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Is remaining alive the goal of all values?

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The continuation of my life (as a rational being) is my objective standard when I decide upon a course of action.

Some men don't have an objective standard, or their standards are short-sited things like momentary pleasure, so they value things that could run contrary to what their nature requires for the furtherance of their existences.

Happiness is my reward for using "remaining alive" as my objective standard when choosing values.

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In Galt's Speech, he says happiness is the goal and the reward of life.

Nicky was right when he said you oversimplified "remaining alive."

Remaining alive, as a man in his proper, rational state (not merely on life-support), is what makes all the good things possible, & implies a desire to achieve them.

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"Objectivism says that remaining alive is the goal of values and of all proper action."

But I don't see how remaining alive is the goal of values. It makes more sense to me the fact that remaining alive is the precondition to all other values, but not their goal.

So It makes more sense to me that happiness and pleasure should be the goal of all values.

So lying in a hospital bed being fed by intravenous juices would be the climax of the morally good if it makes me live 100 years?

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You are right. Remaing alive is the precondition for values.

But it's also the goal of all rational values. By that, I mean an objective standard by which to discern whether something is good or evil. The context of this is morality.

Pleasure shouldn't be the standard by which to judge values. drug abuse is an example of where pleasure, instead of the furtherance of one's life, was the standard of value. The hedonists made a code of ethics based on that.

And your life-support analogy is not an appropriate existence for a life of a man. There are many virtues required to live as a man.The following is part of Galt's speech in which he explains why self-esteem is necessary to remain alive as a man...

"From his discovery that he has to make choices, man knows that his desperate need of self-esteem is a matter of life or death. He knows that he must know his own value to maintain his own life. He knows that he has to be right. To be wrong in person (to be evil), means to be unfit for existence. Every act of man's life has to be willed. The mere act of obtaining or eating his food implies that the person he preserves is worthy of being preserved. Every pleasure he seeks to enjoy implies the person who seeks it is worthy of finding enjoyment. He has no choice about his need of self-esteem. The only choice is the standard by which to guage it."

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I think that my misunderstanding was that I interpreted Dr. Peikoff's words too literally (or maybe he didn't explain it well in OPAR).

 

He said that "remaining alive is the goal of values and all proper action". In other words, he stated that the ultimate value (which all lesser values are means to) is LIFE, or, to be alive.

 

The problem is that I thought he meant only a man's physical survival. That is the cause of all the misunderstanding and discussion I was having in this thread. 

 

After reading Rand's essay on ethics (thanks for the link, Nicky), I came across the following explanation:

 

The Objectivist ethics holds man’s life as the standard of value—and his own life as the ethical purpose of every individual man. Man must choose his actions, values and goals by the standard of that which is proper to man—in order to achieve, maintain, fulfill and enjoy that ultimate value, that end in itself, which is his own life.

 

Emphasis on the words "fulfill" and "enjoy".

 

You see... I thought Dr. Peikoff was referring only to the mere act of physical survival, of only achieving and maintaining one's life. That is where the contradiction rested: If man's ultimate value is to only be physically alive, then, as long as he is alive and healthy, no additional values are necessary (romantic love, art, material goods, etc). However, If a man's ultimate value is to achieve, maintain, fulfill and enjoy his own life, than all kinds of values are possible to the individual, and all these values would be only means to the first.

 

Now it seems much clearer to me. 

 

Thanks for everyone who contributed to our discussion.

Edited by MarceloMartins
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MarceloMartin, you are most welcome; I will be purchasing a copy of OPAR. You made me a little worried about the "life-support system" scenario. I wasn't sure if you had a serious problem, but I figured you, personally, were not in a coma or any such desperate situation. Otherwise, you wouldn't be writing, although, one never knows for sure. But even if one were severely afflicted physically, it would be an individual's choice as to be, or not to be, and how much closer to a satisfactory life one could be.

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Repairman, I am perfectly healthy. I just wanted to really "chew" the ideas so they become clear to me. :)

 

 

This has been answered well, but I'm going to add something to help you out when reading Peikoff in the future.  This is something I picked up from lectures where he has "chewed" through abstract subjects like this exact one.  Peikoff works forward in a hierarchal fashion on ideas, going from broad abstractions to specific and from how we know to what we know. 

 

The statement you highlighted is the fundamental starting point of ethics.  EVERYTHING is a derivative of that, so it is very broad abstraction.  If you asked Peikoff he would have told you that you are right but the particulars and applications come further after you have also finished defining man’s nature (in this case than man needs to live as a human, which means thrive, or that happiness is a proper state of man).   

 

Hope that helps you when reading the literature in the future.  As a rule:  Rand was an author so she had a way to capture the whole at once, which is why she wrote her philosophy in fiction since she could do that in terms of action,  while Piekoff is an academic so his material reads like a dissertation presented in an actual hierarchy.   

