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Is objectivism consequentialist?

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7 minutes ago, KyaryPamyu said:

A while ago I heard an anecdote by Harry Binswanger in which Ayn Rand was arguing with somebody who denied the law of Identity (A=A) on the grounds that a moving object has no particular spatial position. Every time you look at the object, it is in a different position, so where is it? Ayn Rand replied that the particular object isn't anywhere, it is in transition. Its identity is that it is changing its location.

Not to derail the conversation, but I would love to see the effects of this anecdote on many of the conversations I've seen over the years regarding quantum physics and the like...

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3 hours ago, 2046 said:

Eudaemonia is more focusing on a way of function, of excellence in ones mode of functioning, achieving ones unique potentialities and fulfillment of purpose and personal growth. Sometimes we might actually want to feel to opposite of pleasure in order to get what we really want, as in Roark working in the quarry.

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Okay, we will swim through a sewer to grab our bar of gold. There is no such thing as "the virtue of swimming in the sewer". The bar of gold in itself does not cause pleasure, it is the possibilities, the freedoms it provides that give meaning to swimming. So the swim in that sewer at that particular time is part of what is "the good". Flourishing in this context, is an anticipation, in the mind that causes pleasure and thus motivation.

What I hear is "follow your bliss", the pleasure is based on a desire to survive but no need to think about it.

It is the possibility that creates pleasure that is at the core of the motivation. But implicit, in a non-contradictory way, is the requirement for life/existence/survival and the hidden desire for it.

But I wonder if at the core of your argument is that human motivation is never arbitrary. That when one wants something, there is a reason (even if not consciously known). But the implication is that: One does not require a final purpose, one that has no purpose, that any purpose can be a purpose that has no other purpose (fulfillment, satisfaction etc).

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1 hour ago, KyaryPamyu said:

I think this smuggles in the premise that pursuing survival (the 'pure' type) would never require you to temporarily diminish your momentary wellbeing for the sake of increased survival later on. In reality, pursuing survival pretty much requires you to incur 'hits' to your momentary survival. As the norm, I might add.

A while ago I heard an anecdote by Harry Binswanger in which Ayn Rand was arguing with somebody who denied the law of Identity (A=A) on the grounds that a moving object has no particular spatial position. Every time you look at the object, it is in a different position, so where is it? Ayn Rand replied that the particular object isn't anywhere, it is in transition. Its identity is that it is changing its location.

I think that the same thing can be applied to ethics. In fact, it was captured by Rand in her definition of life: 'A process of self-sustaining, self-generated action'. While it may appear a stationary definition, it is exactly the opposite. Survival is not merely a process of staying alive - it is a constant, never ending departure from your current position to a better state. This fact seems to have a expression in the way our brains are made: once you get where you want, you always have to move higher and higher, because you become progressively desensitized to what you currently have. If you suddenly find yourself without intellectual challenge, or doing the same things over and over, you become bored out of your mind. A lot of  enjoyment is derived from the process of moving forward itself, from gaining values as well as enjoying values.

Just to be clear, I agree with SL (and even Kelley) that flourishing is not the goal of life. To sunder the two is to ignore the hierarchy: life -> value -> survival -> moving forward (flourshing). Ayn Rand understood survival to be a state of transition from a lower state of robustness to a higher one. Death is also a state of transition, which is why you can't judge somebody's course by the claim that he is 'happy'. If his happiness is a slow march into the Lion's den, he's wilfully undergoing a process of slow death, no matter how well he tends to his physical health in the meantime.

The excessive prudence that the' survivalist' displays is the result of his Gryllsian view of survival. He don't see the fact that life is actually a broad timeline filled with factors that cannot be separated from each other. Flourishers, on the other hand, tend to speak on the unstated, or unidentified premise that reality is full of things that conflict with survival while enabling flourishing. The flourishing-survival dichotomy is similar to the classical variants of the mind-body break: love vs sex, percepts vs. concepts. In reality, the thrill seeking & cool things that flourishers say they want to do (insteading of being tied to the 'boring' survivalist view) ARE what survival entails. A lack of pleasure and excitement is anti-life in the sense that it moves you away from survival and proper functioning.  

Rand captured this in the virtue of Pride: a person of unsundered rationality not only has the best life possible to him at any given moment in time, but he's also necessarily in a state of 'transition' to even higher self-esteem, wealth, health etc. Stilness means death, in the sense that every time somebody tries to remain where he already is ('freezing' his survival in place), he is actively hurting his survival, not maintaining it. In the example above, the hero does not gain five years of life by giving up his dream. Instead, he becomes spiritualy diseased.

A person who shortens his life for a fuller experience does not forfeit survival, he acts exclusively on the principle of survival. This is not a negation of A=A. Ayn Rand was clear that the standard of value is survival as a specific kind of being.

Survival as man does not mean merely longevity. It means pleasure, challenge, hobbies, love, art, friendship, constantly moving forward and other factors relevant to what he is. The values that man needs qua man are his actual means to longevity. A lot of people turn longevity into a contextless standard and then proceed to seek it in ways that not only hurts their own goal, but makes them survive not as men, but as diseased forms of life. Ayn Rand used the term 'metaphysical monstruosity' in Galt's Speech, and gave the example of a bird struggling to break its own wings, or a plant trying to destroy its own roots. So we can identfiy yet another dichotomy here: the longevity vs identity dichotomy. 

I think Rand would have agreed with me, since she put some examples in her books. For example, the before-mention Galt suicide threat, which appears in the same book as Galt's speech. Surely she must have counted on the fact that Galt's actions would shed some context on her abstract presentation. Galt is not choosing between death (suicide) and survival. He is choosing between two different types of death: by slow torture, or instantaneous. Galt is not motivated by any flourishing-survival dichotomy. His best use of reason told him that he has legitimate grounds to be 100% convinced that his life would become a living embodiment of precisely the thing that his own ethical code condemned. So paradoxically, his suicide over Dagny was a statement of a moral choice, in total agreement with survival qua man.

There are legitimate cases where a change to a different course really isn't possible. Let's look at Galt. He longed for Dagny for a decade, a process that slowly imprinted her into his psyche as each day passed. Every time he had trouble getting motivated, he used her as fuel. He watched her go into the beds of two men he admired. He then got her, but.. what if she died at the hands of a bunch of petty people that represent what he despises the most? 10 years of striving and emotional investment, negated in an instant. A decade of his life, wasted. He probably understood the repercussions on his psychology that her death would have caused. He would lose desire to do anything, no matter how heroically he'd try to get on track. Implying he then wasted 5 more years in depression, and that eventually his desire for women returned, what competiton would there be? If another mercilessly-rational woman with the brains and character to build the John Galt line in a collapsing country was around, he would have known about her. For him, it's either the vice-president or nothing. It would haunt him forever. So, contra SL, I would say that sometimes, but not always, 'pursuing a different dream' can be anti-life. 

