dan2100

I think it is a very unique and astute perspective to bring in a "Mises" view. I acknowledge I am not familiar with it. You mention that Mises argued all human action is value-action, regardless of whether the action was consciously intentional or not. Does this assertion conflict with your statement that "conscious human action" is a redundancy? One aspect of Objectivism I've never understood is how conscious and nonconscious values interact. Are nonconscious values even acknowledged? I'm not an expert on Mises, but in my understanding of his view, human behavior can be split into action and the rest. The former is purposive and directed toward some goal -- i.e., it's the result of choice and seeks a chosen end. So a behavior that's not consciously intended is not really action. Think of the classic knee-jerk response. This is, in my understanding, not considered action by Mises or his followers. Regarding values in Objectivism, values per se need not be conscious. According to Rand, if I understand her correctly, all living things have values, but not all values are chosen. (Her definition is, if my memory's correct, that a "value is that which one acts to gain or keep." Now here I don't think she was using "act" in the Misesean sense and, given her other comments on value, that this would be applied to all behavior and would applied to non-human living things as well, including bacteria, plants, fungi, and the like.) Also, she has a view of objective values -- which, in the case of humans, must be discovered, selected, and acted upon. Of course, the kind of values implied in behavior -- such as a tree's sending out roots to obtain water -- are not exactly the same as consciously selected values, but they're still values -- they are pursued, in a manner of speaking, or something the organism in question is trying to gain or keep -- such as getting water in my tree example.

Dan: Yes, I agree. I kinda thought we we semantic ships slipping selectively by each others central points. Adam alliterally addicted No problem. In this area, do you agree that Rand made a mistake -- at least, that's she's inconsistent? (And I'm not saying this is her one and only mistake ever.)

I don't think you wrote exactly what I wrote. In particular, you ended your post with "Ayn, warts and all, works well for me." Actually, that doesn't work for me: getting rid of the warts is much better, in my view. In fact, that sentence might even be taken to mean one must accept the warts and keep them -- either accepting her all they she said in toto or rejecting it in toto. Dan: OK. I see the inconsistencies and the errors of judgment that she made. Do you see them, or are you stating that the inconsistencies and errors of judgment do not exist in Ayn Rand, writer and philosopher. Adam That's not what I meant. Let me try once more. You wrote and I reacted to "Ayn, warts and all, works well for me." My reaction was not meant to convey that I believe Rand, as "writer and philosopher," was wart-free. Rather, I meant in terms of what I'd accept -- as in accept as valid and true -- would be to revise her views to remove the warts. To put this another way: if she made mistakes -- and I believe she made quite a few -- then these are to be acknwoledged and corrected. This is no different than I'd want to do with any other writer or thinker, including myself. Maybe I misunderstood you as well -- as it appeared strange to me anyone would want to accept another person's views even when they were a mix of correct and incorrect positions. One would want, I trust, to always be selective -- separating out the correct positions and retaining those while rejecting the rest. (This is not to say the process is simple and quick.)

