a man’s body; it is part of his nature, part of the kind of entity he is. He has no choice about it, and he has no choice about the standard that determines what will make him experience the physical sensation of pleasure or of pain. What is that standard? His life." [Her emphasis]

But let's follow your advice and treat standard as a universal. Doing so brings us no closer to deriving a respect for the lives and property of others from a premise of egoism. For Rand to declare than man must act in a way "which is proper to the life of a rational being" does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that his behavior must duly consider the lives and property of others.

Adding the "rational being" qualifier simply allows her at a later point to veto any behavior that she disapproves of. Nothing in the word "rational" rules out aggression in all instances.

You write, "That which is proper to individual members of the species has to be proper for all members if morality is to apply to the set." Well said. But there is no statement in Rand's essay that expresses this. Yes, there is the abstraction of "man qua man," but qua means "as; as being; in the character or capacity of." It is an attempt to state the essence of the species. It is not the same as saying what's true for one is true for all.

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In "The Objectivist Ethics," Rand wrote, "No philosopher has given a rational, objectively demonstrable, scientific answer to the question of why man needs a code of values." She then proceeds to set forth her ethics of rational self-interest.

Now, if her system is in fact rational and objectively demonstrable, not to say scientific, then it should be able to show how setting a man's own life as the standard of his values is consistent with forgoing opportunities to gain value by taking what someone else has earned.

As I have said, there is a gap here that the philosopher and her students have not bridged.

Well, take the concept "man" and take a man and if they don't match up something is wrong. What man is as defined and delineated in Objectivism doesn't match up with a man being a "prudent predator [on members of his own species]." The crux of the problem seems to be too much fallback on definition in the philosophy and too little delineation. The basic definition or idea is fine and the delineation too if it doesn't contradict that. "Man is the rational animal." Now, a man in a primitive tribe that goes and takes from other tribes including their women--kill, steal, rape--like the 19th C. Commanches and figures out better ways to do it is acting rationally out of that context. Then a more powerful tribe arrives and wipes them out with disease and bullets and puts the tribe on a reservation after taking away or killing their horses. Why is this new tribe more powerful? Because it is more rational qua tribe. For the new tribe wealth and power come out of production and production comes from rationality and it's all made possible by an intellectual culture that created the United States politically to protect rights. Now these two rationalities are both rational for any man in one or the other but irrational for a rational productive man in that rational productive society to steal, rape and kill for that's not the way his society works nor does it sanction that behavior. It's not that one man in one society is more rational than another in a more primitive one, it's whether one society is more rational than the other when you have a society of societies, namely these two. (The statism in America contradicts its basic freedom.) If the more rational society is more powerful it will traduce and change if not liquidate one way or another the more irrational one. In today's world in the aggregate Christian society is more rational and productive than Muslim and insofar as the later has decided to wage war on the former it will, in time, lose and lose in all respects. As for the number and types of casualties (on both sides) we can't know until the carnage passes. Iran may destroy Israel or, more likely, the US and/or Israel will destroy Iran's nascent nuclear bomb ability. More than that will be destroyed by Israel if it's reduced to its death throws.

(The US should make a trade with Israel. The US will send Israel all its liberal Jews--especially including the New York Times--and Israel will send the US all its conservative Jews. Then the whole world can sit back and watch the liberal Jews defend Israel.)

Man is the rational animal but he's always inside his social context and it's seldom rational to violate that context, especially a primitive one.

The most prudent predators in today's US world are government employees and old folks on Social Security and Medicare. There are also doctors and lawyers and and members of all licensed professions. Drug companies pushing vaccinations beyond all reason. Etc. Greg avoids most of that but he doesn't avoid the conceit that he avoids it all, but rationalization is good for the soul if you're a master. He too is a prudent predator but everybody is to some extent because we are living in a sea of statism. The question is the extent you are forced to be one by circumstances or go along willingly. How pure am I? My best calculation is something like 83 per cent. Not bad. Looking to do better. If I can get it up to 91%, I'll die a happy man. In the meantime, I'm going hunting. Prudently. (I don't pray for prey, I use my brain. I'll deal with my hypocrisy tomorrow, for tomorrow is another day.)

--Brant

guilty, guilty, guilty!

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What do you think of it?

Why not work to earn money instead?

You can make a LOT of money providing useful products and services to make other people's lives better...

...and you'll become a better person for it as well.

Greg

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You say that we should not treat "man's life" as if it meant "his own life."

FF,

You still don't get it.

I'm not saying it.

Rand is.

(Although I agree with her.)

I'm saying that Rand treats these two terms as different things. It's right there in front of you. Her words, not mine. All you need to do is read them.

Here... let me help you. When Rand writes:

The difference between “standard” and “purpose” in this context is as follows...

... she means that there are two things, not one, because she mentioned two things using the connective "and," she put them both in quotes, and she said they are, well... different.

This is pretty basic English. I learned this kind of stuff around kindergarten.

One term for Rand is an abstraction, an "abstract principle," a universal, and the other is a concrete, or as she said, "a concrete, specific purpose."

And further, all this is within the context she was talking about.

You know... like she just said.

No amount of semantic nitpicking and pretzel-twisting by you is going to make this any different.

You don't have to agree with Rand (I know I have disagreements--especially in parts of this essay of hers), but it's a sorry intellectual enterprise to refuse to understand what she said, then try to pass off your misunderstanding as her intent--especially when she is drop-dead clear that she is talking about two different things.

You have a brain. You have eyes. You are not a stupid man. Use your equipment to get at least the elementary stuff right.

Michael

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You say we should regard "man's life" (as in universal man's life) as the standard. You say that we should not treat "man's life" as if it meant "his own life."

Yet Rand in her essay does use "standard" in the particular sense of the word: "The capacity to experience pleasure or pain is innate in a man’s body; it is part of his nature, part of the kind of entity he is. He has no choice about it, and he has no choice about the standard that determines what will make him experience the physical sensation of pleasure or of pain. What is that standard? His life." [Her emphasis]

.

It's a fair observation.

"Standard" then, to Rand, is a cover-all term applicable at different levels. (I can't see anything remiss in there). Descending conceptually from the abstraction, 'man', to the specific individual the standard, "His life", comes to the fore. Self-evidently that's what he directly senses and sees and knows - his concrete reality (as with his pleasure-pain mechanism). The trick is to hold both "standards" simultaneously. Easy-peasy...

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You say we should regard "man's life" (as in universal man's life) as the standard. You say that we should not treat "man's life" as if it meant "his own life."

Yet Rand in her essay does use "standard" in the particular sense of the word: "The capacity to experience pleasure or pain is innate in a man’s body; it is part of his nature, part of the kind of entity he is. He has no choice about it, and he has no choice about the standard that determines what will make him experience the physical sensation of pleasure or of pain. What is that standard? His life." [Her emphasis]

.

It's a fair observation.

"Standard" then, to Rand, is a cover-all term applicable at different levels. (I can't see anything remiss in there). Descending conceptually from the abstraction, 'man', to the specific individual the standard, "His life", comes to the fore. Self-evidently that's what he directly senses and sees and knows - his concrete reality (as with his pleasure-pain mechanism). The trick is to hold both "standards" simultaneously. Easy-peasy...

Tony,

I disagree.

I think Rand was sloppy, but did not use standard with two meanings here (or as a "cover-all term applicable at different levels").