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On the subject of hierarchies, I mentioned Maslow in an earlier post. While I have yet to read Piekoff's OPAR, I have long considered Maslow's definition of self-actualization as comparatively similar to the heroic nature of man, as Rand often described to be man's highest aspiration. How does Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs compare to the hierarchy Dr Piekoff describes?  

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs

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  • 4 weeks later...

It is not life that is the standard of moral values, not the mere perpetuation of protoplasm, which would justify any action which kept an organism alive. Even for the lowest organisms life is not the process of maintaining life, but of maintaining the organism as the kind of organism it is. That is why Rand emphasizes that it is not just the life of a man that is the source of ethical values, but a man's life, "qua man."<p>

This essential mistake, I believe is the reason most students of Objectivism confuse Rand's view of ethics with a form of hedonism or subjectivism. Rand did not regard selfishness, happiness, or self-interest as a standard of ethical values. I'll let Rand herself explain, from an article I wrote in 2010.

Rand's Objective Ethics

The view that "selfishness" is an ethical primary and that living ethically means living according to one's own selfish desires is rightly called, "subjective hedonism." The first, subjectivism, is any view that regards feelings, desires, or passions, rather than reason, as ever being a legitimate bases for ethical choices. The second, hedonism, is any view that accepts one's own pleasure or happiness as the basis of ethical values. Both of these views fly in the face of objective ethics and the philosophy of Ayn Rand.

The purpose of ethics, or morality, is to provide the principles by which one may live successfully and happily in this world.

"The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live." [For the New Intellectual, "Galt's Speech from Atlas Shrugged," page 123]

The principles of ethics are not social and pertain only to individuals and are based on the requirements of individual human nature.

"Man's life is the standard of morality, but your own life is its purpose. If existence on earth is your goal, you must choose your actions and values by the standard of that which is proper to man—for the purpose of preserving, fulfilling and enjoying the irreplaceable value which is your life."

...and...

"You who prattle that morality is social and that man would need no morality on a desert island—it is on a desert island that he would need it most." [Atlas Shrugged, "Part Three,—Chapter VII, 'This is John Galt Speaking.'"]

Rand's ethical views cannot be entirely understood outside the context of the fundamental principle at the heart of all her work and thought, individualism.

For Rand, the purpose of ethics was to provide the principles by which individuals make the choices that result in their own success and happiness. Every life is an individual life, every mind is an individual mind, and the success or failure of every individual is the consequence of their individual choices.

"... knowledge, thinking, and rational action are properties of the individual, ... the choice to exercise his rational faculty or not depends on the individual ..." [Capitalism, The Unknown Ideal, "Theory And History, 1. What Is Capitalism?"]

This view is in opposition to every view that subordinates the life or purposes of individuals to any other supposed purpose or end, such as society or "the greater good."

"Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life." [The Objectivist Newsletter: Vol. 1 No. 8 August, 1962, "Introducing Objectivism."]

In the 40s and 50s collectivism was promoted in the name of the dominant "moral" philosophy of the day, altruism. It was in opposition to the concept of self-sacrifice embodied in the concept of altruism that Rand presented her view of selfishness.

"We cannot save the system of free enterprise while we ourselves hold the moral beliefs of its enemies. We cannot save it without a complete and consistent philosophy of individualism. A militant and inspiring philosophy, not an apologetic one. Altruism by its very nature is a collectivist principle. If we accept the moral law that man must live for others—we have accepted collectivism, and all the practical consequences will follow inevitably." [The Letters of Ayn Rand (1931-1943), To Tom Girdler, July 12, 1943]

Selfishness, for Rand, represented individualism as the opposite of altruistic self-sacrifice.

"There is no hope for the world unless and until we formulate, accept and state publicly a true moral code of individualism, based on man's inalienable right to live for himself. Neither to hurt nor to serve his brothers, but to be independent of them in his function and in his motive. Neither to sacrifice them for himself nor to sacrifice himself for them in selfless service—but to deal with them in free exchange among equals, each with a legitimate right to his own benefit, and not in the spirit of any kind of altruistic service of anyone by anyone." [The Letters of Ayn Rand (1931-1943), To Tom Girdler, July 12, 1943]

Rand emphasized selfishness in opposition to the irrational anti-individualistic morality of altruism. What she did not foresee was that selfishness would be taken by those who did not understand her philosophy as the basis of two ideas she regarded as destructive and evil as altruism itself: hedonism and subjectivism.

Hedonism

Hedonism is the view that the moral good is determined by or based on whatever makes one happy or gives one pleasure. Ayn Rand's view is that the moral good is determined by moral principles, and that pleasure and happiness are the result of the pursuit of moral values—values determined rationally and objectively.

