ttime

For the record, at least around here, CrowEpistemologist argued similar points you're pointing out, and I agreed with much of it even, personally. For me, the difference is marginal, but in general, I vote according to a position on abortion, that is, opposing anyone who would make abortion illegal if given the chance.

In the long-run, I'd bet most people around here would say both Romney and Obama are more harm than good. Do you want to drive off a cliff or collide head on with a train? You're gonna crash either way.

Given that Swerve (as stated in his profile) has only read Atlas Shrugged, there is actually a lot that can be construed as suggesting all sorts of interpretations.

This is not correct. It is not a natural or default behavior to be be moral, it must be learned. Many lessons must be learned before learning to be moral.

The way "personal" was used suggests to me what OT was saying is that just because people don't have a way to make objective judgments (rendering the judgements in effect subjective) doesn't mean there is no objective judgment method to be discovered. No one in this thread has ever claimed otherwise, and I don't even think Hsieh did either, other than try to get started on identifying a standard to use. I see no reason, though, to accept your claim that "someday we'll discover a standard is [not allowed]". Reality and everything in it can be defined and understood objectively. Everything has an identity, any valid concept anyway. You seem to be saying "we don't know if there is even an objective standard", but that's equivalent to say "we don't know if everything that exists has an identity". If you're only saying beauty is an emotion like anger or joy, then what you say makes sense - you can't say there is "objectively true" anger. You can explain the cause, but that's a question about psychology.

I take beauty as a measurement right now, so I don't think it's an emotion. As such, it can be objectively defined. Beauty, being a positive judgment, indicates a positive value judgment. If you're judging a Kandinsky painting, a person's body, or a sunset as beautiful, it is a value judgment. I'd call this judgment of meaning. This is different than judging if a painting is good art in the sense good or bad there is just about fulfilling successfully a definition of art (in Rand's case, epistemological need of concretizing abstractions). I call this a judgment of technique and craftsmanship. For a positive value judgment, though, that's inextricably tied to your life in some capacity, in a similar same way you judge a coffee ice cream with chocolate chips is great. Meaning in art is deeper than that though, because it has a lot more to do with how a certain art piece presents to you a view or sense of life about existence. Certain viewpoints are more beneficial to life than others, more obvious examples being the Bible versus The Illiad. I'm not going to claim that I know the proper standards in all of art. I'd have to study more than I have. (aside: I was reading Understanding Objectivism yesterday, and that distinction was used to clarify why Rand said that right now, she sees no way to objectively judge the *meaning* of music as could be done with literature).

At the least, beauty involves judging the essential aesthetic fundamentals of what you're judging, and its relationship with your life (i.e. the positive value judgment). When judging human beauty, I'd say health is a consideration, because that produces an appearance, but to be clear, I'm only saying it is a necessary yet insufficient criterion for beauty judgment. For me, use of reason is even bigger to consider, which is what you'd use for clothing, hair style, body modification, etc. I wrote about this in another thread I wrote up a while ago. Again, if beauty is just an emotional reaction, my above reasoning is void.

I do not think it was supposed to be an end-all "Answer". I think it is relevant when judging the appearance of animate creatures to consider the essential features of that creature, with health being a *consideration* where applicable. What makes a human, human? This is how philosophy is done with Objectivism *anyway*, by considering some concretes, and breaking up a concept into constituent parts. Part of an aesthetic judgment involves health - health has an appearance. No, it's not the whole picture, but it's a piece of the picture. In the same way, we'd consider health as part of morality - health allows you to exist. But morality is not judged on health alone!

Also, the ITOE quote is pretty good, because it talks about teleological measurement, a fundamental part of judging values. Aesthetic judgment is related to value, so also involves teleological measurement. Tone it down a bit - I think OT does have standards in mind (and I respect his insights quite a bit), just opted to mention some quotes first. That quote is a good starting point of discussion.

I found that in terms of concretes, the movie was pretty good about substance of beliefs, leaving aside all the flaws I saw in pacing, maintaining a theme, and plot flow. No elaborate speeches were needed, especially given how Batman is such an introverted person anyway. Bane was essentially a nihilist through-and-through, so he didn't have much to say other than for purposes of manipulation, or admiring the destruction he caused in any form. He was really all about denying that anyone deserved justice, in reaction to how he and Natalia were treated in the Pit. One great line was "Which do you think came first?" when blowing up the roof of the sewer to get to the equipment above ground. This might not be the exact words, but it implied hating any notion of value creation because life depends on the grotesque like the trash left in a sewer. Batman had nothing to respond to anyway - what could he have said to a person like Bane?

Induction occurs all the time in many contexts, not just when coming to philosophical principles or scientific conclusions. So, I'm fascinated to hear how people apply ideas of induction to daily life, perhaps even when they don't realize they're even doing induction. I can think of anything from learning a new recipe, to playing a video game, to figuring out who is the killer in a movie. What are some playful examples of induction that you can think of in your daily life?

*

Playing RPGs makes me think of induction quite easily and readily. It's important to quickly develop strategies to defeat enemies at the time, sometimes having to make decisions before I have all the information I want. If I want to win battles, I need to figure out how to efficiently figure questions out I may have about an enemy. Induction here involves what abilities work, and which aren't nearly as efficient.