In my opinion Objectivism's view on Emergency Situations is weak, but judge for yourself. I feel it'd be good starting place to evaluate whether Rand's view on the "ethics of emergencies" is really consistent with the rest of her views here -- rather than just accepting it as part of Objectivism. (And, in my mind, Objectivism is completely open to revision -- as is any philosophical system. Deciding whether the outcome of any revision is still Objectivism depends on what one means by the term. And all such systems and movements face issues of identity and integrity -- i.e., what alterations are possible that remain inside the pale and which ones push one definitely outside it. I don't have an easy formulaic answer for this... Of course, regardless, I think you'd want to know what the correct position to take on this -- rather than what's the Objectivist one, especially given your comments on this being a "weak" part of the system.) Wow, there's alot in there. First of all, I think that pretty much always, conscious human action is motivated by self interest and might be altruistic/sacrificial or not. For me, it is not a self interest OR altruism binary situation. Without this, whYNOT and others run the risk of getting muddled in terminology before meaningful discussion happens. I believe I do know the correct position to take on this. I can arrive at this based largely on Rand's type of logic, but with one small but critical difference, leading to a very different outcome. However, projecting this outcome as objective and universally applicable is a leap I can't take. Anyway, I believe I can quite justifiably paint a more accurate picture of what 'qua man' is. Without getting into too much detail, evolutionary biology quite clearly tells us that altruism (close enough to Rand's version) is built right into us for the most part. We are hard wired to struggle with often competing forces of selfish and altruistic drives. In this situation, a "normal" person morally without question should indeed risk their own life to help. How much risk? Well that's an excellent question. Same thing with the starving child, yes we DO have an obligation to help. Altruism is part of what we are, it helped create who we are, it is part of "qua man". Of course I cannot provide an objective basis of why this should apply to everyone without exception. There are strategies that co-evolve that might be in conflict and their morality is as objective as mine - in other words not objective at all. But I can say at least the vast majority would be described by what I'm saying. Bob Regarding "conscious human action" (a redundancy in Misesean terms: human action is chosen/purposive behavior as opposed to the rest of behavior), I disagree. The problem here is the need to specific what's meant by self-interest. Without specifying that -- and Rand does have her particular means of specifying it -- one can't tell what any particular action is. And in her view, there is a clear difference between self-interest and self-sacrifice: though it could be that particular actions fall somewhere along an extreme, in her view the more self-interested some action is, the less self-sacrificial and vice versa. (I'd add to this that Rand allows little or no scope to actions that are neutral here: either the action is directed toward self-interest or it's directed against it or some mix of the two, but there's nothing that doesn't fall under this, I think, in her ethics.) I agree that this is Rand's view and it's not shared by everyone. And I also that those who use the terms differently might come up with not see self-interest/altruism as a dyad or dichotomy. Yet even in that case the problem then becomes are these views meaningful and consistent. Often enough what I see is the sort of vacuous definition of "self-interest" as people doing what they want -- in which case, almost anything anyone does is self-interest and the concept is of little value. One might as well as say, "His actions were actions done by him." "Altruism" also is often defined as merely doing something good for others. This does fall under charity or benevolence in Rand's terms -- and it's not a reverse Scotsman in my opinion. Why on the latter? Because there's a definite distinction to be made between doing good things for others when this doesn't involve self-sacrifice or is not counter to one's self-interest versus doing good things for others when this definitely does involve self-sacrific and is counter to one's self-interest -- using "self-interest" here in Rand's sense. Also, with regard to charity, there are definite strictures in Objectivism on this, according to a talk Peikoff once gave. True charity, in this view, is not supposed to involve self-sacrifice, is supposed to go to worthy people, and does not earn any moral street cred. On the first, this means, again, it doesn't harm oneself by doing it -- in Rand's sense of self-interest and self-sacrifice. On the second, by "worthy people," I believe he meant that tt doesn't go to people who are NOT reformable and who willfully caused their plight. In this way, it's very different from the usual picture of Christian charity. (To be certain, in practice, most Christians usually were and are stingier with their charity than their rhetoric would have us believe.) On the last, one isn't, according to Peikoff at least, a better person for giving charity. I'm not saying I agree with all this -- just relating his view because I think it might prove helpful here. But there can still be an issue here. Most people tend to use "altruism" to mean what Rand means by charity or benevolence -- and not to mean what she means by self-sacrifice. To be sure, it seems many would praise the kind of self-sacrifice she'd be against, though their moral views tend to differ with hers. For instance, in their view, making the "ultimate sacrifice" might not consistently be seen as a sacrifice if one believes that, say, individual lives are means to an end -- and that end is aside from the individual lives. I admire your caution here. I do think there's a tendency -- and I'm not free of it -- of making bold statements about what's objective and universal. That said, I don't think there no objective and universal principles, but I think one should be careful in attempting to arrive at and apply them. Regarding evolutionary biology, I posted something earlier today on this here: http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=8353 I'd be a little more cautious here about defining just what man qua man means. Also, many things appear to built right in, but might either not be or be something open to choice. I'm skeptical of claiming too many things are "hard wired" especially when the field of evolutionary psychology -- which I'd distinguish from evolutionary biology -- is relatively new and hasn't had the kind of successes some seem to believe. (In fact, from my studies, it appears to mostly just be sociobiology 2.0.)