I think she used "his life" to mean "his life within the context of being a man," or "his life according to the law of identity," or something like that (or in my words, "his life qua human species member"). In other words, what is his standard? He looks at his own life and sees that he is a man. That meaning of "his life."

I hold she did not mean the physical survival of his individual life in this paragraph.

After all, she just finished talking about man's innate nature (where did that innateness come from if not species?), the kind of entity he is (a member of the human species to use my term, not hers), his lack of choice about existing along with pleasure-pain characteristics, and so on.

I don't see how she would--in the same paragraph--blank that out and talk about an individual's life--his individual physical survival--as a concrete as if her thinking were suddenly severed from all that earlier innateness (the species stuff, the standard stuff).

In other words, if "standard" has two meanings, why can't "his life" have two meanings?

Because a gotcha is more satisfying?

If one has to choose a meaning for what Rand meant, I think the principle of charity is in order. In other words, in Meaning 1, my meaning, Rand merely left out some words at the end, probably trying to be dramatic (just look at those italics). After all, she was a fiction writer. I see dramatic gestures all over her nonfiction writing.

In Meaning 2, FF's meaning, she made a fool out of herself from suddenly switching topics, contradicting her own terminology, and making hash out of her own reasoning.

Does that sound right to you?

I'm a conceptual thinker, not a gotcha warrior. I think Rand's conceptual reasoning is totally in order here and she got sloppy in her word choice (by omission) in completing a thought.

FF seems to be arguing that her terminology is 100% in order and her concepts are all messed up--that her reasoning is not valid, that it is disconnected from reality, that she got befuddled and then threw in qualifiers like "rational" merely as a weapon against others so she could sustain some kind of vain neurosis as a whim-based control freak (to "veto any behavior that she disapproves of").

How's that for spin? :smile: (I really like me when I get on a roll. :smile: )

However, I hold that FF has not even attempted to understand what Rand was getting at. He is in love with his gotcha habit and that keeps him blind to the concepts--not that his eyes are defective. He's intelligent. He's just using semantic blinders to block out the light to keep his self-aggrandizing love alive.

And that's a pisser.

Note, as I keep saying, I'm not against criticizing Rand. I just get burned when someone misrepresents her ideas, whether on purpose or by stubborn misunderstanding, so they can claim her ideas are not valid. And they keep droning on and on and on repeating their error trying to get their misunderstanding accepted (by drip drip drip) as Rand's intent.

It's not that hard to understand her meaning, then disagree with that meaning, if one must. Once again, I have no qualm with that, even when I disagree.

But there is no valid reason on earth to misrepresent her ideas and continue in the error just to claim some kind of advantage. At least, I won't take such a posture seriously.

So which do you think she meant? The one that makes conceptual sense, but where Rand made a sloppy omission during a dramatic gesture, or the one where she is the befuddled hypocrite and disapproving arch-enemy of all mankind?

:smile:

(Quip aside, you don't have to answer. I'm merely asking to give you food for thought.)

Michael

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You say that we should not treat "man's life" as if it meant "his own life."

FF,

You still don't get it.

I'm not saying it.

Rand is.

(Although I agree with her.)

I'm saying that Rand treats these two terms as different things. It's right there in front of you. Her words, not mine. All you need to do is read them.

Here... let me help you. When Rand writes:

The difference between “standard” and “purpose” in this context is as follows...

... she means that there are two things, not one, because she mentioned two things using the connective "and," she put them both in quotes, and she said they are, well... different.

This is pretty basic English. I learned this kind of stuff around kindergarten.

One term for Rand is an abstraction, an "abstract principle," a universal, and the other is a concrete, or as she said, "a concrete, specific purpose."

And further, all this is within the context she was talking about.

You know... like she just said.

No amount of semantic nitpicking and pretzel-twisting by you is going to make this any different.

You don't have to agree with Rand (I know I have disagreements--especially in parts of this essay of hers), but it's a sorry intellectual enterprise to refuse to understand what she said, then try to pass off your misunderstanding as her intent--especially when she is drop-dead clear that she is talking about two different things.

You have a brain. You have eyes. You are not a stupid man. Use your equipment to get at least the elementary stuff right.

Michael

Then we won't twist the pretzel. We'll follow Rand's own words: "An organism’s life depends on two factors: the material or fuel which it needs from the outside, from its physical background, and the action of its own body, the action of using that fuel properly. What standard determines what is proper in this context? The standard is the organism’s life, or: that which is required for the organism’s survival."

So whence comes the moral obligation to respect the lives and belongings of other organisms?

When Rand asserts that "The standard of value of the Objectivist ethics—the standard by which one judges what is good or evil—is man’s life, or: that which is required for man’s survival qua man," there is no reason to suppose this must mean "Thou shalt not kill" and "Thou shalt not steal." Man as man, or man as being man, or man in the character or capacity of man may be a wily, ruthless predator just as easily as a benevolent neighbor. What is special to man is his ability to reason. But reason is not the exclusive province of the good neighbor. The power to think in an orderly, logical way can be found among criminals as well as saints.

"But what if everyone were a criminal?" one might ask. "The world would quickly run out of products for the looters to feed upon." Yes, but the same is true for any other occupation. What if everyone were a psychologist or a librarian? Who would pick the grapes at harvest time?

Rand says, "The capacity to experience pleasure or pain is innate in a man’s body; it is part of his nature, part of the kind of entity he is. He has no choice about it, and he has no choice about the standard that determines what will make him experience the physical sensation of pleasure or of pain. What is that standard? His life."

But nothing in her argument gets us from the principle of egoism (a being's life as its "ultimate value which, to be kept, must be gained through its every moment") to a moral prohibition on trespassing against others.

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Man qua man means congruence between a man and the idea or concept of man. The more political freedom the more these match up.

Just as human rights are an invention so too is the congruent morality which is top down from rights which meets bottom up from human nature to integration in the in between ethical middle. Just as an autopsy won't reveal rights within a body neither will it reveal morality. One reason is it won't reveal conceptual thinking and free will.

It's one thing to dump on perceived Randian philosophical deficiencies, but no critique is complete without a proposed repair. If she failed in her inventiveness, then others need try to succeed until success is achieved. I'll bet the farm after this is done, she'll still be there for it's not so much her being wrong as incomplete.

The basic Rand problem to me is the Objectivist Ethics is for an individual and that is basic. Applied, however, the individual moves into a social context. What then? Rand's selfishness-selflessness ideas become a bull in the human china shop. She did not begin to study people as people enough to make her philosophy good enough for human consumption except maybe for Aspies. Take the biological compulsion many men have to fight for the sake of a tribe or nation. In small tribal groups that makes sense in that if the group is destroyed members of that group are too. In this huge nation state we live in it's completely optional because not so many warriors are needed and those that are are much more valued for their brains than back in the days of national service--the military draft. Yet those that are needed voluntarily sign up and many of those with the expectation of actual two-way combat, not just sitting in front of a computer screen directing drone strikes.

--Brant

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But nothing in her argument gets us from the principle of egoism (a being's life as its "ultimate value which, to be kept, must be gained through its every moment") to a moral prohibition on trespassing against others.

In other words, that which one takes for oneself, one might or might not arbitrarily apply to all other men?

Whew.

After all AR's man qua man, metaphysical explanation..

