splitprimary

what have i misunderstood? i was not at all trying to be offensive. i understand that you haven't been discouraging Objectivists from answering trolley problems, which of course i think is good. and you correctly identify some frequent negative motivations people have in asking them that i agree should be kept in mind. i also think your example dialogue shows a really benevolent sense of life tendency to solve problems creatively before accepting that any even partially negative outcome, or any amount of "sacrifice", is necessary. that is the objectively best way to be: so long as there is any wiggle room in the scenario posed, any loophole left unclosed, to go for that instead. maybe it will help if i state my own position: i am actually against pulling the switch. Eioul can imagine himself doing it without any of the mental distress that most other people anticipate, but i think that is a failure of imagination on his part, that he simply isn't projecting himself into the situation very well and that he would find out, much to his surprise, if he was ever actually in it, that he would feel terrible about it afterward. it makes sense that i would predict this, if i think the action goes against something objective in reality or about human nature, since regardless of what beliefs one holds about it, that would be destructive ("any refusal to recognize reality has disastrous consequences", "we can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality"). but i would not agree that Eioul is guilty of endorsing collectivism by his answer. the question can be intended to pit the single person on one track, representing the Individual, against a Group or collective on the other; the questioner may want to force you to accept that as the choice in order to "illustrate carnage as an inevitable result" of individualist morality, but an Objectivist need not agree with that perspective. even in answering "save the 5", that is not something the decision can mean to us if we’re really individualists, since to us the group = 5 individuals. i apologize if i've mistakenly credited you with being more perceptive and/or honest than Eioul, by too enthusiastically interpreting your "disvalue of having caused the death of one [innocent] person" comment and a few others more between the lines, as you noticing the effect this would have on the agent in the event.

i agree that "more strangers" existing is better than "less strangers". thought experiments that isolate the position that in general having more/less people in the world is valuable could be constructed. but the trolley problem is not one of them. too much context is unavoidably included. by the nature of the question itself, the trolley problem simply doesn't get as far abstracted as "5>1", and the fact that people jump there, or interpret it as a choice between "a group" vs "an individual", or whatever else, is not the fault of the question. the threat involved is a train. trains run on fixed schedules that are knowable. usually the question has the 5 people tied down (presumably by some villain, as Nicky said: "those people didn't get tied to the tracks by the wind") who would have done that at the time they did because they knew a train would be approaching then. by this device that context is explicitly preserved. we know that the train is supposed to be in this place at this time, it is part of the scenario that it is justifiably expected by all that the train will run just this course. we also know and should have in mind unless anything is said to adjust it, that trains are owned and run by companies, so this is private property you'd be interfering with. when the questioner includes that the person who is at the switch is not an operator, not an associated employee at all, but just a bystander, this context is also reinforced in the storytelling itself. so the question can also be an exercise in retention of context, or attachment to reality, and reveal peoples' readiness to move away from it. SL had the right standpoint in his conversation with the imaginary professor: context should have to be explicitly removed through some story device, otherwise it's fair game, since the correct method of thinking is to hold concepts in a full way, as representing all of their content and detail. the person who is posing the question is aiming at a specific variable, and is attempting to tailor the question in such a way that they've covered all the other bases. the questioner may be successful or unsuccessful at getting to their target. Peikoff makes some of these points about the trolley question in his answer here, along with the idea that individualists do not consider people interchangeable (or as SL said earlier, rejects that "people and their lives can be reduced to arithmetic"): http://www.peikoff.com/2008/05/26/if-five-people-are-in-an-emergency-room-dying-and-one-healthy-person-in-the-waiting-room-could-save-them-all-if-we-used-his-organs-is-it-morally-permissible-to-do-this-even-though-hell-die/

