Invictus2017

*snicker* Actually, I did understand. I merely addressed the first point I disagreed with, your contention that Objectivists as a group are sorely lacking in fun. I just don't think it's generally true. That said, I don't personally know the people you discussed and I've largely stayed out of that fight, so I'll take your characterization of those public Objectivists as accurate for the sake of argument....but I must still disagree with you, as I think your other premise is wrong. Fun is a virtue,as you noted. As applied to the people you discussed, I would have to agree -- they need more fun for their own sakes. But you seem to be saying that Objectivists need to be more fun in order more effectively spread Objectivism, presumably to enact the social change that is so sorely needed. In my view, there's not a damned thing that Objectivists can do about the world's merry handbasket ride. Westerners are, as a society and mostly as individuals, committed to evasion and not all the reason -- or fun -- in the world, will change that. Only bitter experience might do so, experience the West will get in a couple of decades or so. (I wrote a much longer screed on that point over in DW's topic.) As to what Objectivists should do instead of attempting the impossible, that's probably off-topic here. But I do intend to write about it sooner or later.

Actually, it was a quarter of my life, not the whole thing. Do you suggest that my post didn't say anything important? Do you suggest that I didn't read your post? That I didn't respond to it? Think again. I didn't respond point by point, true. But I thought it pointless to do so, since I believe that your basic premise is wrong. All of the Objectivists of my acquaintance are fun, in appropriate circumstances. Shall I tell you of the time I sang a duet with a well known (in my little part of the world) singer -- with me in drag, singing the woman's part (I'm a countertenor) and she in men's clothes singing the man's part (she did a passable tenor)? Would you care to hear a sample of my awful puns? Ever watched me laughing with a bunch of early grade-schoolers? Back when I had money, one of my favorite activities was dancing, ballroom and on roller skates, and I had a blast with the older women. Would you like a dead parrot? It's turtles all the way down. The answer is 42. And that's my answer to you.

"Is it time, is the hour striking?" In a word, no. Nor is it likely to happen in my lifetime. Objectivists and others like to talk about the power of ideas. There is much to be said in favor of that power. But an idea is powerless if it is not accepted. If a people will not listen, it simply does not matter how right an idea is; that idea will not gain wide acceptance. Objectivists and other modern freedom lovers have been trying to spread their ideas for over half a century, without notable success. Sure, this person or that organization has taken up some good ideas, but in the main the trend of thinking has been toward altruism and statism, toward a seemingly inevitable intellectual, moral, and economic collapse. (I know some disagree that things are getting worse. They've committed the error of selective observation. But I'm not going to debate that point.) The question is why these ideas languish. The usual answer is essentially that there is a contest of ideas and that, for now, the bad ideas have the upper hand. The implication is that one need merely try harder in the intellectual struggle and that, because one is right, one will eventually prevail. That answer is simply wrong. People, at least the damaged products of the organized child abuse that is modern education, do not generally accept new ideas because the ideas are right, they do so because the ideas feel right. To the people brought up in a word wherein it is "right" to spend resources on people in Africa while our courts and public defenders (to name just one critically underfunded part of our society) go begging, the ideas of liberty feel wrong. To the person who believes that government must provide for the support of the elderly and the foolish, the idea that a person should live with the consequences of his action (or inaction) is not merely horrifying, it is terrifying. The poem from which I take my nom de guerre still resonates with many Americans, but few really take it seriously. I listen to a lot of NPR and, in the early AM, Garrison Keillor does "The Writer's Almanac", in which he reads a poem. A month or so ago, he did "Invictus", and a less convincing reading could not have been done. Those last couplets should ring out; Keillor practically mumbled them. So it is with peoples' "acceptance" of liberty. Mumbled words, but no soul behind it. The preachers of liberty, Objectivists and others, rouse the occasional "Amen" but then their listeners go off into their unfree lives, telling themselves how free they are. Churchill had it oh so right when he said, "Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened." I spent a decade codependently trying to change people. Over and over the same scene repeated itself. As an example: I explained to a woman why the public schools were bad for her children. She agreed with me. Did she remove her kids from the public schools? Nope. It didn't feel right to her, no matter her intellectual agreement, so the idea simply had no effect on her. I eventually realized that I can change a person's mind, but I cannot change their feelings, and it is their feelings that determine what ideas they live by (as opposed to giving lip service to). This is not how healthy human beings should be, but the victims of bad philosophy are not healthy people. In the addiction world it is sometimes said that a true addict must "hit bottom" before he will give up his addiction. This is not always true, but is sure is the way to bet. "Hitting bottom" only occurs when circumstances compel a person to confront a sometimes literal life or death choice, when reality becomes so intrusive that no amount of rationalization or wishful thinking can obscure the fact that physical or spiritual death is right there staring one in the face. So it is with modern society. Today, we can hide -- with increasing difficulty -- from the fact that we're hurtling toward death. And, so long as we can do so, we will do so. We haven't "hit bottom". We can pretend that we're not bankrupt, since we haven't maxed out the social credit cards. We can pretend that we're not a police state, since we still have our little liberties. We can hide from reality. And that is exactly what we are doing. And when some Objectivist or other freedom lover comes along, he is not greeted with open arms -- because to do so would require opening our eyes, not just to the reality we live in but our culpability in creating it. Fear and guilt are why freedom will not win in our society. One day, of course, the dam of evasion will break. Our corrupt society will be destroyed by a flood of reality. Then, and only then, will it be the time, the hour to strike, only then will it be possible for the lovers of liberty to not merely speak, but to be heard.

