Marc K.

LoBagola: The first thing I'd like to be sure of is that you aren't confusing "highest value" with "ultimate value". I had the feeling you were confusing the two with your first post, though you seem not to in your most recent post -- I'm not sure. From the Ayn Rand Lexicon: So the ultimate value is always one's own life and then you must understand what Objectivists mean by "one's life". It is not simply the bodily functions that keep one alive. It is not our heartbeat or our brain waves. Life is everything: all the things that make life worth living. All the things that make one happy. All the things that make one think: "This is worth living for" (to paraphrase from the same above) For more on this subject you could search for threads containing the phrase "ultimate value". Here is my post from a thread entitled "Why should man's life be his ultimate value?": I doubt anyone on this forum will ever be faced with such a choice and very few in the country will ever face it so it is a little unrealistic. I mean if you would be willing to die for someone, then most certainly you would be willing to live for them also and I'm sure that is most people's stance. For instance why would someone join the military? Most people don't volunteer in order to die, their objective is to kill the enemy or as Patton said "to make the other dumb bastard die for his country". Certainly they are risking a great deal when joining the military, so your question might be: why would a rational man do such a thing? Well, knowing that an enemy who has attacked you must be killed and that someone has to do the killing, in order to protect his life and those he loves, and not wanting to live under dictatorship, a man could rationally choose to risk his life to protect those values which are irreplaceable and without which life wouldn't be worth living. Could you live with yourself if you saw your child crying in the window of a burning house knowing you could save her but instead you did nothing? I would like to know if you have read Atlas Shrugged because Ayn Rand illustrates the point there. John Galt tells Dagny that if the government parasites figure out their value to each other and threaten to torture her in order to get to him he would kill himself on the spot. He would not help his destroyers and he could not live in a world in which Dagny had been tortured to get to him. [And as he tells Dagny (paraphrasing): "it wouldn't be a sacrifice either."] But for an egoist/Objectivist the orientation is always a selfish one, [it is always about YOU] . You would never "die for someone else". You might risk your life to preserve a value that is very dear to you. If living as a slave is something you couldn't live with, then starting a revolution with the most powerful country on earth would be rational. If you saw the love of your life drowning, you would risk everything to save her knowing how empty your life would be without her and knowing that you couldn't live with yourself if you didn't do everything you could. None of these choices would be considered a sacrifice then. The real sacrifice would be to allow the destruction of the things which make life worth living -- what kind of life would you have then? Fortunately, in a free society, most of us will never be faced with such a choice and instead we can concentrate on living and always gaining values.

Excellent, excellent post Eiuol. You have encapsulated my thoughts on this subject exactly in your second and third paragraphs. I want to go further though by agreeing also with SkyTrooper: most of this would not be necessary if the government defeated the enemy, which is something that not only no one in government advocates today but most think is impossible. Whenever government deviates from its only proper function (protecting our rights) it makes things worse, which necessarily (on the statist premise) begets more violations. So if we have government run schools, the quality of education goes down, which causes the statists to throw more and more money at the problem, prices go up while quality continues to go down. Not allowing free trade both nationally and internationally is a violation of our rights and causes higher prices, pressure group warfare and regulations, which beget more regulations making the markets even less free. Choosing not to identify and engage the enemy emboldens him, which causes you to have to build larger castle walls, which causes him to find other ways to kill you, which causes you to have to find more and more intrusive ways of finding him. The only way to defeat the enemy is to show him that his ideology leads only to death and thus the only way for him to survive is to give up his ideology. Show him that the fountainhead of his ideology is impotent against a morally righteous, militarily superior opponent. Stop the surveillance tomorrow by bombing Iran today.

It wasn't the motor that convinced others to join Galt, it was his ideas.

Aren't the basic laws of supply and demand generally accepted by almost all economists?

I'd love to read that. Why don't you provide a link to that demonstration, that is, if you can manage to do it without further displaying your 10 year old petulance.

Very well said, I can't agree more. I was just reading "The Cashing-In: The Student 'Rebellion'" when I made the connection that lex_aver is probably currently studying Linguistic Analysis. High praise to your insightfully elegant post softwareNerd.

