Logical Structure of Objectivism

[Daniel Barnes]

Three times is a charm.

This isn't a cryptography forum.

[Selene]

Three times is a charm.

This isn't a cryptography forum.

Truth is revealed to those who can see, you seem to have a love affair with your own pronouncements.

Adam

[Brendan Hutching]

Choose life, death, ice-cream, it makes no difference.

So: “Death is fine if you subjectively choose it.”

Speak for yourself.

You’re dodging the issue, Merlin. If the choice of moral standard is a pre-moral choice, that choice cannot be subject to moral judgement. And if morality only kicks into play once the choice has been made, all standards are legitimate on their own terms.

This ineluctable implication of the Objectivist ethical argument totally undermines, among other things, virtually the entire Galt speech, much of which is devoted to telling the audience what rotters they are for adopting another standard.

In other words, by the implications of their own philosophy, Objectivists can only legitimately criticise other Objectivists for failing to live up to their own standard; or, for that matter, “altruists” for failing to live up to altruism.

Mind you, now that I think about it, that’s plenty to be going on with, given the history of Objectivist squabbles.

[rhartford]

You’re dodging the issue, Merlin. If the choice of moral standard is a pre-moral choice, that choice cannot be subject to moral judgement. And if morality only kicks into play once the choice has been made, all standards are legitimate on their own terms.

I share your concern that the Objectivist ethics begins with "the single choice, to live" as its moral foundation and moral standard.

That is why I used cognitive standards to prove the foundational principle of ethics as "acceptance and use of the principle of holding one's own life as the motive and goal of one's action." This puts the foundational moral standard of the Objectivist ethics on a sound cognitive foundation.

Please see:

Hartford, Robert. 2007. Objectivity and the Proof of Egoism. The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 8, no. 2 (Spring): 291–303.

[Brendan Hutching]

You’re dodging the issue, Merlin. If the choice of moral standard is a pre-moral choice, that choice cannot be subject to moral judgement. And if morality only kicks into play once the choice has been made, all standards are legitimate on their own terms.

I share your concern that the Objectivist ethics begins with "the single choice, to live" as its moral foundation and moral standard.

That is why I used cognitive standards to prove the foundational principle of ethics as "acceptance and use of the principle of holding one's own life as the motive and goal of one's action." This puts the foundational moral standard of the Objectivist ethics on a sound cognitive foundation.

Please see:

Hartford, Robert. 2007. Objectivity and the Proof of Egoism. The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 8, no. 2 (Spring): 291–303.

Well, my comments were addressed to the difficulties of the pre-moral choice, not the moral choice. I have no problem with grounding a moral standard in a cognitive foundation, but that’s not the same thing as making a choice for or against that moral standard.

The choice to adopt a standard presupposes a more fundamental decision, such as: “I want to be a moral person.” Is this a decision based solely on cognition, or are moral factors also involved?

As I said previously, the difficulty with the cognitive, pre-moral choice is that it undercuts the likes of the message of Galt’s speech. In the speech Galt tells his listeners that they have chosen the wrong standard, and that this has resulted in their present circumstances.

But Galt also makes clear that his listeners have transgressed morally, and done so grievously. If the choice of the standard is pre-moral, Galt has no basis for these claims. Since his listeners have made poor cognitive choices, at most he can chastise them for cognitive mistakes, not moral transgressions.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Brendan,

To use another kind of language, Galt can and does legitimately chastise people for not choosing life as a standard, then trying to impose that standard on those who do. If they want to go to hell in a handbasket, that's their business. But he does not accept their attempt to take everyone with them and make it impossible for anyone to live on earth well and independently as a life-lover.

Folks can quibble over details, but that's the way I understand the tenor of his talk with respect to choosing life.

Michael

[Guyau]

Brendan,

Would you think that simply choosing life without knowing of the connections of life to value or to moral value would count as a premoral choice to live? It seems to me that it would be a sort of implicit or partially conscious moral choice upon which choice with more conscious understanding of the connections of life to value and to moral value would count as square moral choice. What do you think?