I read struggle here to be a struggle with the environment - including weather etc., but that aside... Competition exists to the degree that resources are limited, so I completely agree that competition is a fundamental part of natural selection. I don't agree that cooperation can be completely explained within a perspective of competition since hypothetically cooperation can access and generate resources for which there is no competition. In either case, competition itself depends more fundamentally on the context of need-fulfillment. As cooperation aims to fulfill needs as well, I'm seeing cooperation in a hierarchical chain of dependencies branch off from the needs-context rather than the competition-context. We're probably splitting hairs either way! I think it's all dependent on what context you're using these terms and most of the problem for me here is crossing over from one context to another. Competition in the Darwinian/neo-Darwinian sense has a certain taint and I think that makes people react to the term a certain way. I have nothing against you talking about fulfilling needs, but then I think you're leaving aside the Darwinian/neo-Darwinian setting. (And that's fine by me -- just as long as it's clear the context has changed.) In fact, my earlier comments on this topic were warnings about using evolutionary explanations. (I still have to respond more fully to Bob on this -- as I only gave a brief response yesterday and wanted to elaborate what I meant, where I feel I've been misunderstood.)

I don't think you wrote exactly what I wrote. In particular, you ended your post with "Ayn, warts and all, works well for me." Actually, that doesn't work for me: getting rid of the warts is much better, in my view. In fact, that sentence might even be taken to mean one must accept the warts and keep them -- either accepting her all they she said in toto or rejecting it in toto.

What I wrote was: "... in mainstream evolutionary theory, competition is more fundamental than cooperation. If you're looking at the world through Darwinian or even neo-Darwinian lenses, then when you see any piece of cooperation, the immediate question is what competitive advantage does this yield. Using the same lenses to see a competitive situation, you don't need to appeal to a cooperative advantage to explain competition." I was not so much reducing "natural selection" to competition, but saying cooperation can be explained in terms of competition but the reverse is not true. By the way, the standard definition of natural selection is something like the process whereby organisms that are better adapted to their conditions survive and thrive better than those less adapted to their conditions -- the latter tend to increase their numbers while the former decrease. This process has competition baked in. If everyone does well and everything stays the same, then, according to natural selection, there'd be no evolution. (To be sure, one might argue that natural selection simply kept things as they are. Modern theories are a little more nuanced here and would argue that natural selection is when the traits are selected for environmental adaptation while neutral selection and other effects can still impact evolution. This is where things like drift plays a role.) Remember, too, the full title of Darwin's famous work: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. Note the use of "struggle" in there. Now, of course, that this is what he meant and what many others mean doesn't, again, mean that this is the way the actual process works or that it's the only process at work. I just want to be clear here about what's meant and not

She didn't do that only with gender roles, but also with her particular tastes in art and music. Exactly DF: Ayn's inconsistency on feminism was one of many inconsistencies, amongst them music and art as you noted. Her politics were, to say the least inconsistent. I never let certain inconsistencies in philosophers or scientists deflect me from trying to understand the core principles and assumptions that they posit. Ayn, warts and all, works well for me. Adam Understanding and adopting core principles, should they prove worthy, means one need not accept the warts and all. In other words, one can pick and choose -- when it comes to Rand or anyone else. Of course, she and some of her follows prefer to package deal here: making it seem like one must make an all or nothing choice, but this is simply not the case. (This doesn't mean, of course, everything is a grab bag, but there's nothing stopping one from adopting far and wide and mixing views from a variety of sources.)

