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Showing results for tags 'ethics'.
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On an Objectivist forum one poster recently wrote: "Benjamin Franklin wanted to achieve moral perfection so he wrote in a journal and marked in his journal everytime he violated one of his virtues... I want to do something similar but with the Objectivist virtues ...". Objectivist Virtues Since the question concerns, Objectivist virtues, let's examine what those might be. Ayn Rand made two lists of virtues, one published in The Virtue of Selfishness, the other unpublished in her Journal, in a section called, "The Moral Basis Of Individualism." The published list of vir
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I used to believe so, since, per Peikoff's audio lectures, it is employs hypothetical, not categorical imperative. But someone, at another forum, objected to this, saying: "you have not apprehended the concepts of Objectivism. Consequentialism is anathema. Morality is principled, not conditional to outcomes.... The utilitarianism of John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham is a well known example of consequentialism. By contrast, the deontological theories of John Locke and Immanuel Kant are nonconsequentialist." I sure agree than Kant is a non-consequentialist. But Kant, also, is against hypotheti
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Treat others as you wish them to treat you, including with respect, courtesy, empathy, friendliness, non-criminality, and non-tyranny. This applies to low-life mass men and high-quality noble souls.
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The other thread on the nature of "evil" got me thinking in a few different directions. Particularly on so- called "victimless crimes". Prostitition, according to Objectivist doctrine, is considered bad, but legally acceptable. The rationale being prostitution (or any money-for-sex relationships) is "faking reality" on part of both the prosittute and the john. Sex, according to Objectivism, is held to be an exclusive good between two mutually valued partners, and money-for-sex arrangements are morally offensive. But let me ask you a question: is the crappily paid McDonalds worker who orders y
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I will start school next month as a freshman. My financial aid package comes from the federal government, the state government, and the Army. I'm conflicted with the morality of accepting government aid, and I would prefer to only use private loans, but the current market just isn't set up for this kind of loan shopping. Every single student who attends university will use some form of government-subsidized financial aid (unless the student attends a private university and pays all tuition and fees personally). Is it moral to accept government-subsidized financial aid as a student? It seems li
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If you aren’t familiar with the phenomenal podcast series available at www.econtalk.org, I highly recommend selecting an episode or two from the archive and listening during your daily commute or exercise. One could select virtually any of the podcasts as a rich starting point for discussion, but one episode in particular had a profound impact on my intellectual framework, and I would like to share it here: www.econtalk.org/archives/2012/01/david_rose_on_t.html In this episode, economist/author David Rose discusses some of the central themes of his book, The Moral Foundation of Economic Behavi
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There are many ways to kill yourself and many reasons to do so. When I lived in Livingston County, Michigan, there was this old couple, married a hundred years more or less and she passed away first and a few days after the funeral, he died. No one asked any questions or needed to. His death was ruled "natural causes" and it was close enough. Even a nominally young person could face unremediable prospects of disease, paralysis, overall loss of life quality. Why delay the inevitable as it just gets worse? (Clearly, someone 20 has more likelihood of better outcomes over time than someone 60.
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Discussing Herman Cain's business career in another topic, I said that the companies with which Cain found success - Burger King, Godfather's Pizza, and Nabisco - do not sell anything I would eat. MSK replied with a tout for Glenn Beck's double deep fried cherry pie. That brought me here to read about deep fried Twinkies. Does anyone else here actually care about what they eat? We could argue a lot, but there must be some basic understandings in order to provide valuable information. For instance, over on RoR in a healthfood thread, one of the regulars boasted of his nut butter sandwiches.
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Seeing as how Rand founded her ethics on an inquiry into value, basically assuming on the part of living beings that they "act to gain and/or keep" ends as part of their nature, I think her account of value could best be restated if it was founded on the Austrian school's axiom of action. I also think that it's necessary to stop regurgitating phrases such as "man's life qua man", "life makes value possible", "there is only one fundamental alternative in the universe: existence or non-existence", etc. For me and for some others I know, their meanings were fuzzy and they prohibited the understan