however, there is an even stronger reason to spend time on this when it can be valuable to your own thinking. and SL i think that is the case here: when you're admitting that the answer you would give based on reason clashes with your emotions, "feels wrong", to the point of being felt as a threat and a temptation to abandon morality altogether, that should tell you there is something "worthy of consideration", something that needs attention; the reflex should not be to push the prompt away. you state in such a situation "one MUST choose to sacrifice one person to save a group of people in order to be moral", but you recognize that against the value to you of these complete strangers you are saving, stands the "disvalue of having caused the death of one person". i think that's very insightful, but then we should check our premises, because one of two things must be going on: either 1. you are correct that pulling that switch is the right thing to do, but your overwhelmingly feeling something other than pride over performing that action means you don't fully grasp why it's right, so your emotions are not following as they should yet. (see Eioul above for a more consistent thought/emotion pro-switch-pulling position: "I am in fact being virtuous", "defending values") or 2. there is an error in the conscious chain of reasoning you've used to arrive at that decision, pulling the switch really is wrong, and your emotions are still following your (correct) implicit premises as an Objectivist instead, and are pointing in the right direction. in either case, further thinking will be useful to you.

the fact that these questions can be used to "stunt and confuse the minds of others toward altruism" and enforce "the premise that morality requires sacrifice", means by itself that there is sufficient value at stake to spend our time on it as Objectivists. if we are easily able to point out the "implicit premises and package deals", this can save students from falling victim to them, and is by no means sacrificial, even if we don't find the dilemmas interesting personally. we can certainly note that there are more significant things to talk about in ethics and try to direct the conversation toward those, but if we conspicuously avoid giving answers, that indicates that we are afraid of them rather than that they are easy and trivial, and sends the opposite message of: "no Objectivist need be afraid of turning his or her mind to such things", "it does not confuse us". we show that by having an attitude of being willing and eager to deal with any moral problem that is presented. to the extent that such questions and the people posing them are really asking: are you willing to drop context and answer moral questions completely without reference to reality?, Objectivists rightfully want to answer: no! my position here is just that this can be communicated much more effectively by participating and reframing the issue in your way with the way you answer, than it can be done by abstaining or simply complaining about the approach. it's much more powerful to take control of the discussion and reassert your view, than to simply criticize the one you are seeing presented. as in anything, the answer isn't to silence the opposition (to stop the "insidious tradition" of professors asking these loaded questions), but to out-compete them and render them harmless (deal with the questions so well that no one finds them challenging or gets tripped up anymore when they are posed).

to merely look at the consequences is not to "examine the folly" or to "understand their theories".

the trolley problem is not "trying to convince us... to kill innocent people for the greater good"; the trolley problem is a question and it is possible to answer otherwise. the point of posing extreme thought experiments is not that ethics is "irrelevant to ordinary decisions" (these should be easy to answer) or that emergencies are the norm (most everyone admits they are not). the point is that an ethical system should be capable of handling anything, providing guidance for any decision you could face. and a moral philosopher should be prepared to stand by their positions even under the most difficult of circumstances, or else reevaluate and amend the principles they have accepted if they are shown to lead to problems when followed out. if ethics is an applied science, as Rand believed it was, then it should be held to the same standards as other applied sciences, and engineers of every kind stress-test their structures. thought experiments like these can be considered to be the moral philosophy equivalent of software testing.

the usual reason for differences of opinion on particular issues is an underlying difference in values and their hierarchy (consider politics, for example). beauty is the same way. it is possible to break down an aesthetic evaluation, to figure out why you find someone attractive or unattractive and why, including which features factor into your evaluations and to what extent, but it takes a lot of thinking. then for someone to agree with you, you will probably have to give reasoned arguments for each of -those- attributing elements, for instance details like: a tan is more/less attractive than pale skin, eyes are a bigger/lesser component in facial beauty than noses, etc, which all lead back to the even deeper questions of what specific visual elements communicate a person's nature best / most consistently, and ultimately what you think that nature is in the first place. you get the variety in opinions out of the complexity, from the fact that the evaluation of concretes contain all these other judgments, not from any part of it being subjective. these are quotes from The Fountainhead from Roark on buildings, but the same principle would apply to other arts, or to aspects of appearance: "Nothing can be reasonable or beautiful unless it's made by one central idea, and the idea sets every detail. A building is alive, like a man. Its integrity is to follow its own truth, its one single theme, and to serve its own single purpose. ...Its maker gives it the soul and every wall, window, and stairway to express it." "We live in our minds, and existence is the attempt to bring that life into physical reality, to state it in gesture and form. For the man who understands this, a house he owns is is a statement of his life." "A building has integrity, just as a man and just as seldom! It must be true to its own idea."

