Leaderboard

Of all the meta-ethical theories floating around in philosophy, there are usually 4 types: god, society, reason, or nature. Usually attacks on Rand's views as a naturalist come from one of the other templates. A Kantian, for example, might claim Rand fails to attach moral claims to pure reason, a conventionalist might claim public agreement lends to more altruism than Rand wants to allow. You seem to want to challenge Rand's views from within the context of human nature, by pointing to some tribalistic aspects of human nature that we've ignored or failed to see. You mentioned a number of times bow, humans are led by emotions, humans are tribal, humans are inherently this or that. But it's not as if merely asserting this or that constitutes a reason to believe something. It's fine if you want to map out the territory, well if humans were inherently interested in only members of their own race, then some sort of racist ethical prescription might follow, but your posts in here suffer from serious "argument from assertion" fallacies. To simply assert is not to establish. It's as if your claims become their own mantra "I see what you're saying but, humans are inherently tribalistic, QED." Is this the proper way to do philosophy? Is this intellectual honesty or ethical discussion? There are many challenges to a neo-Aristotelian conception of human nature, a Randian could challenge, eg., A Nietzschean account by challenging Nietzsche's views of human nature. But just making assertions and repeating them as a mantra is sophism, not philosophy. Moreover, there are many conservative and communitarian critiques of liberty that point to a supposed inherent tribalism, and establish statism to arrange society in tribalistic patterns. MacIntyre, for example, argues against cosmopolitan liberalism from even a largely Aristotelian framework. But he does more than assert "humans are tribal" over and over. The right-Hegelians wished to establish a tribal society in the basis of racist scientific claims. In any event, your original post was about being an "open Objectivism" and revision of certain claims. It's not clear how, if one adopted the above views, one would be offering a divergence from, rather than new version of, Rand's views. If one is rejecting free will, the efficacy of reason, and open ended human sociality, and opposition to statism, this just comes across as petty opportunism or entryism, rather than being an honest conservative critic.