[The problem of libertarianism and the NAP]

But let's try to interpret this criticism as charitably as possible. It seems like you may want to say something like, well look, we have this non-aggression principle, but all it says is "dont aggress." It doesn't say what aggression is. Unless we come up with a coherent theory of rights as the foundation for the NAP, it doesn't get us anywhere. It "fails to be meaningful apart from a concept of rights."

 

Your "charitable" way of interpreting my argument is exactly what I've been saying (consistently, I hope) through this thread. So, thank you for being charitable? 

 

 I mean, everything is tautological with itself, so why is this a "problem" as the title suggests?

 

You're confusing the issue. Everything is tautological with itself, yes. But that's not what the charge is. The charge is that the NAP is "meaningless apart from a concept of rights."

 

A person can say "a rooster is a rooster." And that would be tautological. And of course, all A's are A. But saying "that thing with feathers over there is a rooster" is not tautological. You're making an argument, or providing new information. 

 

What I'm saying in this thread (or positing for discussion/argument) is that all the NAP is saying, is: "You should not aggress against rights." But that's meaningless without a knowledge of rights. And once you establish what rights are, then you could say "don't aggress against them," but it doesn't add anything new. 

 

I'm not even sure the idea of "initiating" aggression is particularly meaningful apart from an understanding of rights. Let's say that someone pulls out a gun to murder me, and I pull a gun in self-defense, but while I hit the murderer and kill him, one of my bullets hits a bystander and kills them. I initiated force against the bystander, but it was in the context of my right to life and self-protection of it.

 

 And you link to an article by the Austro-libertarian economist Walter Block. But... that's the entire point of the very article you linked. Did you even read it, or just read the title and decry it for using the word "axiom"? (Surely you must realize not everyone in mainsteam academics follows Rand's idosyncratic use of the word "axiom"?)

 

Yes, i did read it. Let me say a couple of things, but first make this quick point. The meaning of "axiom" was not defined by Rand. The meaning is "a self-evident truth that requires no proof." In Math, its meaning is "a proposition that is assumed without proof." It's not idiosyncratic of Rand or objectivism. Maybe Block means the term in some slightly different sense. That's fair, although I think he should stay away from calling it an axiom.

 

To the article itself (and I don't really mean to contain this conversation to Block's article. It was meant as a passing, and maybe imperfect, example): Block does say that the NAP is based on private property rights. But that still doesn't WHY there is private property rights, or explain the ethical philosophical justification for private property rights. Block says nothing more about it, and then goes on in the article to address a particular attack against the NAP (one based in utilitarian welfare).  

 

Block actually says:

These arguments implicitly assume that libertarianism is a moral philosophy, a guide to proper behavior, as it were. Should the flagpole hanger let go? Should the hiker go off and die? But libertarianism is a theory concerned with the justified use of aggression, or violence, based on property rights, not morality.

 

So Block says that libertarianism is not a moral philosophy, and is not concerned with morality. The flaw I find in this is, how can you determine what property rights truly are, or what rights are altogether, without an understanding of morality? Without it, any view of property rights or the NAP is in danger of subjectivism.

[The problem of libertarianism and the NAP]

   There is no such thing as a world view without a viewer. If we want to talk about justifications for the NAP (or similar ideas) we should talk about specific people.  The article  posted in the OP was attacking a monolith, which is essentially attacking a strawman. So who has posited the NAP without justification? 

 

    Sure we can all agree that Natural Rights or Utilitarianism are incorrect, and thus not ultimately good justifications for the NAP, but its unfair to not give libertarian authors credit for their own ethical ideas on property rights. The author was of the article posted was wrong to not have looked at Ayn Rand's, John Stuart Mills, Herbert Spencer's, or Murray Rothbard's ethical arguments. 

 

I mean, I think I mostly already answered this. I said that, "To the degree that individual libertarians have a metaphysical-epistemological-ethical foundation for the NAP they may find themselves becoming objectivists, given that their foundation is correct and not skewed."

 

The article's argument is that the NAP is tautological, because aggression can only be understood through an understanding of what rights are. So if you have a concept of rights already established, then the NAP isn't saying anything new. When saying "don't initiate aggression," it's really only saying, "don't violate rights."  You haven't addressed that aspect, I don't believe. The NAP may be helpful in describing what rights violations may look like, but it is only sensible to people who understand what rights are and where they come from in the first place.