I thought that was strange too, but they tell you that in different places, and they ask the questions totally separately in the quiz too. Still it might be that they got confused, and then we don't know which one that percentage really represents. What's interesting to me is that they seem to approve of the split they see (or to think highly of low 'yuk-o-meter' readings). They do not want moral feelings (or "raw sentiment", which they take for granted and assume to come from deeply ingrained social norms and taboos) to be translated into moral judgments. “A yuk-factor might lead us to condemn actions- and even people- we have no good reason to condemn”, they say. The example they give is “untouchables” in the Indian caste system. If such feelings as disgust for eating one’s pet are felt, then, they should be ignored when considering the morality of the action and whether the person should be judged negatively for it. I would expect Objectivists, on the other hand, to be less affected by societal norms, but based on the philosophy’s theory of emotion, to demand consistency between moral feelings and moral judgments. So whatever the ‘Moralizing’ score may be, to always have a 'Yuk-o-Meter' score of 100%. We would want to say that only what is rationally considered to be immoral and harmful should be distasteful, and if something such as incest (another example from the quiz), is disgusting, there must be a reason we find it so.

Correct! The questions in the original quiz were designed to show that there are things most people are uncomfortable with and find repellant on an aesthetic level, yet which they do not consider to be at all morally problematic, mainly because the actions are not thought to harm anyone. In their words, it "measures the tendency of your moral judgments to reflect feelings of distaste or disgust" by focusing on a "class of activities that are harmless, private and consensual, yet violate strong social norms". On the cat question, 97% of people say no harm was done, only 27% call it immoral, but 73% of people say it bothers them. The creators of the quiz consider "rooting [of] moral attitudes in emotion" to be dangerous.

Question comes from a philosophy quiz: http://www.philosophyexperiments.com/cat/ I've discussed this with Objectivists I know and have gotten some interesting combinations of answers!

*recap post!* it seems like there are different classes of things we can say concerning is->ought / form->function. the simplest examples being what everyone here agrees on: allergies like lactose intolerance -> should not drink milk lack of arms -> baseball pitcher is not a viable career and less functionally, more aesthetically- things along the lines of: body type -> certain styles of clothing are more flattering and should be preferred hair/skin/eye color -> certain colors look better on you than others and from earlier on in the thread: anatomy (including height, athleticism, flexibility, genitalia) -> certain positions and techniques for sex are more effective women who are physically unable to orgasm from penetration alone -> rely on other methods (these are all highly particular/individual, and are mostly in the negative- excluding options but not setting ideals.) ——— however, there is also an ongoing attempt being made here to link psychological characteristics to gender, and that hasn’t been substantiated. so as far as epist’s list: “those characteristics which make one a man or woman by nature, and all of the expression and emphasis of those characteristics which should follow by rule - in aesthetics, in style, in manner, in behavior, in character…” -we’ve agreed so far that gender can influence style and aesthetics to some degree, and in very limited ways (like seeing a “urologist or gynecologist”) behavior, but -not- manner or character, not to any significant extent decisions like “career, goals, character, behavior in social situations”, or "kind of relationship to pursue". It has not been established that (or in what way) M/F “should form a cornerstone of our personality”, or are “deeply fundamental aspects to one's very identity and personality” ——— the key challenges are: bc: “You haven't given any reason for one's sex to imply very pervasive things for a person's life and personality rather than much more specific, delimited things.” eioul: “You'd have to first establish that the physical aspects translate to a fundamental psychological difference.” / “The whole problem is how you get from a physical difference to a fundamental psychological difference.” bc: “Why and how does the is of one's [sex] imply the specific oughts you are in favor of?”

