mpp

I've always found it a bit odd that Rand described her heroes as happy people yet also described them as smiling very little/ rarely. One think particularly of Howard Roark. I've stumbled upon this article, and I'm thinking now whether this cultural aspect was responsible for the unsmiling heories: http://russia-insider.com/en/why-dont-russians-smile/ri6935 Thoughts?

Sure -- but in all this you use a constant definition of dignity. Even if you say it can differ subjectively how people think they reach that. But what is your definition of dignity you had in mind when writing this?

J. Welcome to OL, late to the table. Whenever, that I have run into some scarcity in Ayn's known writings and do not come up with something specific that she wrote, I go back to Aristotle. A... It's a start... That's a nice quote. Thank you. Still looking for a rational definition of dignity. I want to find out whether dignity is (morally) absolute, whether it can be taken or must be given away, if one abdicates his own dignity, must he also do so with everyone else's? What do we mean if we say "I have dignity, my dignity is not for sale" or speak of "dignified behaviour"? How is it different from self-respect or pride...

Any new insights or comments about this? Much appreciated

what's "directly experience" and what's "evidence" here? the experience must be either concrete or abstract, otherwise you have sensualism. so you mean, that because you didn't not see any evidence for god you don't know there is a god. okay, true, but do you know there is no god? you don't know it is, but do you know it is not? these are different things. No, the direct "experience" is not abstract, the process is sensory and perceptual before it's conceptual. An extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence, as someone said. Until then, and don't hold your breath, the 'god concept' is hearsay. what i mean is, a lot of your knowledge you didn't experience directly but you still know it, because it's an abstraction from a direct perception. "hearsay" is a hard to classify epistemologically. the good idea is true, false, unlikely, likely, etc. i'm wondering if such a statement as i know god doesn't exist could be valid, even with a non-contradictory definition of "god". i'm thinking it might be if you look at "know" contextually; in the context of the evidence available to me, there is nothing to support this idea. i therefore reject it and in my context, i know there is no god. but this gets more difficult if you try to apply this to other domains: in the observable context, i see no evidence, says the judge, to support your guilt, i therefor know your are not guilty. no judge would say that, it sounds mad. ..? does from "it is possible that x" follow that you can never know or be certain that not-x?

If some one gives a non-contradictory definition of X, then in the absence of evidence for X, the best we can say is that X is possible. Example: The neutrino was postulated to save the law of conservation of momentum and conservation of energy. It took 30 years to -find- the neutrino, i.e. produce empirical evidence that it exists. Please see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino yes, but you'd have some pieces of evidence giving rise to the theory of neutrinos, it's therefore not at all asserted without basis, as the God idea or the unicorn idea or the your wife is an impostor claim would be. if you only have an iota of evidence, you can say it's possible. but i'm saying: if you have NO evidence to assume it, your claim that it is possible is completely arbitrary. the only thing speaking for the claim is that it's not contradictory -- and that's a prerequisite!

you just contradicted yourself. "not absolutely" and "conclude 100%". what's "directly experience" and what's "evidence" here? the experience must be either concrete or abstract, otherwise you have sensualism. so you mean, that because you didn't not see any evidence for god you don't know there is a god. okay, true, but do you know there is no god? you don't know it is, but do you know it is not? these are different things. At one time it was scientific and logical to assume there were no sub-atomic particles. It turns out that later evidence shows there are such particles. At one time it was scientific and logical to assume that space was completely filled with a transparent elastic substance aether, whose vibrations carried the light waves discovered by William Thompson and James Clerk Maxwell. Later on experiments by Michelson and Morley lead to the conclusion no such substance exists. What we think exists and does not exists depends very heavily on the evidence at hand, and that can change over time. Ba'al Chatzaf at that one time, did scientists KNOW there are no sub-atomic particles? if there was no evidence to suggest their existence, you could say in their context they knew it. with growing context and thus evidence, they didn't know it anymore and had to allow the possibility and therefore were able to discover them. yes the evidence can change at hand, but what does this say about certainty? are you saying because of this possibility of new evidence, we can never be certain of something? so there could one day be evidence of god, so you cannot know there is no god. or you say in my given context, with the evidence available, i can conclude there is no god and therefore i know there is no god. but it is a different understanding of the word "know". yes this encapsulates what I'm questioning. but what about other things in your life that could be theoretically possible, like the examples I've named: your wife could be a twin, there could be a in the long-term harmful gas in the air, you're being watched by aliens, etc. this position attacks the concept of certainty, and you couldn't be certain of almost anything. this is why I believe objectivism defines certainty contextual: if in your given context you have no evidence for it, the assertion is invalid. but does an invalid assertion mean you know it isn't so? that doesn't follow...

okay, but what if someone offered you a noncontradictory definition of god? would you know "well enough" then that it doesn't exists? do you know horses with a horn on the forehead do not exist?