The answer, as I already stated and as Craig24 has just alluded to, is: logical consistency. Unfortunately this answer is somehow not enough for some people, which simply astonishes me. If you are interested in a more thorough argument search for a thread entitled "Prudent Predator". There are many things wrong with the ideas expressed here. First of all, Miss Rand never spoke or wrote in terms of "prohibitions", that sounds too much like commandments, but yes, it most certainly would be wrong to sacrifice others to yourself. Have you read "Atlas Shrugged"? If not, and you are interested in Objectivism, you really should. Secondly, you are being a bit hypocritical by saying that "one cannot make a definitive statement such as [...]" and then following it up by saying "sacrificing others will not necessarily end man's life", which isn't definitive at all. It is hard to tell what you are trying to communicate by using "necessarily" there. It could mean anything. But even if all you mean is that sometimes sacrificing others will end your life and sometimes it won't, well that should be enough not to do it right there. Thirdly, you have to discover what Objectivists (actually almost anyone you talk to) mean by "your life" or "man's life". We don't just mean the bare minimum of living day to day as a subsistence farmer, avoiding the grave for as long as our muscles will hold out. We mean, and most people mean, a happy, flourishing, fruitful, creative, joyous, productive, love filled, life. Hitler was alive and he sacrificed many people. Do you think he lived a happy, flourishing, fruitful, creative, joyous, productive, love filled, life? To bring it back to "The Objectivist Ethics", Ayn Rand does answer your question there you just have to tease it out by understanding the essay fully and grasping all of its implications. The first part of the paper discusses "value" as that which one acts to gain or keep and in the second part of the paper Miss Rand discusses “virtue” as the action by which one gains and keeps it. She explains how and why rationality is the cardinal virtue since reason is our basic means of survival. She goes on to enumerate six other basic virtues which are really just different aspects of rationality in different contexts of life. They are: Independence, integrity, honesty, justice, productiveness, pride. She explains how practicing these virtues are requirements for a happy life. If you would sacrifice others to yourself could you consider yourself independent? You would be dependent on others. Could you have integrity if you didn't live by the virtues you espouse? Are you being honest with yourself when what holds for you doesn't hold for others? Is it just to treat others in a way that rationally different from the way you want to be treated? How productive can you be if you need to accept the sacrifices of others? Would you be proud to accept something from someone else knowing it is a sacrifice for them? Could you have any self-esteem knowing you are a hypocrite? And to tad --

In order to understand what Miss Rand means by "end in itself" you should go back to the last paragraph on page 17 of the paperback where she uses it the first time -- in your citation style I believe this is paragraph 24 though I'll start the quotation below with paragraph 23: So an "end in itself" is an "ultimate goal" -- and the only things we know of that have goals or ends are living things -- inanimate matter has no goals, it just is. Now, the phenomenon of life is an abstraction, what exists in reality are living entities, in the case of higher animals and man, individuals. And each individual is an end in itself, each individual must attain the things that sustain its life, each individual's life is its ultimate goal. Meaning that if that ultimate goal isn't sustained its life ceases and it goes out of existence. It is a fact that an individual's life is an end in itself: it goes out of existence without action generated by itself. There are several things you must understand about Ayn Rand's writing (really, any good writing). Just as each word logically follows from the words preceding it, so every sentence follows logically from the ones preceding it and each paragraph follows logically from the ones preceding it. That is why pulling a sentence or two out of a logically connected whole can sometimes be detrimental to your understanding and in an argument can leave you open to the charge of dropping context. When I read Ayn Rand and I am confronted with something I don't understand, it is often the case that I can figure it out by rereading the previous one or two paragraphs. Additionally it might be helpful for you to keep in mind the overall structure of the philosophy of Objectivism as Miss Rand's arguments often mirror this structure: Starting with the metaphysical facts of reality from which ethical principles can be derived; going from what is to what one ought to do. A great tool for understanding this structure is Leonard Peikoff's video lecture "Introduction to Objectivism" which you can watch here for free. It is an excellent lecture that I highly recommend. And now, to get to your question, first let us provide context to your cited quote by quoting the previous paragraph: So, starting at the beginning of the paragraph you quoted, what we are talking about here are social/ethical principles. Ethical principles aren't just facts, they are normative statements, meaning that they take the form of if/then statements, either explicitly or implicitly (the "if" part is often absent but always implied) -- they take the form: "If you want this certain outcome, then you must take this action". Notice how the "must" I just stated mirrors the "must" in your quote, which also mirrors the "must" Ayn Rand uses in the first and third sentences of the preceding paragraph. And we aren't just talking about any old ethical principles, we are talking about Objectivist ethical principles, so the implied "if" is: "If you want to live". So an Objectivist might say "you must eat" and what they mean is "if you want to live, then you must eat". If one's goal is something other than living, then the Objectivist ethics doesn't necessarily apply. Putting it all together we can interpret the paragraph that is giving you trouble. First, Miss Rand states the facts: life is an end in itself and every living human being is an end in himself, i.e., metaphysically, he must sustain his life, he must take action to further the end, which is himself. This necessarily implies that, metaphysically, he is not the means to the ends of others, i.e., feeding himself will not sustain someone else. Or more explicitly: feeding oneself doesn't put food in another's stomach. And, therefore, since these are facts, and since one cannot live by sacrificing himself to others, that he must not sacrifice himself to others if he wants to live according to the Objectivist ethics, which means: if he wants to live. (And to be consistent one can't expect someone else to sacrifice themselves for you). Further than that, ethics is about choice, we all must choose, according to our own judgment, how to live our lives and what actions to take. Therefore, if one wants to live according to the Objectivist ethics (which, again, means: if one wants to live), one must choose never to live by a standard other than life. Which means you must never accept an irrational, sacrificial code of morality. You must choose to live for your own sake and never feel guilty for doing so. And in order not to feel guilty, you must feel worthy (in your own mind) of putting yourself first. The way to feel worthy is by being virtuous, i.e., by choosing to take the actions that further your life and make you happy. Hope that helps.