I will go on a limb and say that the pure survivalist, Kelley-type position is really the absolute same as the flourisher position, when all of the factors are brought into question. The most ardent Flourisher is actually the most ardent, pure and bare-bones Survivalist. And all 'self-actualization'-based ethical systems are useless unless people understand that self-actualization is not an intrinsic end in itself, but the effect, the natural result of a survivalist ethics. The alternative is accidentaly pursuing 'self-actualization' in a way that goes against its root (survival), which leads to consequences that are too obvious to mention. The self-realization vs survival dichotomy.

This is nothing short of brilliant.

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On 10/17/2017 at 1:17 PM, Harrison Danneskjold said:

So if I stopped wanting to live tomorrow then it'd be alright for me to blow myself up on a bus full of nuns and orphans, right?

 

On 10/17/2017 at 1:38 PM, StrictlyLogical said:

What technically do you mean by "it'd be alright"?

 

If blowing oneself up on a bus full of nuns and orphans is irrelevant to morality then the most we could ever say about it would be emotional ejaculations like "ew, that's gross" (as one might respond to the prospect of an anchovy pizza): we might find it personally distasteful and we might even try to prohibit it, but at the end of the day we must concede that it's a valid option.

I do not believe it's a valid option for anyone, regardless of their circumstances. Although I find it just as distasteful as I'm sure you do, I also believe it's objectively and demonstrably wrong (wrong in the way that "2+2=5" is) and I'm prepared to try to demonstrate how and why.

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A process of reason is a process of constant choice in answer to the question: True or False?—Right or Wrong? Is a seed to be planted in soil in order to grow—right or wrong? Is a man’s wound to be disinfected in order to save his life—right or wrong? Does the nature of atmospheric electricity permit it to be converted into kinetic power—right or wrong? It is the answers to such questions that gave you everything you have—and the answers came from a man’s mind, a mind of intransigent devotion to that which is right.

This isn't all that relevant to actual suicide bombers: don't argue with someone who wants to destroy you; run the Hell away and alert the authorities. However, there are countless other evils in the world today that stem from similar errors. Walk into any chapel service, for example, and you'll hear all the same types of distortions, falsehoods, misevaluations and sometimes open misanthropy which cumulatively allow someone to think to themselves that it'd be a good idea to blow up nuns and orphans.

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     The purpose of your struggle is not to know, not to grasp or name or hear the thing. I shall now state to your hearing: that yours is the Morality of Death.

    Death is the standard of your values, death is your chosen goal, and you have to keep running, since there is no escape from the pursuer who is out to destroy you or from the knowledge that that pursuer is yourself.

If you can't argue against the fundamental validity of worshipping death then to me that indicates room for you to learn more about egoism. Which is what I meant for my question to imply.

On 10/17/2017 at 1:45 PM, Invictus2017 said:

It wouldn't be "alright".  And it wouldn't be unethical, either.  ... Of course, to others, who have not abandoned life, it would be evil.
 

So are you basically saying "ew, I don't like that"?

23 hours ago, Invictus2017 said:

I am ignoring and will continue to ignore it because it is derivative....way down the logic chain.

That's true.

I would prefer not to discuss yet the ways in which I think certain moral standards will harm their adherents. It'd be very difficult for me to discuss that without some amount of armchair psychoanalysis (which never ends well); although I disagree with most of the things that've been posted in this thread, I haven't seen anything atrocious enough to warrant that. So their sociopolitical ramifications -derivative as they are- seemed a less personal line of reasoning to the same conclusions.

Perhaps something still better will occur to me.

 

23 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

I cannot tell if you are taking up the Survivalist's position, or arguing against the idea of minimoralism being minimal i.e. only what is necessary.

I was disputing your claim that a morality which applies universally to every choice we make would not reduce us to mindless, robotic slaves to the calculus.

 

There are many different ways for me to try to program something. 

When I was first learning Java I would type something out (and retype and rearrange it until the compiler stopped yelling at me) and then immediately run it to see what it did. Later, there was a long period of time in which I'd code enormous subroutines and entire classes in an hour or two (certain that my conception was perfect and rushing to create it before I'd forget), run it and then send several weeks trying to determine what went wrong. Now I have a system. I make a list of all the classes I think I'll need, sketch out each one's most important parts, try to determine if any of them should be combined or split up and whether there's a better way to do any of the algorithms, repeat sketching and conceiving until I can't think of anything better and only then do I code anything (carefully).

Does my system replace me as the programmer? I don't think so. I came up with it; I defined what sorts of designs were "better" or "worse" and I'm constantly expanding and improving it. Although it determines all of my programming-related choices and actions (at least when I'm on my A game) it's difficult for me to even conceive of it as anything other than a tool I've made for myself.

 

I see Egoism as analogous to that.

 

On 10/17/2017 at 2:40 PM, StrictlyLogical said:

This is a non sequitur, and you have conflated the concept of objectivity with material determinism.. which has nothing to do with objectivity of a standard being useful.

No, I was using an analogy to subtly point out what's wrong with justifying minimoralism on the basis of science and objectivity.

If I had said that minimoralism is behaviorism, that would be a conflation. I didn't think the missing logical steps needed to be pointed out.

Clearly I was mistaken about that, though. My bad.

On 10/17/2017 at 2:40 PM, StrictlyLogical said:

He simply is not living up to the enacting all that is required for a complex physical and mental being... 

His survival is not dictated by his mental well-being, sir, no matter how "complex" the issues involved. That is a non-sequitur at bare minimum.

 

On 10/17/2017 at 2:40 PM, StrictlyLogical said:

As for the meta-ethical question of what he lives his life FOR, and what meaning he gets from life, and whether he even chooses to live.. there is nothing in reason I could say to him other than ... don't you want it?

And if he says "no, I just want to blow up a bus full of nuns and orphans" then ... ?

 

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You who are innocent enough to believe that the forces let loose in your world today are moved by greed for material plunder—the mystics’ scramble for spoils is only a screen to conceal from their mind the nature of their motive. Wealth is a means of human life, and they clamor for wealth in imitation of living beings, to pretend to themselves that they desire to live, but their swinish indulgence in plundered luxury is not enjoyment, it is escape. They do not want to own your fortune, they want you to lose it; they do not want to succeed, they want you to fail; they do not want to live, they want you to die; they desire nothing, they hate existence, and they keep running, each trying not to learn that the object of his hatred is himself.

-Galt's Speech

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19 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

Once he has chosen death he has ceased to be an Objectivist, and he certainly does not adhere to Objectivist ethics which is built upon the choice to live.  Whether or not he ascribes to a sort of ad hoc subjective ethics of his own invention and how he would evaluate these choices according to that ethics is a question open to pure speculation.

 

Let us say that an Objectivist that is 40 years old has now given up on living to his 200th birthday. Has he ceased being an Objectivist?

What exactly does giving up on life mean?


Even a suicide bomber has to live from the day he has the plan to the "month after" when he blows up. Doesn't he have to live for that one month? Or is he amoral at the instant he chose to blow himself up?
 

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23 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

Already there is a social context. 
But I guess its down the logic chain.

Yes, it is. How many people should interact logically depends on how a person should act.

I don't think it'd be invalid to work backwards towards a conclusion, as long as we double-checked it the other way afterwards (making sure we didn't contradict anything more fundamental). Sometimes that's the easiest way to solve a problem.