No. You can believe there is no God, just as you can believe God exists. I regard both as being religions. One is religion in the classical sense, while the other is secular leftist political religion. Politics is the foundation of secularism because government is god. Secular leftism is the fastest growing most powerful religion in the world. This is evidenced by the malignant growth of government all over the world... which is caused by a massive failure of people to properly live their own lives by decent values. You can know God... but that is only through a real life personal experience of the reality of the Utterly Objective, which is not transferrable to others. In that experience each person is totally free to accept it or to deny it... ...for there is nothing more sacred than the power to choose. Greg this is nonsense. the negative of something cannot be the same as the something. believing something to be is very different from believing something not to be. the onus of proof is on the positive, not the negative, assertion. you cannot equivocate government for god either. the only pararells you can draw would be of "psychoepistemological" nature, such as, that statists and theists operate from the same flawed thinking, etc. well yes you can know god if you saw him in a concrete form or reached him with a rational abstraction from some other evidence in reality. but neither of this has happened.

This is so. Ae you able to state the reason in a few sentences as to why contradictions cannot exist? I'm struggling to put the thoughts into wording. Is there any "proof" that contradictions don't exists even or is the question in itself invalid? As in, if contradictions did exists, you didn't have such a thing as proof. All I can think of is that the statement is self-negating. But you offer any proof beyond that. Curious to hear your justification of this. Let me see if I understand you correctly. Let's say someone says: God is love. This notion contradicts our knowledge of what love is; namely a feeling caused by a specific set of chemicals which are released upon a conscious or automatic value judgement...or something like this. Now for God to be love you'd have to show that love isn't some feeling caused by chemicals and your mind, only then would you have grounds to assert the hypothesis that God is love. Example: God is a being more intelligent than us. Now we don't know that if there are beings more intelligent then us and we don't know if they would be God etc. So we couldn't say they exist or don't exist. We wouldn't know they don't exists. But here is where my question applies. What does the verdict "up in the air" mean? It means you make no judgment either way, but isn't this agnostic? So any definition of God that isn't contradictory or contradictory to an established fact would require us to be agnostics? I find this hard to agree with. Since this position would invite scepticism: anything you cannot disprove, so any arbitrary yet noncontradictory assertion could be possible. how do you know your wife is really your wife and not a well-trainer twin? how do you know you're not currently living in a truman-show like reality recreation? how do you know there aren't any poisonous odourless gases in the air right now and you need to buy this air filter? all these assertions are baseless and to disprove would require the impossible proof of the negative. but it would seem insane to grant these assertions, as you'd walk a tightrope of what if and couldn't it be, you'd have no certainty about these things. that's why i believe the objectivist answer is, if it's asserted without basis, you can reject it without basis. so the verdict wouldn't be "up in the air", but it woldn't be "wrong" either it would simply not be a valid question. a question about which you can not make a statement. but can you know it then? do you know your wife isn't a twin? it's metaphysically possible she is? i shouldn't think she is because you have no reason to assume it. but can you say you know she is your wife then? if yes, what's the definition of knowledge you use?

There seems to be a distinction between what is called hard and soft atheism. Hard atheism, as I understand it, is the claim that there is no God, soft atheism is the assumption that there isn't one. A common objection to hard atheism would be: in order to know that there is no God, you'd have to know everything that is in the universe. How can you know that there isn't such a thing as God anywhere in this huge universe? How do you know it isn't possible? I believe Objectivism answers such an attack on hard atheism in several ways: 1. by definition God is contradictory so you can know just as certainly that there isn't a God as that there aren't any round squares. This begs the question, how do you know that there are no round squares? how can you make a claim on knowledge past your context? I believe the Objectivist answer to this would be: a) the law of identiy b) knowledge is contextual. b) is to mean that in order to be certain of something, you must not have any reason to assume otherwise within your observable context. 2. onus of proof is on the one making the affirming statement. there is no God until you have reason to suspect the possibility of their being one. since not an iota of evidence of God has been given, we remain with the negative: there is no God. "innocent until proven guilty". this ties into 1b) within your given context, you cannot assume a god. but would any judge say: i know you are innocent? it would be strange to say that since there is a possibility that he is in fact guilty. now to the question: can you know that there is no god? you might answer yes if the definition of god is contradictory on the grounds that no contradictions can exists. what, however, if the definiton of god is not in itself contradictory? such as: can you know there are no unicorns (those without superpowers)? according to point 2. you'd have to say yes because there is no evidence of them. but is it really proper to use the word "know" here? i mean it could be very possible that on some distant planet a thing that we'd call unicorn could exist? it would seem proper to state: there are no unicorns, since you have no reason to say that there are. but does such a statement entail certainty and knowledge; same for a statement about the existence of a deity? thanks for taking part in the discussion.

