Harrison Danneskjold

Devils advocate: Looting isn't selfish in any way at all. Is heroine addiction selfish? If someone were asking if that will make them truly happy, how would you respond? Because drug addiction is aanalogous to murder theft and rape, in terms of selfish gain. It's hard to fully appreciate but it's absolutely crucial to grasp: To sabotage your future for a momentary whim is about as selfish as altruism.

Tjfields: Happiness is a state of mind which is pleasurable and self evident to whomever experiences it. True happiness, as distinct from immoral forms of happiness, stems from the joy of the fact of existence and isn't irrational or self destructive in any way. I contend that almost all of the conceivable reasons one could give for the op's action would ultimately be unrealistic, illogical or self destructive. Any reasoning exempt from such flaws would be moral.

Morality isn't suspended by an emergency; it changes implementation. The selfish pursuit of your own happy life has radically different requirements, depending on whether human life is sustainable or not. Harming others to survive is only moral as a last resort where no alternatives are possible. On a national scale this reasoning simply can't apply. A nation is not a person and has no rights except those of its individual citizens. To enslave someone for their own good is a contradiction in terms.

Devils advocate: Your post about utility was slightly ambiguous, if you meant to imply consent as an integral factor. But if you recognize that then i agree. About ethical reciprocity: Morality is almost invariably used, nowadays, in a social sense. Ie: ethics is about how to treat other people. That's not how Rand conceived of it and that's the source of this intransigence you're seeing. --- I get what you mean about it because I've also seen ethics as a social matter for most of my life. But Objectivist morality isn't about how to treat other people; it's about how to treat yourself. Ethics is a game with only one player. Politics is social. That said, if you apply ethical reciprocity to politics (which is how i think you mean it) you'll find it directly in line with individual rights. It stems from the recognition of objective values; those preferences (such as oxygen or property) which are universally moral. --- Its a political matter. But as a political matter i really can't imagine how that could contradict rand.

Tjfields: If I asked you to explain the mechanics of gravity, given enough time and detail, we would find fuzzy approximates in YOUR knowledge as well. This doesn't make them invalid. You're comparing a half formed but rational concept with blatant irrationality. And thank you, by the way, for expecting my omniscience. --- You choose your own values but all of Objectivist ethics is based on the premise that life is good. If you value death then you're already immoral. Period. --- As for objectively defining happiness- NO!! You've officially depleted my patience with that request; nobody who speaks English needs such a definition. --- I will attempt to clarify anything else you legitimately want to know.

Welcome to the club. I've thought about that a lot, before. . . A lot. . . And I don't think either axis, reason-selfishness-capitalism or mysticism-altruism-collectivism, will ever be entirely gone. Mysticism has dominated since the beginning of recorded history, but reason hasn't ever totally vanished since it started in Greece. And it makes sense, too. Since we're talking about the philosophies of billions and billions of individuals, and each individual has to choose their own philosophy, statistically speaking it's almost impossible that everyone could ever come to one conclusion or the other. So this conflict between the two axis, which has been going on for a long time, is likely to continue for a very long time. --- That said, reason is held implicitly by almost everyone in the first world, but explicitly by only a tiny fraction of a minority. We can only expand from here. The future belongs to us.

Realized a lingering deontological premise in my own thinking; the dichotomy between survival and happiness. Resolved contradiction. Subsequently resolved to quit smoking. Started a new book; resolved to finish this one. Probably post again here when I finish both.