Yes. And not only that, but typically the person using the slur intends to smear Ayn Rand with it also by implying that she was the originator of a cult. Be that as it may, I do find something positive in the decision. It at least raises the question of how much government can do. The answers may be irrational and anti-freedom but at least there is a slap in the face of the little tyrants. Also, it buys time. I would have cheered if the Supreme Court had undone Obamacare, no matter what the reason.

Yes, Thomas Sowell makes the same point here as highlighted by Don Watkins at Laissez Faire.

I already gave you some useful conclusions that follow from this, are you hard of reading? Is english not your first language? I also provided you a link to an article written by Ayn Rand called "The Objectivist Ethics" in which she explains in much greater detail the myriad conclusions along with a long string of logical connections that must be made in order to derive an ethics from the facts of reality. I suggest you read it if you want to be taken seriously and have a fruitful discussion. I doubt this is what you are after since all of your posts consist of one or two not logically connected sentences. This site is dedicated to the study and explication of Ayn Rand's philosophy, Objectivism. Presumably, when one comes here they have read and admire Ayn Rand and would like to learn more or they have some questions. Some people disagree with Ayn Rand in whole or in part and either want to discuss what they don't understand or argue about that with which they disagree. All are welcome. Then there are trolls, like you, who haven't read Ayn Rand but want to bash her anyway. You haven't read anything by Ayn Rand and yet somehow you think you know she is "wrong". How is that possible? How can you know someone is wrong if you don't know what they have said? Trolls aren't welcome here so maybe you should just move along. Pretty soon no one will give you the time of day anyway.

Actually it isn't. A tautology starts with the same premises it purports to prove. Each of my statements is different from all the others. Now see, if you had read Ayn Rand you would know. It isn't incorrect for you to ask it this way but I usually reserve the words "right" and "wrong" for political discussions and speak of "good" and "bad" when discussing ethics. When speaking of "good" and "bad" you are speaking of "values". Here is Ayn Rand from "The Objectivist Ethics": There are no values without life; "value" does not exist in the absence of life. The very concept "value" is dependent upon the concept "life". Plants and animals pursue values automatically to sustain their lives, if they fail they die. She goes on to explain, in a much more eloquent way than me, that the organism's ultimate goal is its life. Pursuing that goal requires attaining certain values. Those values that promote the organism's life are "the good", those that destroy life are "the bad". Here is the whole "The Objectivist Ethics" by Ayn Rand. Please read it, you might learn something. The difference between man and other animals is that man must choose his goals and therefore he can choose good or bad goals. That is where ethics comes in. Ethics defines what we should choose in order to live. Choosing the good enhances your life, choosing the bad detracts from it. If you make really poor choices you could die right now. If you make good choices you could live for 100 years. Makes a big difference in the "long run" (which of course means nothing apart from life). So when you say: the question is: what should we eat? fresh kill or decaying flesh? Apple pie or poison?; What should we drink? Water or drano? That is ethics: what should we do? And now I'll ask for the third time: Have you read anything Ayn Rand wrote? If not, how do you know she is "wrong"?