It is still backwards, though.

 

20 hours ago, Invictus2017 said:

This does not depend on which flavor of ethics one adopts.  Every ethical proposition X, when fully stated, is of the form, "If you choose to live, then X."

Do you mean to include every moral code in that? If so then I have some churches to show you. Or was that just an oversight?

 

19 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

Sigh.

 

Do you honestly believe there exists any type of flourishing in reality open to a man which does not in reality increase (even by the smallest infinitesimal amount) his chances of and his continued ability to survive?

Any of the men who died in the American revolution. Marie Curie. Everyone who's ever died trying to escape dictatorship. The astronauts of Apollo One.

*sigh*

 

7 hours ago, 2046 said:

Sometimes we might actually want to feel to opposite of pleasure in order to get what we really want, as in Roark working in the quarry.

But despite the various pains he endured there, didn't Roark experience a higher sort of satisfaction by holding on to his own values and standards (and consequently, in the context of his whole life, a net increase in "good stuff")?

I know we're venturing into the nature of nonsensory types of "pleasure" now (which is far from obvious to me) but that's what I thought the last time I read it.

 

7 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

Your reasoning is pushing towards the ethics of emergencies and suicide.... and is an evasion from the question I asked.  

...

Give me an example. Identify a single type or kind of flourishing which does not lead to any increase whatever in a man's ability to survive.

He mentioned John Galt's choice to commit suicide if Dagny was caught. Every single person arguing for something like "flourishing" here has mentioned it and you have yet to address it.

 

I don't know whether that's an evasion or whether you just didn't notice or consider it relevant; there's a lot going on here, across several dimensions simultaneously, which makes it very difficult to know where anybody's main focus is. So I won't claim to have such knowledge.

It would, however, probably be instructive if you could address that at some point.

 

Also, I've been assuming that by "minimoralism" you mean your own grasp of egoism, which you've named for the sake of clarity (and which, if true, I greatly appreciate), but is that true? Because if you see it as something distinct then there are a lot of observations and arguments that I don't need to have on the back burner any longer.

 

4 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

To ignore the nature of man, the social being, the need for others, be it for trade, knowledge, play, sex would have to be brought up earlier or it will be vulnerable to these arguments.

Nobody (not SL nor even Invictus) is ignoring that; they're omitting it for the specific purpose of this conversation, while keeping in mind that those derivative issues are still real and important (but currently irrelevant).

It's not necessarily invalid, either, and the points I want to make don't require it (it'd be a problem if they did). I was hoping to get away with doing this slightly out of order, in order to avoid the messier route, but it's looking less and less like that'll work.

 

Well, there's more than one way to skin a cat.

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6 hours ago, KyaryPamyu said:

Just to be clear, I agree with SL (and even Kelley) that flourishing is not the goal of life. To sunder the two is to ignore the hierarchy: life -> value -> survival -> moving forward (flourshing).

A "hierarchy" implies multiple distinct and individual things; a hierarchy of one item, isn't. And if there's a hierarchy involved then some things matter more than others (and presumably there is some top-level thing which matters the most). To say that there is an evaluative hierarchy involved at all sunders the two.

 

6 hours ago, KyaryPamyu said:

A lack of pleasure and excitement is anti-life in the sense that it moves you away from survival and proper functioning

 

6 hours ago, KyaryPamyu said:

There are legitimate cases where a change to a different course really isn't possible. Let's look at Galt. He longed for Dagny for a decade, a process that slowly imprinted her into his psyche as each day passed. Every time he had trouble getting motivated, he used her as fuel. He watched her go into the beds of two men he admired. He then got her, but.. what if she died at the hands of a bunch of petty people that represent what he despises the most? 10 years of striving and emotional investment, negated in an instant. A decade of his life, wasted. He probably understood the repercussions on his psychology that her death would have caused. He would lose desire to do anything, no matter how heroically he'd try to get on track. Implying he then wasted 5 more years in depression, and that eventually his desire for women returned, what competiton would there be? If another mercilessly-rational woman with the brains and character to build the John Galt line in a collapsing country was around, he would have known about her. For him, it's either the vice-president or nothing. It would haunt him forever. So, contra SL, I would say that sometimes, but not always, 'pursuing a different dream can be anti-life.

Then you're using "life" to mean something very different from survival.

I think Rand absolutely would've agreed with that (it's basically in her own words). I also think the terminology leads to the same type of confusion we're all grappling with here and that "flourishing" would describe that same thing in a much clearer and less ambiguous manner.

 

6 hours ago, KyaryPamyu said:

I will go on a limb and say that the pure survivalist, Kelley-type position is really the absolute same as the flourisher position, when all of the factors are brought into question. The most ardent Flourisher is actually the most ardent, pure and bare-bones Survivalist. And all 'self-actualization'-based ethical systems are useless unless people understand that self-actualization is not an intrinsic end in itself, but the effect, the natural result of a survivalist ethics. The alternative is accidentaly pursuing 'self-actualization' in a way that goes against its root (survival), which leads to consequences that are too obvious to mention.

I'm sorry; they aren't to me. Could you please elaborate?

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1 hour ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

How many people should interact logically depends on how a person should act.

By social context, I don't mean how many people he should interact with. 

Rather, is the Nature of Man, An Entity that requires companionship? Does Man need "others" to in fact survive? Not a Rawlsian question but meaning: should a human being be on the lookout for relationships that work or rather live like a hermit.

If you are defining life to be flourishing, then I believe you will push for "social consciousness" as in knowing that others exist vs. narcissism (no one else exists). I categorize narcissism as anti-life, anti one's own life.

So for an ethics that is for a Human, the nature of a human being must be defined first. If "social awareness" is what a Man requires, it should influence aspects of his code of values right away.

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5 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

But I wonder if at the core of your argument is that human motivation is never arbitrary. That when one wants something, there is a reason (even if not consciously known). But the implication is that: One does not require a final purpose, one that has no purpose, that any purpose can be a purpose that has no other purpose (fulfillment, satisfaction etc).

That's close to my position on "flourishing".

 

All human emotions are one of two basic types of responses to some *thing*; for it or against it; desire and fear, pain and pleasure, etc.

Some of those responses are built into the physical sensations of pleasure and pain, and are immediate, automatic and inescapable. Others are generalized expectations we have about the things around us; you touch a hot stove, learn to expect it to hurt and then fear it, you eat Halloween candy, learn to expect deliciousness and learn to crave it, you see adults using money to obtain Halloween candy, learn to expect that money can buy Halloween candy and learn to crave that, too. Even pride and guilt are responses for or against some thing; that thing just happens to be your self.

So no human emotions is ever causeless or arbitrary, and anyone who says otherwise is up to no good. However, this doesn't necessarily make them good guides for action.

 

There was a study done at one point which involved rats with electrodes wired into the pleasure centers of their brains. When given a button to directly activate their own pleasure they invariably learned to want to push it (the same way a child learns about hot stoves and candy) and did so until they all starved to death.

The fact that our brains are however-much bigger and better than that of any rat does not make necessarily make us immune to the same vulnerabilities (just look at any drug addict). We have to learn to think in straight lines, to predict the full consequences of our own actions, to analyze our emotions (since they can lead us towards our own pain and destruction) and to suppress them, if necessary.