I’m thinking in particular of Rand’s line in Galt’s speech in which she has him say “I am. Therefore, I’ll think.” This comes well after she has set down her morality and its connection to life, human life, and thought. So the reader sees that compact statement as saying: “I am living, my biological nature is such that I must think to live, therefore I’m gonna think.” But consider someone who has never heard this theory of morality, one who simply says, by act if not in words, “I’ll think.” Couldn’t that choice of behavior be implicitly a choice to live, a sort of preconscious or premoral choice to live?

I have remarked on this issue here and here. This is the David Kelley Corner, and it would be nice if this discussion could be carried on in this other thread, as a discussion of David Kelley’s essay on the topic.

[Brendan Hutching]

Brendan,

To use another kind of language, Galt can and does legitimately chastise people for not choosing life as a standard, then trying to impose that standard on those who do. If they want to go to hell in a handbasket, that's their business. But he does not accept their attempt to take everyone with them and make it impossible for anyone to live on earth well and independently as a life-lover.

Folks can quibble over details, but that's the way I understand the tenor of his talk with respect to choosing life.

Michael

That’s a political issue, not an ethical one. When people want to forge a democratic but unified political and economic entity, they need to choose some baseline principles and practices that are workable and acceptable to the majority.

The fact that these arrangements may violate some people’s ethical standards is unfortunate but unavoidable. There is no way around this difficulty unless one could devise a system whereby all of one’s actions were entirely self-contained and affected nobody else. I’m not aware of any such system.

And nor do I think it’s the case that Galt is complaining about being repressed. The entire thrust of his talk is: this is what you wanted. He is castigating his audience because they chose the wrong standard and are now paying the price.

[Daniel Barnes]

I share your concern that the Objectivist ethics begins with "the single choice, to live" as its moral foundation and moral standard.

This can be put perhaps even more clearly:

The Objectivist ethics begins with "the single choice, to live", which is its moral foundation and moral standard, whilst somehow simultaneously being completely amoral.

It is perfectly reasonable to be concerned as to whether this is even possible, let alone credible.

Hartford, Robert. 2007. Objectivity and the Proof of Egoism. The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 8, no. 2 (Spring): 291–303.

Is this online anywhere?

[Ellen Stuttle]

The vagaries of memory.

A couple factual details: [Victor had] been offending in between. And, no, it wasn't your "exposing his recidivism" that "led to his banning" -- not without quite a few other occurrences in process.

Well the way I remember it is: up till then [Victor had] been keeping his nose pretty much clean, supposedly.

Then I spotted his pinching. As far as I recall it was this event that set people off on the hunt again uncovering other plagiarism. (In fact I even remember my post as saying words to the effect of: are you up to your old tricks again, Victor?)

Up till then, you weren't aware of his plagiarizing. I alerted you to his history off-list (as described here; meanwhile, you'd done a Yahoo search and found references to earlier incidents. The words in your post (here) were, "Oh, I see. Predictably he's been at it before."

Also, emphasize the "supposedly," since he hadn't been refraining; he'd only been being a little more careful in disguising borrowed material.

Obviously there were other subsequent events involved. I said it "led to". I'm not being self-aggrandising, I just wasn't about to write a potted history of the bloody incident.

DF affirms your account:

Yes, I remember it [Victor's cribbing the Dykes essay] very well. When that happened I also became alert to plagiarism in [Victor's] posts and found some nice examples myself. The rest is history, so you're fully justified in claiming that your exposing [Victor's] plagiarism led to his banning from the forum.

Writing "a potted history" isn't necessary to writing accurate history. ;-)

Both of you appear to forget that only 6 people were on-line during the all of one and a half hours the thread in which Victor cribbed Dykes was up: Victor himself, MSK, Daniel, DF, Elizabeth Nonemaker, and I. No one else saw the thread at that time. Although it might have set DF watching for further instances, it didn't alert folks who didn't know about it. Had Victor not continued plagiarizing, I doubt that the Dykes-cribbing incident would have "led to" any further result in terms of Victor's continued presence on the forum.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Re the substance of this thread, I do think, Daniel, that you miss the difference between a concept and a word.