Ah my thread has been hijacked! I do not appreciate this. FF, start your own thread. Is there any one who cares to reply to my last post here? That I would appreciate.

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.

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.

Thanks for the reply. Although this is not the kind of reply I'm looking for. I need moral reasoning, not fear mongering. Besides, I obscured the case enough that it wouldn't be traceable. But I don't care about this, since I don't plan on doing it. If I did, I wouldn't have posted about it, indeed. To round it out even more, I have people who would buy from me and more so I have the ability to convince people of to buy. I know I shouldn't do it and I don't plan to but I need to be fully rational about this because I do not want to be tempted. For instance, I would never steal in a store or commit insurance fraud, because I know the full implications of my actions. Therefore I'm not even tempted. Neither have I ever been tempted to keep the countless iPhones that I've found, because I know what keeping them would do to my mind and I know objectively why it's wrong. With this, however, maybe because it's so easy and -- I admit quite exciting in a Thriller/adventure kind of way -- I'm not 100% turned off to it. My emotions haven't caught up, my mind isn't totally objective.

I have the opportunity to get to a lot of money. I purposely did not write "earn" or "make". I know on some level of consciousness that I shouldn't do it and I am almost sure that I won't do it. But I'm having qualms because it is such an easy opportunity and because of that my mind isn't fully convinced that I shouldn't do it. I'm not totally objective. Please help me make clear the full implications of this case, what doing it would do to my consciousness, my mind, my integrity, my self-esteem. I have to learn that I'm not passing anything up, that there is nothing to regret by not doing this. That it's in my rational self-interest to say no. Here is the deal: Someone I know, Peter, knows someone, Mark, who works at a place that is responsible for printing some kind of ticket. Mark therefore has access to the blank papers on which the ticket is printed. Mark is printing his own tickets and selling them privately (illegally behind the company's back). Since it is not some kind of event, the company doesn't notice if additional tickets have been sold. Neither do they control the amount of blank paper. The value of the ticket is around 500-600 USD. He is selling them for 50 to dealers. These dealers are then selling it for 100 to people they know with the info that they should sell it for 150 to people they know and so on..I think it's called a pyramid scheme. I have the opportunity to get the tickets for 50 USD because they guy I know, Peter, who gets them from Mark, gives them to me at no extra cost. I could therefore sell the tickets for 100 USD to people I know and have them sell more for me with ever increasing profits until the price has been saturated at around 400 USD. I could very easily make several thousand USD, which is a lot of money for me. I'm a student. My risk is small as well since I'm not in direct contact with the source dealer. And the nature of the ticket sale is such that it is untraceable. If it is, ... Why is it not in my self-interest to do it? What are the implications of it? Why is it evil? What would it do to my mind? It's also very easy to make rationalisations about it: "oh the customers wouldn't buy the tickets for 600 anyway", "ah the company won't even notice if a couple hundred tickets have been sold extra (they sell millions)", "the company is subsidized by the government so I'm just getting my tax money back", etc. I have arguments to why I think it's a bad idea but I'm not 100% convinced I shouldn't do it. What do you think of it? Since you're not able to profit from this, I'm counting that you will be more objective than me. Please share.

No I'm still here. Been thinking about it. I think the topic hasn't been dealt with at all. I'm not sure yet, what dignity is suppose to be. Yet it is always used by everyone with such confidence that its meaning is clear--including Rand. (examples in Atlas Shrugged are many). As for laws to protect dignity. It would be hard to prove these laws objectively. For instance, it shouldn't be forbidden to hire a midget for a funny yet degrading entertainment event (example dwarf throwing in wolf of wall street). If the little person wants to do it, he should be allowed to do it--even if it's immoral. The topic gets more complicated, however, if you think about it in the function of the state. If there are no laws to protect dignity, in the free society, a government could broadcast its prisons for a TV show, and show the inmates in the bathroom, showering, etc....the inmates would have no lawful protection, of what we would now say is a violation of their dignity. Further, you wouldn't have a standard by which to decide how you are going to treat inmates. What is dignified/undignified management? What if you have them walk around naked to prevent the hiding of weapons? Does a person have a right to decency? On what grounds if not some kind of dignity? The case can be made that there must be some derivative laws from the "law to one's rights" that include dignified contact. Just as you would have privacy laws, that are derivates of your property rights. Yet still, what is "dignity"? How does it differ from self-respect. And is dignity a sufficient condition for self-respect, or is self-respect a sufficient one for dignity? Or is it a necessary condition....

