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Eiuol

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  1. Eiuol

    Objectivism Ethics

    I never argued that they're unrelated. You're talking about rights, then somehow saying ethics is only relevant in a social setting. Ethics is broader, it applies to all actions. Rights are a type of moral principle, not a principle that makes morality relevant... Again, you are talking about rights, all by saying ethics is only about social context. Your point isn't clear because your posting is rife with equivocating rights to morality. "Thank you for the link. I'll look into this, but my position doesn't dispute the need for morality on a desert isle, or anywhere else. " You said the exact opposite in post #29: "If it were possible to be entirely self-sufficient, to live without any interaction with others, then ethics would be irrelevant."
  2. Eiuol

    Objectivism Ethics

    All you're describing is the Objectvist view on rights. And redefined happiness for no reason as "maintaining peace". "It's only in consideration of the consequence of interaction with others that an ethical view (of proper action) becomes relavent." isn't what you are saying now: "What does concern them is the measure of control (choice) they have over their existence. This where ethics becomes relevant in some form of, "do as you're told" vs "you're not the boss of me" " You are saying different things. But then you throw in "some form of" that doesn't follow. You are saying ethics is primarily about choice, and it is primarily about impediments to choice. There is more to choice than impediments, and two primaries is impossible. Then you avoid the OP's question anyway by saying "oh, some people have reasons to opt out". That's the topic of the thread: why not opt out?
  3. Eiuol

    Objectivism Ethics

    How does it follow from "I know what is bad for me in reference to others" to "ethics becomes relevant when I consider the consequences of interacting with others"? All you're saying now is that I need to observe others to be able to know what is good or a bad - a perfectly legitimate claim that I agree with. Aristotle's Golden Mean is basically that, where we look to others to see how a virtuous person acts. If living in total isolation, you'd have no information to work with to help you figure out how to be virtuous. This is totally different than saying morality is only an issue in social settings with consequences - which always leads to moral relativism I described earlier. Social consequences makes for varying moral systems depending on the society and time period. To judge moral systems, we need a standard to measure them that can apply man qua man rather than man qua society. A more sensible standard is where we start developmentally and by nature, which is aiming for life. That isn't "it's good because it's natural", it's that it's the only standard and time to need a code. It provides the means to happiness, that's the purpose ethics serves.
  4. Eiuol

    Objectivism Ethics

    DA, I don't know the point of the first part? Are you saying morality is dependent on interaction with other people, and if we analyze it without the social part, it'll be unavoidably subjective or meaningless? That is only a plausible angle to explain why the concept "morality" grew and developed, as opposed to an explanation of morality. Even if it were true that it explains morality itself, we still run into VECT's question: Why use this standard as opposed to another? Why wouldn't someone wonder if it's okay to do an act if they were alone? "Simply acting" is not any promise something beneficial will happen, so at the least, it's plain stupid to "simply act". A hidden premise here appears to be psychological egoism, where people always pursue their self-interest. If that were true, simply acting would always be in your interest, so morality would be irrelevant - you do what's in your interest anyway. The problem is, many people really do ignore their interests or fail to consider their interest, so end up doing something besides what is in their interest. We don't even have a meaning to "self-interest" by which to act, it is a moral concept that doesn't happen automatically. Ethics is still meaningful before we start talking about social topics, partly why it's a separate topic than political philosophy. Of course if someone really is alone is unlikely, and looking for a social basis for ethics to the root of ethics is going to overlook life as the root to that social basis being relevant! Taking a social basis will be other-centric, because you already rejected ethics as being self-centric. The issue there is altruism at least implicitly, where we must act with regard to what other people may say or do in response to you. Then, out of guilt, you'd wonder "is it okay for me to do such and such?", not just out of a need to think and evaluate. All I agree with is that choice is what makes deliberate action possible. The choice need not be deciding one day "I must live!" It only needs to orient our action. Rand brings out a fundamental choice, but it isn't saying what we ought to choose. That happens developmentally - Rand's explanation is rooted in pleasure/pain, and other explanations may be possible as to why babies don't need to be instructed to live. Values will arise in life-furthering action, just by nature of living. Foods, activities, and so on. It's possible to declare "I don't want to live!", and there's no "duty" to avoid it. But it involves deliberately denying or evading existing values. Nihilism perhaps. If you want to persuade a person to further their life, it requires pointing out their values and how it goes along with happiness. Reason has power there - I can guarantee your friend VECT, does have values to pursue, and grasps why it matters. It takes noting how drug users fail to lead a good life - real world evidence.
  5. Eiuol

    Objectivism Ethics

    Why do you wish it were different? It's up to an individual, yes, and there are reasons to say life is pursued developmentally speaking. "Wholly subjective" seems to say there is no reason at all. I don't see any bad implications of what I explained.
  6. Eiuol