I think you're quite wrong about that. Yes, Rand ostensibly makes the distinction.

But in practice it results in the same problem. That's the point.

1) What is it you're thinking I'm "quite wrong" about? That you miss the difference? Or that there is a difference?

2) Specifically what "same problem"? If all you mean is infinite regress, I don't see that that problem does arise for a hierarchy of concepts. (It would be a problem if all that words did refer to was other words, but as messy as word meanings can get in standard language, there are ponies in there, i.e., real referents.)

Ellen

[Daniel Barnes]

1) What is it you're thinking I'm "quite wrong" about? That you miss the difference? Or that there is a difference?

The former, obviously, as I refer to the Objectivist adoption of the nominalist position of words as "labels".

2) Specifically what "same problem"? If all you mean is infinite regress, I don't see that that problem does arise for a hierarchy of concepts. (It would be a problem if all that words did refer to was other words, but as messy as word meanings can get in standard language, there are ponies in there, i.e., real referents.)

Once again, the problem is not "real referents." It never has been.

That's why in the "puppy" example both people point to "real referents." It demonstrates how this doesn't decide a disagreement over who has the "true" or "false" meaning of a word.*

There are actually several problems conjoined, not the least of which is that concepts exist in our heads. Thus, until we get mind-melding up and running, they require some kind of shared audio-symbolic representation for us to discuss them. This usually means words, which brings us back to the beginning again. This is why "conceptual" analysis in practice amounts to verbalism.

This is not to say that words are useless, any more than letters are useless just because debating spelling is trivial. It's just that arguments over their meaning cannot be resolved into "true" and "false" without resort to convention as the standard for such a decision. And Rand rejects convention as such a standard so it seems to me to be checkmate.

Instead of arguments over definitions, which cannot be so decided, we should instead debate plans, proposals, policies, theories etc which can be. For example, while the argument over the meaning of "puppy" cannot be resolved without resort to convention, a debate over whether, say, lowering taxes will to greater prosperity or whether Mercury is closer to the Sun than Earth can be tested, and decided as "true" or "false" regardless of what convention dictates.

But perhaps I am wrong, so perhaps you could counter with some examples of some important "true" and "false" definitions that Rand identified, and step us through the workings by which she determined that they were "true" and the common usages she derided were "false".

I have given the possible example of "selfishness", as it is an important concept to Objectivism (though I admit in advance the key passage (2nd entry) in the intro to VOS is an typically confused and convoluted one).

You are welcome to provide your own however.

*Of course, if we don't want to have discussions, and only want to talk to ourselves, we can all have our own private language and end up like Harry Binswanger - in a world of our own.

And of course, shared meanings do not preclude the use of language for our own purposes of self-development either. I think this is an important function of language, and have previously remarked how this was one of the few interesting and imaginative parts of Rand's theory, and that it was a pity she didn't pursue it.

[Guyau]

I share your concern that the Objectivist ethics begins with "the single choice, to live" as its moral foundation and moral standard.

This can be put perhaps even more clearly:

The Objectivist ethics begins with "the single choice, to live", which is its moral foundation and moral standard, whilst somehow simultaneously being completely amoral.

It is perfectly reasonable to be concerned as to whether this is even possible, let alone credible.

Hartford, Robert. 2007. Objectivity and the Proof of Egoism. The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 8, no. 2 (Spring): 291–303.

Is this online anywhere?

Partly

Comment

Reply

[Brendan Hutching]

Brendan,

Would you think that simply choosing life without knowing of the connections of life to value or to moral value would count as a premoral choice to live? It seems to me that it would be a sort of implicit or partially conscious moral choice upon which choice with more conscious understanding of the connections of life to value and to moral value would count as square moral choice. What do you think?