It's at the very least, implicit, FF.

This is the nature of man, fundamentally always true - regardless of whether an individual turns out a self-acknowledged egoist, Objectivist, jihadist, or whatever - which is on the table.

Is it not as result of your professed determinism, which can consider that a "...man may be a wily, ruthless predator just as easily as a benevolent neighbor?"??

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Just because humans have a survival need, and Rand talked about it, that doesn't mean that humans don't have an identity. Rand talked about human identity, too.

The two are not mutually exclusive.

Her method was to observe, then think. She did not start with "survival need" as a floating abstract anchor, then try to deduce all human essence from that.

Survival need is a principle for valuing, one of several, not an all-encompassing Platonic form.

Those who don't try to use Rand's form of fundamental thinking, i.e., observe then think, will never understand her. They are stuck in the mindset of thinking, then trying to observe what fits or doesn't fit. Then criticizing what they don't understand, especially when they refuse to see it.

Michael

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Just because humans have a survival need, and Rand talked about it, that doesn't mean that humans don't have an identity. Rand talked about human identity, too.

The two are not mutually exclusive.

Michael

Michael, It turns up that often (art, for one) that this could be the most significant stumbling-block in all discussions.

In a few quite innocuous-looking sentences in the last pages of ItOE, Rand wrote:

"The motive of all the attacks on man's rational faculty, is a single basic premise: the desire to exempt consciousness from the law of identity. The implicit, but unadmitted premise of modern philosophy is the notion that "true" knowledge must be acquired without any means of cognition, and that identity is the ~disqualifying~ element of consciousness.

This is the essence of Kant's doctrine, which represents the negation of ~any~ consciousness, of consciousness as such.

Objectivity begins with the realization that man (including his consciousness) is an entity of a specific nature; that there is no escape from the law of identity..."[Consciousness and Identity]

You know this stuff and I've seen you voice the idea before, but it's worthwhile quoting, repeatedly.

"...identity is the DISQUALIFYING element of consciousness". Yup. True for about everything one sees and reads today.

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Man qua man means congruence between a man and the idea or concept of man.

Brant,

This is exactly what I have been saying. From FF's words, I don't think he sees this. Of if he does, he believes Rand didn't see it.

The basic Rand problem to me is the Objectivist Ethics is for an individual and that is basic. Applied, however, the individual moves into a social context. What then? Rand's selfishness-selflessness ideas become a bull in the human china shop.

This is one of the issues I have with Rand. However, I look at what a person does and what he says. When there is a difference, I go with what he does as the best indicator of his thinking and intents.

So... does the selfishness frame to Rand mean the individual is in a cut-off isolated state, one that is alienated from reality like in Existentialism, or does man's nature flow from reality along with being an individual?

The second is all over her work. "Nature to be commanded must be obeyed" is one of her mantras.

But let's look at what she calls her highest value. Is it totally subjective or is there an element of human nature involved?

Let's look at romantic love.

I don't see Rand preaching that an individual should fall in love (in a sexual sense) with a pigeon or a watermelon. Her heroes and heroines fall in love with other humans. Using FF's way of thinking, one could say Rand ultimately meant non-human sexual love can be man's highest value as an expression of her morality.

Obviously she did not mean that.

I'll stop right there. I could come up with all kinds of other examples, but that one alone destroys the notion that Rand's idea of individual selfishness excluded other people on a metaphysical level.

Selfishness is the foundation of her ethics. It is not an exclusive boundary. In other words, her ethics has selfishness at root for an individual human entity plus others, not selfishness cut off from everything else.

By analogy, which is more important to the human body, the heart or the liver? Man's nature means he comes with both, that both are needed. Rand knew this about selfishness and other people.

I agree she did not explore the implications of what she did very well re others as opposed to what she said, and she sometimes got in her own way with drama, bluster and plain old stubbornness, but when she wrote (in the “About the Author” section to Atlas Shrugged):

My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.

... notice that she did not say survival was the moral purpose of man's life, or that instant self-gratification was his noblest activity. She said happiness and productive achievement.

To the thief, survival and self-gratification qua individual blob are right up there as his essence. He will sell-out a friend in a minute if he gets afraid and he will do any old destructive thing to anyone, including selling his mother in a scam, to get some money and an ego-rush.

That is not what Objectivism is about. Happiness to her is the moral purpose of man's life on a concept level, not just on an individual life level.

And whenever one uses the word "humans," one is talking about more than a single person. To repeat and extend, whenever one talks about a concept, like "concept of man," Rand is talking about more than a single person. Hell, in ITOE, she even claims it is impossible--by definition--to form a concept out of a single instance (from Chapter 2, Concept-Formation):

Every word we use (with the exception of proper names) is a symbol that denotes a concept, i.e., that stands for an unlimited number of concretes of a certain kind.

And that's just one quote I found in a hurry. There are many.

On another point, when one produces something in the manner Rand was talking about, that thing can be used by more than one person. It means producing stuff that humans use.

If you produce a mess no one can use for anything--no matter how hard you as an individual work at it, or how detailed that mess is, or how much personal satisfaction you get from it--that is not what she meant as a noble activity. Calling this kind of production man's "noblest activity" is not part of her "concept of man."

Why?

If it is not valid for the individual and for others, it cannot be universal to the concept's units. In other words, it destroys the concept, the concept becomes invalid.

But analyzing human universals is what Rand did, over and over and over, irrespective of what she said and how she said it in other places.

Michael

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Unrelated question: why can I not like posts in this thread? It tells me “ you have reached your quota of positive votes for the day". But I've not liked anything before. and why would there be a quota of positive votes?

##

As for my original post: Thanks whYNOT, Kelly, and Brant for addressing my questions directly and giving good answers, thanks to the others who touched on it tangentially.

I’m going to break the whole topic down to my extent of understanding at the moment. I would love for you to comment critically.

If we summarise, the arguments in this thread boil down to this: stealing isn't selfish because the thief will suffer psychologically. Since the standard of ethics in Objectivism is one's own life, the reason why one shouldn't do something must have to do with oneself; it must be harmful to one's life and pursuit of happiness. In this way, the arguments against stealing must show why the gain from the theft cannot be worth it.

-To mention the fear of punishment by the law won't cut it though since every real criminal is narcissistic enough to think that he won't be caught. Further this fear can be dealt with by means of "calculable risk"; as we do all the time in our lives in many different areas.

-The argument of repetition isn't good enough either, since a) if the person does it, he wouldn't care if he did it again, since it would be by his evaluation in his interest and b) we are not determined and could always redeem ourselves, "come to our senses" and stop our bad actions.

-What remains is the psychological argument: “Is this the lifelong reputation I wish to have with myself?”, “the good tainted by memory of cheating”, “You can't not know it: you can't not know that sleaze brought you that wealth. “, “Don't be surprised later when you look in the mirror and all you can see is sleaze.”