When I played Final Fantasy 6 a few months ago, I had to figure out strategies for bosses. Usually I'd go through possible weaknesses to the different types of magic. I'd try ice, fire, or lightning first, see if the boss is weak to any of those elements. I'd even have my non-casters use spells as well, as if a boss does have a weakness, the battle is much quicker. Still, I might find no weakness, so I let my main caster go on as normal by using high rank spells. As I learned throughout playing, I need at least one healer on bosses so I can last safely enough while I look for a weakness. But through that need, I saw how a healer can also buff up my party early on when my party doesn't have a lot of damage taken. This is, for the most part, applied to all bosses. Then again, I've learned that from years of playing video games, so I have a basis already for building up ideas applicable specifically to Final Fantasy 6. Dedicated healers are nice, but since healing spells are quick for party members to learn, I really noticed how a specific healer isn't always needed. Healing with my party members that did less damage overall were my best bet rather than those with only high magic damage stats, especially since if there are no boss weaknesses, most party members do similar damage. The ones that do notable damage I keep as my preferred damage dealers.

The only thing additional I need to figure out what a boss does and how to defend myself – attack strategy isn't my only tool. One boss was such a pain because I thought I was doing so well. There was a head and body, and both were separate from each other. A few other bosses are like this and both usually need to die, so I attack the body first. I progress fine, although it's annoying that the head keeps healing the body. It's nothing too difficult to handle, so I keep going. My mana started depleting – if it hit zero, I wouldn't be able to heal anymore. I pulled through, killed the body... but then the head revived the body. Needless to say, my whole party died soon after. Judging from my difficulty, I figured the next time, I needed to do a lot of damage to the head quickly. Sometimes in games, a healing body part of a boss is the weakest part of all, so that should be killed first. Only in newer games is this really violated as a rule, so I should have remembered that since Final Fantasy 6 is at least eighteen years old, “healing parts die first”. When I tried the boss again, I killed the head first, without a great deal of trouble, then the rest of the boss.

The whole process there is something I've take for granted in the past. I don't really think about my “weakness test” method, or even realize that I'm taking principles from other games (e.j. how to arrange healing for parties in RPGs). But when I analyze what I'm doing, I'm acting pretty inductively – developing principles to use that will be automatized later in the game.

I've stated in the chatroom, and I'll state here, that I believe duels should be legal. So long as every last bullet stays on -their- property, I'm perfectly fine with it. The duel does not infringe on anyone's right, so long as both people mutually consent to the duel, and the bullets do not go on the property of someone who did not agree to allow it.

One of the issues in the chatroom for me was that there's no assurance that the bullets will not miss and hit someone else on accident, which is why I added above that it's legal only in the context that even the bullets themselves stay on the property of the people having the duel (or the property of whoever consented to hold the duel.)

In the chatroom, a number of people claimed that humans could not give up their rights like that, or else that by agreeing to hold a duel, you're not agreeing to die, you're agreeing to risk death. I personally do not see the essential difference between the two in the latter contention, and I don't see why someone would be unable to give up their rights in the former contention.

Heya Superman123, another gay Oist here. Same to the OP, hello! Welcome to the forum.

In response to your recent point, Superman: In a free market system all minorities would be in the same boat. However, there's an important part of Ayn Rand's view of -how- a free market system becomes adopted. Ayn Rand believed that in order for the government to change fundamentally to become more capitalist the general attitude of individuals' personal views on morality and politics would have to change. If a dictator ran in and suddenly abolished taxes, regulations, social programs, and left the perfect framework for a capitalist government with individual rights, it would immediately topple. You can't force people to believe in a philosophical system, and such a system is a necessary part of how a government style arises.

The general trend is that individualism is more compatible with atheism and (classical) liberalism than it is with religion and theocracy. Those fundamentalist religious types who are such 'ardent' supporters of individual rights are simply compartmentalizing their metaphysical and moral beliefs away from their political beliefs. When it comes right down to it Jesus was a dirty hippie who hated family and wanted people to pay their taxes and support the poor, hungry, and bereaved. The association with religion and capitalism has been a recent development in America, and in my opinion it is not a strong bond. There is a ticking timebomb in America's culture war, which ends with the marriage of fundamentalist religion and mystical altruism. Already the two parties are nearly identical ideologically on every important issue, and argue mostly on the most practical way to implement altruism.

So the idea here is that if and when a free market system arises in America it will be to a whole new moral zeitgeist (which the ARI is trying to start) that will necessarily have to include individual rights for all human beings. So you're right, nothing will stop a single shopkeeper from putting up a sign what says "Keep out the gays." And similarly, nothing will stop the majority of people from simply not patronizing such businesses. Any business which unfairly and irrationally denies itself customers is doomed to failure in a capitalist economic system, besides being irrational and immoral to discriminate based on such criteria, it is also not good business sense.

That is a fundamental part of Objectivism: That all real principles must also be practical. There is no dichotomy between theory and practice, because if your principles do not work in practice, they were not good principles in the first place.