I think that would depend on what would constitute “choosing life”. Most people don’t make a conscious choice to physically live; the body just keeps going. Whereas the choice to “live life to the fullest” or to pull back from, say, suicide, seem to be very much moral choices, in that they involve some type of valuing. I don’t see any prior non-moral cognitive element in these sorts of decisions.

The other point is that while the choice is presented as “choosing life”, in actual fact the choice is of a specific moral standard. You are not choosing life so much as choosing a specific type of life, and that requires a moral evaluatiuon.

Nor can I see how simply choosing to think could be a pre-moral choice to live in a certain way. That would depend on the content of the thought. I can understand how one could have an inchoate desire or impulse to act in a certain way, and that desire or impulse could be more consciously recognised as a choice to live in a certain way.

But I don’t think that such a desire/impulse would count as pre-moral. As you say: “It seems to me that it would be a sort of implicit or partially conscious moral choice...”

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

That's a political issue, not an ethical one. When people want to forge a democratic but unified political and economic entity, they need to choose some baseline principles and practices that are workable and acceptable to the majority.

The fact that these arrangements may violate some people's ethical standards is unfortunate but unavoidable. There is no way around this difficulty unless one could devise a system whereby all of one's actions were entirely self-contained and affected nobody else. I'm not aware of any such system.

And nor do I think it's the case that Galt is complaining about being repressed. The entire thrust of his talk is: this is what you wanted. He is castigating his audience because they chose the wrong standard and are now paying the price.

Brendan,

Even though I admittedly used simple language, I find your response way too oversimplified. For starters, you totally divorced politics from ethics.

Even so, I want to simplify the language further. Paraphrasing your last statement, but completing it, Galt essentially said that people who did not want to pay reality's price of choosing life in order to live will not think and produce in order to have stuff, other than, say, bare necessities. Anyone can see that in all eras of human history. These are the ones who are paying the price according to Galt. What is that price? Here you didn't say, but you did make it sound like something dastardly. The price was nothing more than doing without. There's your ethics, for you. Simple.

And to top it off, they are in the way of those who do want to pay reality's price and produce stuff—and they want to take the stuff the producers produce from them by force.

That's politics, but it's way more than politics, too. Thinking that other human beings are farm animals like chickens producing eggs until they are slaughtered, the gift that keeps on giving until its very existence becomes the one-off gift so to speak, starts from a very twisted ethical premise. Telling people that "I am no longer your farm animal" is an ethical stance, not just a political one. And further, telling people that if they choose to exist below the level of farm animals by not even choosing life, they should not complain when they discover that they are treated by others (their own dictator-like heroes, in fact) as farm animals.

That statement by you, "these arrangements may violate some people's ethical standards is unfortunate but unavoidable," is kind of amusing. Here in the USA, a hell of a lot of people, even religious ones, are now starting to come to the conclusion that some people (the ones favored by your "these arrangements") violating their ethical standard—i.e., explicitly wanting self-reliance and having no master to crack a whip over them—might be unfortunate, but it is completely avoidable. And they are starting to do stuff to make sure it is avoidable.

I have a question. Why do you think that people not choosing life, then doing without and demanding that someone provide stuff is an "ethical concern" when the guy who produces it says he chooses life, but will not longer carry parasites who won't even bother to choose life and self-responsibility, is a "political concern"? Don't you see an ethical connection in both? The connection is really obvious to me, unless, of course, I accept "these arrangements" that violate others as some kind of metaphysical absolute or ethical imperative. But "these arrangements" aren't anything of the sort. They are only a bluff based on doublespeak and bullying, so I see the ethical connection really clearly.

Michael

[Xray]

To use another kind of language, Galt can and does legitimately chastise people for not choosing life as a standard, then trying to impose that standard on those who do. If they want to go to hell in a handbasket, that's their business. But he does not accept their attempt to take everyone with them and make it impossible for anyone to live on earth well and independently as a life-lover.

Folks can quibble over details, but that's the way I understand the tenor of his talk with respect to choosing life.

Galt's criticism of those not sharing his personal set of values is no more "legitimate" than others' criticism of Galt for not sharing their set would be "legitimate".