"We Should Be Fun People. We Aren't. Let's Change!" Uh...speak for yourself, brother. I rather doubt that we know one another well enough to know whether "we" are fun people. As for me, I came to this forum for unfunny reasons, so I'm mostly very serious. That says nothing about whether I am, or have, fun in other parts of my life.

Do you mean to include every moral code in that? If so then I have some churches to show you. Or was that just an oversight? Yes, it was an oversight. "flavor of Objectivist ethics".

OK, I see that I must clear something up, a bit of sloppiness that I am as guilty of as anyone else. Otherwise, this discussion is just not going to go anywhere. The Objectivist ethics comprises a set of conditional statements, each of which is of the form, "If I choose to exist, X." Existence not being a floating abstraction, to exist is to exist as something. So those conditionals really mean, "If I choose to exist as a human being, X." One attribute of humans is that they die. Dying is as much a metaphysical fact as breathing (and I don't need to be told that technology might change this. But for now....) Choosing existence is necessarily to choose that one will die. What matters in the Objectivist ethics is not that one dies -- that is not open to choice -- but how one dies. The contrary to the Objectivist ethics is not choosing to die. It is choosing to live in a way that is not proper to a human being. So, the death question confronting an Objectivist is not whether he will die, but whether he will die as is proper to a human being, or not. The relevant consequence here is that, if a person abandons life as a human being, none of those conditionals imposes a "should" on him. So there are no validly reasoned ethical conclusions that apply to him. But this applies to abandoning life as a human being. Not to choosing the manner of one's death. The person who decides that his values are best served by his own death is still choosing existence as a human being, albeit a shorter one than his biology would have allowed. His actions therefore do satisfy the conditionals of the Objectivist ethics. The contrary is a bit more complicated. It is hard to imagine a person consciously choosing against his own values in order that he die. His is not the case that really matters, though. Instead, it is the person who chooses a value that is contra-life (his life) that is said to have chosen death. I think this is an unfortunate wording, as it simply doesn't reflect reality. If I'm brought up Christian and follow its morality, I have chosen an anti-life morality, but I haven't rejected life itself; I have no idea that my morality is anti-life. To the contrary, I would believe myself to have chosen life, the life promised by my religion. Not only that, I probably only give lip service to the worst aspects of what I assent to, implicitly choosing life in doing so. My point here is that I think it would be a good idea to drop the whole "choosing life/death" thing. Whatever rhetorical value it may have (and I think it has little), it causes immense intellectual confusion.