This reasoning goes in the right direction in my opinion but is far from complete. it must be made clear, why it's never worth to give a piece of one's mind or self-esteem for any amount of money, otherwise you could defeat it with a simple trade-off: i accept the psychological bruise for the higher value of the money. and the psychological bruise could so easily be justified: it was necessary, every one makes mistakes, i'm not infallible, i know it's wrong but i wasn't strong enough to stop myself (same principle is at play in procrastination, you know you shouldn't do it but still everyone procrastinates and you wouldn't hate yourself forever for this; being too weak to do the right thing), the thief could then do it in full knowledge that it's wrong and then just pacify himself by forgiving himself, determining to get better, to say that he learnt from it. you'll have the money and then you'll have a lot of time (money = time) to fix your tainted self-esteem, you'll learn to forgive yourself.

to defeat this problem, the answer doesn’t either lie in the premise that money can never be a higher value than a psychological bruise, since that is for everyone to judge individually.

instead, the problem is defeated by proving that there is in fact NO trade off: you are not giving a smaller value (part of self-esteem) for the higher value (money). you are trading a disvalue for another disvalue.

this reminds me of such character testing questions as: would you sleep with someone you hate/are deeply repulsed by for x amount of dollars? the people who struggle with this question and think that everyone has a price ("surely you'd do it for 1 billion, think about 1 billion you'd never have to work again or could start your dream career"), think that the money will actually be worth something to them. but this is CONTEXT dropping. there is nothing to gain, you are not surrendering a lower value for a higher one. but why not? i'd have to refer you to Francisco's money speech in atlas shrugged.

so back to the question, to answer why it's not in one's self-interest to steal.

I see two ways here:

you prove that stealing is wrong, e.g. by means of property rights, the fact that you yourself don’t want to be stolen from, that it doesn’t make sense if everyone did it and then you prove why it’s not in one’s self interested to do something that is wrong; that it’s bad.

or

2. you prove why something is not in one’s self interested to do, is bad, and therefore it’s wrong. if you understand, here, that it’s wrong, it would automatically mean that you’d not want to do it, you wouldn’t feel tempted.

so how you proceed depends on your definition of wrong. do you see it as a moral term? if you accept the word “wrong” by any other standard than one’s self-interest, such as a Kant’s categorical imperativ or the law, you’d then have to prove in a second step why it’s not in one’s self interested to do something that one has accepted as “wrong” by the standard which gave you the word “wrong” in order to not want to do it.

if you hold that “bad for yourself” implies wrong, you only have to prove why stealing is bad for yourself.

Problems I see with 1. how can you define what’s “wrong” if not by the standard of self-interest? how would you prove something to be wrong?

Problems I see with 2. how can you prove that doing a particular thing is NEVER in yourself, if you haven’t proved that it’s wrong? all the psychological arguments couldn’t apply; you first have to establish that it’s wrong, otherwise you couldn’t speak of integrity violations.

so to make this work, i’m going to use “wrong” here to mean contradictory and false, irrational—not primarily as a moral term.

1. first you have to prove that it's wrong. you can do this with property rights, the fact that you yourself don't want to be stolen from, that it doesn't make sense if everyone did it etc., that you contradict yourself if you don’t want people to take things from you, that it’s looting and parasitism which is contradictory because to loot something necessitates that someone produces it and if stealing weren’t wrong, who’d produce? in fact the concept of theft implies property rights.

2. now, just because something is wrong is not good enough to prove that it's not in your self-interest to do it. exactly for the reason that i mentioned above: you could see it as a trade-off: psychological discomfort/deliberately doing something that is wrong versus a lot of money/a higher gain. just by stating that something is wrong you cannot assume that someone will accept it as not in one's own interest. to not do something simply because it's wrong is christian ethics (god forbid it and that's that).

(again this here is a tricky point because it all depends on how the individual defines “wrong”. wrong in the legal sense, wrong by what ethics/standard?

i believe, in objectivism wrong only exists by the standard of your life and therefore accepting that something is wrong you’d automatically accept that it’s not in your self-interst and we’d be in scenario 2. please help me with this problem if you see the solution)

3. to show that you shouldn't do something that is wrong is to prove that it's also bad for oneself, since that is the standard of ethics. if you understand that it's not good for you, you won't do it and you won't be tempted. emotions will follow your mind.

4. i don't know if you can formulate a universal principle that proves that doing something that is rationally wrong (again to mean contradictory, false) is never in one's self interest to do. however i can try to argue for it on a case by case basis (don't kill because..., don't lie beacause..., don't steal because..)

5. stealing is bad for you because

a) you wouldn't actually gain something, things you buy with money you don't deserve will not really make you happy. here i refer you to francisco's money speech. the FLAW i see in this, however, is maslow's hierarchy of needs. this premise is void if someone is starving; he'd have every reason to steal to save his life, even if he won't enjoy eating the food; it won't matter to him since survival is a more basic need than self-actualization.

b) you'll destroy you own judgement, you can never object anymore to someone treating you unfairly/hurting your values, you'd have no right to critizise, your words will hold no power. you'd have to offer yourself to the looters, you'll lose your self-respect. this is one of the main reasons why i decided not to do it, under these circumstance you can not possibly be happy. (as a side note that is connected to this: i've stolen in the past. i've been able to forgive myself because i was a dumb teenager with no moral reasoning. if i stole now however, where i'm older and can think about my actions and where i know that it's wrong, i'll destroy my forgivness for my past faults, i'd have to forever see myself as scum.)

c) destruction of self-esteem as mentioned in this thread. if you know something is wrong, if you wouldn't want someone to do it to you, yet you do it, you destroy your integrity. this in terms hurts your self-esteem which in terms destroys your chance at the pursuit of happiness. since the pursuit of happiness is your purpose and highest goal in life, any action defeating it must be undesired, not in your selfish interest. this is why you don't do things that you accepted as wrong. in here might lie the universal principle why one shouldn't do anything (is not in one’s interest) that's wrong.

d) another attempt at a universal principle why doing things that are wrong are not in your self-interest: if stealing is wrong, it’s irrational. to survive and and achieve your values you need rationality, hence living irrationally will make it harder/impossible for you to survive and get your values. under this, how could you achieve happiness?

as you can see this topic isn’t yet clear to me. especially i’m confused about the word “wrong” and its relationship to self-interest and something being “bad”.

questions:

-how is the word “wrong” in this context in objectivism to be understand? how do you prove, by what standard and by what usage of “wrong”, that stealing is wrong? what does accepting that stealing is wrong imply?

-what do you say about my point with Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs? if you shouldn’t steal because it will ruin your chances at happiness, how can this argument hold if your aim is not happiness BUT survival?

Thanks for reading this long post and participating in the discussion.

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But nothing in her argument gets us from the principle of egoism (a being's life as its "ultimate value which, to be kept, must be gained through its every moment") to a moral prohibition on trespassing against others.

In other words, that which one takes for oneself, one might or might not arbitrarily apply to all other men?

Whew.

After all AR's man qua man, metaphysical explanation..

It's at the very least, implicit, FF.

This is the nature of man, fundamentally always true - regardless of whether an individual turns out a self-acknowledged egoist, Objectivist, jihadist, or whatever - which is on the table.

Is it not as result of your professed determinism, which can consider that a "...man may be a wily, ruthless predator just as easily as a benevolent neighbor?"??

If, as you say, I am determined to say "man may be a wily, ruthless predator just as easily as a benevolent neighbor," then you can easily disprove the statement by showing the complete absence of ruthless predators among our species. According to your theory, my determinism will prevent me from being persuaded by your answer. But then I am not the only reader of posts on this thread, am I?

As for the need to justify our actions by universalizing them: would a man wracked by cancer need to encourage all his brothers to commit suicide before he could rightfully take his own life?