The facts: - man must act in order to live - man has free will - therefore man must choose to act in order to live - man can choose to act for or against his life - in order to live man must choose to act for his life The last is an ethical principle. This is empirical evidence that and ethical principle can be derived from the laws or facts of nature. The science of ethics discovers what the things are that man needs to live. You have said in another thread that Ayn Rand was wrong and I've asked you to name what she was wrong about specifically. You never did. Now I am going to have to agree with plasmatic that it isn't that you disagree with Miss Rand, it is that you have never read her. This, of course, raises the question of how could you know Ayn Rand was wrong when you've never read her? What is your purpose on this site?

I think you could make that argument but I think it would be more roundabout because what the liberals would argue is that actually it is the few (the poor people without insurance) that we (everyone who takes care of themselves) are morally obligated to help. That the ones who can help themselves are morally obligated to help those unable to help themselves. You still could do it though by pointing out that their other argument is that most people's healthcare will improve if we just tax the rich (the few) a little more. A simpler approach might be to go after the progressive income tax directly; in which the rich (the few) are taxed at a higher rate than everyone else (the many). You could then bring in other Objectivist conceptions such as "justice" and contrast them against the currently accepted concepts of "fairness" and "equality" giving objective definitions of each.

First, this is from a blog, so I don't think they are reading or will be giving you an answer. Coal IS a dandy fuel even without meeting your two criteria. As evidence, look at life expectancy since we started using coal. Also, to address this comment: Here is a quote from the article: "The process gives off no air pollution, and the captured carbon dioxide is ninety-nine percent pure, enough to make it a valuable commodity." [emphasis added]

This question of when to nuke is not a philosophical question, it is a military strategy question which should be left to the military sciences. The philosophical principle is that a nation defending itself must do whatever is necessary to defeat the enemy. "Whatever is necessary" means different things in different contexts. In the context of Grenada 1980 (?) it means you send in one squad of marines. In the context of Japan 1945 you nuke them until they relent. There are several good threads discussing these questions in which I have participated in the past. This one entitled "Pre-emptive War: Should we nuke Tehran?" is quite long but good. The very last post is by me and addresses the question of whether we could just assassinate the leaders of an aggressive country. This one is entitled "In Our Name"? and is very good and short, only two pages. It addresses the issue of the differing contexts of semi-free countries versus aggressive ones.

Wow, yes, that may be the best introduction I've read. Welcome

Your hypocrisy would be comical if it wasn't so sad and deceitful. First, I thought part of your whole argument throughout this thread was that it is improper to equate aesthetic representations with real life morality (or something to that effect). In which one cannot take moral lessons from fiction. Did you not argue that? Secondly, from whom did Ragnar recover the stolen wealth? Was it only from those who took it? And whom did he give it to? Are you saying that the only people whose wealth was stolen were in Galt's gulch? According to you shouldn't he return it in exact proportion to those from whom it was stolen? This isn't my point of view but it is yours. You have defeated yourself once again. I may at some point answer your other post but I really don't feel the need to since you have already been thoroughly defeated. Another sign of your intellectual dishonesty is that you are unable to admit when you are wrong so these long debates are useless. And by the way you did make a positive claim about the Objectivist view on lying. You said that it was ONLY allowed when one is under threat of force. So contrary to your assertion that you can't prove a negative, I never asked you to. Provide a quote in which Ayn Rand said those were the ONLY conditions under which one could lie. Show me where she uses the word ONLY. Furthermore, there is absolutely no honest way to interpret Miss Rand's article "The Question of Scholarships" the way you have. In it she mentions medical services, teachers and the like and even other government jobs that are not the proper function of government. You have misinterpreted it either intentionally or unintentionally. Either way, I've provided quotes to back-up my assertions, you haven't and I refuse to do your reading for you. I'm surprised to see you return to this thread when you haven't answered all of my challenges. Just to mention one: you never addressed my conception of Rights in which I said it was improper to phrase or think of a Right as a Right NOT to do something. I gave a convincing and concise argument and you not only didn't address it, you continued to assert the opposite.