Perhaps the problem is I'm am not coming at this from a Darwinian or Neo-Darwinian sense. I am very wary about theories formed from observations of animals and then applied to man with the expectation that they will work just fine there as well. How would evolution explain it if mankind wipes himself out with a massive nuclear war? In the entire history of life on earth there has never been the possibility of an organism causing himself to go extinct. As I said before, evolution by natural selection may explain how we got where we are but we need something more general to predict where we might be heading. This is simply not true. Any species can cause itself to go extinct, according to evolutionary theory, by having the wrong traits -- i.e., traits that don't suit its conditions. In fact, an evolutionary biologist might argue that the record of evolution from the species perspective just that: a record of species going extinct. Also, evolutionary theory in its broadest sense attempts to find evolutionary mechanisms that apply to life forms -- not limiting itself merely to non-human animals. Of course, there might be reasons to limit particular mechanisms to particular kinds of living things, but there's no reason to start out with and it doesn't seem defensible at this point to state that there are two types of life: human and non-human and evolution theory only applies to the latter. (I'm not sure why you bring up non-human animals here. Do you think evolutionary theory thus far has only dealt with other animals -- leaving out plants, fungi, bacteria, etc.?) Now, that said, I wouldn't rule out a priori that there might be some differences and wouldn't want to rule these out from the start. I've voiced the opinion elsewhere (and even here to some extent) that evolutionary psychology (which seems to me just the heir to sociobiology -- sociobiology for the 21st century?) is often applied sloppily -- as in someone observing some behavior in some other animal, coming up with some hypotheses explaining it, doing a tiny amount of testing, and then applying it to humans. That things happens much more often with amateurs applying the ideas far and wide -- whereas many workers in the field of, say, ethology, tend to make the conventional narrow claims and leave it to others to [over-]generalize. In other words, there are genuine valid concerns here. But just saying you don't like this is not much of an argument. (It almost sounds like people who argue for rent control or minimum wage laws because they still believe it'll give them what they want -- when, in fact, economic law reveals to us it won't work and will only make things worse.) In closing, too, it's unlikely a massive nuclear war would wipe out humans. This is not to say they might not invent other technologies that could wipe them out, but current nuclear stockpiles simply aren't large enough to do the job.

She didn't do that only with gender roles, but also with her particular tastes in art and music. Yes, of course. And she's not the only person to ever do so. In fact, in many areas, this is how many people work: merely rationalizing their particular tastes and likes. (And I make no claims to be above this, though I feel, when I do make that sort of mistake, it's an error on my part.)

Yes, Edith Efron gave a clearly favorable review in the Objectivist. I remember that I was a bit surprised reading that, not because I had read the book itself, but I'd read enough about it and about its author to think that it was not really Rand's cup of tea. I suspect that she had no idea either and that she just trusted Efron's judgment. I believe I read the review many years ago. I think Friedan might have changed her views over time. If my memory's correct, too, while the review was sympathetic, I believe there were some criticisms. I'll have to look for it to be sure.

Even with that distinction in mind, I still believe Rand's views here are problematic. She seems to be all for the first type of feminism you mention, but then why her stand against a female president (to be sure, I'm against all presidents, male, female, or otherwise) and her view on the essence of femininity as man-worship. (On the latter: Why is not the essence of masculinity woman-worship? And where do this whole thing come from? What about gays, bis, and asexual types? What do they fall under? All these seems to me like Rand attempting to universalize her particular tastes in gender roles and not like something derived from or compatible with Objectivist core principles.) These seem to conflict with your first type of feminism, no?

But that's just it, our science has a tremendous effect on our reproductive success, in particular, our survival no longer depends primarily on "physical" prowess, etc. but is increasingly dependent on "mental" ability. Did anyone here say that survival or reproductive success only depended on '"physical" prowess'? It seems to me that you were starting with a very narrow notion of these ideas... Let me be clear. In an evolutionary explanation, one is not limited to explaining survival or reproductive success via only physical prowess. In fact, to me, the only limits on an evolutionary explanation, at least in the Darwinian or neo-Darwinian sense, would be that whatever does the explaining is variable in the population and can impact survival and reproductive. This would, naturally, NOT exclude '"mental" ability.' Why would you think it would?

The same might be asked of novelists, poets, painters, sculptors, dancers, composers, musicians, etc., no? God bless the obvious. We don't have to argue. --Brant poke, poke True, but was this an attempt on your part to call into question the entire project of esthetics? Or do just mean people don't need to know, think about, or take sides in esthetics theory to create art? If the latter, this is little different than most people not knowing, thinking about, or taking sides in linguistics theories being able to use language and even use it well. No to the former and yes to the latter. However, much of what I've read qua esthetics I don't respect, much. --Brant Understood. I've read some esthetics I've respected, some I haven't, but I don't think I've read any esthetician who argues artists must know esthetics to produce art. (Granted, there's no reason an artist can't enter the field of esthetics and a esthetician can enter the field of art. E.g., some novelists have presented their theory of the novel -- people like Henry James, E. M. Forster, Milam Kundera, and, of course, Ayn Rand. It typically appears when they do this, they're nearly invariably presenting an esthetics that justifies or validates their art work.)