 

I know that individual libertarians do have various arguments for the foundation of rights. And as I said, to the degree that they do, and to the degree that their understanding of rights is correct, they may find themselves being more of an objectivist, even if not by name. And to answer one of your questions, because libertariansim is such a large tent, and allow for very different views of philosophy of ethics and the genesis of rights, the one concept that forms the large tent for them all is the NAP, even if individually they have different views of rights and ethics. In addition, some libertarians do say that the NAP is an "axiom." http://www.lewrockwell.com/block/block26.html

 

For those two reasons, I don't see the issue of addressing libertarianism as a worldview that has the NAP as it's connecting principle, and showing that the NAP itself fails to be meaningful apart from a concept of rights.

[The problem of libertarianism and the NAP]

Again, what libertarians say that? What libertarians do this? Which libertarians have no backing for the NAP? Surely there are subjectivist libertarians out there, and they're bad, but do all libertarians do this? Then why do you make such statements? You do understand that without specifics this argument is entirely hollow?

 

Individual libertarians may have some backing for the NAP. But I'm talking about libertarianism as a worldview and philosophy. To the degree that individual libertarians have a metaphysical-epistemological-ethical foundation for the NAP they may find themselves becoming objectivists, given that their foundation is correct and not skewed. 

 

But libertarianism as a worldview and philosophy posits the NAP as though it's an axiom without need for any further support or explanation.

 

And I did already tacitly address this in my previous post:

 

The libertarian is reduced to either saying moral value is subjective ... (or) must establish an objective moral value. This is what Objectivists have long said.

[The problem of libertarianism and the NAP]

Great response, Nicky. However, I don't believe Sanchez was referring to "physical" force alone in the first quote you posted and responded to. The example he follows up with is this:

 

To establish your right over (say) your car just is to establish that I ought not to take or use it without your permission (perhaps barring extraordinary circumstances, the parameters of which will tend to be implicit in the argument establishing the right). It is neither necessary nor illuminating to add the additional premises that taking what you have a right to counts as “aggression,” and that one ought not to aggress.

 

I think the point he is trying to get at is to ask the question: How do you know, after seeing a car sitting there and seeing keys nearby, that getting into the car and driving off with it is aggression, unless you have a system of rights established already? Nothing was physically done to another human being. In order to show that taking that car was an act of aggression, you first have a system of property rights. So the real issue is the property rights. The act of aggression is defined by the underlying system of ethics and rights. Without that underlying system, the non-aggression principle is a tautology -- it says nothing.

 

Even with physical aggression, the same problem is true. It comes back to the is-ought problem. If I punch you in the face, you can observe the "is" of what happened -- I swung my fist, it connected with your face, you suffered damage, my hand suffered less damage. I have physically injured you. But that's still an "is." It's a statement of fact. A libertarian, with the NAP, can say "don't injure anyone except in self-defense or in retaliation to an initiation of an injurious aggression." But why? Where does that moral claim come from? What is its foundation? The NAP in a vacuum doesn't provide the "why." 

 

What you need first is a moral backing. The libertarian is reduced to either saying moral value is subjective, and therefore the NAP, though defined by the objective reality of physical injury in most cases, is still subjective in terms of its moral backing and claims. Or the libertarian must establish an objective moral value. This is what Objectivists have long said.

 

Sanchez's point, and I think it is a good one, is that if you have established a moral value (whether it's subjective or objective), all the non-aggression principle really says is "It's bad to do a bad thing." That's tautological and really says nothing at all. In essence, libertarians beg the question. They begin with the notion that initiation of aggression is morally wrong. And then they say "it's wrong to initiate aggression." They need to show why initiation of force is morally wrong. But once (and if) they do that, then there's no reason to say more. The line about "you shouldn't initiate force" is redundant and meaningless from a logical standpoint (it may still have a benefit in terms of explaining the relation of force and the right to individual life). 

 

To use an analogy: Libertarian says, "No one should be prevented from wearing any particular color of shirt." To which Subjectivist says, "Why not?" Libertarian has assumed, but did not establish, that people should be free to wear whatever color of shirt they want. And Libertarian didn't explain why people have that right and why it is an objective right and not a subjective idea. If Libertarian were to make the argument that all people have a right to wear whatever color of shirt they choose, then it's unnecessary to say, "No one should be prevented from wearing any particular color of shirt." It would be a redundant restatement of the right to wear any color shirt, which has already been established. 