Also another thing I am surprised no one has brought up here: Ayn Rand had a very close friend who was gay, her husband's brother. She remained friends with him her entire life. No, she was not a homophobe, and no her recorded comments about gays do not constitute a necessary part of this philosophy. Peikoff is recorded in his podcasts saying that Objectivism does not count homosexuality as immoral and that he personally believes the theory Louie put forth earlier that it may be the sum of a number of choices. This view of his is not a result or tenet of Objectivism.

Objectivism has been the most amazing force for positive change in my life. I know many Objectivist gays and many Objectivists with gay friends. So stick around, Queer Capitalist, and Superman123. We would be happy to have you, and don't let any small minds get you down.

<3

Hume was a rationalist and empiricist. What would Hume would accept as an explanation? An ought cannot be observed, nor can an ought be deduced from any of the Aristotelian syllogistic forms, so the inference he implies is that no ought can be justified.

Was not Hume also the philosopher that claimed there was a mere correlation of events and not causation in the case of a ball striking a window and the glass breaking? He refused to ever connect the dots, or to integrate in the Objectivist terminology. He would never accept such a tenuous connection such as depriving an organism of food, water or air and its subsequent death as causal so he would never accept Rand's explanation of oughts as deriving from the conditional requirements of life.

Most guys who "don't know what they're doing" will err in the opposite direction, outlined by aequalsa in his last post. Telling a woman you value her, and even telling her why, before mutual value has been established through actions and conversation that doesn't consist of compliments (or "meta" comments of any kind), is the fastest way to make her disinterested as far as romance goes.

One idea is that people are aware of the human capacity to "romanticize" things, and people. A guy who overtly compliments a woman on her virtues, is statistically less likely to be a man of value who values her. He is MORE likely to be a man who is somewhat needy or desperate, and clings to the first woman he finds who displays value. Therefore he takes all her positive qualities and ignores the bad ones--or doesn't give himself time to discover them. Women know this, so when a guy starts complimenting them, they figure it's just another desperate lonely guy who "doesn't have a clue".

Let alone the fact that there are guys who think that complimenting a woman is a valid tactic for getting her to like them more. It's not expressly thought in these guys' minds, but this is in lieu of demonstrating virtue or value on his part. It's basically like saying "I have nothing to offer you, except the fact that I like you." Even an Objectivist woman would reject a man in this situation.

Of course perhaps he does have something to offer her, but usually it comes along with a kind of lonely neediness. So women are very quick to dismiss complimenters. Women of value (particularly good-looking ones) get thousands of compliments, so another point is this: complimenting a woman does nothing to set you apart from all the other guys complimenting her, even if you ARE a person of value...she'll think you're not.

[edit] I just read the article. I do think that power games of the specific kind that she mentioned in the last paragraph are pretty sick. But on the other hand, it is true what she said:

"Gentlemen, if you put it out there too fast, too soon, and too uncomplicatedly we will basically figure you for a good-for-nothing loser, with obsessive stalker tendencies and nothing else going on in your life. And will dump you quicker than you can say used tampon."

This is pretty unfortunate, but it is certainly what I've experienced.

There is a sort of deceitfulness that derives from lack of character,
and dependence and emotional extortion - which is ultimately where
mind games and such come from, actually.
Mind games usually denote immaturity, low self-confidence, and essentially fear,
in my experience. A pseudo-strength, hiding weakness.

A woman doesn't have to know you inside out - and early on, why should she? -
for you still to be honest about yourself with her - within appropriate boundaries.
Genuine honesty is your own selfish virtue, not to be switched on and off for the sake
of power, pretence, or to manipulate her. A woman - a worthwhile one - will ALWAYS pick up on the difference between counterfeit and genuine strength of character, and respect it.

And if it's only bed you have in mind, it's as much reason to remain honest to yourself
and her; for many girls it's a refreshing change!

Between the OP and your post, there are three separate issues raised:
1. animal cruelty laws
2. the morality of animal cruelty
3. what you call "the sacrifice of animals"

None of them are fundamental philosophical issues, but the philosophy of Objectivism can easily be applied to resolve them:
1. Animal cruelty laws violate property rights, because animals have no rights.
2. Animal cruelty, for its own sake, is immoral, because it is the act of proliferating psychological corruption.
3. The slaughter or any other use of animals for human benefit is not a sacrifice, and therefor proper, because animal life has no inherent value (because there's not such thing as inherent value).

What is Objectivist view on animal abuse and how those who have been found abusing animals (be it dogs, horses, whatever) should be handled? I can see an issue with animals having rights, but is there a another way for this to be legitimized? I can't see in my mind a free society where people are found to be nearly killing horses and a large variety of other animals in cruel and often utterly disgusting ways like I have seen on tv and then them being able to get away scott free.

Lol, a crummy baker baking crumby cake is what I pictured. XD

In another thread a similar point was made about how once you are born, your chromosomes really don't have as much of a use anymore after birth. Regarding the concept of sex, this is relevant to the extent chromosomes aren't really an essential consideration, unless a biologist wants to better understand early development. Conversation has moved more towards psychological distinctions of sex, which is how gender is distinguished, although I see gender as mostly behavior which is almost entirely related to social norms. To use your analogy, my focus is on what would it mean to quack like a woman versus quack like a man? Gender concepts are alright in the context of a specific culture (what I meant by an emic concept earlier).