Just because humans have a survival need, and Rand talked about it, that doesn't mean that humans don't have an identity. Rand talked about human identity, too.

The two are not mutually exclusive.

Her method was to observe, then think. She did not start with "survival need" as a floating abstract anchor, then try to deduce all human essence from that.

Survival need is a principle for valuing, one of several, not an all-encompassing Platonic form.

Those who don't try to use Rand's form of fundamental thinking, i.e., observe then think, will never understand her. They are stuck in the mindset of thinking, then trying to observe what fits or doesn't fit. Then criticizing what they don't understand, especially when they refuse to see it.

Michael

Very well, man has an identity. What Rand does not provide is any logical argument that, at his essence, homo sapiens is Man the Producer, not Man the Mystic, or Man the Warlord, or Man the Social Worker.

If I am nothing more than a stubborn mule who refuses to see what you claim is plainly there, then perhaps for those with more open minds, you might quote a passage from her ethics where she establishes irrefutably that man's identity forbids theft.

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If I am nothing more than a stubborn mule who refuses to see what you claim is plainly there, then perhaps for those with more open minds, you might quote a passage from her ethics where she establishes irrefutably that man's identity forbids theft.

FF,

This very request shows your thinking model.

Rand doesn't deduce theft from a Platonic principle.

But what the hell, I'll give you more than a "passage from her ethics where she establishes irrefutably that man's identity forbids theft."

Some have said Rand wrote a long-ass book about a bunch of philosophically-minded genius-super-achievers who went on strike precisely because they were sick and tired of the theft of their stuff and just wanted to live according to man's nature as they rationally identified it.

See here.

Michael

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But nothing in her argument gets us from the principle of egoism (a being's life as its "ultimate value which, to be kept, must be gained through its every moment") to a moral prohibition on trespassing against others.

In other words, that which one takes for oneself, one might or might not arbitrarily apply to all other men?

Whew.

After all AR's man qua man, metaphysical explanation..

It's at the very least, implicit, FF.

This is the nature of man, fundamentally always true - regardless of whether an individual turns out a self-acknowledged egoist, Objectivist, jihadist, or whatever - which is on the table.

Is it not as result of your professed determinism, which can consider that a "...man may be a wily, ruthless predator just as easily as a benevolent neighbor?"??

If, as you say, I am determined to say "man may be a wily, ruthless predator just as easily as a benevolent neighbor," then you can easily disprove the statement by showing the complete absence of ruthless predators among our species. According to your theory, my determinism will prevent me from being persuaded by your answer. But then I am not the only reader of posts on this thread, am I?

As for the need to justify our actions by universalizing them: would a man wracked by cancer need to encourage all his brothers to commit suicide before he could rightfully take his own life?

No, no! Not meaning that YOU were 'determined' to state that - but, that you believe (I surmised) that others were 'determined' to be predators or good neighbors and so on. Last we debated it, you had determinist leanings.

Returning to mpp's poser, he wouldn't have asked, and we would not be discussing his question - IF - he and I and others here did not have convictions of individual volition.

In which case, I'd be advising him to just go with the flow, that he was not instrumental in his actions, character and virtues, that all he is and does was anyway predetermined and beyond his power. (And all that matters is can he get away with it).

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If I am nothing more than a stubborn mule who refuses to see what you claim is plainly there, then perhaps for those with more open minds, you might quote a passage from her ethics where she establishes irrefutably that man's identity forbids theft.

FF,

This very request shows your thinking model.

Rand doesn't deduce theft from a Platonic principle.

But what the hell, I'll give you more than a "passage from her ethics where she establishes irrefutably that man's identity forbids theft."

Some have said Rand wrote a long-ass book about a bunch of philosophically-minded genius-super-achievers who went on strike precisely because they were sick and tired of the theft of their stuff and just wanted to live according to man's nature as they rationally identified it.

See here.

Michael

It's because Rand explicitly criticized philosophers for not giving us a "rational, objectively demonstrable, scientific answer to the question of why man needs a code of values" that we should expect from her something approaching real world evidence for claims about main's nature. But you argue that the "data" consists of a novel in which the heroes all seem to have faces constructed from the same mold of angular planes and the villains are each variations on the theme of drooling ghoul? Really?

If only it were true that all the looters and moochers and pull-peddlers in America 1890, 1917, 1933, 1945, 1965, 2008 got their comeuppance immediately, directly and on the chin. However, outside the world of Ayn Rand's wish-fulfillment fiction, trains do crash and bridges do collapse, but, sadly, not every victim is a mystic, an altruist, or a collectivist, getting exactly what he deserved, to use the stock phrase of the comic relief character on this website. Sometimes "the man in Bedroom A, Car No. 1" is actually a hard-working software designer and not "a professor of sociology who taught that individual ability is of no consequence."

But nothing in her argument gets us from the principle of egoism (a being's life as its "ultimate value which, to be kept, must be gained through its every moment") to a moral prohibition on trespassing against others.

In other words, that which one takes for oneself, one might or might not arbitrarily apply to all other men?

Whew.

After all AR's man qua man, metaphysical explanation..

It's at the very least, implicit, FF.

This is the nature of man, fundamentally always true - regardless of whether an individual turns out a self-acknowledged egoist, Objectivist, jihadist, or whatever - which is on the table.

Is it not as result of your professed determinism, which can consider that a "...man may be a wily, ruthless predator just as easily as a benevolent neighbor?"??

If, as you say, I am determined to say "man may be a wily, ruthless predator just as easily as a benevolent neighbor," then you can easily disprove the statement by showing the complete absence of ruthless predators among our species. According to your theory, my determinism will prevent me from being persuaded by your answer. But then I am not the only reader of posts on this thread, am I?

As for the need to justify our actions by universalizing them: would a man wracked by cancer need to encourage all his brothers to commit suicide before he could rightfully take his own life?

No, no! Not meaning that YOU were 'determined' to state that - but, that you believe (I surmised) others were 'determined' to be predators or good neighbors and so on. Last we debated this, you had determinist leanings.

Returning to mpp's poser, he wouldn't have asked, and we would not be discussing his question - IF - he and I and others here did not have convictions of individual volition.

In which case, I'd be advising him to just go with the flow, that he was not instrumental in his actions, character and virtues, that all he is and does was anyway predetermined and beyond his power. (And all that matters is can he get away with it).

I hold with the school of thought that everything that happens in the world of non-fiction has a prior cause (or multiple prior causes). I will not guess what MPP's convictions were at the time he posed his question in Post #1, but it is certainly possible for someone who is not an adherent of the free will argument to ask any number of questions, academic and otherwise.

You seem to view determinism as the simplistic idea that a man is programmed only once by external forces, and that after that nothing can change his motives/actions. I don't know of any determinist who has taken that position. Of course, people change with changing conditions. New factors, including new knowledge, alter patterns of behavior. This is what child developmental psychology is all about.

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Coming up with an answer that satisfies the poser of such problems as posed by the OP stems , I believe, from certain problems of the posing. The question asks about morality and normative judgements but drops context or blanks out on certain particulars involved. Eg "money" as opposed to "wealth" or value.

Morality would play In a hunter/gatherer/quasi-agrarian society, yes? If you were able to sneak some of my food stock and I don't happen to notice, at least right away, bad on me , good on you? A prudent parasite? Watchout when I realize and the jig is up.