If we do all of that successfully, all day, every day, then we can enjoy our lives so much more than those rats ever could've imagined (assuming they have imaginations - I don't know) but it's not easy.

 

Quote

Being selfish -truly selfish- is the hardest thing you can do. But it's worth it.

-Yaron Brook

 

Now, I don't think you need any life purpose outside of your self, because the purpose of your life is the same as the purposes of those rats' lives, or of the life of any living animal: to enjoy it. But to enjoy it the way only a human can (to flourish) takes hard work.

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19 minutes ago, Easy Truth said:

By social context, I don't mean how many people he should interact with. 

Rather, is the Nature of Man, An Entity that requires companionship? Does Man need "others" to in fact survive? Not a Rawlsian question but meaning: should a human being be on the lookout for relationships that work or rather live like a hermit.

If you are defining life to be flourishing, then I believe you will push for "social consciousness" as in knowing that others exist vs. narcissism (no one else exists). I categorize narcissism as anti-life, anti one's own life.

So for an ethics that is for a Human, the nature of a human being must be defined first. If "social awareness" is what a Man requires, it should influence aspects of his code of values right away.

 

Sorry; I didn't mean the quantity of people, either.

A group of people is only some number of individuals. How they should behave, as a group, depends on how each of them should act in isolation (not that they'll necessarily be identical but that one must be based on the other).

 

You are right on several counts (notably the relation between my ideas on "flourishing" and on socialization) and I do push for "social awareness", in my own way, and only in that very specific way.

There's a point at which "social awareness" would cease to be healthy, benevolent coexistence and turn into second-handedness (trying to think through another brain, see through their eyes and do whatever you think they'd most approve of); beyond that point human beings stop being helpful or uplifting for each other's lives and gradually become codependent and monstrous.

Trying to define the ultimate standard and purpose of ethics in social terms will prevent you from being able to define that cutoff point.

 

Now, if you think it's just a separate but also important issue, then you're right. It probably belongs in another thread, but if you feel like making it and we can continue this subject over there. :thumbsup:

 

---

 

Also, on rat brains and flourishing, I found this to be extremely helpful:

 

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9 hours ago, DonAthos said:

I disagree that a person "who has not chosen to live" (which I regard a specious formulation) has, therefore, no "reasoned ground" to value anything -- even if alone the terms of their own death, and whether or not their loved ones are harmed in the process. When a parent makes some sort of "self-sacrifice" for the sake of preserving their childrens' lives, for instance, I don't think that means that the parent has no longer any "reasoned ground" to value their children.

OK, I see that I must clear something up, a bit of sloppiness that I am as guilty of as anyone else.  Otherwise, this discussion is just not going to go anywhere.

The Objectivist ethics comprises a set of conditional statements, each of which is of the form, "If I choose to exist, X."  Existence not being a floating abstraction, to exist is to exist as something.  So those conditionals really mean, "If I choose to exist as a human being, X."

One attribute of humans is that they die.  Dying is as much a metaphysical fact as breathing (and I don't need to be told that technology might change this.  But for now....)  Choosing existence is necessarily to choose that one will die.  What matters in the Objectivist ethics is not that one dies -- that is not open to choice -- but how one dies.

The contrary to the Objectivist ethics is not choosing to die.  It is choosing to live in a way that is not proper to a human being.  So, the death question confronting an Objectivist is not whether he will die, but whether he will die as is proper to a human being, or not.

The relevant consequence here is that, if a person abandons life as a human being, none of those conditionals imposes a "should" on him.  So there are no validly reasoned ethical conclusions that apply to him.

But this applies to abandoning life as a human being.  Not to choosing the manner of one's death.  The person who decides that his values are best served by his own death is still choosing existence as a human being, albeit a shorter one than his biology would have allowed.  His actions therefore do satisfy the conditionals of the Objectivist ethics.

The contrary is a bit more complicated. It is hard to imagine a person consciously choosing against his own values in order that he die. His is not the case that really matters, though.  Instead, it is the person who chooses a value that is contra-life (his life) that is said to have chosen death.

I think this is an unfortunate wording, as it simply doesn't reflect reality. If I'm brought up Christian and follow its morality, I have chosen an anti-life morality, but I haven't rejected life itself; I have no idea that my morality is anti-life.  To the contrary,  I would believe myself to have chosen life, the life promised by my religion. Not only that, I probably only give lip service to the worst aspects of what I assent to, implicitly choosing life in doing so.

My point here is that I think it would be a good idea to drop the whole "choosing life/death" thing.  Whatever rhetorical value it may have (and I think it has little), it causes immense intellectual confusion.

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3 hours ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:
On Tuesday October 17, 2017 at 8:33 PM, Invictus2017 said:

This does not depend on which flavor of ethics one adopts.  Every ethical proposition X, when fully stated, is of the form, "If you choose to live, then X."

Do you mean to include every moral code in that? If so then I have some churches to show you. Or was that just an oversight?

Yes, it was an oversight.  "flavor of Objectivist ethics".
 

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9 minutes ago, Invictus2017 said:

I think this is an unfortunate wording, as it simply doesn't reflect reality. If I'm brought up Christian and follow its morality, I have chosen an anti-life morality, but I haven't rejected life itself; I have no idea that my morality is anti-life.  To the contrary,  I would believe myself to have chosen life, the life promised by my religion. Not only that, I probably only give lip service to the worst aspects of what I assent to, implicitly choosing life in doing so.

Maybe it is unfortunate wording but well said. There is that "first person" experience that drives us all. In hindsight what you described may not reflect reality, but while it is going on "what you see is real".

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2 hours ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

There was a study done at one point which involved rats with electrodes wired into the pleasure centers of their brains. When given a button to directly activate their own pleasure they invariably learned to want to push it (the same way a child learns about hot stoves and candy) and did so until they all starved to death.

 

The implication is that drug addiction is a situation where one's emotional mechanism is not attuned to survival anymore. And of course we are all born with some wants that we wish we did not want and vice versa, we wish we wanted something that we could not care less about.

The way you find out about the misalignment of emotions is when something hurts and you find out that you caused it because you wanted an unwantable. Its just that coming up with an ethics based on the interplay of emotions, reason, perception, sensation, and imagination is too overwhelming, at least for me it is.

Furthermore, I know, based on experience, that my emotions are misaligned. Therefore I feel safer (emotionally) using reason to guide me. Consequentialism with an ultimate end fits my bill.

Do you know anyone whose emotions are perfectly aligned to survival? As in they are attracted to eating only what is good for them, they want the right companion simply by an emotional reaction, they control the order of activities simply by emotion, they are on time simply by feeling it, they don't want excesses that prevent important survival necessities (smoking, gambling, Netflix, video games, drugs, alcohol, and procrastination).

I think everyone's emotions are misaligned and an addictive drug is not the only cause.

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Here is another analogy that examines the difference between consequentialism and Objectivist ethics. A utilitarian suicidal person will want to commit suicide well (properly). An Objectivist could not care less.