Correlation is adequate when you do not have time to thoroughly analyze a concept, such as a lion confronting you on a safari, or a cab driver on an intense schedule (although you probably understand predatory animals well enough to know lion behavior for sure). We have time, so correlation only is inadequate for making conclusions in our discussion.

True, neuroscientists do not even have a full understanding of the brain as a whole, but that does not mean we non-neuroscientists are in a justified position to make generalizations to make up for their lack of knowledge. If you want to talk more about the neuroscience, give me some studies to read. We'd get more done by avoiding heavy science, and instead talking about actual observations of males and females "in their environment" to establish that there is actually a female or male "way" of acting, aside from just how Western society works. One's sex might not establish a uniquely or even notably "female" style, similar to how being Asian in genetic terms does not lead one to being good at math. Maybe a little bit, but other factors matter more. Think of how Rand tried to explain masculinity and femininity. She didn't cite any neuroscience; she went for an abstract argument, albeit one I think is baseless.

The point of this essay is to induce and reduce the principle that “values are objective,” and we’re going to use Ayn Rand’s own life to reach this, since it was her identifications that led to the objective theory of values in the first place.

Here are two deductive (but not rationalistic) approaches to demonstrating that values are objective:

(1) Value requires a valuer […] [Moral evaluation] is possible only if man chooses to pursue a certain goal, which then serves as his standard of value. The good, accordingly, is not good in itself. Objects and actions are good to man and for the sake of reaching a specific goal.

But if values are not intrinsic attributes, neither are they arbitrary decrees. The realm of facts is what creates the need to choose a certain goal. This need arises because man lives in reality, because […] the requirements of his survival, which he does not know or obey automatically, are set by reality (including his own nature). [Man’s evaluations] do not have their source in anyone’s baseless feelings; they are discovered by a process of rational cognition
[...]
Moral value does not pertain to reality alone or to consciousness alone. […] The good, accordingly, is neither intrinsic nor subjective, but objective.
[…]
[T]he good is an aspect of reality in relation to man. That is: the good designates facts—the requirements of survival—as identified conceptually, and then evaluated by human consciousness in accordance with a rational standard of value (life).”
[Peikoff, “Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand,” p. 241-43.]

(2) The intrinsic theory holds that the good resides in some sort of reality, independent of man’s consciousness; the subjectivist theory holds that the good resides in man’s consciousness, independent of reality.

The objective theory holds that the good is neither an attribute of “things in themselves” nor of man’s emotional states, but an evaluation of the facts of reality by man’s consciousness according to a rational standard of value. (Rational, in this context, means: derived from the facts of reality and validated by a process of reason.) The objective theory holds that the good is an aspect of reality in relation to man—and that it must be discovered, not invented, by man. Fundamental to an objective theory of values is the question: Of value to whom and for what? An objective theory does not permit context-dropping or “concept-stealing”; it does not permit the separation of “value” from “purpose,” of the good from beneficiaries, and of man’s actions from reason.

What we want to answer is: how did Ayn Rand reach the theory of objective values from her own experiences in reality?

We should quickly realize that it wasn’t as if Rand had given no thoughts as to what values are before reaching her theories of concepts and of objectivity. If that were the case, not only would she have not lived very long, but she wouldn’t have had any values to apply her theory to. What must have happened is that she had reached an understanding about value’s status, source and validity well before forming her theory of concept-formation or of objectivity, and these later theories allowed her to reach her final theory of values and other identifications (like the connections between objective values, capitalism, and force).

Rand had many explicit values, and she formed an idea of values at an early age. The fictional hero Cyrus Paltons from Maurice Champagne’s The Mysterious Valley, the works of Victor Hugo, skyscrapers she saw, American movies, and tiddlywink music. She also had intense disvalues: the small talk of the Russians of her youth, communism and its effects on her life, folksy, average protagonists, etc. Having intense values is the precondition to any further advancement in regard to values. If you don’t become passionate about your values at an early age, then the ability and motivation to understand their role in your life will never arise, or it will be very difficult to appreciate.

So, what inductions did Rand have to make about values from considering her own values?

By reducing the concepts “values” and “objectivity,” we can reach two inductions: The role of choice in values, and the role of reason and reality in values.

Human Values Involve Choice and Reason

Something that Rand knew as a kid was that her values were not automatic, and not self-evident. Many people did not have her values, and many did not agree with them. What Rand gleamed from this is that values are, in some way, personal to the person valuing; they require the decision of or input from the person. Values aren’t thrust upon people by reality or their particular situations. Some view or decision or input from the person who values is needed.

Another idea that Rand learned was that her values were not on the same level as that of others. She came to disagree with the prevalent idea that values are arbitrary, mere opinions, and that no one’s values are better than anyone else’s. She could give reasons for why she valued things, whereas she would note that other people who disagreed with her couldn’t provide any reasons for their values. Later on, she would induce that all ideas have to be reached by reason, and that this has a relation to the role of values.