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Mr. MPP has just provided us with a real world example of the logical gap in Objectivist thinking. Rand's ethics holds that a) it is proper for man to act in his rational self-interest, and b) man has certain property rights which others must not violate.

Objectivists routinely say the two principles are not in conflict. There cannot be a "prudent predator," they say. Why not? Well, because the prudent predator is not acting rationally. Why not? Well, because he might get caught, er, that is, the risks always outweigh the potential rewards when we steal from others.

Yet I've never heard an Objectivist advise a police officer or a firefighter to leave their profession because of the hazards.

When the "it's not really selfish" argument fails, Randians then rely on even flimsier defenses: you could make more money doing something else; you'll suffer psychological guilt for years to come; if everybody were a prudent predator, there would be no more hosts for the parasites, etc.

Francisco,

I haven't read the entire thread. I'll catch up eventually, but I would just reply that your prudent predator doesn't exist. I will simply assert, without proof at this point, that cheating, lying, stealing, murdering, etc., are never in a person's self interest. A person's expected payoff in leading a life that involves violating the rights of others is always less than his expected payoff in leading a rights respecting life.

I will admit that it is a difficult argument to make. It is probably as difficult as arguing about the economics of freedom versus big government. However, I think you will find that it is impossible to come up with real world examples where a person's expected long term payoff is greater by violating the rights of others. In fact, if the goal of morality is to preserve life, then the proper measurement is longevity. So, you would have to argue that a person's expected longevity is greater if he violates the rights of others than if he respects them.

Darrell

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Coming up with an answer that satisfies the poser of such problems as posed by the OP stems , I believe, from certain problems of the posing. The question asks about morality and normative judgements but drops context or blanks out on certain particulars involved. Eg "money" as opposed to "wealth" or value.

Morality would play In a hunter/gatherer/quasi-agrarian society, yes? If you were able to sneak some of my food stock and I don't happen to notice, at least right away, bad on me , good on you? A prudent parasite? Watchout when I realize and the jig is up.

Hey, yes, this is something I came to realise while writing my last reply in this thread. Here it is again:

##

Unrelated question: why can I not like posts in this thread? It tells me “ you have reached your quota of positive votes for the day". But I've not liked anything before. and why would there be a quota of positive votes?

##

As for my original post: Thanks whYNOT, Kelly, and Brant for addressing my questions directly and giving good answers, thanks to the others who touched on it tangentially.

I’m going to break the whole topic down to my extent of understanding at the moment. I would love for you to comment critically.

If we summarise, the arguments in this thread boil down to this: stealing isn't selfish because the thief will suffer psychologically. Since the standard of ethics in Objectivism is one's own life, the reason why one shouldn't do something must have to do with oneself; it must be harmful to one's life and pursuit of happiness. In this way, the arguments against stealing must show why the gain from the theft cannot be worth it.

-To mention the fear of punishment by the law won't cut it though since every real criminal is narcissistic enough to think that he won't be caught. Further this fear can be dealt with by means of "calculable risk"; as we do all the time in our lives in many different areas.

-The argument of repetition isn't good enough either, since a) if the person does it, he wouldn't care if he did it again, since it would be by his evaluation in his interest and b) we are not determined and could always redeem ourselves, "come to our senses" and stop our bad actions.

-What remains is the psychological argument: “Is this the lifelong reputation I wish to have with myself?”, “the good tainted by memory of cheating”, “You can't not know it: you can't not know that sleaze brought you that wealth. “, “Don't be surprised later when you look in the mirror and all you can see is sleaze.”

This reasoning goes in the right direction in my opinion but is far from complete. it must be made clear, why it's never worth to give a piece of one's mind or self-esteem for any amount of money, otherwise you could defeat it with a simple trade-off: i accept the psychological bruise for the higher value of the money. and the psychological bruise could so easily be justified: it was necessary, every one makes mistakes, i'm not infallible, i know it's wrong but i wasn't strong enough to stop myself (same principle is at play in procrastination, you know you shouldn't do it but still everyone procrastinates and you wouldn't hate yourself forever for this; being too weak to do the right thing), the thief could then do it in full knowledge that it's wrong and then just pacify himself by forgiving himself, determining to get better, to say that he learnt from it. you'll have the money and then you'll have a lot of time (money = time) to fix your tainted self-esteem, you'll learn to forgive yourself.

to defeat this problem, the answer doesn’t either lie in the premise that money can never be a higher value than a psychological bruise, since that is for everyone to judge individually.

instead, the problem is defeated by proving that there is in fact NO trade off: you are not giving a smaller value (part of self-esteem) for the higher value (money). you are trading a disvalue for another disvalue.

this reminds me of such character testing questions as: would you sleep with someone you hate/are deeply repulsed by for x amount of dollars? the people who struggle with this question and think that everyone has a price ("surely you'd do it for 1 billion, think about 1 billion you'd never have to work again or could start your dream career"), think that the money will actually be worth something to them. but this is CONTEXT dropping. there is nothing to gain, you are not surrendering a lower value for a higher one. but why not? i'd have to refer you to Francisco's money speech in atlas shrugged.

so back to the question, to answer why it's not in one's self-interest to steal.

I see two ways here:

you prove that stealing is wrong, e.g. by means of property rights, the fact that you yourself don’t want to be stolen from, that it doesn’t make sense if everyone did it and then you prove why it’s not in one’s self interested to do something that is wrong; that it’s bad.

or

2. you prove why something is not in one’s self interested to do, is bad, and therefore it’s wrong. if you understand, here, that it’s wrong, it would automatically mean that you’d not want to do it, you wouldn’t feel tempted.

so how you proceed depends on your definition of wrong. do you see it as a moral term? if you accept the word “wrong” by any other standard than one’s self-interest, such as a Kant’s categorical imperativ or the law, you’d then have to prove in a second step why it’s not in one’s self interested to do something that one has accepted as “wrong” by the standard which gave you the word “wrong” in order to not want to do it.

if you hold that “bad for yourself” implies wrong, you only have to prove why stealing is bad for yourself.

Problems I see with 1. how can you define what’s “wrong” if not by the standard of self-interest? how would you prove something to be wrong?

Problems I see with 2. how can you prove that doing a particular thing is NEVER in yourself, if you haven’t proved that it’s wrong? all the psychological arguments couldn’t apply; you first have to establish that it’s wrong, otherwise you couldn’t speak of integrity violations.

so to make this work, i’m going to use “wrong” here to mean contradictory and false, irrational—not primarily as a moral term.

1. first you have to prove that it's wrong. you can do this with property rights, the fact that you yourself don't want to be stolen from, that it doesn't make sense if everyone did it etc., that you contradict yourself if you don’t want people to take things from you, that it’s looting and parasitism which is contradictory because to loot something necessitates that someone produces it and if stealing weren’t wrong, who’d produce? in fact the concept of theft implies property rights.

2. now, just because something is wrong is not good enough to prove that it's not in your self-interest to do it. exactly for the reason that i mentioned above: you could see it as a trade-off: psychological discomfort/deliberately doing something that is wrong versus a lot of money/a higher gain. just by stating that something is wrong you cannot assume that someone will accept it as not in one's own interest. to not do something simply because it's wrong is christian ethics (god forbid it and that's that).