 

To simplify further:

 

Let "A" be an objectively true right of an individual to not have "C" done to them.

Let "B" be the statement "You should not do C to an individual." 

 

A libertarian says "B" without establishing "A."

 

An Objectivist says and establishes "A." 

 

If "A" was established, then then "B" becomes redundant, because it is a necessary result of A.

[The problem of libertarianism and the NAP]

One of the questions I'd like to raise and get comment on is this reader-comment response to the article, and whether you think it's a valid critique of the article or not:

 

The non-aggression principle is not an empty tautology like "don't violate rights." It's "don't initiate force." It's the recognition that any peaceful cooperation, trade, civilization, society, etc., is based on the agreement to not bring scarce goods into violent conflict, and it automatically implies the "first user" principle of property rights.

[The problem of libertarianism and the NAP]

This argument is nothing particularly new to objectivists, but I found this article by JULIAN SANCHEZ clear and illustrative of problems with the NAP in a vacuum. I don't know Sanchez well enough to know if he is coming from an objectivist perspective, but the argument he makes is essentially the argument made by objectivists against libertarianism: Saying that aggression against rights is bad is meaningless until you know what rights are and how they are established. It's like saying that the ultimate rule for all morality is to not do anything bad. Well, of course. But this is nothing but a tautology until you define what is bad and how it is determined.

 

I don't know if this article was already posted here, so I hope I'm not needlessly making a repost. 

 

Some of the salient excerpts: 

 

The appeal of the NAP lies in its apparent simplicity and intuitive plausibility (tautologies tend to be intuitively plausible), but it’s typically deployed in a way that amounts to a kind of shell game: I argue that socialism must be rejected on the grounds that it violates this one simple moral principle, and hope my interlocutor doesn’t notice that I’ve essentially begged the question by baking a theory of strong property rights incompatible with socialism into my conception of “aggression,” when of course libertarian property rights are ultimately backed by the threat of (individual or state) violence as well. 

 

Suppose I tell you that I have, at long last, discovered the simple principle from which all morality derives. Assuming you suppress your initial skepticism about this bold claim, you are likely to be disappointed if I then reveal that my principle is something like “One ought not to commit wrong actions,” or “Never violate the rights of others.”

 

A “right” is a claim that you are justified in ultimately resorting to (direct or indirect) force to make effective; whether or not a particular act counts as “aggression” or “initiation” of force depends on whether the right enforced is a genuine one. But all the real action is in the definition of rights; invoking the NAP adds nothing.

 

[Objectivist Sexuality: Amber Pawlik's book]

A lot of the confusion about sex and sex roles and relationships, and other topics, it seems to me, sprout from a misunderstanding of the answer to the is-ought problem. I think, but I'm not sure yet, that even Rand herself later may have held a confused and incorrect view on how the is-ought question is properly answered, even though I find that what is written in TOE is clear enough and perfectly correct.

A lot of objectivists seem to hold that an "is" directly constitutes an "ought." It is for that reason that some objectivists will say, "A man is physiologically this way with a penis that penetrates, sex happens physiologically this way with the man doing the penetrating, and therefore a moral principle "ought" to be this way, with the man taking charge and being the initiator." Or the argument may speak about a man's physical strength compared with a woman's, and moral conclusions are drawn from that. This seems to be in error according to the argument laid out by Rand in TOE, and the is-ought problem is still being committed.

She did not solve the is-ought problem by saying something like this: "Reality is objective and real, our nature as man is objective and real. Therefore, whatever our natures are, are what they are supposed to be morally speaking, and thus what nature is, is what ought to be."

(You could replace "morally speaking" with "metaphysically speaking" and the sentence would be true, but then again you're not making the connection from an is to an ought.)

That is close in some regard, but it is off on some important points.

Instead, I think she solved the is-ought problem this way:

You cannot get an "ought" from an "is." When you see a statement of fact, all it is is a statement of fact. No matter how hard you stare at it, there is no "ought" to be found. However, you do get an "ought" from an "if." Conditional statements are needed to have an "ought." For example, "if" you want to eat that apple in that tree, you "ought" to pick it off the tree. Now, carry that idea over to life itself. "If" you want to sustain life, you "ought" to do the things that sustain life, and you "ought not" do the things that fail to sustain life or endanger life.