DA: withdrawing from one government doesn't necessarily mean staying "unaffiliated" with any, although it could. maybe i'm missing something, because we seem to me to be in agreement. the secession/migration issue is the important point: "The only necessary right, which is the ultimate expression of casting a vote, is the right to immigrate." "No government should be allowed to... impede departure" "fundamentally represents a kind of vote, i.e. whether to remain (and participate) or flee (and seek better governance)", "remove oneself from a hostile environment" having a standard procedure for that would do a lot more good than prohibiting certain people within a system from voting. i'm not quite following the switch to concerns about emergency response. ?

i had e-mail notifications turned on for this thread. here's what i have been able to reconstruct of the record from that. a little unsure about order (sN/Eioul feel free to edit if you know where it's off, or if anyone has additions): dream_weaver: "And for governments which are not amiable to such agreements, DA, what would determine how they get to draw from this 'global pool'?" Devil's Advocate: "What generally happens to businesses with dissatisfied customers? Governments with restrictive emigration wouldn't draw much from the global population. We didn't see, for example, counter waves of migrants climbing over the Berlin Wall into East Germany. Restrictive migration policies work to the disadvantage of any nation imposing them, essentially marking them as places to be avoided." softwareNerd: "I don't understand how voting rights are related to immigration rights. The assumption of the question is that a country has a government (i.e. not competing governments within a country). Within that context, voting is one way in which the government makes decisions: people vote in referendums or they vote for representatives and then those people make decisions, or those representatives make laws , ... and so on. Granted that people should be free to immigrate in or out of a country, but that does not answer the question about voting rights." happiness: "If Objectivists founded a country, would it be moral to restrict voting rights to Objectivists?" splitprimary: "it would be moral to restrict citizenship to Objectivists and to restrict voting to citizens" Devil's Advocate: "splitprimary said 'it would be moral to restrict citizenship to Objectivists..' How so?" dream_weaver: "I'm trying to picture this. "Raise your right hand, place your left hand on this copy of Atlas Shrugged Do you solemnly swear . . ." " Devil's Advocate: "dream_weaver said 'I'm trying to picture this. "Raise your right hand, place your left hand on this copy of Atlas Shrugged Do you solemnly swear . . ."' Wrong oath ;o)" dream_weaver: "Devil's advocate said 'Wrong oath ;o)' Or the wrong ellipsis. B)" Devil's Advocate: "I'm attempting to respond to the OP more broadly in the context of establishing a relationship between civil voting and a fundamental right to life. Not being able to vote doesn't threaten ones life per se, however not being able to remove oneself from a hostile environment does. So immigration as a right is more directly related to the right to life than voting in my mind, and fundamentally represents a kind of vote, i.e. whether to remain (and participate) or flee (and seek better governance). On a side not, I'm finding it difficult to gain access to this forum and getting errors while trying to log in, which accounts for sometimes not being able to respond sooner" softwareNerd: "splitprimary said 'you should at least have to agree to the philosophy of government of the state you're joining. and politics of course is a higher branch, that really rests on metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics.' This is a much narrower requirement than having to be an Objectivist. For example, someone might be religious, but might be fine saying that the state should be Capitalist. The current U.S. oath is applied to immigrant. The majority of citizens are born into they country and one cannot reasonably ask them to leave if they have different ideas about the nature of government. I do think that certain basic knowledge about the fundamentals of government (knowledge, not agreement) should be a requirement to vote. However, even here there are a lot of caveats to this... or such a system could be corrupted to disenfranchise people." splitprimary: "Devil's Advocate said 'How so?' if you were in a state of nature and you wanted to only pool together for defense with other individuals who claim to be atheistic, or to create a contract where everyone agrees about how disputes will be settled between members of the group, but also include a rule that everyone must wear red hats on tuesdays, you are free to do so. the same would go for forming a society exclusively with people who agreed to a specific philosophy. the question then is what is the best requirement. it could definitely be argued that broader is better because people are valuable and you want as many as possible, so let any capitalist in. there would be benefits to restricting it to people who would fully endorse at least the core principles of Objectivism though. for instance, the irrationality of religious people often does influence their political decisions for the worse. people claiming to be pro-liberty and endorsing individualism at the political level, but who hold collectivist and altruistic principles when it comes to ethics... in a way that's how the current mixed economy came about." splitprimary: "softwareNerd said 'The current U.S. oath is applied to immigrant. The majority of citizens are born into they country