(again this here is a tricky point because it all depends on how the individual defines “wrong”. wrong in the legal sense, wrong by what ethics/standard?

i believe, in objectivism wrong only exists by the standard of your life and therefore accepting that something is wrong you’d automatically accept that it’s not in your self-interst and we’d be in scenario 2. please help me with this problem if you see the solution)

3. to show that you shouldn't do something that is wrong is to prove that it's also bad for oneself, since that is the standard of ethics. if you understand that it's not good for you, you won't do it and you won't be tempted. emotions will follow your mind.

4. i don't know if you can formulate a universal principle that proves that doing something that is rationally wrong (again to mean contradictory, false) is never in one's self interest to do. however i can try to argue for it on a case by case basis (don't kill because..., don't lie beacause..., don't steal because..)

5. stealing is bad for you because

a) you wouldn't actually gain something, things you buy with money you don't deserve will not really make you happy. here i refer you to francisco's money speech. the FLAW i see in this, however, is maslow's hierarchy of needs. this premise is void if someone is starving; he'd have every reason to steal to save his life, even if he won't enjoy eating the food; it won't matter to him since survival is a more basic need than self-actualization.

b) you'll destroy you own judgement, you can never object anymore to someone treating you unfairly/hurting your values, you'd have no right to critizise, your words will hold no power. you'd have to offer yourself to the looters, you'll lose your self-respect. this is one of the main reasons why i decided not to do it, under these circumstance you can not possibly be happy. (as a side note that is connected to this: i've stolen in the past. i've been able to forgive myself because i was a dumb teenager with no moral reasoning. if i stole now however, where i'm older and can think about my actions and where i know that it's wrong, i'll destroy my forgivness for my past faults, i'd have to forever see myself as scum.)

c) destruction of self-esteem as mentioned in this thread. if you know something is wrong, if you wouldn't want someone to do it to you, yet you do it, you destroy your integrity. this in terms hurts your self-esteem which in terms destroys your chance at the pursuit of happiness. since the pursuit of happiness is your purpose and highest goal in life, any action defeating it must be undesired, not in your selfish interest. this is why you don't do things that you accepted as wrong. in here might lie the universal principle why one shouldn't do anything (is not in one’s interest) that's wrong.

d) another attempt at a universal principle why doing things that are wrong are not in your self-interest: if stealing is wrong, it’s irrational. to survive and and achieve your values you need rationality, hence living irrationally will make it harder/impossible for you to survive and get your values. under this, how could you achieve happiness?

as you can see this topic isn’t yet clear to me. especially i’m confused about the word “wrong” and its relationship to self-interest and something being “bad”.

questions:

-how is the word “wrong” in this context in objectivism to be understand? how do you prove, by what standard and by what usage of “wrong”, that stealing is wrong? what does accepting that stealing is wrong imply?

-what do you say about my point with Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs? if you shouldn’t steal because it will ruin your chances at happiness, how can this argument hold if your aim is not happiness BUT survival?

Thanks for reading this long post and participating in the discussion.

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Mr. MPP has just provided us with a real world example of the logical gap in Objectivist thinking. Rand's ethics holds that a) it is proper for man to act in his rational self-interest, and b) man has certain property rights which others must not violate.

Objectivists routinely say the two principles are not in conflict. There cannot be a "prudent predator," they say. Why not? Well, because the prudent predator is not acting rationally. Why not? Well, because he might get caught, er, that is, the risks always outweigh the potential rewards when we steal from others.

Yet I've never heard an Objectivist advise a police officer or a firefighter to leave their profession because of the hazards.

When the "it's not really selfish" argument fails, Randians then rely on even flimsier defenses: you could make more money doing something else; you'll suffer psychological guilt for years to come; if everybody were a prudent predator, there would be no more hosts for the parasites, etc.

Francisco,

I haven't read the entire thread. I'll catch up eventually, but I would just reply that your prudent predator doesn't exist. I will simply assert, without proof at this point, that cheating, lying, stealing, murdering, etc., are never in a person's self interest. A person's expected payoff in leading a life that involves violating the rights of others is always less than his expected payoff in leading a rights respecting life.

I will admit that it is a difficult argument to make. It is probably as difficult as arguing about the economics of freedom versus big government. However, I think you will find that it is impossible to come up with real world examples where a person's expected long term payoff is greater by violating the rights of others. In fact, if the goal of morality is to preserve life, then the proper measurement is longevity. So, you would have to argue that a person's expected longevity is greater if he violates the rights of others than if he respects them.

Darrell

Impossible? In fact, there are many historical cases of people who survived difficult times by violating the rights of others. To cite one famous example, concentration camp kapos in Nazi Germany were prisoners who were spared the harshest conditions by supervising, often brutally, other prisoners. See in particular Elie Wiesel's autobiographical Night. Of the perhaps thousands who performed this function, only a couple of dozen were successfully prosecuted after World War II.

More recently, in the United States, arrested drug dealers are frequently given the promise of a lighter sentence or no prosecution if they serve as informants for the police.

As for the statement "the goal of morality is to preserve life," to be fair, that is not Rand's position. According to her "that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good."

.

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I hold with the school of thought that everything that happens in the world of non-fiction has a prior cause (or multiple prior causes).

...

You seem to view determinism as the simplistic idea that a man is programmed only once by external forces, and that after that nothing can change his motives/actions. I don't know of any determinist who has taken that position. Of course, people change with changing conditions. New factors, including new knowledge, alter patterns of behavior. This is what child developmental psychology is all about.

"New factors, including new knowledge, alter patterns of behavior".

You must explain to me how this happens. Knowledge, which "knowledge"? How does it change anyone? Does the "knowledge" of the existence (e.g.) of brute killers rampaging through countries enter one's mind and force an alteration in one's "patterns of behavior" to the extent of enlisting with them?

What "new knowledge" convinced you to become a libertarian? And why? I suggest you were 'ready' or receptive to become one, in advance, from earlier thinking and observation..

I suspect that any argument from determinism is self-refuting. Realised or not, everybody has a sense of morality and conviction. Which is self-created by deeper convictions gained from reality (or unreality). This is the real meaning of what a being of volitional consciousness is all about - not: a 'hard volitionism' that whatever one wills and wishes for, will come into existence, or that external forces do not have any influence in one's life.

I think you became what you are by volition, FF. Your determinism is a cognitive self-indulgence, no more true to the nature of man, than altruism. Either of which, if practised assiduously would ensure a short survival.

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It's because Rand explicitly criticized philosophers for not giving us a "rational, objectively demonstrable, scientific answer to the question of why man needs a code of values" that we should expect from her something approaching real world evidence for claims about main's nature. But you argue that the "data" consists of a novel in which the heroes all seem to have faces constructed from the same mold of angular planes and the villains are each variations on the theme of drooling ghoul? Really?

If only it were true that all the looters and moochers and pull-peddlers in America 1890, 1917, 1933, 1945, 1965, 2008 got their comeuppance immediately, directly and on the chin. However, outside the world of Ayn Rand's wish-fulfillment fiction, trains do crash and bridges do collapse, but, sadly, not every victim is a mystic, an altruist, or a collectivist, getting exactly what he deserved, to use the stock phrase of the comic relief character on this website. Sometimes "the man in Bedroom A, Car No. 1" is actually a hard-working software designer and not "a professor of sociology who taught that individual ability is of no consequence."