Adam, I shared her distaste with the feminist, men-hating, movement of the time... but it has always seemed to me that she supported the traditional superiority of male over female. This is borne out by her off-the-cuff remarks I've read (the woman Presidency issue, and others), and by her man- as- hero, and woman-as-hero-worshipper roles in her novels. (I am truly hoping we can avoid introducing that 'rape' scene yet again, here.!) Tony Didn't one of Rand's publications favorable review The Feminine Mystique? I think Rand's and Objectivism's stance on feminism is a bit more complicated than conventional roles. I do admit, some of Rand's opinions here strike me as silly and I don't think those are compatible with Objectivism's core principles. Have you read Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand?

Yes, I am eliminating all animals that do not have science. I think it's a matter of degree with regard to changing environments. All organisms alter their environments in the trivial fashion of acting in them, taking and pushing out energy and mass, and so forth. But this isn't really relevant to the discussion of evolutionary explanations. These would apply to all organisms provided they can die and can reproduce -- and that they have differential survival and reproductive success. It doesn't matter whether they have technology, science, and the like. The explanations would still apply. I'll try to address your earlier post later today.

The same might be asked of novelists, poets, painters, sculptors, dancers, composers, musicians, etc., no? God bless the obvious. We don't have to argue. --Brant poke, poke True, but was this an attempt on your part to call into question the entire project of esthetics? Or do just mean people don't need to know, think about, or take sides in esthetics theory to create art? If the latter, this is little different than most people not knowing, thinking about, or taking sides in linguistics theories being able to use language and even use it well.