and one cannot reasonably ask them to leave if they have different ideas about the nature of government.' being "grandfathered in" to a social agreement that carries obligations with it is bizarre. allegiance to a country should be explicitly chosen, likely at the age of legal adulthood. it is not a matter of "asking them to leave", it would be a matter of asking them to join. and there's no "leaving" if they do not, they would just not be protected by that entity. people own property and governments are formed by them, not the other way around." Eioul: "splitprimary said 'the question then is what is the best requirement. it could definitely be argued that broader is better because people are valuable and you want as many as possible, so let any capitalist in. there would be benefits to restricting it to people who would fully endorse at least the central principles of Objectivism though. for instance, the irrationality of religious people often does influence their political decisions for the worse. people claiming to be pro-liberty and endorsing individualism at the political level, but who hold collectivist and altruistic principles when it comes to ethics... in a way that's how the current mixed economy came about.' Well, this is why we talk about rights, since it quite literally doesn't matter what a person thinks, as long as they at least agree on rights protection as the government's function. I see no reason to test someone for being an Objectivist if all you want to do is decide on citizenship or voting rules. If your aim is rights protection, then I see no reason to throw non-political qualifications for citizenship. A government's rules are what prevent internal decay. If people ruin it from the outside, then the rules are poorly written or too easily altered. Personally, I would not use belief standards, I'd use standards of action. This works far better than gauging who qualifies as "really" believing in certain principles. To accomplish that, you could say citizenship requires military service, just as an example." Devil's Advocate: [missing] 2046: "Everyone has the right to vote. Let's say Sam, Tom and Joe go out for a movie. They can decide to vote on the movie if they want. They can disagree on the chosen movie and any one can go their separate way. Anyone can vote for anything, a leader for themselves, to pool their resources together, to form a corporate entity, etc., and anyone else can vote against it and decide to take their ball and exit. Now if you talk about excluding people, anyone forming any group can exclude anyone the group doesn't like. This is basically a private club. Excluding people you don't like they way they think sounds more like a private club than a government based on supposed rational principles. If you're trying to argue something like, well if we don't exclude certain undesirables, then that's a bad structure for maintaining the continued existence of the system, because people are going to vote against the rights of others. Well yeah. But that's an argument against democracy and in favor of the right of secession, not necessarily against universal suffrage. Objectivists have to decide whether they want to embrace democracy, including the right to vote itself out of existence, or more uncomfortable positions like radical secessionism, decentralization, polycentric legal institutions, or else the fantasy of a "objectivist" oligarchy where an elite group of enlightened individuals ensure the maintenance of liberty while excluding everyone else from the decision making process." Eioul: "2046 said 'Now if you talk about excluding people, anyone forming any group can exclude anyone the group doesn't like.' I think this is a loaded statement. A group "could' exclude those it "doesn't like", but that's only if it's rules are badly formed. Rather, a group should exclude people acting against its function. So it makes sense to exclude people. Basically, I don't follow how voting ought to be universal. Couching excluded people as "undesirables" is closer to an appeal to emotion, since we're trying to ask what in fact should qualify a person to vote. We're asking what rational rules are to voting exactly so that rights are protected. I accept radical secessionism generally, yet I don't really embrace democracy a lot per se." splitprimary: "Eioul said 'A government's rules are what prevent internal decay. If people ruin it from the outside, then the rules are poorly written or too easily altered.' agree completely. Eioul said 'it quite literally doesn't matter what a person thinks, as long as they at least agree on rights protection as the government's function. I see no reason to test someone for being an Objectivist if all you want to do is decide on citizenship or voting rules.' [missing]" __ __ __ i don't have my other responses saved but i know i said something to Eioul along the lines of: atheism isn't a core principle of Objectivism anyway so that would be extraneous, but there is a whole philosophical underpinning to political philosophy that those positions depend on, so even if you were only looking for agreement about right's protection there is a lot to that goes into that that comes from lower-level branches. the US documents basically mention natural rights and man as and end in himself already. that's the sort of thing i'm talking about that would be reasonable to include explicitly. +probably individualism, reliance on reason as opposed to force.. also had something in response to the Devil's Advocate post i can't find, about how having requirements for citizenship doesn't = "denying" people outside of that particular country the right to "life, liberty, and property".