In a previous post, I edited down and gave my take on the part of "The Objectivist Ethics" that defines ethics. Its next part says: Before "any attempt to define, to judge, or to accept any specific system of ethics", one must answer the question, "Why does man need a code of values?" "Does man need values at all -- and why?" "Is the concept of value, of 'good or evil' an arbitrary human invention, unrelated to, underived from and unsupported by any facts of reality -- or is it based on a metaphysical fact, on an unalterable condition of man's existence? ... Does an arbitrary human convention, a mere custom, decree that man must guide his actions by a set of principles -- or is there a fact of reality that demands it? Is ethics the province of whims: of personal emotions, social edicts and mystic revelations -- or is it the province of reason? Is ethics a subjective luxury -- or an objective necessity?" As before, Rand has not yet demonstrated that ethics must be a code of values, as opposed to some other structure of knowledge. I'll re-express what I understand to be her point here, without making that assumption (and without the repetition and pejorative emphases): Before even trying to validate an ethics, one must ask whether humans need ethics and, if so, why. Are there any facts -- unalterable facts of human existence -- that require a human being to guide his actions by some specific body of knowledge? If not, ethics is an arbitrary exercise, outside the province of reason. Only by presenting such facts and deriving ethical knowledge from them can one produce an objective ethics. (Rand goes on to say, "In ethics, one must begin by asking: What are values? Why does man need them?" This is the point at which she begins the development of the Objectivist ethics proper and where it becomes clear that ethics must be a code of values. I think it is clearer to start with the concept of life and then transition to discussing values. This is probably how I'll do the next bit.)

And they're as necessary in ethics as concepts are in epistemology. This is one of the areas where I differ from Rand. When I am engaging in philosophy, including ethics, I may not support a conclusion with some emotional response, although I may take emotions and even particular emotions as facts about which I may reason. But life is full of situations where reasoning is impracticable or impossible. In such cases, it would be rational or even necessary to substitute an emotional response for a reasoned decision. (This is yet another reason why emotional health is so very important.)

Objectivist dogma says that one's automated values reflect one's ethics. The reality is rather more complicated than that. But one's ethics do strongly influence one's emotions and habits. So, as a general rule, the person who has chosen to die is likely to continue (in most areas) as if he had not made that choice, simply because his programming gives the ethics he abandoned a kind of inertia. Thus, a man who loves his family but has chosen to die isn't likely to harm his family. This won't be a reasoned choice, because he can't reach any reasoned ethical conclusions. But, I expect, it would be a choice strongly supported by the emotions he feels in relation to his family. A thing that is wholly automatic is wholly outside the province of ethics. One's programming isn't quite that, in that it depends on one's prior choices. So, it can be morally evaluated -- though not by the person who has chosen to die.

This does not depend on which flavor of ethics one adopts. Every ethical proposition X, when fully stated, is of the form, "If you choose to live, then X." (Or, rather, a more complicated X. But that's a topic for another time.) The person who has not chosen to live has no reasoned ground to accept any X. Of course, losing the reasoning that supported his values won't have much effect on his emotions, so one might expect such a person to act more or less as he would have prior to his choice to die, at least in areas not related to the reason for his choice.

No reasoned value significance. But we're creatures of emotion and habit, as well as reason, and so even if I have abandoned my reasoned commitment to values, I will likely act based on my automated values, or at least the most compelling of those values.

That's getting just a little personal. That said, of course my idea of flourishing includes other people.. However, I prefer to deal with things in a logical order, and settling the fundamental issues of ethics is a prior condition to addressing a third level set of values. So, I shall continue with the fundamentals and, once I've nailed them down to my satisfaction, I will turn to derivative issues.

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

I thought it was pretty clear from the context. However, HD can tell us whether I understood his question or not.

This is a discussion about ethics, so I took his question to be whether his action would be ethical. Actually, I qualified it with, to those "who have not abandoned life". (I can think of extraordinary circumstances where, even by the standard of life, doing so would be ethical. Nevertheless, what I said stands as a general proposition.) Is that humor, sarcasm, or a well disguised point?

You made a similar post in June. So the real question is: What are you here for?

It wouldn't be "alright". And it wouldn't be unethical, either. Your action -- to you -- would have no value significance whatsoever, since you had abandoned the standard by which values get significance. Of course, to others, who have not abandoned life, it would be evil.

The thing that struck me about that post was how mechanical it sounded. Totally not-life. Appropriately so: the survivalist doesn't live, he merely exists -- as he must, since he drops his humanity out of the equation when he makes survival his only goal.