But it is at this next point where I think Rand shines and solves the problem. While you need a conditional statement in order to have an "ought," the condition of life is already established by default for a conscious living being. You are alive; you didn't choose to be. And being a living, conscious being, you have the nature of man qua man. You feel pain as you approach the loss of life; you feel joy in a healthy life and the acts of sustaining life. So, because you are a living, conscious being, and as long as you choose to continue to live, then there are objective "oughts" related to your life established by the facts of reality and the "if" of existence so long as you continue to exist. And being a rational being with free choice (unlike plants that are not conscious and have no rationality, or animals that are conscious but live instinctively without much rational decision-making), you ought to use your rationality in your survival, because that is how man survives.

That's the answer.

But notice what the answer does not say. It does not say that any "is" of reality equals a direct "ought" of morality. It is the "is" of existence, together with the "if" of continuing to live, that creates the "oughts" that are necessary conditions for rational sustained life. But that is something different than saying that because men are bigger, or have sex a certain way, or that because the penis and sperm was designed for insemination in the vagina and egg, that there are "oughts" about those things. The facts of reality relate to morality only insofar as we understand and accept the relationship of realities have with self-interested rational life. So, the fact that the sky is gray may mean that you "ought" to protect yourself from the cold rain in order continue to survive, but the sky's grayness or blueness itself doesn't mean the sky "ought" to be gray or blue morally.

In the same way, the fact that a man is bigger than a woman, or that the penis goes into the vagina, does not mean that a man should be the ultimate leader in a relationship, or that anal sex is wrong, or that homosexual sex is wrong, if those actions have nothing to do with an individual's rational sustaining of life.

The is-ought problem still exists, and necessarily so. The ethic that exists objectively doesn't come from any and every "is" of the world, it comes from the "is" of life and the rational choices that sustain and enhance life.

[Violence by proxy]

What you said in the quote above is a slippery and dangerous slope. A man who kills  a doctor who performs abortions is not an innocent victim of his priest. We don't put the priest in jail even though he might have triggered the chain of events.

 

There are very real differences between a priest saying "abortion is evil, and abortion doctors are murderers;" a priest saying, "The abortion doctor John Doe on First Street is a murderer and should be killed;" and a priest saying, "Hey, Bob. The abortion doctor John Doe on First Street is a murderer. Here, take this gun and go kill him." 

 

You're treating all those scenarios just the same. While the second one may be approaching yet falling short of the definition of conspiring to commit murder and being an accessory to it, the third clearly is conspiring to commit murder and being an accessory. 

 

There are clear ways to define whether one is an accessory to a crime. If I drive the getaway car in a bank robbery, I am an accessory to the crime, whether I was the one who walked in with the gun or not. There may indeed be some areas where it may be hard to determine if someone is an true accessory to a crime or not, and in those cases the default ruling would be "innocent," however that is no argument against the very real fact that if a person commits acts to knowingly aid in the committing of a crime, then that person is also held at fault.

[Violence by proxy]

@bogdan: One of the problems is that the world isn't as simplistic as you paint it. Yes, maybe if A hires B to kill C, then B does not have to agree, and no force is being used on B, only persuasion. But, what happens when A's goons, X and Y, pay a visit to B and say "you either do it or we're going to kill your two kids (e and f)." Now, the threat of that violence may make B decide to go through with it. But the only reason X and Y even made that threat to B is because they were afraid that if they didn't abide by A's wishes, then they would be killed by J and K. 

 

But in that whole (yes, somewhat comical) example, you would only find fault in B and only at the point that he actually committed the crime, and not a minute sooner (not even when he was on his way over to C's house with a gun. I guess police would just have to observe him right up to the point of the crime, and arrest him afterward). But A is not at fault, in your view, and neither is X and Y or J and K. And yet the whole scheme is fear built on fear built on fear. 

 

I think the proper view is to know that to plan to initiate force, and to take measures toward carrying out that plan, is criminal if it can be determined that desire and initiative would in all likelihood have ended with the crime being committed. . 

[Violence by proxy]

Oh cool. So I can pay someone to murder my hypothetical wife, and if someone tells the police on me, I don't have to worry about getting arrested, AND if someone does murder her, I STILL don't have to worry about getting arrested. Awesome.

