nastiness abounds

[sjw]

I restrict intellectual discussions to the Internet.

Sounds lonely/boring.

If I were your neighbor it would all spill over. I could say the same about Ghs et al.

Well, I could say the same about GHS...

I play it by ear with new people, you can generally tell where they can and can't go in conversation. People who can handle intellectual discussions are rarer, but they don't exist exclusively on the internet.

Shayne

[Brant Gaede]

I restrict intellectual discussions to the Internet.

Sounds lonely/boring.

Shayne

There's too much disjunction between what our respective minds are all about and how they work.

--Brant

[sjw]

I restrict intellectual discussions to the Internet.

Sounds lonely/boring.

Shayne

There's too much disjunction between what our respective minds are all about and how they work.

--Brant

If you say so. If you're ever in Utah stop by, I'll throw a party for you. We can have a bunch of intellectual discussions ;)

Shayne

[Brant Gaede]

I restrict intellectual discussions to the Internet.

Sounds lonely/boring.

Shayne

There's too much disjunction between what our respective minds are all about and how they work.

--Brant

If you say so. If you're ever in Utah stop by, I'll throw a party for you. We can have a bunch of intellectual discussions ;)

Shayne

Ah, a driveby.

--Brant

pizza, chicken, corn, brocolli and beer

[sjw]

Ah, a driveby.

--Brant

pizza, chicken, corn, brocolli and beer

Broccoli???

We do have beer here in Utah. And even our own whiskey distillery.

Shayne

[anthony]

The philosophical choice on my part lies in examining whether philosophical premises stand up to scrutiny.

But if the practical is that which works to achieve a goal, suppose the goal is immoral, then equating practical with moral makes no sense.

As an Objectivist, you would then also have to call "impractical" all those procedures which don't further Objectivist moral ideals, even if these procedures are very effective and make many people happy.

Simply, yes: the moral is that which furthers his life in toto, and the practical is that which works to further his...etc.

To what degree does this include the well-being of others? Does e. g. the capitalist profiting from child labor "further his life in toto"?

Xray,

There is another way to put "practical" (seeing as you're stuck on it.)

Realistic.

Of, or from, reality.

So if you want to think of it as the 'reason/reality dichotomy', or the moral/practical one, be my guest.

I think they resolve down to the same thing.

By Rand's definition of irrationality being the insane or the impossible, the moral/practical choice correlates to the sane and the eminently possible one.

Capitalist using child labour? simple - he's no Capitalist, he is an immoral businessman.

Capitalism directly derives from rational egoism.

That old saw of the businessman valuing profit above everything - self-esteem included - just never dies; partly it is true, in the Statist climate we know (but it is not capitalism); partly, it is good old not-quite-dead-and-buried European Marxism creating a strawman out of what they don't understand - or don't have the honesty to face.

An ethical capitalist (a redundancy) might not know the first thing about philosophy and the moral/practical (so called) split. By trial and error and introspection, quietly on their own, many have arrived at the moral conclusion.

Why do I get the feeling you know all this, and are just spinning wheels?

Tony

[Brant Gaede]

No one is arguing that there are practical means to immoral ends. Are they?

--Brant

[anthony]

No one is arguing that there are practical means to immoral ends. Are they?

--Brant

No, the reverse. Xray is showing that there are immoral means to practical ends.

Thus driving a wedge between 'moral' and 'practical'.

She's right, insofar as she has disingenuously slipped in her own version of morality (the normative? the altruist?).

Then, of course, the dichotomy holds.

Tony

[Xray]

Capitalist using child labour? simple - he's no Capitalist, he is an immoral businessman.

Capitalism directly derives from rational egoism.

Since capitalism is:

"an economic system in which the means of production are privately owned and operated for profit, usually in competitive markets.", http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism

,

the businessman would still qualify as a capitalist, even if one morally disapproves of his proceedings in this case.

An ethical capitalist (a redundancy) might not know the first thing about philosophy and the moral/practical (so called) split. By trial and error and introspection, quietly on their own, many have arrived at the moral conclusion.

Since there exist unethical capitalists as well, 'ethical' is no semantic marker of capitalism.

There do exist many ethical capitalists too of course.

It is important not to let one's personal moral ideals connotatively slide into the denotation of the term 'capitalism'.

Why do I get the feeling you know all this, and are just spinning wheels?

It's all about being precise, Tony.

Edited August 4, 2011 by Xray

[Xray]

No one is arguing that there are practical means to immoral ends. Are they?

No, the reverse. Xray is showing that there are immoral means to practical ends.

Thus driving a wedge between 'moral' and 'practical'.

She's right, insofar as she has disingenuously slipped in her own version of morality (the normative? the altruist?).

Then, of course, the dichotomy holds.

I was merely pointing out the philosophical problematic of connotatively loading an operational term ("practical"). If combined it with other Objectivist principles, like "every choice is moral", one can run into quite a few contradictons.