FF,

I'll meet you on your epistemological turf a little--enough to say this.

I suspect you know very little about the neuroscience of narrative, mental model-building, mirror neurons that release dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, cortisol, endorphins, how primates learn by imitation, etc. If you did, you would see just how silly your comments come across in this post.

But I prefer to go back to my epistemological frame. You are not going to help your argument by changing the goal post. Nobody, not Rand, not me, not anybody on this thread maintains that historical capitalism is only populated with good guys. That was never Rand's point.

Your caricature description and dismissal of Rand's "wish-fulfillment" shows just how little you understand what she is saying.

When Rand says "rational," she is not talking about the same thing you are.

I will not try to explain that in depth right here. But since I am writing for the reader's benefit and not for yours, I will make a few comments.

I see the essence as the following: According to what I have understood of your words so far, in your world-view, humanity is naturally divided between an elite class and an exploited class--or better, elite classes and exploited classes. Predators and prey. Eaters and the meals. I'm not talking about how humans have often behaved over history, where they did this a lot. I am talking about a metaphysical mold humans are trapped in and can never get out of. Ever.

That is how I see your notion of what human means.

And you claim Rand's ethics justify this exploitation of the exploited, or at least do not prove through a rational reason why everyone's life has value in a society, not just the lives of the elites.

So long as that is the perspective governing your discourse, there will be no data or argument or identification that will get you to look at it objectively, much less sway you. Your position is essentially based on faith for the physical part (all strict determinists are religious fundamentalists at root) and crossword puzzles for the mind part.

Don't forget, this stuff has to come before talking about theft.

(As an aside, I sincerely hope you are not engaged in anything sleazy. Normally, when people get passionate about justifying sleaze, they are doing sleaze on the side and feel guilty. :smile: I'm not saying this is your case--just saying I hope it is not.)

According to my worldview, a lot of which I gained from Rand, man needs an identification more suited to his prefrontal neocortex, an identification that allows the prefrontal neocortex to operate correctly in all people who have a healthy one. She used the word, mind, but that area of the brain is the physical region where the mind, i.e., conscious volition, resides. Why should this part be the essence of man? Because no other life form has such an organ that is capable of overriding and instructing its own lower life processes in addition to producing the stuff it needs to survive.

The human species is the only one that has it.

The moment you claim a person has volition but is not suited to use it, however an elite class over there (thugs and thieves in your description) is suited, you are talking about an identification of human that is little more--and very little at that--than an ape. You are talking about humans who do not have a prefrontal neocortex as part of their essence.

In your world, thugs can create the cure for cancer. In mine, thugs will never bully that discovery out of any independent mind.

When Rand says "rational," she means identification of reality into concepts. When you say rational, you mean the rules of logic like the rules of a board game.

Here's an example using a syllogism structure:

All men are mortal.

Socrates is a man.

Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

In both Rand's method and your method, that is logical.

However, let's change the syllogism:

All unicorns are immortal.

Socrates is a unicorn.

Therefore, Socrates is immortal.

In your form of logic, that is logical. It is rational. It follows the rules of logic. For Rand it is not logical.

Why?

Because unicorns do not exist and Socrates was not one. For logic to be valid for Rand, all premises had to be connected to reality--based on observation at root.

Ron Merrill first brought this distinction of mindset home to me. I wrote about it recently:

One may agree or disagree with the academic approach or Rand's, but I believe his observation makes it a lot easier to see where the two sides are coming from.

In talking about some early academic papers on Rand's philosophy (including Nozick), in The Ideas of Ayn Rand (p. 88), he wrote:

To read these arguments is frustrating; the two sides are simply not communicating. The opponents of Objectivism, steeped in the tradition of academic philosophy, display their superior debating skills while adroitly dodging the real issues. There is a tone of rather tolerant amusement as of a chess-master demolishing a naive opponent. It seems never to occur to them that Objectivists might not regard philosophy as a game.

He goes on to further critique the academic approach with some cute phrases ("philosophy means never having to say you're certain" and "skill at debate makes right" and so on :smile: ). However, the important two points are:

1. Rand's mission was not competitive; she wanted to help normal people (not just academics) understand important and fundamental issues with certainty so they could get on with living their lives as best they could (or, better, achieve great things), and

2. Philosophy to Rand was a human need, not just a bunch of academic rules and counter-rules.

One of Merrill's phrases bears repeating: "It seems never to occur to them that Objectivists might not regard philosophy as a game."

Once you get into Rand's perspective, you will be able to understand abstractions in her manner of using them. Critiques of her ideas from that perspective are extremely valuable to me.

Until then, you will misunderstand her and keep claiming she proved or disproved things she never did. You will keep trying to play gotcha. That's because your only perspective is a concrete-bound rule-based epistemology Rand did not use (except, maybe, in her aesthetics when judging people she did not like). Critiques from that perspective have no value to me because they stem from incorrect identification and the abstractions are all over the place (despite their form following rules).

Until we can actually communicate on the same level, even though you find stories disdainful as proof or whatever, here's a story.

One day, Jeremy was walking through a South American jungle with a sidekick who knew local native tribe languages. Jeremy was exploring the jungle, trying to ferret out its secrets so he could bring the benefits to the rest of mankind. Suddenly an arrow hit a tree right in front of his face. He stopped as a shiver of fear ran up his back.

Out of nowhere, there appeared five savages from a little-known indigenous tribe. Their hair was cut short, they were mostly naked, and they had long white streaks of paint on their faces. They glared in all hostility.

The sidekick spoke up. He said in their language, "We come in peace."

One of the savages stepped forward. "What are you doing here?"

The sidekick made a wait gesture, then talked it over with Jeremy.

He said to the savages, "We seek the secrets of the jungle."

Suddenly they all erupted into yelling. They said some secrets were off limits to humans. After it died down a little, Jeremy said to his sidekick, "Tell them this. We can take any secret and remove the danger from it. Just as surely as the earth is round."

On hearing the sidekick translate "earth is round," the savages looked perplexed.

One of them said. "We know flat for the world, not round. We know mountains and valleys for the world, not round. We know land and rivers for the world, not round. What do you mean round?"

Once translated, Jeremy smiled. Now we are getting somewhere. I can bring them knowledge and perspective they don't have.

He lifted his finger and gestured for them to wait a second. He scraped off a small place on the ground with his foot. Then he got a few berries off some nearby brushes and put them in the cleared area. He found a round gourd and some larger fruit.

The savages glared suspiciously.

He put the gourd in the middle and the berries and other fruit randomly around it. He looked up at the savages with a broad smile. He said the gourd was the sun and the fruit were planets circling around the gourd. That the earth was one of these berries and was round like the berry. Wasn't that interesting?

After the sidekick translated, the savages stopped glaring. They looked at each other. Time passed in silence. One savage looked up to the sky, then down to the earth. He scratched his belly. Suddenly, without warning, they all guffawed. And they couldn't stop laughing.

One said, "Gourd? Berries? Circles? Ha ha ha ha!"

Another said, "Everybody knows the earth is a flat cake that a giant snake carries on its back."

Another piped up. "These men or not dangerous. They are fools. We need not bother with them. Leave them for the jungle animals."

The savages disappeared into the vegetation just as silently as they appeared.

Discussing Rand with you is like this. You are the savages and I'm the fruit guy.

:smile:

Michael

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