I don't think it's that simple. That you don't find it in objectivism must not necessarily mean that it's not important. In many european countries there are laws against violations of dignity; you are not allowed to treat people in a way which would hurt their dignity. It seems to be an important topic. Even more so in an egoist code of ethics. If you don't know what exactly is the nature of dignity, how are you going to live a dignified life? Which presumably dignity is a necessary (not sufficient) part of. In your post you pretty much equate dignity with respect. I think that is making the matter too simple. Disrespect towards people can be tolerated, violations of dignity can be punished by law. What makes the difference? It seems like dignity includes rights. Which ones? Incidentially, what's the difference between dignity - self-respect - respect? Must dignity be learned? Earned? Is it objective, i.e. can you tell someone: you shouldn't do this, it's hurting your dignity (e.g. throwing of dwarfs)?

Thanks everyone for your interest in my post. @Michalel -- thanks I've searched but I've been trying to find an explicit treatise on the nature and role of virtue by Ayn Rand. But I now don't think it exists. I've found writings in which Rand used the word "dignity" but never - to my knowledge - did she define it. I'm curious about dignity in terms of value hierarchy and in its relation to self-respect: Can it ever be moral to surrender one's dignity? If to save one's life? Can dignity ever be taken from you, or must one always resign it? What if the choice is resigning it or death, wouldn't it then be taken from you? Is dignity a consequence of self-respect, a corollary, or a cause? What would be a formal definition (genus+differentia) of dignity? What then marks instances in which dignity was violated? What are violations of dignity--active and passive?

Hello What is the nature of dignity in Objectivism? Has Ayn Rand written explicitly about it? Thank you.

Thanks again to everyone who's contributed. I've followed every lead and I've found Aristotle wrote explicitly about the rules (topoi) of definition in Topics, VI. Although vague and short on the rule of equivalence and fundamentals, the others are addressed there.

Thanks everyone for your replies! I have Copi's book "Introduction to Logic" which was referenced in the wiki article in front of me. Unfortunately, it doesn't contain the sources of the rules. Metaphysics is a good link, although I think it's primarily concerned with substances and essences and not so much, if at all, with the other more technical rules. I've read the other links too: no mention of the rules. Merlin, do you have the book? Can you tell me if Kelley cites any particular passages for definitional guidelines?

Please excuse, this is not an objectivist topic. I didn't know where else to post. I've listened to Branden and Peikoff speak about definitions (Efficient thinking and Intro to logic course). Unfortunately neither quoted their sources. I'm looking for Aristotle's work on the rules for making valid definitions (such as: definitions must express fundamentality, no circularity, rule of negatives, equivalence, etc). Unfortunately I cannot find it. Can anybody here help me out and point me to the sources? Thanks a lot.

Thank you all for contributing! Are any of you familiar with European universities? (It's a money issue.) @Reidy: Is it a correct assumption that you benefited from studying philosophy? I'm interested in the subject to improve my reasoning, problem-solving, and writing skills and because I'm hungry for knowledge. I once heard Peikoff say: Across 14 years, as a student of philosophy, he has found it, with extraordinarily rare exceptions, a disastrous blow to the mind's ability to think or stay in touch with reality. I don't have an explanation of the reasons behind this statement, however. @MSK: Thanks. I've sent RB a private message. I found this forum thanks to his post The Rewrite Squad. Let's hope he contributes.

Hello I've been reading on here for a while and appreciated many interesting discussions. Now I want to start one: I'm planing to study philosophy possibly alongside psychology. I'm from a German speaking country but would like to study in English. I know there are many academics on this board and I would like to get their opinion on which universities they would recommend for philosophy primarily and psychology secondarily. It mustn't be one with an ardent objectivist holding the chair, but maybe one that's open to consider, teach and endorse other views than the Kant-influenced. Mainly, it should be one that looks for honesty and allows individual thinking, one that's objective. I don't want to be treated like a sheep nestled in heard-mentality. I am looking for a place where opposing thoughts are welcomed, not stigmatized. Thank you for any input!