Forget everything I just said about happiness!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ayn Rand said: Happiness is NOT another factor in this teleological fitness function; it is the goal and the final product! Emotions are subconscious value judgments; what you value is what you want. You choose your own values by your thoughts and ideas, over time. Thoughts create emotions VIA values! Since ethics is the science of choosing and judging values, it is the business of ethics to tell you how you should feel about any given thing [directly relates to Eiuol's statements about intention]. You cannot be happy if you want to die. If your values or your morality are irrational, life is an obligation and death is indulgence- and life without happiness isn't worth living, while corpses simply can't be happy. Rational selfishness isn't about survival vs. happiness or survival with coincidental happiness; rational selfishness IS being happy ABOUT LIFE! Be happy THAT you're alive, and find the best way to continue living as much as you can- happiness is derived from and corresponds to health! Ayn Rand also said: --- Rational selfishness is a teleological fitness function which evaluates your values [including emotionally, once fully integrated] according to the ultimate value of life. Accordingly, it would be immoral to kill the stranger (because it's Objectively unfit)- specifically because the desire for murder is irrational, because it pits happiness against survival.

We are all human beings; human beings are mortal organisms. Being mortal, there is one constant alternative which we are always faced with: life or death, existence or nonexistence. This is the source of and the reason for all ethics; this fundamental choice. To be or not to be, that is the question. If you want to live then that is the fundamental value; all other values are judged according to their effect on that. And while I haven't read this explicitly in any Objectivist's works, I think that living "man qua man" means to fully live. It's somewhat weird and counterintuitive, but what if we conceived of "life" as having various degrees, such as the degree of health or sickness, which applied to someone's every single attribute? For each and every detail we know about someone, we can gauge with relative ease how this impacts the possibility of their continued, contingent existence. Think of Darwinian fitness. Now, what if we were to judge the an organism's fitness, not by its hereditary traits, but by its choices? If we judged the fitness benefit of any given value then we would appear to be making moral judgments. And if we imagine the sum total of all maximum possible values- the perfectly fit human- we find "man qua man". Notice that happiness has not entered into this line of reasoning; that was by design. Happiness was a conceptual stumbling-block. If we simply consider happiness to be another fitness value, but a DERIVATIVE value (much like the degree of one's health or sickness, while a value in itself, is derivative of a staggering number of biological factors), we find it perfectly analogous to the role of happiness in Objectivist ethics. --- VOILA!! Rational selfishness is a volitional fitness function, the ultimate value is to maximize one's own fitness and to live as "man qua man" is to actually achieve the ultimate value. It's all based on the choice to live, and all of its implications. --- Gentlemen: You are welcome.

The Virtue of Selfishness would probably be most relevant (also one I need to get a copy of; I haven't read it in years). Tjfields: I'm gonna take a wild stab at an answer for you, because I think I see what you're looking for.

This is a slippery premise. Utility is simply another word for value, and people are immensely valuable utilities. A friend, for instance, serves specific purposes and functions in one's life: they simply aren't the sort of functions one could ever buy. Slavery is bad because of the principle of consent, which is the principle of recognizing the minds of others (including their decisions). People use each other all the time and there's nothing wrong about it. In the words of Leonard Hoffstader and Howard something-or-other: "She isn't interested in having a relationship, so much as using men as tools for stress-release." "SO?! Be a tool!!!"

Absolutely. Think of it this way. You choose your own values, much like everyone has their own eating preferences. And a wide variety of these preferences are perfectly legitimate. But no matter how you define or redefine poison, it will remain poison. In exactly the same way, you could declare that you value death instead of life- but that won't make it good or healthy for you to pursue that value. In exactly the same way, you could declare that you value killing- but that won't make killing good. Are you making an attempt at humor? If so you're succeeding.

Let me clarify real quick. I know what living as "man qua man" looks like. If you give me any concrete example I could tell you whether or not it would fit. I could describe it for you if you'd like, or give you a list of attributes (although this will simply be a list of Objectivist virtues); I just can't define it. Yet. Honestly, until this thread, it's something that had never occurred to me before. Somewhere along the line I read that this Objectivist concept of human perfection was the best thing to strive for, I thought to myself "yeah; that makes total sense" and hadn't thought to analyze it since. It just seemed obvious to me. Nobody is omniscient or immortal; everyone in the entire world has to make snap-judgments with incomplete data. I will be looking into this sometime soon, because you're right; I should be able to define this. As for basing my argument on it, as I said: It just seemed obvious to me. I know enough to tell you what living as man qua man looks like, and that isn't it. And I can tell you that anyone who values solitude above human life cannot achieve it. I don't have a firm grasp of long-term principles. I know what it would be moral or immoral to do, in any given instance; I have fuzzy approximates of what it's moral to be.