Evolutionary arguments have been invoked to defend or attack various positions here and elsewhere. The typical form of these arguments has been to link some phenomenon with natural selection via a "just so" or story scenario, expressing a qualitative and intuitive model of causation. Many biologists, such as Brian Goodwin, have criticized this method for being arbitrary. (See Goodwin's "Evolution and the Generative Order" in Theoretical Biology: Epigenetic and Evolutionary Order from Complex Systems, edited by Goodwin.) An example of this might be why did wolves come to be pack animals. The "just so" story might go along the lines of this offers a competitive advantage, so wolves must have evolved along this path and that explains it. In in this example, the story is tenuous and there's no other evidence offered. Note that no attempt is made to find the exact evolutionary path the wolf ancestors took to arrive at their current arrangement. Instead, a story is offered as an explanation and the explanation ends with that. One might argue that using a flawed method of explanation is better than using none at all. Science can work with faulty explanations. Instances of such abound in the history of science. Bohr's model of the atom, e.g., is now known to be wrong, but it did focus attention on the important traits of atoms at that time, and hacked a path over which later thinkers could travel toward better theories. It can also be argued that any explanation we have at any point will always be flawed. Human knowledge will never be perfect or complete. I agree with this and that a "just so" explanation can be a starting point for further inquiry. Still, in evolutionary biology there are better means of evaluation than making up a good scenario of how things came to be. They are not perfect, though they are almost all better than "just so" explanations in that they offer a testing methodology. Some of these methods have the benefit, so important in science, of being independent of particular causal theories of evolution – such as the neo-Darwinian "Synthetic" Theory, the entropic "Unified Theory" (see Brooks' and Wiley's Evolution as Entropy), and the Neutral Theory (see Motoo Kimura's The Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution). These methods include paleontology, population biology, phenetics, and cladisitics. Here I will concentrate on cladistics, though I'm doing so to illustrate the point and not because cladistics is the best method of all. (I'm also using it because it's the method I'm most familiar with both in terms of application and theory.) Cladistics uses the traits of biology groups, such as populations, species, and genera to reconstruct the lineage of the groups. The method aims at a transparent recovery of the history of "cladogenic" events – that is of splits in ancestral groups. By "transparent" is meant a method that does not rely on intuitive notions and should allow others to quickly and repeatedly get the same results without bias. This is akin to addition or multiplication. If someone adds one number to another to generate a third, anyone should be able to repeat the process and clearly see how the third number is generated. (See Wiley et al. The Complete Cladist: A Primer of Phylogenetic Procedures.) To give an example of this, Barbara A. Block et al. test the hypothesis that endothermy evolved only once in fishes in "Evolution of Endothermy in Fish: Mapping Physiological Traits on a Molecular Phylogeny" (Science (260) 1993 April 9). Endothermy is, in lay terms, warm-bloodedness. Put simply, the hypothesis is that warm-bloodedness came about once and was passed along to all other warm-blooded fishes. This would mean that all warm-blooded fishes should be more related to each other than they are to non-warm-blooded fishes – in the same way that I'm more related to my brother than I am to his wife. Another way of saying this is that all warm-blooded fishes can be traced back to a common ancestor -- that one particular fish species developed warm-bloodedness and passed it along to all its descendants and all living warm-blooded species are descended from this line. Block et al. examine the distribution and changes in DNA to determine that endothermy in fact has evolved independently three times in fishes. This is the equivalent of saying that not all warm-blooded fishes are more related to each other than they are to non-warm-blooded fishes. Thus, they tested the above hypothesis and it failed. A "just so" explanation most likely would not have revealed this. In fact, it's hard to see how one might have tested any "just so" explanation. Chances are, the creator of the explanation would merely stated and those who accepted it would see the trait of warm-bloodedness as explained and move on to the next topic. I don't have enough space here to cover the whole method, but cladistic methods work by comparing traits (which can be anything from a complex behavior to DNA sequences) between groups (e.g., species) and seeing in terms of these which groups are more closely related. This allows one to recapture the history of evolution as the sequence of branchings between traits. For instance, two species of fish which are closely related in many their of traits might differ in endothermy, giving evidence that endothermy evolved separately. To illustrate: imagine three sister species (species sharing a common ancestor) which form a clade (meaning there are only these species and no other that share this common ancestor): A, B, and C. Cladistically, this set can give rise to four hyptheses. The first is that they all evolved directly from their common ancestor, meaning there were no intermediary splits in their line. The evidence for this would be that none of them shared any other traits besides the ones all of them shared. Let's call their ancestor M (for mother species). M has among other traits five traits that we can list as (0,0,0,0,0) – each 0 representing a binary trait: you have it or you don't have it. These traits can be anything, from having a certain stripe on the back to warm-bloodedness. Let's say A has traits (1,0,0,0,0), B (0,1,0,0,0), and C (0,0,1,0,0). They all share the last two traits (the last two 0s), but differ completely in the others. Graphically this could be modeled by on point M with three lines leading to points A, B, and C. Imagine now instead that while A, B, and C share a common ancestor, A and B share another common ancestor which C does not share. In other words, between M and A-B, there lines another species which is the mother of the A-B sister pair. We'll call this M'. Evidence for this would be something like M and C have the same traits as above, but A has traits (1,0,0,0,0) and B has traits (1,1,0,0,0). Note A and B share that first 1 with each other, but not with C; they also differ by the third 0 with C and share 0s four and five with C. Graphically, this could be pictured as a point M with one line leading to C and another leading to M' AND two lines leading from M' to A and B. Thus M evolved into M' and C, and M' then evolved into A and B. The two remaining possibilities here, which I won't cover in such detail, are that B and C are more closely related or that A and C are more closely related. Aside from the order in which the branches happened, why would this be important? One might, say, have an evolutionary hypothesis like long-billed hummingbirds in South America evolved from shorter billed ones in response to environmental pressure. I bring up this example because not only has someone done the analysis but it seems obviously to be true. But, in actual cladistic analysis, it was found this was not the case. The short-billed ones actually came later, evolving from their longer billed cousins. If we had stuck with "just so" stories of evolution, I doubt we'd have uncovered this one. (The article in which this was covered was in an issue of BioScience several years ago.) Another example is that of skull size in certain fishes in Lake Victoria. Robert Dorit covers this in his "The correlates of High Diversity in Lake Victoria Haplochromine Cichlids: A Neontological Perspective" (in Causes of Evolution: A Paleontological Perspective, edited by Robert Ross and Warren Allmon). Dorit shows particularly how one might assume skull size and shape varied gradually from one species to another in this closely related fish group. However, when molecular cladistics methods (specifically, using mtDNA to map relationships), one finds the two species with extreme skull sizes (the largest and the smallest) actually are more closely related than any of the intermediary ones. This again clearly illustrates how "just so" explanations can go wrong. (It also shows that morphological data and phenetic analyses can lead one astray.) The lesson of these examples is that "just so" stories can at best be starting points to explaining the evolution of a particular phenomenon. The can be completely misleading, however, is one confuses them with scientifically valid explanations. At best, they're a starting point and must be tested using methods like cladistics -- else all the would be explanation ends up being is a sort of mythical account that might blind one to the truth.