In some sense, Rand grasped that values involve her choice and the functioning of her reason. She learned that values have some relationship to the facts and don’t pertain to just your wishes, that you have to understand these facts with your mind in order for your choices to be rational. On the one hand, she learned that values involved her knowledge and her thoughts, whereas on the other hand, those who disagreed with her would preach blind obedience to holy commandments or to some authority. She knew in an introspective way that if she didn’t understand the reasons for something, then she would openly oppose the view that it was a value to her because some authority said so. She knew that her values had to be reasonable, and that is why she would choose them. So when arbitrary commands were issued to her as duties, like “don’t read so much, be more social, stop being so intellectual and intense,” she would despise them and disobey them. Her view of reason and values, combined with the non-value of other people’s commandments towards her resulted in a generalization that she knew very well from her own experiences, that “nothing is valuable until or unless it passes the test of my own reason.”

From an early age, Rand knew that both choice and reason-recognizing-facts are involved in values properly.

“God Said: ‘Take What You Want and Pay for It.’”

With the knowledge that values involve both human choice and reason grasping facts, she could successfully deal with opposing views in philosophy that she would encounter in high school and in college. The “Duty” school of the Kantians and Christians: they are very similar to the people in her neighborhood who would tell her to do something simply because she “has” to, that it’s her “duty” as a girl or a child, etc. The school of subjectivists-skeptics whose view was that nothing is certain, so anything goes or is equal to anything else: she believed that some values were better than others; some values are based on reason and facts, and some were not. Values for her were not an issue of “do whatever you want,” and not an issue of uncritical obedience to someone’s edicts or commands.

Eventually, the question arose, “how do I reconcile these two, values involving choice, and values involving reality?” The history of philosophy basically split on this question, taking one side or the other. If values are based on choices, then values are subjective, it’s essentially up to you to decide them, and reality has no say in the matter. If values are based on reality, then it’s like the law of gravity, and you have no choice in the matter, you just have to obediently accept the values that reality hands down, and that’s the intrinsic school. She learned something about both choice and reality that allowed her to combine the two while not getting trapped in one side or the other.

What she learned that allowed her to advance in this issue was a form of causality, represented by her favorite Spanish proverb: “God said: Take what you want and pay for it.” In her interpretation, this means that you choose a goal, an object that you want (the role of choice here), and reality sets the course to reach the goal, and the consequences of the achievement that result. Reality sets the cause-and-effect, the means required and the consequence, and one’s choice sets the ultimate purpose for acting. At this stage of her thinking, a choice was rational when you knew your reasons for doing it, when you knew the means required to reach your goal, and when you knew and accepted the consequences that would result.

(Later on, she would connect this thinking with Aristotle’s doctrine of final causation:

In order to make the choices required to achieve his goals, a man needs the constant, automatized awareness of the principle which the anti-concept “duty” has all but obliterated in his mind: the principle of causality—specifically, of Aristotelian final causation (which, in fact, applies only to a conscious being), i.e., the process by which an end determines the means, i.e., the process of choosing a goal and taking the actions necessary to achieve it. (http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/final_causation.html ))

In some sense, she knew that this didn’t completely answer the status of value, because it left open the question, “What is the status of the basic goal or decision or choice?”

Could the Spanish proverb mean:

“Choose whatever you want as the goal of your life, and then follow reality in reaching it?” If it did mean that, it would be a complete surrender to subjectivism. Joseph Stalin could say, “I pick destroying millions of people,” and his regime carried that out in reality, he took whatever steps were necessary to accomplish it. He also accepted the consequences: if socialist revolutionaries, conspirators, freedom fighters, etc. tried to kill him, he ordered thousands of his guards to protect him while living in his country house, and had food tasters at every meal to ensure that he didn’t die of some hidden poison in his food or drinks. So if the test of the proverb was, “consistency with the goal you choose, no matter what it is,” then Stalin would have passed it. And that’s why the proverb alone can’t be the basis for values in reality: it gives far too much emphasis on the “choice” component of values as a primary, and not on the fact that reason or reality should be guiding your choice, even in the case of a basic choice.

“Life” Makes “Value” Possible and Necessary

If we reduce “values are objective,” we’ll reach something that points back at that question I posited, about the status of the basic choice or goal.

“Values are a means to an end.” This is something established by the reality of cause-and-effect, and by simply introspecting on one’s values. Rand probably reached this induction by thinking about what goals she wanted to accomplish by reading Victor Hugo’s works, or watching American movies, or listening to Tiddlywink music, as they were means to an end of hers in one way or another.

The problem, which she didn’t solve until her 40’s, was “what is the ultimate goal that will serve as a standard of value?” and further, “how do we relate it to reality?” Discovering the ultimate goal would allow us to tie all values to reality, and if it turns out that it is an issue that we have a choice about, then everything can be integrated together because it will be choice and reality together with values in some way.

From there on out, she would be on a course to find an ultimate goal and standard of value that we have a choice to adopt or not, but was required by reality in that it still had to be discovered. The results of her search can be read in Galt’s speech and in “The Objectivist Ethics.” Through a series of identifications, she realized that living things have needs, and they have goals that require actions on their part to satisfy these needs—living things are goal-directed, and face an alternative of life or death, existence or non-existence. Inanimate objects don’t require anything to remain the way they are (they only need to be left alone), and nothing matters to them, even if they are reduced to ashes (or subatomic particles)—they have no needs, and so they merely react with no negative or positive consequences for them. At some point, she connected this train of thought to her earlier identification that “values are that which one acts to gain and/or keep.” Combining these points, she discovered that values are what living things act to gain and/or keep, ultimately to remain alive (through fulfilling whatever subordinate end the value exists for). Life, she reasoned, is a series of actions generated by the living thing itself, designed to sustain the thing’s existence, and the means of sustaining itself is successfully satisfying its needs through value-achievement.