[Bill Maher Rips Ayn Rand]

I've seen this line of attack constantly, so it's not even an original thought with Maher. The attack is that Ayn Rand is for teens and anyone who hasn't quite matured, and once you grow up, mature people realize it and discard her.

 

But intelligent people know that that line of thought is a logical fallacy. It's a personal attack without offering any kind of actual argumentation against Rand's arguments. What Maher and others are trying to do with this kind of illogical attack is appeal to the emotional need for social acceptance, and try to convince people that they will be outcast from society and viewed as weird and immature for agreeing with Rand. 

 

And intelligent people know that that kind of attack fails, and ironically shows the immaturity of the person trying to make it. If you want to (maturely) refute a person's arguments or position, you will have to deal with their actual arguments and deal with them logically.

 

If Maher never really understood what libertarianism was, he only has himself to blame for his ignorance.

[On Rand’s The Little Street]

If you read up on Hickman, you have to wonder what Rand read about him that led her to write what she did.

 

The OP's quotes already explain it. Rand wasn't glorifying his crimes. She was highlighting his ability not to be mediocre. He was an extremist, and she saw that as a good thing, instead of society's attempts at making civilians adopt a golden mean kind of view of themselves. A collectivist society wants you to join the mob, the collective. A person who demands to be an individual will be considered an extremist. That's why she says, "He has no ambition to be a benefactor or popular hero for mankind. […] Subconsciously, this is the result of a noble feeling of superiority, which knows that to be loved by the mob is an insult and that to be hated is the highest compliment it can pay you."

 

But she didn't say that all extremists are good, or that Hickman himself was good. She clearly denounced his killings and crimes, and extremism can be very bad if extreme in the wrong ways.

 

Hickman is an extremist, a type that can either be very good or very bad."

 

 

 

Her larger point was that extremism is preferable to the golden mean, preferable to society's attempt to make us all part of the average. Only "extremists" can ...

be faithful to their purposes and to themselves, they would be clear, straight, and absolute in everything. And they wouldn’t tolerate a lot of what is tolerated now.

 

 

But to say that Rand was honoring or idealizing Hickman's crimes and murders themselves is to misunderstand what she said about him in her notes.

[what would be some good points to make when justifying/ explaining Obj]

One way is to ignore him or tell him to FOAD if he is being rude. No sense in having a conversation with someone who isn't willing to use even the slightest amount of reason.

 

Another way, if he does want to have a grown-up conversation, is to ask him if he thinks Objectivism is bad. When he says yes, ask him if he believes it is objectively bad, or subjectively bad. If he believes values are subjective, then why is he bothering to tell you his subjective values or to attack yours, since neither is better than the other? If he believes values are objective, ask him to explain how. 

[Playboy Trashes Ayn Rand]

For the most part, the free market invoked by Rand is a mythic version

of an American past that never existed. After all, the American economy was

founded on federal subsidy, protectionism and, for a time, slavery—not the free

market.

 

I enjoyed how they, in some slight way, saw that slavery is antithetical to a free market, and yet are unable to see the moral basis for a free market.

[Audio: Men, Don't Ask a Woman to "Hang Out" With You]

I recommend keeping your friends away from a woman you're dating, not because you might lose her to one of them, but because "friends" (particularly male ones) often have an unfortunate tendency to act in ways which can cause a woman to lower her opinion of you.

Kevin. Don't you think that if a woman found out that you were keeping her away from your friends because you were embarrassed by them or concerned about how they would act, then THAT would cause her to lower her opinion of you? Especially if your concern was your own image and hiding parts of yourself from her? For a man who does that sort of thing, it comes across sounding like he has such a low view of himself, and is somewhat desperate to convince her to like him, that he is trying to sell a certain image to her.

At the risk of incorrect assumptions and based solely on what I can gather from the little that you've told me and from reading your blog and video posts, I think your viewpoint is suffering from some fundamental concepts that you've neglected. You seem to be trying to craft a certain image to display for a woman, and then hoping that she approves of that image and accepts you. But why are you trying to seek anyone's approval? The only approval that matters is the approval you give to yourself. Key to this is determining what your own ethic is, and only doing what you would do. Once you know what your ethic is, and you live by it, then you are free to grant yourself approval -- no other approval needed. Once you've done that, you'll be free to offer yourself to other people as you are (without any attempt to sell yourself), and form friendships and relationships with people who enjoy you -- the real you. There is no need, ever, to worry about another person's "opinion of you." And this is the fundamental point many men need to get straight on.