There's a difference between "friendly" competition and "life and death" competition - the former keeps us honest, the latter causes bitterness, wars, etc. Are wars evolutionally necessary to weed out unfit humans? Has does culture fit in to this? What happens when man interferes with evolution by his actions? The rules aren't the same for intelligent beings as they are for the rest of lifeforms. In my view, this misunderstands the point. Let me state the point again: in mainstream evolutionary theory, competition is more fundamental than cooperation. If you're looking at the world through Darwinian or even neo-Darwinian lenses, then when you see any piece of cooperation, the immediate question is what competitive advantage does this yield. Using the same lenses to see a competitive situation, you don't need to appeal to a cooperative advantage to explain competition. (This is a "just so" story: something I saw recently on a National Geographic documentary set in Denali National Park. In it, a pack of wolves -- obviously, cooperating -- took food from a bear. I don't know the relative intelligences of the bear and of the wolves, but it looked to me like, working together, the wolves were able to outwit the bear in a way that probably a lone wolf would never have done. In this particular case, it appears that if we ask, "Why did the wolves cooperate?" the answer is, in neo-Darwinian terms, going to be along the lines because this gave them a competitive advantage. (I'm not saying I completely agree with this logic. Also, one must be careful with such "just so" stories in evolutionary biology. I hope to post something later today on testing evolutionary hypotheses in the Epistemology section of this site.)) How would this apply to intelligent beings? Well, putting on the neo-Darwinian lenses, one might explain that intelligence gives one a competitive advantage and that cooperative between intelligent beings does this more so. We can, of course, gush on and on about differences between levels of competition and how humans might above this, but this is all beside the point. Also, even in neo-Darwinian terms, what you call friendly competition might still lead to survival and reproductive advantage. For instance, a person who plays the friendly social games better might, in the end, leave more descendants. She or he need not brutally beat the competition to death in a bloody death-match. It can merely be that cooperating with others under competitive conditions might lead to survival and reproductive advantages. Now, this type of explanation, whether true or valid in any sense, is beside whether one is offended by it. Let's say it's both valid and true. This doesn't mean one has to embrace it or one has to love the fact. But one would have to acknowledge it, correct? It seems to me that you're drawing more from this than you should.

The same might be asked of novelists, poets, painters, sculptors, dancers, composers, musicians, etc., no?

Forgive the quick response due to lack of time, but two points. One, this just sounds platitudinous. No offense, but it does. Two, if you're going to evoke bio-evolution, then the standard view in evolutionary theory is competition is all there is. When you see cooperation, dig deeper and you find it's because of competition. In other words, in evolutionary terms, competition explains or is more fundamental than cooperation. One more comment: Rand's view is altruism actually got us into this mess -- whatever that mess is -- and more of the same -- including saddling people with feelings of guilt or some sense of duty -- will not result in a step forward but either in a step back or the status quo.