For no one needs legal permission for personally attributing value to this or that.

You used "legitimate" conntotatively of course, meaning "justified" (which again is connotative use of language. Amazing isn't it, how often we use language with connotative meaning when we want to express a personal valuation).

Rand was way off base with her "stolen concept" thing, which ignores phenomena like figurative speech expressing personal valuation.

To illustrate with the "puppy" example discussed before: calling a young man "puppy" is using language connotatively. It is figurative speech employing a metaphor to express personal valuation, taking the semantic element 'immaturity' from "puppy" (very young dog).

So it is about differentiating whether denotation or connotation is used.

The relevance of the denotation/connotation issue becomes crucial in analyzing Rand's work since she labels her personal preferences as 'rational', presuming this makes the claim synonymous with fact.

It is the fallacy of confusing connotation with denotation, i.e., imagining the subjective to be objective.

MSK: I have a question. Why do you think that people not choosing life, then doing without and demanding that someone provide stuff is an "ethical concern" when the guy who produces it says he chooses life, but will not longer carry parasites who won't even bother to choose life and self-responsibility, is a "political concern"?

Where does it say that "a (human) parasite" (connotative use of language indicating personal disapproval of someone's lifestyle) doesn't 'choose life'? A so-called "parasite" can actually thrive living at others' costs. Who says that e. g. a 'gold digger' snatching a celebrity as a partner does not love life?

Edited December 5, 2009 by Xray

[rhartford]

I share your concern that the Objectivist ethics begins with "the single choice, to live" as its moral foundation and moral standard.

That is why I used cognitive standards to prove the foundational principle of ethics as "acceptance and use of the principle of holding one's own life as the motive and goal of one's action." This puts the foundational moral standard of the Objectivist ethics on a sound cognitive foundation.

Please see:

Hartford, Robert. 2007. Objectivity and the Proof of Egoism. The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 8, no. 2 (Spring): 291–303.

. . .

As I said previously, the difficulty with the cognitive, pre-moral choice is that it undercuts the likes of the message of Galt’s speech. In the speech Galt tells his listeners that they have chosen the wrong standard, and that this has resulted in their present circumstances.

But Galt also makes clear that his listeners have transgressed morally, and done so grievously. If the choice of the standard is pre-moral, Galt has no basis for these claims. Since his listeners have made poor cognitive choices, at most he can chastise them for cognitive mistakes, not moral transgressions.

The issue is more complicated. Proof of the choice to live is cognitive and pre-moral, but implementation of the choice to live is normative and hence a moral issue. A quotation from my 2007 paper may clarify the issues involved.

"Objectivity thus has two distinct roles: its descriptive role for logically proving the choice to live, and its normative role for implementation of the choice to live. Choosing life is both logically and morally valid. Therefore, it is not surprising to find commentary that treats the failure to choose life as a logical failure and other commentary that treats the failure to choose life as a moral failure.

". . . Peikoff on one hand 'condemn morally the choice not to live' and . . . Peikoff on the other hand asserts that 'the choice to live precedes morality.'

"[because of ] the equivocal use of 'the choice to live' in the above quotations [Peikoff's two statements are not contradictory]. For clarity, 'the choice to live' often needs to be modified by 'to prove,' 'proof of,' 'to implement,' or 'implementation of.' It is not at all contradictory to 'condemn morally the failure to implement the choice to live' and on the other hand to assert that 'proof of the choice to live precedes morality.'

"One should not be overly critical of those who sometimes focus on the cognitive failure to prove the choice of life and sometimes focus on the moral failure to implement the choice of life. Only a detailed analysis and a process of introspection can fully determine the relative contribution of logical errors and moral errors in any failure to choose to live."

[Dragonfly]

This whole discussion about "the choice to live" is surrealistic. There is, except for a very small percentage of the population that one day commits suicide, no such thing as "a choice to live", living is what they automatically do. That phrase is just a cheap rhetoric device to repudiate those people who don't agree with Objectivist principles and to suggest that they "worship death" or "choose death", a kind of manichaeist fantasy that has no basis in reality. Therefore all the discussions about this "choice" being moral or pre-moral make as much sense as those about the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin.