Rand, in defining "value", observed that this concept is not a primary; it presupposes an answer to "to whom" and "for what". "Survival" is also not a primary; it presupposes an answer to "as what". Thus, to excise the fact that the entity surviving is a human being from the question of his survival is to commit a logical error. "Surviving" must mean "survival as a human being" or it is just a floating abstraction. Thus, defining survival merely in terms of longevity is necessarily wrong. The reductio ad absurdum is to suppose that a person can be moral by reducing himself to a dish full of cells that is to be kept indefinitely in a lab somewhere. That's "survival", but not "survival as a human being".

Morality is only relevant to a being that has chosen to live; choosing non-existence makes morality irrelevant and takes one's actions outside the realm of morality. Once you've decided to die, you can't act immorally. So, if I've chosen pleasant feelings over literal survival, and doing so constitutes choosing non-existence over existence, my choice is not immoral, it is amoral. This is the logical reason why survivalism must be false. It requires designating the choice to die as immoral when, in fact, this choice is premoral. Or, "Check your premises".

That's a point and one I've given some thought to. As I see it, the reason it's a code, as opposed to something more ad hoc, is simply that the process of reason is too slow. When I'm going through life, I do not have the time to start from first principles and derive an ethical conclusion that applies to the facts at hand. I need to have pre-reasoned some things so that I can make the ethical judgments I must make when I need to make them. (Of course, there is the theoretical possibility that such pre-reasoning would fail, in that one couldn't derive useful ethical conclusions. Luckily for us, that theoretical possibility did not come to pass.) Those pre-reasoned conclusions, however they might be structured, constitute an ethical code.

As indeed Rand provided, shortly thereafter. But at the point in her essay where she defined ethics, she had not yet brought into the discussion the particular facts on which she would rely. It is those facts that explain why ethics must be based on values and not on, say, duties. Once those facts have been brought into the discussion, it is then proper to explain that ethics is a code of values, rather than some other intellectual construct.

Quite the contrary. I want immediate feedback, so that I can correct any problems early, hopefully before they cause problems later. My delays are due to having many other things on my plate. That, and I've had to reduce my food intake recently and it's hard to think well when one's stomach is grumbling.

An ethics can be deontological, guiding action by means of rules that are independent of any values a person might seek. Rand simply excluded such ethics from the get go, assuming that ethics is about values. She was right, of course, but it's not good reasoning or argumentation to assume. Better is to prove, which she does shortly thereafter. I struggled a bit over how to categorize ethics. Knowledge, as you say, is typically descriptive, not prescriptive, but the term "knowledge" can include prescriptions. So I described ethics as a body of knowledge. If you have a better general term, let us know. They are clear in her work. However, I am attempting to formulate Rand's argument with as much clarity and lack of ambiguity as possible. At the beginning of an argument, one shouldn't assume that the reader has read and understood the rest of it.

The first substantive point in "The Objectivist Ethics" is where Rand defines ethics as "a code of values to guide man's choices and actions -- the choices and actions that determine the purpose and the course of his life. Ethics, as a science, deals with discovering and defining such a code." Of course, Rand wasn't writing a scholarly treatise, so it may be impolite to hold her to academic standards, but I do have to point out that this is question begging. My issue is with "code of values". The motivation for ethics is the problem of deciding what to do. However, a code of values is but one possible way of making such decisions. That said, I think it's a minor issue. One can begin by saying that ethics is a body of knowledge to guide man's choices and actions. Later, one can demonstrate that this knowledge is properly in the form of a code of values. While I'm nitpicking, I'll also point out that choices are actions, so "choices and actions" is redundant. However, I presume that Rand intended to say that ethics guides both mental and physical actions. Oh, and another nitpick: The word "action" is frequently ambiguous, as it is often unclear whether it refers to all action or only to volitional action. In this particular context, it's clear that Rand was talking about volitional action. However, it wouldn't hurt to make this explicit. So then, a definition of the topic at hand: Ethics is a body of knowledge to guide man's choices and volitional actions. Rand goes on to say that the initial question to be asked is why man needs a code of values at all. Because that's part of the question begging, her particular argument can't be used. Instead, one would have to ask something on the order of why man needs ethics at all, and transition to a discussion of values. Once that discussion is done, one can point out that ethics concerns a code of values, That, at least, is how I think I'll be proceeding in my next post analyzing "The Objectivist Ethics".