Wow, there's alot in there. First of all, I think that pretty much always, conscious human action is motivated by self interest and might be altruistic/sacrificial or not. For me, it is not a self interest OR altruism binary situation. Without this, whYNOT and others run the risk of getting muddled in terminology before meaningful discussion happens. I believe I do know the correct position to take on this. I can arrive at this based largely on Rand's type of logic, but with one small but critical difference, leading to a very different outcome. However, projecting this outcome as objective and universally applicable is a leap I can't take. Anyway, I believe I can quite justifiably paint a more accurate picture of what 'qua man' is. Without getting into too much detail, evolutionary biology quite clearly tells us that altruism (close enough to Rand's version) is built right into us for the most part. We are hard wired to struggle with often competing forces of selfish and altruistic drives. In this situation, a "normal" person morally without question should indeed risk their own life to help. How much risk? Well that's an excellent question. Same thing with the starving child, yes we DO have an obligation to help. Altruism is part of what we are, it helped create who we are, it is part of "qua man". Of course I cannot provide an objective basis of why this should apply to everyone without exception. There are strategies that co-evolve that might be in conflict and their morality is as objective as mine - in other words not objective at all. But I can say at least the vast majority would be described by what I'm saying. Bob No time at the moment to respond to all your points. Just wanted to comment on two. One is the evolutionary biology approach. I think the jury still out and this field changes so much, especially in terms of looking into human behavior, in recent years, that I'd be careful in drawing too many conclusions of what's wired in or where certain behaviors or beliefs come from. Evolutionary psychology, in particular, is, in my opinion, rife with many "just so" explanations that seem more like the researcher rationalizing a case than actually explaining anything. (I want to post something on testing evolutionary hypotheses later, though it won't apply to this particular case.) Two is that the helping the starving child case I recall Rand making was that of helping a starving child who's a stranger over helping one's own child -- not one of helping a starving child versus doing nothing. (And, in a way, people already do this now without being Objectivists or knowing anything about Rand: think of all those starving children now who go unfed while parents feed their own children. This doesn't mean they're following a conscious moral code here, but if you're going to argue the evolution of your species wired people to help children, then there are an awful lot of cases where they don't. (Of course, to be fair, you make the case that there's a conflict wired in -- and that might fit this case of helping one's children versus helping other children, though this would need to be tested and not merely proclaimed, no?))

You think so? Two counts? I would say that Objectivism would say that he has no moral obligation to intervene. But I disagree. Bob I think you're right that there's no moral obligation to intervene -- though this would depend on the particulars of the relationship. I think a classmate relationship wouldn't be as strong in terms of potential for moral obligation as a friendship. (And I'd judge someone who did absolutely nothing but claimed to be a close friend as a bad character and treat him or her accordingly. I'm not sure I'd do the same for a classmate, though I certainly wouldn't expect, say, a total stranger to feel any obligation in this case.) One must also be careful here, too, to distinguish between a moral obligation -- such as one should aid one's friends even when it might cause one discomfort or risk -- and a legal obligation when one must do something or one is violating someone's right -- such as I've signed a contract to protect the girl and then say, when the the other kid is running after her with seeming murderous intent, "Whoa! This was a stupid idea and I'd rather watch to see how she gets out of this fix. Hey, anyone getting this to put on YouTube later?" and merely look on.

Rand never said that one may legitimately use defensive violence only when one is personally attacked. Nor did Rand ever say that coming to the aid of an innocent victim, or potential victim, is necessarily immoral. Ghs Agree on your first sentence, but I think Rand did bring up the case of aiding strangers and, unless I'm mistaken, she did say it was immoral to sacrifice higher values in this case. I think the case she used was helping one's own child over helping a stranger's -- if both were starving. (I forget the exact reference here.) That doesn't exactly map onto this case -- unless one thinks of it as would you prefer to risk your child to save another child from the meat cleaver wielding classmate.

On your first point, there's nothing immoral in Objectivism on attacking an aggressor. Rand was against initiating force, but once someome initiates force, there's nothing to limit retaliation to the victim of said initiation. (And here I think she was consistent with Objectivism as I see it.) Were this not so, this would end up with a very odd outlook: only the victim could retaliate and everyone else would be morally tied up in not doing anything against an aggressor. Imagine the case of the little old lady being mugged being some violent but rather lanky thug and the well armed body builder saying, "I cannot stop the thug. He hasn't aggressed against me. Hey, let's see how granny gets out of this one." On your second point, there is something to debate. It matters here what the risks are, though in most of these cooked up situations the problem is likely to rest on habits inculcated rather than someone soberly considering the options.