Then the Army should weed out Objectivists for suicide missions. A commanding officer may think "The moment that this Objectivist accepts the suicide mission, he will turn into an amoral fighter, maybe even turning on us." Now, of course, the argument against it may be that it is a risky mission, not a suicide mission. But there are missions where you know that you are not being rescued or pulled out of the danger zone.

It is an ethics of emergencies. There is no possibility of survival (in theory). But that is where Objectivist ethics ends. 
 

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From another thread, I found this fascinating:

2 hours ago, CartsBeforeHorses said:

I don't want to read too much into this podcast, or to put too much upon one man's experiences (even if that man is Leonard Peikoff), but really, I found this not only fascinating in itself but that it speaks directly to -- not necessarily the technical specifics of this ongoing conversation, but -- my basic approach and motivation.

Peikoff describes himself as finally fully happy at age 81 (though I'm certain he must have enjoyed himself to some extent throughout his life), and he attributes this to having discovered what he "really wants to do in life" (as opposed to at least some portion of his work theretofore, which he "dreaded"). To me, in my life, such a thing is simply unacceptable. I would not want to wait until I'm 81 to be able to describe myself as "finally fully happy" and in fact I have not waited. Though I have challenges and setbacks from day to day, as I expect everyone must, and sometimes severe or lasting ones, I consider myself happy in all of the major areas of life.

In part, I believe this is because I have always paid careful attention to my own experiences, cared about them, and have taken action accordingly. When I have pursued paths that I dreaded (and I have), including career aspirations or personal relationships, etc., I took that as a cue that there was something fundamentally amiss, and in need of investigation/change. I did not accept my own unhappiness as being somehow the price of moral action, but I sought (both without and within) to make things better for myself, as much as within my power, as soon as possible. I have put nothing higher than my own experience of life -- to make it as positive as possible -- and I think that this emphasis has rewarded me.

If Peikoff could not have described himself as "fully happy" before this late juncture, then I suppose we must be thankful for his longevity. What a tragedy it would have been, had he died never being able to say that about himself. I'm middle-aged, myself. A week ago, I was involved in a car accident -- that's one of those pesky challenges/setbacks! -- and actually, it was a situation that I've often brought up in various discussion about ethics: I was stopped, behind some other cars, but another car (a couple back) failed to stop, and there was a domino effect, leading to my being rear-ended. No one was injured, thankfully, but sometimes things don't work out so well. Can we imagine if I were pursuing an ethics that might not lead me to happiness until I'm in my 80s (if ever)... and then I die decades beforehand, whilst dreading my daily work? What a waste that would be. No thank you. I would rather enjoy myself along the way, as much as possible, so that on the day I die (be it tomorrow or fifty years from now), it will always be correct to say that I was happy.

From yet another thread, I recently found this:

On 10/18/2017 at 8:33 PM, dream_weaver said:

Quibbling over whether this borderline case or that borderline case falls inside or outside the Objectivist guidelines may be a good intellectual exercise for developing clarity for some.

Squabbling over whether Johnny’s interpretation or Jimmy’s interpretation or Joey’s interpretation of Ayn Rand’s wording is ludicrous at best.

I don't know what dream_weaver had specifically in mind when he wrote this -- and frankly I don't know what to make of it, if we are disinclined to discuss various interpretations of Ayn Rand's wording on a board such as this -- but I will say that I believe it really, deeply matters how we understand and approach ethics. I think it can make the difference between being able to achieve happiness now, or having to wait until old age... if we ever reach it at all, if we don't die first, our attempts at "survival" notwithstanding.

If the Objectivist community has a hard time winning converts -- and based on many threads here lately, and based on the overall state of the world, and the way things appear to be trending, I'd say that we do -- then maybe part of it is that we don't manage to produce very many well-adjusted, friendly, happy people. Maybe the confusion at the heart of our approach to ethics, a confusion reflected in this thread and many others on the board, is playing a role in that, inspiring people to fight for "survival" (whatever that should mean to them) at the cost of the things which might otherwise bring them happiness in the near(er) future or present. I'd say that if, when people met Objectivists, they were inspired to think, "Wow! That person really has life figured out; look how well they're doing! Look how happy!" that this would go at least as far as a free copy of Atlas Shrugged in convincing them to investigate the nature of the underlying philosophy. Maybe farther.

Edited by DonAthos
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2 hours ago, DonAthos said:

Peikoff describes himself as finally fully happy at age 81 (though I'm certain he must have enjoyed himself to some extent throughout his life), and he attributes this to having discovered what he "really wants to do in life" (as opposed to at least some portion of his work theretofore, which he "dreaded"). To me, in my life, such a thing is simply unacceptable. I would not want to wait until I'm 81 to be able to describe myself as "finally fully happy" and in fact I have not waited. Though I have challenges and setbacks from day to day, as I expect everyone must, and sometimes severe or lasting ones, I consider myself happy in all of the major areas of life.

I doubt if there is anyone, Objectivist or not, that would disagree with you.

My understanding is that there was one aspect of the work that he hated, that of writing. The rest, he enjoyed. One can't possibly last if it was all misery. But not being able to discover what truly made him most happy is clearly unfortunate.

Some don't know what they really want or ... alternatively, they might not be fortunate enough to be introduced to it. Does that mean that one should try every new thing because it might be the ultimate satisfaction or pleasure? I don't know.

I admire his honesty, knowing that it would cause consternation for some. He could have easily hidden this information from us. Do you think that when you are 80 you will look back and say, that this forum was misery? 

Knowing the truth is a passionate quest. A quest that we are willing to tolerate pain to achieve. I suppose he was in the same camp.

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8 hours ago, DonAthos said:

Peikoff describes himself as finally fully happy at age 81 (though I'm certain he must have enjoyed himself to some extent throughout his life), and he attributes this to having discovered what he "really wants to do in life" (as opposed to at least some portion of his work theretofore, which he "dreaded"). To me, in my life, such a thing is simply unacceptable. I would not want to wait until I'm 81 to be able to describe myself as "finally fully happy" and in fact I have not waited. Though I have challenges and setbacks from day to day, as I expect everyone must, and sometimes severe or lasting ones, I consider myself happy in all of the major areas of life.

I can't speak to Peikoff himself but I believe those who find Objectivism and try to fully understand themselves and reality in an integrated fashion are not waiting for happiness to happen, nor delaying it, they are actively pursuing it. 

A mystic who never discovers independence or morality nor life itself as a human, can live as a physical and spiritual slave thinking he is happy. Those who know better, even intuitively, will be compelled to want to wake up from such a false existence.  Waking up and fighting the inner falsehoods is the good fight that sometimes takes a lifetime.

Consider the indoctrination and the effect of social programming religion, altruism, and skepticism on almost everyone every day of their lives from birth.  Is it any wonder that it truly takes a lifetime of effort to heal those wounds, to rebuild the atrophied muscles, and broken bones of our abused and tortured psyches?  I don't think it is surprising, I truly think it is a wonder anyone raised in modern society ever truly becomes a whole and happy human and all that means.  