Everything you described about scientific antirealism seems kosher, to me. I think the whole thing boils down to what it means for something to "exist" and, in that respect, antirealism sounds much more realistic to me. Are abstract existents (such as an electron or a boiling point) real? It sounds like scientific antirealism considers such concepts to be real, but only in connection with their observables (not self-sufficiently real, in their own right). So, for instance, is matter composed of waves or particles? If I understand you correctly: A scientific realist would get hung up over the wave/particle duality, while an antirealist would reply that matter is matter and sometimes it acts like both. It's very similar to the issue of omniscience and the contextuality of knowledge. So, yeah; not only does that not prevent you from considering yourself an Objectivist, I think that's the generic Objectivist position. --- Tangential: It's especially understandable with regards to quantum mechanics. The human mind can't even visualize more than three dimensions; why get worked up over one of several valid perspectives?

Resistance is futile.

thenelli01 and Nicky: A rose, by any other name, would still be a rose. So it really doesn't matter. But let's say, for the sake of argument, that anything which deviates from what Rand wrote constitutes a new philosophy. Alright. So there's already this post-Objectivism thing, which apparently (I think) advocates Buddhism as consistent with Objectivism. Now, I agree with the post-Objectivists about anarchy and (I think?) intellectual property, but not about whatever Buddhist nonsense they've written about. So I would be a separate category, along with Don Athos. Perhaps hyper-Objectivism. And then there are those Objectivists who stubbornly insist that homosexuality is immoral. . . Which is what Rand thought. (Welcome to neo-Objectivism, Nicky). --- So I just think that if we actually consider every little deviation to be a brand-new philosophy then we'll soon discover dozens, perhaps hundreds, of different philosophies which are almost exactly the same. And then you'll need a word to distinguish that umbrella-group of philosophies from all others on Earth, and whether or not you use "Objectivism" to do so, that's what you'll be referring to.

Dreamweaver: Yes. Point being that a "right" is a concept which must be reached through a certain process, and cannot be taken as an out-of-context absolute. It doesn't exist in its own right (nor does consciousness or free will). SL said that rights become relevant once a society exists, not that they're a gift from society. Do you think they apply to isolated men, without contact with any other men? If so then there's actually something to argue. And in that scenario, how many people have a rational consciousness capable of decision-making? You're ignoring the reason for that, with this very statement. And I'm ignoring your other post.

And how did you ever arrive at this knowledge? ?????????????????????? . . . ? . . . Moving on. . . --- SL: INDEED! It's intrinsicism, pure and simple. Rights aren't granted by society or by compromise- NOR do they exist in CONCRETE REALITY. A million scientists with a million microscopes could never actually find a right, and yet here they apparently are- washed ashore with our hypothetical castaway. Anyway. It's understandable; I didn't even realize my own intrinsic tendencies until after I found this forum (so very, very recently). But damnit, it's wrong!

But that's it, right there- what this entire thing hinges on. IS it good for you to kill people? I don't think so. I wouldn't even say it's a matter of "good for me" or "good for you"; it's a sheer misunderstanding of what "good" even is! Nobody benefits from murder; not by any sort of comparison to their loss. So gay marriage is the government's business; it's a political issue involving two or more people. I think you're stretching politics a bit further than it's meant to go.

Yes, the OP's scenario has a political component. It also has a desert island and someone who somehow arrived there and somehow managed to find self-fulfillment in complete isolation. We could discuss any number of things from that scenario, but he asked a specific question about morality. If you truly think that the right to life is the fundamental reason why killing is wrong, then you have no answer to that question. If you have no answer to that question then please stop spitting on mine. Is it immoral to ignore the rights of others? Riddle me that one. --- SL, about the pre-societal right to life: When imperatives fly!