(Historically, she says that she didn’t fully understand how “value” depends on “life” until after “The Fountainhead,” so she likely reached her mature, philosophical argument for her ethical views while writing notes for “Atlas Shrugged.” For instance, she said that while writing “The Fountainhead,” she didn’t realize that even weeds have values. See “100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand,” p. 335)

These identifications allowed her to change her understanding of the concepts of “life” and “value,” such that one would depend on the other. She notes that our automatic pleasure-pain mechanism indicates what is the right or wrong action in a given context, and that the standard being used is the conscious organism’s own life; she also states that our emotional mechanism has two basic emotions, joy and suffering, and that these operate under a standard of value that is chosen by us, determined by how we choose to live. Both pleasure and joy indicate that a value is being achieved, and both are indications that the organism in question is furthering his life (and the opposite for pain and suffering). From observations and reasoning such as these (and many more in addition), she came to the pivotal conclusions that both the reality and very concept of “value” is made possible and necessary by the reality and concept of “life.”

“Life” (that is, the existence of living things and the concept of “life”) makes “value” possible because values require the accomplishment of a goal in the face of an alternative, such that the action’s success or failure makes a difference to the thing that acts; inanimate objects have nothing at stake, and matter merely changes its form, never ceasing to exist—when living things exist, so do values. “Life” makes “value” necessary because living things do face an alternative of life or death, and can lose their lives if they fail to achieve their values—it is impossible for a life to continue without accomplishing the values that its nature requires.

In one grand-scale integration, she came to three important conclusions about life which would allow her to solve her problem about what the “standard of value” could be: she determined that life is the ultimate end or goal, life is an end-in-itself, and life is the ultimate value. Life isn’t a means to anything else except continued living, continued existence, so fulfilling life only results in more life that requires action to sustain, and this is why it’s an “end-in-itself,” not a means to any other end. It’s the ultimate end or goal, because all of the other goals are means to the end of keeping the living thing within the realm of reality, to keep it alive, just like one sleeps, eats, or drinks to remain alive. And it is the ultimate value because it is for the sake of life that actions are taken to achieve other values. With all of these inductions clear to her, she reached her seminal induction: “life is the standard of value.”

Life is the Standard of Value

A standard is an abstract reference point or principle that we use to measure or gauge things in order to guide us in carrying out a specific purpose. By taking “life” as the standard of value, we can observe the effects of our purported values on life, whether positive or negative, and thus determine whether it is a genuine value or not. This is the way in which Rand held that life, the ultimate value and end-in-itself, could set the standard by which all lesser goals could be evaluated. Whatever furthered the life of an organism is the good, and whatever threatened its life is the evil.

Once she reached the principle that “life is the standard,” she began the process of analyzing all of her accepted values, showing that they were all reducible to “life is the standard.” Reason, virtue, production, sex, happiness, art, self-esteem, purpose, morality, individual rights, etc., are all examined under this new principle of hers, and the principle became central to the philosophy of Objectivism as a result. Not only could she tie all of her values to reality with this overarching principle (in addition to the specific reasons she had before for holding those things as values), but she could also integrate this principle with her view that human values involve choice, too: “life being the standard” was something that a person had to choose. If a person didn’t choose life, then Rand was now in the position to show the person that the whole issue of what is good or bad for them became philosophically unintelligible without choosing life.

A proper value, Rand now believed, means a goal that was chosen in accordance with reality by comparison to an ultimate goal and standard of value, which is life based on reality.

Values are Objective

She was ready to advance another stage higher than even all of these previous integrations once she fully developed her theory of concept-formation and her reformulation of objectivity. Once her knowledge of objectivity grew, she only needed to integrate the process of forming concepts with the process of forming values. Both concepts and human values involve the awareness of something in reality in addition to something contributed by human consciousness—in the case of concepts, the contribution is measurement-omission; in the case of values, it is the choice to live. Rand could then say that values are objective because they are formed by a definite method, but not by some authority claiming that something in reality is an intrinsic value, and not by subjective, arbitrary feelings. This method involves two factors, just like in the case of concepts: existence and consciousness. Values are objective because the good is an aspect of reality in relation to human beings, just as our concepts are, and this means that logic can be used to evaluate what we claim to be our values using the standard of life. Rand reached the theory of objective values in 1965-66, soon after realizing the significance of her expansion of the concept of objectivity, and so she reached this idea at around the age of 60, and it was a theory that she pretty much worked her whole life to formulate.