As far as I'm concerned Peikoff has finally won in the good fight, and I urge everyone not to give up on their own fight to be fully human, no matter how hidden and ingrained the damage and no matter how long it takes.  We've heard the truth... we need to believe, understand, and then fully Know it with our entire being.

 

After word :  We here are here for a reason and it is ourselves.  Unless and until we have obtained everything we want and need, we'll keep coming back.  If any should break the chains that make this forum necessary, and we hear nothing from them again, I will assume they have reached a better place, a world beyond this one... the real world and a happy full life as man qua man... for truly they will then have slipped their surly bonds to touch the face of the God who is in fact their true and full Self, as it can and should be.

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3 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

I can't speak to Peikoff himself but I believe those who find Objectivism and try to fully understand themselves and reality in an integrated fashion are not waiting for happiness to happen, nor delaying it, they are actively pursuing it. 

A mystic who never discovers independence or morality nor life itself as a human, can live as a physical and spiritual slave thinking he is happy. Those who know better, even intuitively, will be compelled to want to wake up from such a false existence.  Waking up and fighting the inner falsehoods is the good fight that sometimes takes a lifetime.

Consider the indoctrination and the effect of social programming religion, altruism, and skepticism on almost everyone every day of their lives from birth.  Is it any wonder that it truly takes a lifetime of effort to heal those wounds, to rebuild the atrophied muscles, and broken bones of our abused and tortured psyches?  I don't think it is surprising, I truly think it is a wonder anyone raised in modern society ever truly becomes a whole and happy human and all that means.  

As far as I'm concerned Peikoff has finally won in the good fight, and I urge everyone not to give up on their own fight to be fully human, no matter how hidden and ingrained the damage and no matter how long it takes.  We've heard the truth... we need to believe, understand, and then fully Know it with our entire being.

 

After word :  We here are here for a reason and it is ourselves.  Unless and until we have obtained everything we want and need, we'll keep coming back.  If any should break the chains that make this forum necessary, and we hear nothing from them again, I will assume they have reached a better place, a world beyond this one... the real world and a happy full life as man qua man... for truly they will then have slipped their surly bonds to touch the face of the God who is in fact their true and full Self, as it can and should be.

This literally brought a tear to my eye. Thank-you.

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5 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

My understanding is that there was one aspect of the work that he hated, that of writing. The rest, he enjoyed.

Yes, that's also what I got from the podcast. But it appears to have been a central aspect of his labors -- so much so that he's glad to field the question whether he himself is happy, now that he can finally answer in the affirmative.

5 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

One can't possibly last if it was all misery.

I am unconvinced of this, though I doubt that Peikoff would ever have described himself as miserable, generally (or at least, I hope not).

But I think that there are many miserable people in the world who manage to live very long lives, and perhaps even lives that are "successful" by many measures, and to all outward appearances. Yet I do not call a life of misery a "success," not even if one lasts. Lasting isn't the point.

5 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

But not being able to discover what truly made him most happy is clearly unfortunate.

Some don't know what they really want or ... alternatively, they might not be fortunate enough to be introduced to it. Does that mean that one should try every new thing because it might be the ultimate satisfaction or pleasure? I don't know.

It's a good question. But again, what I can say about this personally is: if I was dreading doing something (let alone every day) it would compel me immediately to find some alternative (i.e. as soon as I could identify it), because I would not be content with such a situation. It would certainly be worth it to me to try new things.

In a way, it comes back around to our view of "consequences," and how that factors into our ethical thinking. We cannot say that, if a man is unhappy into his 80s (not that this describes Peikoff), therefore he must have made some kind of mistake; maybe he was on the right track the whole time and, circumstances being what they were, it simply took that long to get there (not being fortunate enough to be introduced to a certain discipline, for instance, although I have reason to believe that Peikoff was introduced to fiction writing early enough, and in a noteworthy way).

But in this case, given who Peikoff is, it nevertheless strikes me as rather alarming; it's like, if it was this hard for Peikoff to achieve happiness, given what we might grant is an unusual level of insight, of introspective ability, of education, of knowledge of ethical theory, etc., etc., then what chance do the rest of us stand? But my own answer to that is: perhaps, despite all of his other substantial advantages, he was looking at things in slightly the wrong way. At the very least, perhaps there is a difference between how he views "life as the standard of value," and applies it to his circumstances, as against my own views and application.

5 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

I admire his honesty, knowing that it would cause consternation for some. He could have easily hidden this information from us.

I admire it as well.

5 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

Do you think that when you are 80 you will look back and say, that this forum was misery?

Oh, there are so many ways I could respond to this... :)

But I'll put it this way: whatever challenges this forum presents me (and they are many), they are not central enough to my life such that this forum could cause me to hesitate on the question of whether or not I am happy overall. If it were that central (like my profession), and if it were causing me misery, I would drop it in a hot minute. (To be very honest, even given the level of participation I have, there are times when I sincerely question my investment; there is no other area in my life where I am quite as close to "shrugging" as trying to have reasonable and pleasant conversations with folks who, in theory, should be quite reasonable... and, dare I say it, even pleasant.)

5 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

Knowing the truth is a passionate quest. A quest that we are willing to tolerate pain to achieve. I suppose he was in the same camp.

I have my college degree and a five year old child; I'm quite familiar with tolerating pain for the sake of achievement. ;) But even in my quest for the truth -- which began in earnest when I was quite young -- I have found and adopted pleasant means to that end. I think it fitting that this should be so, because I have come to hold that even the "quest for truth" is not an end in itself, but that it serves the greater purpose of enjoying a good life (rhetorical emphasis on "enjoy").

I am willing to tolerate great pains, after all, for the sake of greater pleasures, and chiefly happiness. But that is the end towards which I am oriented, and as such is my orientation, I look to reduce or eliminate my experience of pain along the way -- and increase my experience of pleasure -- insofar as I am able, because that is how I mean to achieve my end. Life isn't exclusively some "future" end: life is right now and all the time, and so, as far as I can reckon, if I am not fundamentally happy right now, I am doing something wrong. If my daily activities, especially, are not bringing me happiness, then there is a problem which needs addressing (whether the "problem" in question is one of the activity, itself, or my perspective on it; the experience of emotion is information, but as it is not a "tool of cognition," the specific course of action remains to be determined through reason).

18 minutes ago, StrictlyLogical said:

I can't speak to Peikoff himself but I believe those who find Objectivism and try to fully understand themselves and reality in an integrated fashion are not waiting for happiness to happen, nor delaying it, they are actively pursuing it.

But that's just it. I'm not convinced that all Objectivists are "actively pursuing" happiness; I think that there are some people who are convinced (to greater and lesser extents, implicitly or consciously) that one does not actively pursue happiness at all, but rather pursues things according to some other standard (even bare-bones survival)... and then happiness will (hopefully) be the pleasant byproduct of achieving one's values. But I don't think this describes reality. I don't think it's a good recipe to achieve happiness.

18 minutes ago, StrictlyLogical said:

A mystic who never discovers independence or morality nor life itself as a human, can live as a physical and spiritual slave thinking he is happy. Those who know better, even intuitively, will be compelled to want to wake up from such a false existence. Waking up and fighting the inner falsehoods is the good fight that sometimes takes a lifetime.