So your desire to hide your friends from a girl you would be interested is wrongheaded.

Part of the process of knowing your ethic, doing what you would do, and granting approval to yourself, means that you choose the kinds of friends whom you want to have as part of your life. To approve of them for your life is a natural outflow of your own self-approval. So, if a woman disapproves of your friends and has a lower view of you based on how she judges your friends, then she is probably not the kind of woman that you would want, I would think.

But again the main point here is that, in a relationship, it's not about a man trying to impress or sell himself or manipulate someone's opinion, by crafting a certain image and hiding other parts of his life. Even if that were to "work" for a short amount of time, eventually once the woman gets to know you better she will (hopefully) see deeper than the facade, and if you are not what you presented yourself to be, if you sold her something that you could not deliver, then you end up being a relationship con-artist.

 

A relationship is not trying to mold yourself to fit what you think her opinion is, hoping you hit the right buttons; it is to offer your real self, fully self-approved, without the trappings of the ceremony of "dating" and courtship gestures (which only display neediness), in order to be real with her and get to know her for whom she really is. That way you are not selling her a bill of goods or conning her. If you choose to be with each other, you both will be getting the real deal, exactly what you each presented to one another. And an extra benefit is you won't be wasting your time trying to win the "opinion" of someone who wouldn't be right for you anyway.

[Audio: Men, Don't Ask a Woman to "Hang Out" With You]

Kevin. First off, my intention wasn't to make assumptions about your view. If it came across that way, I didn't mean it to and I apologize. I did actually ask specific questions above in my first post about what you meant by a "date." You never answered, so when I responded, I addressed the general conception of "dating" that people have. I'm still curious then what you mean by dating, and whether you would do the things I asked about above (pay for dinner, open car and restaurant doors, be the driver instead of the passenger, etc.).

 

So my intention was not to make incorrect assumptions, but to make some points concerning the potential problems I see for anyone who did those types of traditional things that are implied in a "date." And because you didn't specify what exactly you mean by a date in your videos, a lot of listeners will assume that you mean by it those traditional courtship rituals. If you agree that those things are problematic and you don't want to imply them by using the word "date," it might be beneficial to say that directly.

 

One other thing that I think is very important, and I am not in a position at the moment to re-listen to the video in order to transcribe your words exactly, but I think you mentioned something about one benefit of a date being that you keep your friends away from the girl you have an interest in -- that if you were to "hang out" with a group, then your guy friends might try to win over the girl you are interested in. You did say something like that, correct?

 

If that was your point, I think there's a real danger with that perspective, and it highlights a lot of the problems people have in terms of jealousy, sex, attraction, and romance.

 

Given that a woman is a person, not a possession, then no other guy could swoop in and take her for himself without her also being attracted to him and choosing him as well. Don't you want a woman to choose you freely, even with other options available to her? And if she did in fact "hang out" with you and a group of your friends and ended up having a fling with one of them, then isn't it a good thing that two people who like each other follow their desires and have fun with each other? Why should that be something to fear?

 

Any kind of scheming to try to keep a woman from someone she might be attracted to over you seems to me to indicate a high level of low self-esteem, and indicates what I believe to be a false dichotomy: That a person can only be attracted to one person at a time. (Not that you personally have low self-esteem, but someone who did would conceivably do such a thing.)

 

In my view, I have no qualms whatsoever with a woman spending time with my friends, or becoming attracted to one or more of them. There is no competition, because love and attraction require free choice -- if a woman is going to be attracted to me, then by default it is her free choice and has nothing to do with how I can manipulate situations or keep her away from other people. If anything, that kind of paranoia and low self-esteem will only make me a less attractive person. And at the worst end of that scale, those kinds of people end up being the kind of abusive husbands who try to turn their significant others into virtual house slaves, keeping their wives from having any friends at all because of an extremely jealous fear that they may choose someone else, or be attracted to someone else.