Meta-blog, automatic cross-post

Hi everyone. So, I was in a discuasion with some Liberarian friends of mine about Atpas Shrugged when one of them chimed in statong that Ayn Rand actually created a voluntarist/agorist utopia in Galt's Gulch as it had no government. I disagreed with this person and then another person said they did not rwmember it having any government either. I do not currently have the book in my posession and it uas been some time since I last read it. Could someone verify or otherwise refute this claim for me please? I find it unlikely that Ayn Rand would make sucu a mistake but I would like to be able to prive it Apparently this guy named Stefan Molyneux, who I have seen a number of other things from him I disagree with (he is an anarchist libertarian) made a youtube video stating this and this claim has since exploded into online communities. As a side note, someone also made this xokment to me when I said it had a government:

So, I'm going to reply to the OP here, although probably some of what I will say has been said already in another way. Also let me say that I share your regard for the philosophy underlying Rowling's HP series. So here goes.



First of all, I think you have to see the same sentiment in Rand's writings. Her ideal characters are willing to live life only on their own terms, not on anyone else's. They are clearly not aiming at 'mere survival,' but something more. So let's explore this a little. She certainly states that her morality is based on the alternative of life and death, and yet her morality does not seem to result in people who are willing to prolong their life at all costs. Whence the disconnect?

When she says that the fundamental alternative is life or death, she is attempting to give some guidance as to what is a value or not. It's fine to say that love is what is worth living for, but that leaves the deeper question: what is worthy of love? Even love can be directed at the wrong people or things. There are any number of people who would swear that they love people who treat them badly; abuse them, cheat on them, etc. Voldemort himself harbors a love for power (which Rand herself illustrates as wrong through the character of Gail Wynand). We need standards for love just like any other emotion; this is what Rand means when she says that emotions are not tools of cognititon.

You write as though it's a crime for Objectivists to say that emotions are what's worth living for, but Objectivism does not denigrate emotion. Emotion is critically important, and those that disregard it do so at their own peril. And yet, we need standards to tell us what it is proper to feel positive emotions for, and we know from experience that emotion itself does not provide these standards. So what is the ultimate standard that tells us, no matter how good it might feel, that things that detract from our overall well-being are not good? What tells us that (to use an extreme example), no matter how good heroin feels, it's not ultimately a value?

It's our long-term well-being; as Rand would say, our own life, lived over the long term. Survival isn't precisely the right word, because once we invest in a certain value that is concordant with our long-term well-being (like a person, or an ideal), we might very well sacrifice our own life for that value. Rand gives numerous examples, such as John Galt, who is willing to die to save Dagny, or a rational soldier who might be willing to die for the sake of preserving freedom in his nation. The Harry Potter series gives us more: defeating an enemy who seeks to subjugate all before him. In all such instances, what is common among the things worth dying for? It is the fact that these are the things that promote human life, or the kinds of people or relationships that promote our own individual lives. Those things that promote human life (as over the alternative of death) are the things ultimately worth fighting (and dying) for. In that light, let's look at some of your HP quotes (quotes that I wholeheartedly agree with):



Rand seeks to provide the philosophy for living a truly human life. Her ultimate goal is to provide the philosophy for achieving happiness and success on this earth. All of her characters accept the fact that they will eventually die; and yet, their achievements in their own lives are of paramount importance to them. She goes one step further in asking, what is the root of human achievement? Her answer: it makes life better for us all, it prolongs our life on this earth, it furthers the goal of human health and well-being. And what is the root of the concepts of health and well-being? It is the fundamental alternative of life or death. That's what she means when she says that all we do should be ultimately to promote our own lives.

Even anecdotal, such as "women are more empathetic". It's something I observe to be generally true, but I think it is sufficiently explained by a cultural influence rather than any gender tendency.

That's the point, is it not? Even if having eight arms and gills made you something besides homo sapiens, you'd still have your rational faculty, in addition to some physical traits that may leave you off better than before.

Right, it's your value system that leads to your dislike. Your value system is in your power to alter, but you can't make changes in a day. The more integrated a choice, the harder it is to choose a different one. Sexuality as a sense of life topic is one where the choice is so integrated that it's difficult to change (and may be influenced - not caused - by biology). Aesthetic preferences are quite similar. You will be unable to will yourself to like it, just as a communist would be unable to simply start reading Rand and enjoy it immediately. Changing ideas and preferences take time, and a lot of the time changes never happen. Volition isn't the power to make a choice at a moments notice; It's the ability to direct your course of life in the long-term.

The rest of my previous post was directed at the OP in general, and some of what Jaskn wrote.

SFreeman, I would bet your friend is mainly taking a stance that mind trumps body, as a type of mind body dichotomy. When people make a distinction between sex and gender, it typically is physical traits versus psychological character traits, respectively. Whether or not these distinctions are important with regards to masculinity or femininity is the topic of discussion, basically. Your friend seems to be just taking something related to the mind and implicitly suggesting that a mind is somehow more powerful. So, it is sufficient for her to say "if someone says they're female, they are!" In this sense, gender is already working like an anti-concept, and destroying the concept of sex in the process. I'm not saying alteration is wrong, only that there isn't even an attempt at objective definition on your friend's side.

A "brain sex' does not seem any different than expanded definition of male or female. At the least, your brain does not necessarily lead to any particular character trait. I do not know the science on brain differences between the sexes, but I can't tell you what traits must follow at a statistically higher rate due to any brain differences. If there are at least a couple well-established causal relationships, then that is likely to be your basis of a better conception of gender.