[BaalChatzaf]

This whole discussion about "the choice to live" is surrealistic. There is, except for a very small percentage of the population that one day commits suicide, no such thing as "a choice to live", living is what they automatically do. That phrase is just a cheap rhetoric device to repudiate those people who don't agree with Objectivist principles and to suggest that they "worship death" or "choose death", a kind of manichaeist fantasy that has no basis in reality. Therefore all the discussions about this "choice" being moral or pre-moral make as much sense as those about the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin.

You have a point. Most people I know just live, and don't think much more about that issue, except in situtations where they have to guard their lives against hazard. I know that I don't wake up in the morning and tell myself: Self, today I have decided to live.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Selene]

This whole discussion about "the choice to live" is surrealistic. There is, except for a very small percentage of the population that one day commits suicide, no such thing as "a choice to live", living is what they automatically do. That phrase is just a cheap rhetoric device to repudiate those people who don't agree with Objectivist principles and to suggest that they "worship death" or "choose death", a kind of manichaeist fantasy that has no basis in reality. Therefore all the discussions about this "choice" being moral or pre-moral make as much sense as those about the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin.

Precisely. It is why so many big O objectivists make such lousy dinner guests.

Here is a gif that I ran across that you might want to use...

Don't blame me...9th got me addicted to icons and gifs

Excellent point though.

Adam

Edited December 6, 2009 by Selene

[Xray]

Would you think that simply choosing life without knowing of the connections of life to value or to moral value would count as a premoral choice to live? It seems to me that it would be a sort of implicit or partially conscious moral choice upon which choice with more conscious understanding of the connections of life to value and to moral value would count as square moral choice. What do you think?

I’m thinking in particular of Rand’s line in Galt’s speech in which she has him say “I am. Therefore, I’ll think.” This comes well after she has set down her morality and its connection to life, human life, and thought. So the reader sees that compact statement as saying: “I am living, my biological nature is such that I must think to live, therefore I’m gonna think.” But consider someone who has never heard this theory of morality, one who simply says, by act if not in words, “I’ll think.” Couldn’t that choice of behavior be implicitly a choice to live, a sort of preconscious or premoral choice to live?

Imo Dragonfly's excellent comment on this discussion hits the nail on the head:

Dragonfly: This whole discussion about "the choice to live" is surrealistic. There is, except for a very small percentage of the population that one day commits suicide, no such thing as "a choice to live", living is what they automatically do. That phrase is just a cheap rhetoric device to repudiate those people who don't agree with Objectivist principles and to suggest that they "worship death" or "choose death", a kind of manichaeist fantasy that has no basis in reality. Therefore all the discussions about this "choice" being moral or pre-moral make as much sense as those about the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin.

Stephen Boydstun: I’m thinking in particular of Rand’s line in Galt’s speech in which she has him say “I am. Therefore, I’ll think.” This comes well after she has set down her morality and its connection to life, human life, and thought. So the reader sees that compact statement as saying: “I am living, my biological nature is such that I must think to live, therefore I’m gonna think.” But consider someone who has never heard this theory of morality, one who simply says, by act if not in words, “I’ll think.” Couldn’t that choice of behavior be implicitly a choice to live, a sort of preconscious or premoral choice to live?

See above. Same surrealism in the discussion.

Galt's speech btw is so full of factual errors that I would be hesitant to quote from it at all as alleged proof of anything.

Example:

"Are you prattling about an instinct of self-preservation? An instinct of self-preservation is precisely what man does not possess." (Galt)

I'm afraid the prattler is Galt, for he is just plain wrong. For example, it is the instinct of self-preservation which makes an infant suck milk; we become instinctively alert when listening to an unidentifiable sound at night since it might indicate danger, etc.

Or read about what he believes is "morality":

"You who prattle that morality is social and that man woould need no morality on a desert island - it is on a desert island that he would need it most.