I'm not so concerned about the idea of people who consider themselves happy, but are not; it's true that emotions take knowledge and skill to identify correctly (not through evasion alone; as a parent, it has been an interesting endeavor to teach my daughter how to recognize and describe her internal states), but I am mostly interested in how one achieves actual happiness in reality.

In any event, I do not think that my experience of happiness and that of the mystic (as such) is equivalent, or that it is right to describe even the pleasant emotions the mystic (again, as such) feels as happiness. I think that happiness is a real, objective phenomenon, and that it requires knowledge and effort to achieve it. It requires a science: the science of ethics.

18 minutes ago, StrictlyLogical said:

Consider the indoctrination and the effect of social programming religion, altruism, and skepticism on almost everyone every day of their lives from birth.  Is it any wonder that it truly takes a lifetime of effort to heal those wounds, to rebuild the atrophied muscles, and broken bones of our abused and tortured psyches?  I don't think it is surprising, I truly think it is a wonder anyone raised in modern society ever truly becomes a whole and happy human and all that means.

I hear you and I agree with you to a large extent (the challenges people face in modern society are enormous, and Objectivists are not immune).

But still, there's something to be said for considering one's profession (even if only to some large degree) as dreary or what have you, such that you dread your daily efforts, and how inimical this is to human happiness. And if human happiness is your goal, as I believe it ought to be, then, given the proper ethical stance, I think it should inspire change. As for Peikoff, it did in the end; but were it me, I would not wait so long.

And I think differences in approach of this sort -- and their results --  are down in large part to how we view and value our daily experience of life, our pleasures and our pains, and how we incorporate that sort of information into our ethics and decision making. That's why I want to get this right.

18 minutes ago, StrictlyLogical said:

As far as I'm concerned Peikoff has finally won in the good fight...

Me too, and I am happy for him.

18 minutes ago, StrictlyLogical said:

...and I urge everyone not to give up on their own fight to be fully human, no matter how hidden and ingrained the damage and no matter how long it takes.

Hear hear.

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On 10/20/2017 at 7:37 AM, StrictlyLogical said:

A mystic who never discovers independence or morality nor life itself as a human, can live as a physical and spiritual slave thinking he is happy.

To the degree that someone is a mystic, they are not happy.

I've met plenty of alleged mystics who hardly suffered from their ideology's symptoms, at all - and none of them gave the causeless or miraculous a moment's thought beyond the confines of their Church. I've known others who routinely expected their problems to be solved by magic and wailed just as often that the universe hated them. I've seen others being rushed to the psych ward after scrutinizing their own beliefs too closely.

Mystics are not happy.

 

On 10/20/2017 at 7:37 AM, StrictlyLogical said:

If any should break the chains that make this forum necessary, and we hear nothing from them again, I will assume they have reached a better place, a world beyond this one... 

 

:thumbsup:

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On 10/17/2017 at 4:55 PM, DonAthos said:

My observation, meant to challenge this (if lightly), is that I do not believe that in reality people who decide to commit suicide would attach zero "value significance" to their method of suicide; I think that most suicides, even in their last moments, would consider drinking hemlock to be far more ethical than blowing up the proverbial (or literal) nuns and orphans.

But is this irrational? If an Objectivist were to decide to commit suicide, making whatever "amoral" or "pre-moral" decision no longer to value life that we imagine such people do (which I am not convinced is actually a thing that exists, but whatever) -- then should that Objectivist consider all potential manners of exit (including the slaughter of others) ethically equivalent?

1

Was this put to rest? 

My understanding was that initiation of aggression was immoral. I can see the logic, that a moral code is like a playbook in order to play football to win. When you are never going to play football again, the plays have no relevance. So morality only applies only when you want to play the game of life. But what about the issue of leaving a legacy, as in living the future in the now? "Anyone who fights for the future, lives in it today." (Romantic Manifesto)
 Is forfeiting one's life for a better society in the future, enjoying it now? If so, the decision to be remembered and honored for taking the hemlock instead of committing the slaughter of innocents is a moral act, to live the "pride" now. It has some reasoned moral significance.

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3 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

Was this put to rest?

In what way? If this is what you mean, no debate around here (or as far as I can tell, in the world) is ever settled such that all parties are agreed.

3 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

My understanding was that initiation of aggression was immoral.

It's easy enough to say that, from the point of view of the innocents harmed, blowing up a bus is immoral. But ethics, per Objectivism, are based upon self-interest. The moral prohibition against the initiation of the use of force is meant to be as self-interested as anything else -- not fashioned to protect "others," or the wider world, but for the sake of the person who abides by it.

But does the suicidal man stand to gain anything (in reason) by refraining from hurting others upon his exit? (I say that he does.)

3 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

I can see the logic, that a moral code is like a playbook in order to play football to win. When you are never going to play football again, the plays have no relevance. So morality only applies only when you want to play the game of life.

Right, that's the way the logic goes. So when you've decided that you're no longer playing to win (or that you cannot play football), then you can run any formation you'd like; you may even blow up the stadium. It's anything goes from there on out.

In theory, this should also mean that a person with a terminal illness is no longer bound by morality (because they understand that they are never going to play football again, no matter what play they run). Some suggest that such a person will continue to drift along on their habits... and so we shouldn't expect too much chaos. However, someone who has given these matters sufficient thought (and with the proper philosophical perspective) ought to be able to recognize their changed context...

3 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

But what about the issue of leaving a legacy, as in living the future in the now? "Anyone who fights for the future, lives in it today." (Romantic Manifesto)
 Is forfeiting one's life for a better society in the future, enjoying it now? If so, the decision to be remembered and honored for taking the hemlock instead of committing the slaughter of innocents is a moral act, to live the "pride" now. It has some reasoned moral significance.

Yes -- this is my essential answer. "Legacy" runs the risk of implying that this is "for others," but then you continue to identify the true root of it: that it is the experience of value in the present, the pride, the pleasure, the happiness that moral action brings, which continues to make our decisions morally significant, even in the face of (nigh) instantaneous death.

In another thread, discussing this same issue, I raised the Buddhist parable "The Monk, the Tiger and the Strawberry " as an example of moral action in the face of extremity. I believe that, so long as there is a self -- so long as life remains, so long as choice remains, and so long as our choices matter to our experience of life -- then there is the possibility of moral action, to wring out for ourselves the best possible experience of life, whatever our present context happens to be.

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I have now changed my mind, I think that Objectivist Ethics, in fact, is a type of "Virtue Ethics", not Consequentialism.

It pertains to "how to do life", regardless of actual consequences. A key component of consequentialist ethics is to considered mistakes as being immoral. Yet that isn't the case in Objectivistic Ethics.

"Morality pertains only to the sphere of man’s free will—only to those actions which are open to his choice".

Playboy Interview: Ayn Rand
Playboy, March 1964

I remember in the Fountainhead, Roark befriends the construction worker, a person highly competent but not having achieved great wealth or fame. I also remember Rearden offering Fransisco a relatively low-rank job. It was all about "how you do it" or judging methodology rather than accumulated wealth or position.

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  • 1 month later...