 

And for me, there is no problem with a woman being attracted to multiple different people on different levels. As far as I know, every person (including me) is attracted to multiple other people at any given time. If you and her fit together well, and connect in a deep, romantic way, then it will happen naturally and freely, with no manipulation required, and she will choose you even if you have hot friends (she will find you hotter, if she does. That's an important tautology). It's really important to drop the fear over those sorts of things. If anything, that fear and jealousy and attempt to keep a person away from someone else, end up being detractors and roadblocks that prevent women from being attracted to you.

[Audio: Men, Don't Ask a Woman to "Hang Out" With You]

... my ideas are based on years of observation of what works in romance between men and women.

 

Well if it is working for you and you're happy and satisfied with your romance/love/sex life, then I wouldn't want to fiddle with that at all.

 

But my concerns in general remain: That by relating to women with traditional dates and courtship you are widening the gulf between you and women; creating awkwardness with the ceremony and expectations of a "date," thereby creating roadblocks for a real connection; and making yourself less attractive to women, because they see you as the one vying for their attention (trying to sell yourself) by paying for their meal and opening their doors, as though you are putting them up on a pedestal, with you being the lowly and hopeful courter. In my experience, women are not attracted or turned on by this behavior.

 

Not to mention the fact that this model of courtship, while trying to treat a woman like a valuable possession and showing her that you're so interested in her you will serve her, ends up still treating her like a possession instead of a person and turns you into a servant to be pitied, not turned on by, and is intrinsically sexist.

 

I also do very, very well in the sex/romance arena, and I don't go on "dates." That kind of thinking is not even on the table, for the reasons mentioned above.

[Audio: Men, Don't Ask a Woman to "Hang Out" With You]

Do you ask your guy friends to go hang out with you? If so, why do you have a different standard for women? I agree that it's better to have specific plans in mind instead of vaguely saying "let's hang out," but it seems that your thought is rooted in traditional dating and male/female roles, and I think you make an error with that.

 

Which leads me to a side question: Do you pick up the whole tab when you ask a woman to go eat with you on a "date"? Do you open the passenger-side car door for her? Do you rush to get to the restaurant door before she does so you can open it for her? And would you do any of these things for a guy friend whom you had asked to go grab some food with you? It you have a double standard, I think you definitely are basing your thought on cultural courting rituals, and it may be you who are at risk of looking like a "loser," without realizing it, in the eyes of many women.

 

But again, nice video series.

[Could religion be considered prosecutable child abuse?]

If a stranger came up to me and told me I should accept Jesus or burn in Hell, I don't feel threatened. But if he approached my five-year-old child, I would be concerned.

 

Your concern would be for their physical safety because a strange person approaches them instead of you and talks to them. That's something entirely different than what we are talking about here, and thus a false analogy and irrelevant conclusion.

[Is the Objectivist view of sex flawed?]

(she makes a distinction between valuing a sex partner and treating them as an object)

 

Yes clearly you should treat people as people, and not as objects. This is actually one of the primary reasons why many men have trouble getting women to have sex with them. 

 

(As an aside, there's nothing wrong with objectifying your partner in the act of having sex -- for fun and roleplay. But that's a different issue than treating a person as an object instead of a person in day-to-day life.)

 

But none of this has anything to do with forming an argument against casual sex.

 

You seem to be making two errors: 1. You are arguing that you shouldn't do anything casually with someone else. (Somehow that's wrong in your estimation, but I'm not sure why.) 2. You are begging the question by saying that casual sex is wrong because it is not actually casual sex, and never can be. (You are assuming the very thing you are trying to prove; i.e., casual sex can't be because it can't be.)

 

Additionally it occurs to me that your definition of casual sex is a bit of a strawman. You are assuming that casual sex means that you don't think of your partner as a person or a friend. Who says? Any woman I have sex with is absolutely a person, and absolutely a friend, though maybe a casual friend. I do have a love for her, a sort of friendship love. Even if I were to meet someone and decide to have a one-night-stand, I still form a casual friendship with that person in the time I know her. Sure, it's not deep love. Is that a requirement for activities with people? It's not deep and romantic love to be sure, and yet you think that's the only kind of love that sex belongs to. And thus in that I believe you are begging the question once again.

[Is the Objectivist view of sex flawed?]

The problem Ayn Rand, and many other people, have with casual sex is due to a remnant of evolutionary psychology. This is why I've argued before that Ayn Rand's view could be improved upon with an allowance for the understanding of evolutionary psychology. Sex is one of the clearest examples of that. 