Let him try to claim when there are no victims to pay for it, that a rock is is a house, that sand is clothing, that food will drop into his mouth without cause or effort, that he will collect a harvest tomorrow by devouring his stock seed today - and realtiy will wipe him out as he deserves; reality will show him that life is a value to be bought and that thinking is the only coin noble enough to buy it." (Galt)

What Galt thinks is 'morality' is as if one defined chalk with the semantic markers pertaining to cheese.

For a man's claim that a rock is a house has nothing to do with "morality", but is a simple error about a fact. Big difference.

That "life is a value to be bought" is wrong as well. Does anyone recall paying their parents in order to come into existence?

I have the impression that Rand's use of any term often depends on how she feels at the moment. Whatever "meaning" is convenient for argument is the one she grabs as needed. She is not at all concerned as to whether usage of the term connects to reality. The shift from volition to non-volition to arrive at a "valuing plant" is a classic example of this thinking.

Edited December 6, 2009 by Xray

[Selene]

Imagine the ultimate robotic uber voice for this commercial:

"Hello my name is Xray:

I am now going to prove the Ayn is wrong by fact checking a fictitious speech, spoken by a fictitious character in a romantic novel

Not only am I going to do that and expect you to willingly suspend disbelief about why a sentient being would do this, but I am also

going to misuse the authoresses meaning of morality and conflate it with my subjective definition of morality.

Then I am going to ask you to believe that I am someone who should be listened too because I am a teacher, or a mother, or wait, I am a German, ...uh I need more time.

Adam

thinking of options

[Brendan Hutching]

"Objectivity thus has two distinct roles: its descriptive role for logically proving the choice to live, and its normative role for implementation of the choice to live.

Yes, there is a distinction between offering a justification for a standard, and actually choosing to live by that standard.

To rework my previous comment, one could ask: why offer a justification at all? One could treat the issue as a purely intellectual, hypothetical exercise, and there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s what people do when they study ethical issues as a discipline.

But when it comes to deciding which ethical standard or code to actually live by, the justification is offered in the context of a more fundamental issue: how to live as a moral person.

The issue of how to live as a moral person isn’t driven by the justification, although many people present the issue that way. Rather, the desire to live as a moral person precedes the justification.

[Brendan Hutching]

I have a question. Why do you think that people not choosing life, then doing without and demanding that someone provide stuff is an "ethical concern" when the guy who produces it says he chooses life, but will not longer carry parasites who won't even bother to choose life and self-responsibility, is a "political concern"?

Michael

I’m not arguing that politics is completely divorced from ethics. My argument was in response to this claim: “Galt can and does legitimately chastise people for not choosing life as a standard, then trying to impose that standard on those who do.”

In a pluralist society, such as those in the Western world, you cannot politically satisfy all ethical standards. Some people oppose abortion, others support it. Whichever political solution you arrive at, someone will be disappointed.

In the case of the Objectivist standard, yes, I understand that you believe that your choice of life is being brutally violated by your political system and that you are being treated like a battery hen. (A step up from being treated like a mushroom, though.) But not everybody sees it that way.

Rather, they view politics – especially democratic politics -- as a way of dealing with conflicting demands. That means there will be compromises, losers and winners.

The mere fact of violation doesn’t explain why your ethical standards should take precedence over others. You can argue that bad stuff will happen otherwise, but once again, not everyone agrees.

As for the division of human beings into producers and parasites, most people in one way or another contribute to the support of others throughout their lives, and most people receive support. Dividing people into producers and parasites is, in my view, a highly simplified and potentially dangerous politics.

Edited December 6, 2009 by Brendan Hutching

[tjohnson]

"You who prattle that morality is social and that man woould need no morality on a desert island - it is on a desert island that he would need it most.

This is certainly a very unorthodox use of the term 'morality'. If there was something a man on desert island would need most it would be ingenuity, resolve, patience, a strong will to survive, etc. But maybe this is what Rand means by 'morality'??