You catch on quick. Agreed. Unfortunately, that's exactly what I can't do; I only have a rather fuzzy approximation of this ultimate value. I know it's directly related to living as "man qua man" but, aside from acting in accordance with man's metaphysical nature (primarily your rational mind), I really couldn't define it for you. Perhaps someone else here could elaborate further on that? No. Solitude is a fine thing to value; it can be enormously beneficial because it allows one to think in peace. But permanent and utter solitude is harmful (see solitary confinement). But that's tangential. The primary issue is that killing someone for the sake of solitude requires that you value solitude above human life- which isn't rational and hinders the ultimate value. A mugger values petty cash over human life and that's the same sort of moral failure. Anything could be valued, but values should be judged and chosen according to their relation to the Ultimate Value. Unless this random stranger has the cure for some disease you've caught hidden away in his pancreas, he benefits you more than anything you could gain from killing him. And not because he converts oxygen into carbon dioxide but because he's a conscious being with a rational mind. I could get into how much people benefit each other, each and every day, with goods and services- but I won't. I could get into the incalculable benefit each of us has gained from the knowledge we've inherited from past generations- but I won't. I think you can extrapolate from there. But more than all of that, we need other people in order to be happy at all. We need people to talk to, people to share with; not even for material gain, but for mental and emotional well-being. As human beings we require other self-aware minds with which to interact with; when thusly deprived we cannot thrive. And I don't know for certain, but I would bet that it's part of living as man qua man. --- Now, people can be extraordinarily harmful to each other (far more than any natural danger) and that's where we start getting into politics. But most people generally aren't; most people are indescribably valuable to most other people. The right to life does apply to this situation; Devil's Advocate and Plasmatic are correct. But if you don't have a firm grasp of the moral principles, first, then knowing about that right isn't going to clarify anything at all. There are situations where other people have no value to you, or even remove value. But if we're discussing complete strangers then there's no good reason to assume such extraordinary circumstances as would make it moral to kill them.

I have nothing to add to this. I simply thought it was worth repeating. . .

Plasmatic: No, nothing is self-evident except sensations; hence the qualifier. But even a dog or a rat has some concept of value; it's fairly close to self-evident. As for strawmen: I said that bringing politics into a moral debate begs the question. You responded with a political quote. I see you've found the yellow-brick circle. As for categorical imperatives: What do you call an arbitrary moral commandment? Yes, arbitrary; you can't reduce 'rights' to the perceptual level without passing through 'value' which means you can't currently reduce it, which makes it (within THIS context!) both circular and arbitrary. The fact that I agree with your conclusion doesn't mean that it applies to this question.

That's part of it, yes. The other part is that not all values are equal. I may enjoy steak while someone else may be vegetarian; once I know that it would be proper for me to respect that decision. But if I enjoy life while they enjoy killing, their values be damned; I'll not allow them to make that choice. The specific hierarchy of values involved (which is what gives rise to the hierarchy of rights) is determined by morality.

Value- to whom? You separate rights from value when discussing value (primarily when there's any confusion about it) so that you don't use derivative concepts to explain earlier ones, beg questions, and otherwise turn a straightforward conversation into the usual philosophical spectacle. I don't mean to remove rights from the issue permanently and compartmentalize them; I just mean to leave rights at the door until everyone's clear on why we should even HAVE rights, in the first place. --- Postscript: I justify this by the fact that the requirements and specifications of individual rights aren't self-evident. The requirements of life and happiness are (basically). At some point someone said that 'it's wrong to take a life that isn't yours, to begin with.' While this is true, it's a hanging assertion without explicit basis- if you told that to Peikoff while discussing "value" he'd probably act as though nothing had been said.