"Man exists for his own happiness, and the definition of happiness proper to a human being is: a man's happiness must be based on his moral values. It must be the highest expression of his moral values possible to him.

"This is the difference between my morality and hedonism. The standard is not: "that is good which gives me pleasure, just because it gives me pleasure" (which is the standard of the dipsomaniac or the sex-chaser)-but "that is good which is the expression of my moral values, and that gives me pleasure." Since the proper moral code is based on man's nature and his survival, and since joy is the expression of his survival, this form of happiness can have no contradiction in it, it is both "short range" and "long range" (as all of man's life has to be), and it leads to the furtherance of his life, not to his destruction." [The Journals of Ayn Rand, "13-Notes While Writing: 1947-1952."]

Even though Rand clearly explained what is wrong with hedonism in The Virtue of Selfishness, most of those who have studied Rand's ethics, continue to make the mistake that it is selfishness itself that is the basis of Objectivist ethics. It is not selfishness that makes a choice a moral one, but rational objective moral values, and any choice guided by reason and based on such values is a moral one, and therefore, in Rand's terms, a selfish one.

"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. 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." [The Virtue of Selfishness, "1. The Objectivist Ethics"]

Personally I think one of Rand's best explications of what is wrong with hedonism and what the correct basis of moral values are is that which I've gleaned (and annotated) from one of Rand's letters:

"... hedonism is not a valid ethical premise; "happiness" is not an irreducible primary; it is the result, effect and consequence of a complex chain of causes. To say: "The good is that which will make me happy or that which will serve my interests," does not indicate what will make me happy or what will serve my interests. Hedonism, of course, assumes that the standard is emotional, subjective and arbitrary: anything that makes you feel happy is the good. But a feeling is not a standard of anything."

{Note that Rand here makes the connection between hedonism and subjectivism—"assumes the standard is emotional, subjective and arbitrary."}

"The task of ethics is to tell men how to live. Since neither self-interest (nor happiness nor survival) can be achieved by random motions or arbitrary whims, it is the task of ethics to define the principles by which man is to judge and choose his values, interests, goals and actions."

{Self-interest, happiness, and one's life, may be the objective of ethics, but none can be the basis of ethics. To make any of these the basis of ethics would justify any action or choice with the excuse "its for my own happiness which I have a right to," or "it is OK to steal if it is a matter of survival," an argument I've heard some Objectivists make.}

"You know the base and validation of the Objectivist Ethics; you know why man's right to exist for his own sake is not an arbitrary, 'selfish' choice, but a metaphysical necessity derived not merely from man's nature, but from the nature of life, that is: of all living organisms—and why the specific moral code required for man's existence is necessitated by his nature as a living organism whose basic means of survival is reason.

{Note that Rand explicitly says that the right to exist for one's own sake is not a, "selfish choice," but a rationally determined fact based on the requirement of human nature to live by means of reason.}

Therefore, a man's self-interest is not to be determined by his arbitrary wishes or whims, but by the principles of an objective moral code. Man must pursue his own self-interest, but only by the guidance of a moral code and within the framework of such a code. The moral rights and claims derived from that code are based on his nature as a rational being; they cannot be extended to include their opposite; an irrational claim invalidates itself by negating the base of man's moral claims or rights (by falling into the fallacy of the "stolen concept"). The right to exist and to pursue his own happiness does not give man the right to act irrationally or to pursue contradictory, self-destructive, self-defeating goals. Rationality demands that man choose his goals in the full, integrated context of all the relevant knowledge available to him; it forbids contradictions, evasions, blank-outs, whim-worship or context-dropping.

{It is not one's "self-interest" that determines moral values, it is the reverse; one's moral values determine what is in his self-interest, and it is only by means of reason and moral principles one's self-interest can be realized. Nothing justifies choosing or acting irrationally, that is, on the basis of desire, whim, or passion. Nothing justifies evading the full context of all one knows to be right and true.}

[The Letters of Ayn Rand, "Letters To A Philosopher," (Dr. John Hospers), April 17, 1960]

Ayn Rand has made the connection between hedonism and subjectivism and has emphasized one of the essential mistakes of subjectivism which is evasion.

Subjectivism

Rand explained both how hedonism depends on subjectivism and how subjectivism is ultimately an evasion of reality.

"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; to be guided by whims—by desires whose source, nature and meaning one does not know—is to turn oneself into a blind robot, operated by unknowable demons (by one's stale evasions), a robot knocking its stagnant brains out against the walls of reality which it refuses to see." [The Virtue of Selfishness, "1. The Objectivist Ethics"]

Subjectivism is the opposite of objectivism. Objectivism is determining one's choices and action by means of reason; subjectivism is determining one's choices and action on the basis of feelings: emotions, desires, passion, or whim. Reason is man's only means to knowledge, man's only "tool of cognition." Rand emphasized this difference.