    Objectivism Ethics

    There is no shouldn't there. All you'd say is ethics doesn't matter at all for that person and they'll never be happy.
  7. That's the conclusion of people who consider fractional reserve banking to be immoral. Basically, I described sharing. Like in math, show your work! Don't just show your conclusion.
  8. Can you post some differences here? I'm very interested!
  9. Eiuol

    Objectivism Ethics

    What are you talking about, seriously? VECT didn't say he knows the answer. He literally is saying he doesn't understand by explaining what he doesn't understand. He already knows there is some error, or he's looking to see if Rand made an error. Let's keep it productive, recognize that by asking a question, he is spending time learning.
  10. Eiuol

    Objectivism Ethics

    There is no reason, there is no "shouldn't". Rand doesn't even say there's a decided reason. She suggests pleasure/pain is a feeling that for developmental reasons affect seeking life. Later, we may identify the choice for life in explicit terms, but the only reason to offer is that by seeking life, happiness will come with it. If you choose non-life, okay, in which case, by Rand's position, you won't have any happiness. As soon as you choose non-life, there is no sense of ethics that matters. So, yes, in some way, life is a subjective matter, but here, the important point is that as babies, before we even know what life is, we do life-sustaining actions without a deliberate, reasoned out plan. By implication, values are formed. As an adult, we can analyze those values and measure them against life, which is where value derives. We'd probably say that there are reasons to maintain that life. Your concern seems to be that moral relativism might be true. Moral relativism is basically that more than one standard of morality is valid, but not necessarily all standards. Rand argues that only one standard of morality is valid because of the two fundamental alternatives: existence and nonexistence. For the record, cognitive development is pretty relevant to Objectivist ethics. Developmental factors are important to explain a system of ethics. We're blank slates at the moment of birth, but not any moment after that.
  11. Eiuol

    Objectivism Ethics

    Life, as in being alive. Self-sustaining action. Survival is not necessarily self-sustaining if sustaining is longer than a few moments. Basically what Jon said.
  12. By scholarship, I am speaking of interpretation and understanding of Rand's ideas. I'm excluding anything building on her ideas, which is a different type of thinking and technically speaking not Objectivism. For instance, OPAR is part of Rand scholarship, while a lot of Tara Smiths work like Viable Values is doing philosophy with a lot of Rand influence is not Rand scholarship narrowly speaking. What got me thinking is a paper by Robert Campbell who I know posts on Objectivist Living. In it, he criticizes editing done by Robert Mayhew of posthumous works. Looking at the editing done from original recordings by Mayhew, it looks like a subtle but significant change in meaning or tone. That is, sometimes Rand is shown making a stronger statement than otherwise by going as far as to write questions that weren't asked as shown, or cutting out whole paragraphs of long answers. Sometimes he'd change words to ones Rand never used, which is editing the very way she spoke. Read the paper for specific details. Now, it's easy to get the gist of Rand's answers, but what good is that for scholarship if this is the only format available? I'm not sure what to make it, except deeming any works edited by Mayhew as poor sources for interpreting Rand or studying Rand. But it brings a wider concern of availability of quality scholarship. For instance, Peikoff claims to be Rand's intellectual heir, but no record of Rand saying so. That itself is poor scholarship, an expression of vanity. From that alone, it makes me wonder if even OPAR is as reliable as claimed. It's good, yes, but can we label it as -Rand- scholarship? Perhaps I'm overly skeptical about OPAR, as it is interpretation of Rand anyway, but I'm wondering about how fairly/properly Rand scholarship is done. How much meticulously careful scholarship exists? Is the issue bigger than Mayhew, or does it only extend as far as him?
  13. Eiuol