I come back to the fundamental question of the topic which is: "Is objectivism consequentialist?" This time I've read most of the topic (not all because a lot of messages seem to deviate from the original subject) and I felt trouble in the force.

Sorry if I made mistakes in English, it's not my primary language.

As 2046 rightly said, the point of Grames (page 5), which says consequentialism is an "empty doctrine" is invalid in itself, because consequentialism is not a moral doctrine as such, but simply a category of moral doctrine. The generally opposite category, deontology, is also "empty" and silent about on what the good is. Grames (and others) makes another mistake in believing that "every theory of good and of the virtues is trivially consequentialist" and that one can "bolt the standard objectivist of value - your own life - onto consequentialism" because Objectivist ethics is actually incompatible with the consequentism, I will explain why. It's pretty simple.

I will use quotations from Rand and Peikoff that have already been given several times in this topic, but which, I think, have not always been clearly understood.

The reasoning of StrictlyLogical (who, if I understand well, thinks that Objectivist ethics is compatible with consequentialism) are sometimes brilliant, but he has just missed a crucial point.

Objectivist ethics can not be classified as consequentialist for exactly the same reasons that Ayn Rand rejected utilitarianism and hedonism.

What is consequentialism? Taking the consequence as the sole standard of good.

YES, the Objectivist ethic deals with causality, so it fully takes into account the consequences (which is why some people seems troubled), BUT it does not consider the consequences as the standard of the good. The pursuit of values does not imply consequentialism.

To know whether Objectivist ethics is consequentialist or not, the crucial question is not: Should the consequences be taken into account in a moral theory? (The answer is YES, of course, otherwise we fall back anyway into the intrincist theory of value). The crucial question is: WHERE does morality lies? In the action? In the consequences of the action? Both ? In the relationship between the two? Or elsewhere?

Here is why, in short, Objectivist ethics is not consequentialist: Consequentialism confuses the consequences of morality with morality itself. In other words, it confuses the standard with the purpose of morality.

Consequentialism says: morality does not lies in action, but exclusively in the consequences of action. Objectivist ethics does not say that.

Think about the relation between morality and consequences like the relation between knowledge and emotions, because it's exactly the same kind of relation. Values are knowledge, and emotions are consequences. Ayn Rand used to say: "Emotions are not tools of cognition." because emotions are consequences of ideas or knowledge and not idea or knowledge by itself. We can also say somehow : "Consequences are not tools of morality".

Back to the fundamental question: Why does man need a moral code? (Any moral code.) In order to guide his action. And action is always a mean. In other words, morality always deals with means.

Quote

The field of ethics itself, including all moral virtues and values, is necessitated by the law of causality. Morality is no more than a means to an end; it defines’ the causes we must enact if we are to attain a certain effect.
— Leonard Peikoff (OPAR, p. 244)

Of course it is necessary to have a goal, values (to give meaning to the action-means), but the goal alone is not enough (contrary to the consequentialist view), there must be a standard for discriminating actions that are consistent with this goal and actions that are not. In other words, a standard is needed to identify the virtues.

Why do we need a standard? Why do our actions need to be guided by a moral criterion? Because man does not have automatic knowledge. He does not function by instinct, and he is not omniscient, a human being can not fully foresee the future when he acts, he do not know in advance all the consequences. (Which would be a pre-condition of consequentialism ...) So he needs a guide, that is to say a moral code. As it has been said by many of you, we can not evaluate actions post-facto ...

Quote

This is the fallacy inherent in hedonism—in any variant of ethical hedonism, personal or social, individual or collective. “Happiness” can properly be the purpose of ethics, but not the standard. The task of ethics is to define man’s proper code of values and thus to give him the means of achieving happiness.
— Ayn Rand (The Objectivit Ethics)

We must therefore identify a standard that accords with the purpose, where we can rationally show the necessary dependency relation between the standard and the purpose as a cause-and-effect relationship (life is the cause, the effect is happiness, as Ayn Rand says in the following quote).

According to Objectivist ethics, life is not the consequence or the purpose of morality, it is the standard. The purpose is happiness.

Quote

The maintenance of life and the pursuit of happiness are not two separate issues. To hold one’s own life as one’s ultimate value, and one’s own happiness as one’s highest purpose are two aspects of the same achievement. Existentially, the activity of pursuing rational goals is the activity of maintaining one’s life; psychologically, its result, reward and concomitant is an emotional state of happiness. 
(...)
But the relationship of cause to effect cannot be reversed. It is only by accepting “man’s life” as one’s primary and by pursuing the rational values it requires that one can achieve happiness—not by taking “happiness” as some undefined, irreducible primary and then attempting to live by its guidance. If you achieve that which is the good by a rational standard of value, it will necessarily make you happy; but that which makes you happy, by some undefined emotional standard, is not necessarily the good. To take “whatever makes one happy” as a guide to action means: to be guided by nothing but one’s emotional whims. Emotions are not tools of cognition

— Ayn Rand (The Objectivit Ethics)

Life is the ultimate value because it is the condition of happiness. Without life, there is no happiness. But life is not an action. Life is the standard that makes it possible to judge the morality of an action, in other words, whether it is virtuous or not. Moral action is virtue, and it is practiced by choice.

A consequentialist morality such as utilitarianism for instance, says: What is the purpose of morality? Happiness. (We agree.) But then immediately it says: So, everything that makes you happy is good. Happiness is the good.

But it is not happiness that is moral as such. Happiness is a consequence of a proper morality. In other words, happiness is not the good, happiness is a consequence of the good. There is confusion in utilitarianism between standard and purpose.

To say: "the consequences are the moral standard" is a contradiction, it's like saying: "morality is useless" or "morality does not serve to guide action" or "man does not need a guide to action." To say, as consequentialism claims, that morality does not lie in action is to say that virtue does not exist. There is no moral code, no moral principles.

Quote

To declare, as the ethical hedonists do, that “the proper value is whatever gives you pleasure” is to declare that “the proper value is whatever you happen to value”—which is an act of intellectual and philosophical abdication, an act which merely proclaims the futility of ethics and invites all men to play it deuces wild.

— Ayn Rand (The Objectivit Ethics)

For example, imagine that I am faced with an alternative. To determine how I should act, I will think, "I must choose my action according to such consequence." (happiness for instance) This is the consequentialist morality in its totality. This is not wrong in itself, but there is no morality yet: it is obviously insufficient to guide the action. Then I have to think and tell myself: "What actions would cause this consequence?" How to know? (In other words, what virtues should I practice?) In short: I need a moral code.

In itself, having a purpose (happiness for example) is necessary, but not enough to determine a rational action plan. How do you determine what makes you happy? The moral code (life for example) is used to identify how to achieve this purpose. The purpose of your life.

Quote

Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values. If a man values productive work, his happiness is the measure of his success in the service of his life. But if a man values destruction, like a sadist—or self-torture, like a masochist—or life beyond the grave, like a mystic—or mindless “kicks,” like the driver of a hotrod car—his alleged happiness is the measure of his success in the service of his own destruction.

— Ayn Rand (The Objectivit Ethics)

 

Edited by gio
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