"Emotions are not tools of cognition...one must differentiate between one's thoughts and one's emotions with full clarity and precision. One...has to know that which one does know, and distinguish it from that which one feels....to distinguish one's own considered judgment from one's feelings, wishes, hopes or fears." [For the New Intellectual, page 55]

There is no natural antagonism between reason and emotion so long as one keeps the order correct—so long as one's feelings proceed from one's rational values and he understands what the source of those feelings are. It is when one let's their feelings influence or determine their thoughts and choices that those feelings become one's enemies, demons causing unhappiness and torment, and not the source happiness and pleasure they ought to be.

"An emotion is an automatic response, an automatic effect of man's value premises. An effect, not a cause. There is no necessary clash, no dichotomy between man's reason and his emotions—provided he observes their proper relationship. A rational man knows—or makes it a point to discover—the source of his emotions, the basic premises from which they come; if his premises are wrong, he corrects them. He never acts on emotions for which he cannot account, the meaning of which he does not understand. In appraising a situation, he knows why he reacts as he does and whether he is right. He has no inner conflicts, his mind and his emotions are integrated, his consciousness is in perfect harmony. His emotions are not his enemies, they are his means of enjoying life. But they are not his guide; the guide is his mind. This relationship cannot be reversed, however. If a man takes his emotions as the cause and his mind as their passive effect, if he is guided by his emotions and uses his mind only to rationalize or justify them somehow—then he is acting immorally, he is condemning himself to misery, failure, defeat, and he will achieve nothing but destruction—his own and that of others." ["Playboy's interview with Ayn Rand," pamphlet, page 6.]

I hope these notes and words of Rand will be a help to understanding what Rand's view of ethics truly was.

Edited by Regi F.
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"Life" is being taken as a continued pulse, which is understandable.  But in the context of Objectivist ethics it's wrong.

If the ultimate value were biological survival then brain death would be morally trivial, but it's clear that brain death is (and should be) morally equivalent to conventional death.  But happiness can refer to a variety of subtle responses, and the usual meaning of 'happiness' isn't the correct UV either.

Suppose we had the technology to implant our own minds in a fully immersive virtual reality, such as the Matrix, and you were choosing which world to inhabit.  If happiness as such were the UV then you would choose a world where every day was a good day, wouldn't you?

But does that seem like anything Galt or Roark would consent to, let alone actively pursue?

Taking the hypothetical a bit further, if Galt or Roark were placed in such a scenario, what sort of world would they request?

 

The ultimate value is the health, not primarily of one's physical body (although this is necessary), but of one's consciousness.  And when I introduce this distinction between mind and body, please note that I'm referring primarily to the distinction between one's awareness of them; introspection and extrospection.

Your mind is as complex and variable (likely moreso) as your physical anatomy, with its own identity and requirements.  And the functions of your subconscious mind (which are composed of your own mental habits memorized unto automization), or psycho-epistemology, affect your conscious experiences as much as the existents you choose to focus on.  For example:

You mentioned attending a play, at one point, as a pursuit of 'happiness' (which, while accurate, wasn't very precise terminology).  But your enjoyment of any given story depends on how much and how clearly you understand it, and your subsequent emotional reaction to it.  How much would you enjoy a play which was performed exclusively in some foreign language?  How much would you enjoy Atlas Shrugged if you had trained your own mind to ignore abstract thought?

Do you see the relation of the first question to the second?

 

So, proceeding from that observation; just as the ultimate value requires one to obtain food and shelter, to pursue what is existentially [extrospectively] good, it also requires one to grasp the nature of one's own mind and to perpetually improve its health and capability.

Yes; perpetual improvement is absolutely necessary.  Anyone who becomes morally content with the state of things, permanently, is already dead.

 

Now, this is already a massive abstraction and as you analyze it in greater depth (which is highly recommended), it will only become more complex.  So what does it all amount to?  It is synonymous with living as 'man qua man' but what does that look like, in our own lives, concretely?

 

The ultimate value, which subsumes all of the above and more:

The goal of Objectivist ethics is not happiness (although that's a consequence), but the sincere and fully-aware pride of yourself.

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That sort of pride requires survival, self-awareness, integrity (reason as an absolute) and eternal, objective improvement across whichever dimensions you rationally consider important.  It also requires the freedom to make whichever choices you find necessary for that (although that's derivative, it is how the UV progresses into individual rights).

That is the precise ultimate value as it appears from the perspective of your own awareness.  Rand referred to it as the "purity of your own soul" which I prefer not to use for its connotations, but also denotes the same thing.

 

Concretized in external words and actions, the pursuit of objective self-pride looks a lot like John Galt.

Edited by Harrison Danneskjold
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