Your "operational" sense of "practical" is entirely missing the point and has nothing to do with Rand's sense.

In Rand's sense, something is only practical when taken in the context of the whole of your life. An action that is out of place, that clashes and undermines the others, that doesn't fit, is impractical in her book, and she is quite right think that way, indeed, as I said that is one of her greatest lessons. If you missed out on that then you missed absolutely everything. Let's say you were trying to repair a leak in your water pipes -- with poisonous lead. In your sense, it's quite practical for the narrow goal of fixing the leak; in Rand's, it's not practical since you use that pipe to send water to the tap to drink. Your sense of the term is utterly worthless. The methodology that makes you define worthless terms is also utterly worthless.

In the above example, if I think it works with lead (for the discussion's sake, let's say I'm clueless about lead being poisonous), I would be in error about a fact, wrongly assuming that something is practical when it is in fact not.

Now if a person is in error about choosing X, and every choice is a moral choice, would, according to Objectivism, this choice be immoral?

If yes, how can a choice be immoral if the individual just does not know about certain facts?

Edited August 4, 2011 by Xray

[Brant Gaede]

Capitalism is the most moral system because it is free enterprise based on individual rights. Child labor is a consequence of poverty which is generally a consequence of another economic system. As it exists under capitalism it prevents death by starvation and represents a transitory phase from less capitalism to more (freedom), from poverty to less poverty. Naked little boys in English coal mines in the early 19th Century on their hands and knees dragging bags of coal is analogous today to children in India helping break up ships and shipping containers or even worse. Laws and rules preventing this labor drives children away from more beneficent labor to worse as the best places to work are most subject to inspections and less apt to bribe the inspectors. In a world where in many countries half one's income goes for food, complaining about child labor is a Western indulgence and Western companies manufacturing abroad generally don't dare do it for pr considerations. There is also widespread de facto slavery around the world, including the US. Do-gooders might better concentrate on that, but it's a harder slog and one sleeps easier at night knowing one is fighting for the children--without creating one good job for them; by making their condition even worse even unto death in many cases.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

No one is arguing that there are practical means to immoral ends. Are they?

No, the reverse. Xray is showing that there are immoral means to practical ends.

Thus driving a wedge between 'moral' and 'practical'.

She's right, insofar as she has disingenuously slipped in her own version of morality (the normative? the altruist?).

Then, of course, the dichotomy holds.

I was merely pointing out the philosophical problematic of connotatively loading an operational term ("practical"). If combined it with other Objectivist principles, like "every choice is moral", one can run into quite a few contradictons.

Your "operational" sense of "practical" is entirely missing the point and has nothing to do with Rand's sense.

In Rand's sense, something is only practical when taken in the context of the whole of your life. An action that is out of place, that clashes and undermines the others, that doesn't fit, is impractical in her book, and she is quite right think that way, indeed, as I said that is one of her greatest lessons. If you missed out on that then you missed absolutely everything. Let's say you were trying to repair a leak in your water pipes -- with poisonous lead. In your sense, it's quite practical for the narrow goal of fixing the leak; in Rand's, it's not practical since you use that pipe to send water to the tap to drink. Your sense of the term is utterly worthless. The methodology that makes you define worthless terms is also utterly worthless.

In the above example, if I think it works with lead, I would be in error about a fact, wrongly assuming that something is practical whhen it is in fact not.

Moral is the primary category. Secondary categories are immoral, amoral and moral and relate to what is actually happening, happened and will happen. All choices are moral relates only to the primary category. Do something that is right and that is moral. Wrong is a mistake or immoral. Amoral is actually bogus; it's for sociopaths. Moral is one word with two meanings here. Meaning is determined by context.

--Brant

[anthony]

Capitalist using child labour? simple - he's no Capitalist, he is an immoral businessman.

Capitalism directly derives from rational egoism.

Since capitalism is:

"an economic system in which the means of production are privately owned and operated for profit, usually in competitive markets.", http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism

,

the businessman would still qualify as a capitalist, even if one morally disapproves of his proceedings in this case.

Xray,

I'm overstating (as usual) to make my case - there is no ways a capitalist is intrinsically moral, nor will it make a moral person out of one. Poor character and amorality will be the same in or out of capitalism.

But if you are only going to go by the Wiki economic definition, you are missing half the story.

In a nutshell, when capital is free (mobile), you and I are free.

Not free from reality, but free from control.

That's the basic requirement for the Objectivist ethics to flourish, though capitalism is not a moral philosophy in itself. It allows and encourages the expression of self-interest, roughly put.

Capitalism was always attractive - long before I had 'capital' - to me as a 'system', because it is actually imo, a non-system.

Individually, socially and politically, it demands no more than that one respects others' liberties. One can rise, or stay the same, or decline, as one pleases - but the opportunity will forever be there to put in the effort and creativity and to collect the rewards; to be free in other words.

Maybe one has to have the psycho-epistemology of an anarchist to fully appreciate this!

Tony

Edited August 5, 2011 by whYNOT