 

Societies' various issues concerning sex have to do with what I call the who's your daddy problem. 

 

If you have the knowledge and ability to manage and/or prevent pregnancy, and remain safe from STIs, then sex itself doesn't have to be a significant issue. But sex has been a big issue for most of our history as humans. In a more primitive society that has no good method of birth control; sex always brought with it the real possibility of pregnancy. No woman wanted to become pregnant without being able to prove whom the father is, because it would have left her without a partner willing to take on parentage of the child, and without a partner willing to provide resources for the survival of the child and the mother. 

 

To put an Objectivist understanding on it: Casual sex in those societies DID constitute a threat to a woman's survive-ability.

 

In other words, in a primitive tribe, if it was known that a woman had more than one sex partner in a short amount of time, and she became pregnant, there would be no way to determine whom the father was. And none of her partners would volunteer himself to be the father or to share resources for a child whom he couldn't be sure was his. That would leave a mother to support herself and her child. For that reason, a woman had to either become very selective and deny sex only to a man who was willing to make a relationship commitment (marriage, betrothment), or she had to at least convince the tribe at large that she was chaste and not "loose" (whether she was in reality or not). The main point was to make sure the men believed she wasn't "sleeping around," so that if she became pregnant after having sex with a man, the man would be convinced that he had to be the father, and therefore would form a relationship contract with her (if he hadn't already) and help share resources for the survival of the woman and their child.

 

This is the whole reason why we have the views on sex and marriage and relationships (and the double standards regarding women and sex) that we do. It's a remnant of our evolved psychological makeup as humans. But over the past 50 years the world has changed dramatically. It is now possible for smart people with the right technology to separate the threat to survive-ability from sex. Now, with the right precautions and methods, you can have sex without much danger of STI contraction and without the possibility for pregnancy. But because people don't know the evolutionary psychological underpinnings for their feelings about sex in the first place, and don't understand the survive-ability/objective value connections with sex, they still cling to the hard-wired views that casual sex is immoral and that women who sleep around should be called nasty names.

 

This is where people are confused. Because of that psychological background, people tend to believe that they must form romantic attachments to whomever they have sex with. Often, even if they begin casually, they will find themselves "falling in love" with a person they have sex with casually. It's a sort of trick of the brain, but it can cause real problems and confusion about what real love really is. I don't think a person can grow up fully in terms of sexual relationships, and relationships in general, until they learn to be clear about the separation between sex and love, and to know that they really are separate concepts.

[Is the Objectivist view of sex flawed?]

Most of the posters in this (in the freshly revived portion at least) thread are blatantly misrepresenting Ayn Rand's position. It's easy to argue against strawmen. I never read anything where Ayn Rand claimed that casual sex causes lasting damage, nor anything where she was against having sex for pleasure and fun ... .

 

Huh?

 

"Sex is one of the most important aspects of man’s life and, therefore, must never be approached lightly or casually." 

-- Playboy Interview: Ayn Rand

 

She goes on to say promiscuity is immoral, and that sex is too good and too important to be approached casually, and that it must involve a "very serious relationship."

[Is the Objectivist view of sex flawed?]

I honestly hate merges like this.

 

Not to mention the fact that the title is "Is the Objectivist view of sex flawed?" started by Dormin111 in 2012, and I don't think that's true. Wasn't that Kjetil's thread's title? Or am I mistaken?

[Is the Objectivist view of sex flawed?]

@425

Your statement appears to be begging the question. One the one hand you say that sex is "an intimate moment." I take it by this that you mean emotionally intimate, not just physically intimate. And then you use this as a reason to argue against casual sexual moments. As though you are saying, it is wrong to have a casual sexual moment, because it is a non-casual sexual moment. 

 

I'll have more to say later when I have time.

[Is the Objectivist view of sex flawed?]

"... it's either meaningless, scratch my back, I'll scratch yours ..."

 

Meaningless in what way? 

 

Are you sure it's entirely meaningless? How much meaning does something need to have before you decide to do it? Is eating dinner with friends at a restaurant meaningless?

 

It seems to me that in your estimation, sex needs a much higher level of meaning than most other things. Would you agree with that assessment? If that's true, it appears to be a bit of a begging of the question.  I would wonder also, then, if you are opposed to anything done "casually."