I'm quite sure working with cars is traditionally seen to be a "masculine" job. For Western culture as far as I've seen, it does matter. Still, my point is that a gender role is not what defines masculinity or feminity, and you seemed to agree. If a man did all those things in public, sure, if we go by cultural standards, he is being feminine. As I was saying earlier, I don't think a concept of gender *in this manner* is playing a helpful role as all concepts should. The distinctions cover too much ground. Perhaps this means gender is a valid concept like altruism is a valid concept, but keeping it as wholly distinct from one's sex rather than an interchangeable word is harmful and even collectivistic. Presuming a rational culture, I would bet that distinctions between masculine and feminine would lose meaning to the degree that people think for themselves. A concept of sex would matter, but masculine/femine would be useless beyond application to types of clothing made for male or female body types.

Nowadays, gender works pretty fluidly anyway. People don't fit into hard categories of masculine or feminine; it's more like a continuum that is correlated with how the average male or female of a culture thinks, whether or not that's good.

You sure had me fooled; your posts are as long as novels!

I am getting tangled up as well at just what the direction of discussion is. As I see it, the main points are: (1) a concrete example is needed to add some context, so DonAthos wants to project more on supposed negative consequences of casual sex, (2) at least on my end, I think it is important to address how one can validate ideas on sex; some notion of casual sex seems acceptable, (3) sex is of course plenty pleasurable anyway, so if there are opportunities for sex with people who are quite good people that might not be romantic companions, it should be pursued.

All those points are generally independent. The goal of discussion seems to be getting at what kind of negative effects casual sex has. On the far end of the value spectrum, there are likely not-so-good people who may only be a night of fun, which is pretty well established as bad for strongly divorcing mind and body. This does not seem to be quite the consequence of at least generally valuable/good people.

Sure, his examples are fiction, but I can't see how any of this can be discussed without at least invented, plausible examples. Perhaps there is an actual story out there to talk about, but I can't think of one. I think Don is fair in saying that if his examples are unrealistic, point out what makes the whole thing unproductive to discuss. Christy is clearly prudish and thinking in a rationalistic way, but that may be irrelevant to discussion. I doubt anyone is going to claim that one should go as far to say "never sex before marriage!".

The Misty example does add some concreteness to a quite abstract discussion. It's an attempt to give a context realistic enough that we can discuss what casual sex is supposed to mean in this discussion. If we call Misty's behavior "casual sex" I don't think even matters. I interpreted her (fictional) intention to be that of desiring to understand sex - abstractly and concretely - in order to make her own life better overall. She didn't have sex just for the hell of it, the consequences be damned. Maybe one can claim that Misty is in fact doing herself harm in the long run, even if she's quite alright now, and she believes herself to be. But what kind of harm is she doing to herself in the long-run? Surely we can project what harm could be caused, even if this is fiction. Projecting ahead is how any action can be judged as a bad idea and therefore immoral.


Why does it sound like she's on the wrong side of "enough versus not enough" dividing line? True, she had sex with people that she was not in a romantic relationship with. At least, I think that's what your reasoning is. But that sounds an awful like taking important ideas for granted. As I was trying to reason from your own examples, Sandy does easily pass the "enough" line without being a romantic partner. So, I'm not seeing what your objection actually is. I attempted to get at reasons why Misty's relatively casual approach (hardly at the level of random hookups, to be sure) could be perfectly alright and moral.

People do vary in their general interest in sex and sex drive. Not that sex matters less for people with low sex drives or low interest levels are making an error, but the pursuit of understanding isn't nearly as strong. By understand, I don't mean anything like mastering sexual technique. I mean grasping what sex means, fully and experientially. Finding a romantic relationship is certainly one of the most difficult things to do, so it's important to think about how sex should be treated outside of a relationship. If one's interest is on the lower end, there is less desire to figure it all out, and just sex in romantic relationships is perfectly fine. If one's interest is on the higher end, there is plenty of desire to figure it all out. I don't mean that one is enslaved to their passions where sexual urge is just a primal desire to be satisfied whatever the cost. That's why I brought up other examples of practical wisdom (I shouldn't have said skill). Practical wisdom is acquired by *doing*, so practical wisdom about sex can only be acquired by having sex. For some, practical wisdom of sex is extremely important for whatever reason (just as some people care about being a good musician more than being a good writer), so standards should be altered accordingly. That "whatever" reason may simply be "given my context in life right now absent a romantic partner, yet knowing several really awesome people, and given a high sex drive and interest in understanding sex better, it'd be worth having sex with those awesome people". Hardly absent of standard, but certainly casual in some sense.

I'll bust out some Aristotle quotes if my points on practical wisdom are unclear.

So, I am an amateur classical guitarist. I've been studying the instrument for some time. I have made some tabs and arrangements, mostly of video game music. (Don't sniff just yet!)

About a month ago, I made an arrangement that I have been absolutely ecstatic about, because I didn't know it could be done on guitar. Now I've practiced it, and made a video:



Hope you enjoy it! If I do anything else that I'd like to present, I'll post it here, too. And feel free to check out the rest of my channel if you like.