    Objectivism Ethics

    There is no "reason" to choose life, as reasons depend on a standard. But the fact remains that life is implicitly chosen all the time based on many developmental reasons. Yes, a duty would be subjective essentially - that's why Rand boils it down to essential alternatives, i.e. existence or non-existence. Why should you choose life? There is no process of deliberation to say. It's not a problem though, as ethics is supposed to answer how to live well for Objectivism. Choosing non-existence requires no code at all. You may have reasons to continue living, though.
  14. Umm, I don't think scenario two is how government debt works... No one will actually spend more than $1000, you could only actually withdraw $800. You can't withdraw the extra $200 if the government is using that $200. A problem only appears when you want more than $800 right now. In practice, you have all 1000 and the government 200, but it's still only really 1000. In a way, it's a means for unused money to be used by other entities. Things get a lot more complex if we talk about long-term payments like mortgages. I'm not saying there is no issue. I think the point is that the problem is totally misidentified and blown out of proportion by the OP. I'm not super informed on all this, so I may be missing important points.
  15. Then I don't know what your point is, other than you don't like Crow. You might not like a specific point in general, but you both agree in general that such laws on the books ought not exist. Also, you made a point that Tesla is pretty bad too, but I'd like to see some evidence that Tesla thinks it deserves special treatment. As a whole, it would make more sense to seek some common political ground here instead of highlighting minor differences as essential differences. That's why it looks a lot like "Objectipublican" whitewashing... EC, I didn't mean to imply you were defending Republicans. At the very least, I think Nicky is defending them, which I simply don't understand.
  16. Your response seems to be you didn't care, don't care, and won't care. I got riled up like Crow about Republican hypocrisy, and like Crow, I am bothered that Democrats are also to blame. I probably should've cared before, but now I care. Who cares if it's mainstream? It's a bad law. Now, it is being reinforced as mainstream by apparently attaining bipartisan support. This is bad. It is aggravating. It's more aggravating when a supposed pro-capitalist is nothing of the sort, like SA described. All I see you saying is "oh well, nothing new to see here, move along." Apathy is not anything to be proud of! What you DID do doesn't matter. I see 3 possibilities: You still don't care. Or, you care, but not now because Republicans aren't as bad. Or you just don't want to agree with Crow and put rationality on hold. In post #7, Crow says both parties are at fault. Generally, more people on this site are on the conservative talking point side politically speaking - and why I rarely post on political news threads anymore. The point I'm getting at is whether it is important to care about little things. To me, eliminating car franchise hyper-regulation is an easy battle to win and get support over. Foaming at the mouth outraged? No. It is still worth outrage in the "this is totally stupid" sense.
  17. Nicky, the point is that there is no outrage. Crow is suggesting there would be outrage if the governor were a Democrat. That he is a Republican seemed to attract your whitewashing: "It's a tiny little wrinkle in franchise regulation." You don't seem to care, and I don't know why.
  18. I still think he is. I just didn't think it was worth my time trying to explain it again. I'd rather unpack the premises than pick on one bad sentence.
  19. How does adding another person into the equation eliminate all the possible ways to be wrong? Two people can be wrong just as much as one person. If it isn't sufficient for one person, it isn't sufficient for anyone. Part of thinking well is being able to recognize errors and delusions, so by saying I can't verify my own ideas and concepts, no one else would be sure if they're delusional either. Maybe the other person will have a bias about me! If two people can be objective, there's no reason one person can't be. I'd say your "I like fries more than I like carrots" is something only I can be certain of. You may say my eating habits suggest I like them, but only I will know if it is true. The data you pointed to is just correlation, and the MEASURE of liking isn't the same as the EXPERIENCE of liking. On a personal level, "fries are more likeable than carrots [to me]" is just as sensible, as long as a standard is present. In a sense you could say the experience is subjective because I'm the only one who knows for sure, but only if you deny that one person is able to verify something. I agree about your "God is in Paris" example. No one can verifiy it. Not even one person. Thus it is arbitrary - not even wrong.
  20. Why must it be verifiable by multiple people? Isn't it sufficient that it is verifiable to yourself? I think that's what Grames is addressing in 2: for objectivity to require verifiability from others, we'd need to poll all those people to find out what is objective. This is impossible, which would mean objectivity is impossible by your standard.
  21. It's fair to the extent Tesla is the only company that seems to care. Crow didn't say that it is proper - Nicky said that Tesla thinks it's proper. What I'd like to know is if Tesla really did make such an argument, that they need deserve treatment. If the governor wanted to deregulate to ANY extent, he should not have signed the law. Because the law was intended to close loop holes, in a way, it is reaffirming support for the law as it is.
  22. The thing is, if you had all that evidence, it would probably be quite straightforward to establish a motive. If you had all that and can't establish a motive, well, it'd probably not be as clearcut as you'd make it out to be in your hypothetical. We may know that the person did the action, but we wouldn't know exactly how to attribute their level of guilt. If in legal terms I am wrong about this, I'd like some examples of convictions where motive was never determined. Maybe accident isn't the best word choice. Rather, no established motive would indicate that the case is not as obvious as it appears.
  23. Doesn't that beg the question? Of course proving guilt only requires knowing the person committed the crime, but how would you know they did! Without a motive, I'm saying you would have reason to say maybe what seems to be the case just isn't so. In terms of law, I'm not sure if a motive must be established, but when it comes to human action, if I am to believe someone is guilty regarding intentional acts, I need a reasonable motive. Otherwise, it's probably only an accident.
  24. AisA, that seems like a strange statement. Why would motive not be required in establishing guilt? Clearly it doesn't apply to accidents. Your post implies, though, that motive doesn't matter for saying someone is guilty of murder. Do you mean something else?
  25. If you choose not to do X, it means you have no motive to do X. The other two don't take your mind into account.
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