what in particular was surprising about Carson?

sorry for the confusion, i was using the language from the original post there, which got a bit awkward. the idea seemed to be that honesty should be avoided in the context of an irrational society, since it will harm rather than benefit people who are evasive. but evasion is harmful. i think anyone here would claim that if they themselves were being evasive about something, the best thing for them would be to be confronted with the truth, and they would want honesty from the people they interacted with even if that was difficult in the short-term. honesty is not only the selfish policy, as others here have pointed out so well, it's also the most benevolent.

i don't understand the argument against honesty here. you seem to be implying that someone being prevented from evasion is not a benefit to them!

i'm also interested, if you ever do want to make a post here about it! and welcome to OO!

is this true? i've never heard that. where does that information come from?

we can probably all agree on the standard (from VoS): “The standard of value of the Objectivist ethics—the standard by which one judges what is good or evil—is man’s life, or: that which is required for man’s survival qua man.” “‘Man’s survival qua man’ means the terms, methods, conditions and goals required for the survival of a rational being through the whole of his lifespan” "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." so we're looking at the long-range self-interest of a rational animal as the standard. i guess the question becomes: how does that connect to the particular issue of abortion? does terminating a healthy pregnancy, in principle, either further or frustrate the actions/values/goals that are proper to man?

it's a good deal stronger than "distasteful" (synonymous with "unpleasant"). synonyms for "abhorrent" include: "detestable", "loathsome", "despicable", "abominable", "reprehensible", "contemptible", and most of the definitions there do contain an element of "moral revulsion" or "deserving condemnation". i think anyone should be able to discuss surgical procedures casually over lunch. anyway, aleph, bluecherry is right that "ew" and "i don't like it" aren't arguments. and that emotional reaction won't be shared by integrated pro-choicers, as you can already see from the reactions in this thread: so, not everyone does, the question is why should people find this morally abhorrent and sickening?

right, naturally no federal money, but that can be said without any discussion of the morality of abortion or the sale of fetal tissue. aleph, it seems like you want much more ground that this, go for it!

i'm not sure i understand the intention of the comparison here. is it that abortion is fine, or that surgery isn't? i don't think surgical procedures are at all abhorrent, and if you're perfectly okay with abortion it seems like you shouldn't think what's in the video is either.

oh, well your labor obviously shouldn't be taxed! that makes no sense.

property ownership should definitely be a qualification for voting. and that pretty much takes care of other concerns, such as women voting (women vote more liberal than men do). in a system where the property is what votes, a family is usually going to have one vote. and single women who do actually own property are at least more likely to vote rationally. i don't see any problem with having literacy tests, but that would be less necessary too, since the original reasoning for those was to prevent "immigrants (including legal ones and newly naturalized citizens)" from voting, and they would naturally be less likely to own property as well. (but really citizenship itself should require agreement with the philosophy of government of the country, so that demographic should not be a particular concern). and even though there are plenty of liberal rich, tying voting to property ownership would definitely make an impact. cities are the most blue areas (even most of california and new york are red), and the majority of the voting population there are renters.

it's always worth it to throw out rational arguments, whenever you can, to whoever is listening, or even when you don't think -anyone- is listening. you never know what good it might do. and if it's that you're not good at presenting your ideas, you will get better by doing this! now what's this about starving children? that sounds interesting..