Who cares what Hobbes said? The real question is, is this what YOU say? Apparently you agree otherwise you wouldn't have posted it. You (and Hobbes) are wrong. The problem isn't that humans have an ego and MUST make judgments according to their own understanding: this is a FACT of nature and a requirement of life. The problem is those who don't think for themselves are swayed by some other authority, such as society or god or whim, and they take that authority on faith. Doing so they are unable to convince others and thus turn to FORCE others to accept their point of view. Force is the evil here not "egotistical beings who claim their own judgment as authority". Our own judgment is all we can go by, who elses judgment would you have us go by? What is your purpose on this forum? It seems it is only to bash Ayn Rand. You understand this is forum dedicated to Ayn Rand right? You have made many assertions which you seem unwilling or unable to defend. In another thread you claim that Ayn Rand made errors and I asked you to name a few. You haven't done so, so I will ask again: name specifically some things you think Ayn Rand got wrong.

I don't understand exactly what you mean by your last sentence. Aren't these two different subjects, or at least two different aspects or contexts you are talking about? Yes history (and most other things) flow from the ideas people hold. But I don't see how that bumps up against observations of the industrial revolution. The way I think of rational thought in this context is that it is constantly feeding back on itself (if properly done). Meaning, you observe the world and try to figure it out by organizing and categorizing it and then you check to see if you have done a good job. If so you can form principles and continue to check their validity against reality. I'm sure there were many observations that people in ancient Greece could make to confirm that reason is man's basic means of survival but after the industrial revolution it is an inescapable conclusion. This "top-down" procedure that you are talking about sounds like rationalism. I mean "history" is just an aggregation of individual actions which is what actually exists. Please explain what you mean by "top-down"

It is sometimes hard to decipher what you are saying because, in my opinion, you aren't being explicit enough. Are you saying that her definition of logic is incomplete or wrong? If you think it is incomplete that doesn't necessarily mean it is wrong. Have you considered that hers is a philosophic definition and thus may be broader than what you are thinking of? Why don't you provide a definition of logic so that we can compare. What things specifically do you think she was wrong about?

Yes, I misspoke, and I was allowing for it by mentioning Aristotle, but didn't make it explicit. Clearly one can be rational and be wrong. So my revised statement would be that Ayn Rand's was the first and only completely rational, completely integrated, true philosophic system. Now, I don't know what was in Aristotle's mind but I do wonder if he was completely satisfied with his system. Because while it is possible to be rational and wrong on one or several issues, it must be much harder to integrate ALL of one's knowledge under one system while that system contains errors which redound throughout that entire system. I do think that Aristotle should be given wide latitude though since he did not have the benefit of the knowledge illustrated by the industrial revolution which Ayn Rand said was crucial to her understanding of reason as man's basic means of survival. I don't think that same latitude should be given to Kant and no matter how many mental contortions one allows Kant I think it is impossible to be rational and arrive at his system.

Right, Jonathan is confusing libertarianism with Objectivism again. As Ayn Rand said (from "The Question of Scholarships"): "[...] Whenever the welfare-state laws offer them some small restitution the victims should take it. "It does not matter, in this context, whether a given individual has or has not paid an amount of taxes equal to the amount of the scholarship he accepts. First, the sum of his individual losses cannot be computed; this is part of the welfare-state philosophy, which treats everyone's income as public property. [...]" There is no need to make the kind of calculation Jonathan suggests (which is impossible). More important is whether one supports or rejects the welfare-state. Only those who reject the welfare-state may morally accept government money or jobs. Libertarians also use Jonathan's confused conceptions above to say that we may not bomb foreign countries in time of war because we are not retaliating against those who initiated force. That we are only morally allowed to kill the leaders of an aggressive country. Ignoring what causes a country to become aggressive in the first place: the ideas the people hold; and whose responsibility it is to keep a country from becoming aggressive: the people; and who must suffer the consequences: the people.

Bodystun: I am no philosophical scholar so I am willing and able to be corrected here, but the following are things I've heard from various sources as originating with Rand -- if not the idea, then the formulation. The formulation holding significant power in the same fashion as what you just posted: “Existence is Identity, Consciousness is Identification”. First one quibble. Depending on what you mean exactly, I'm not sure this formulation is accurate: "And not only is it that where there is value, there is life; it is also that where there is life, there are values." The second part is clearly true but the way you've phrased the first part makes it sound like life is a consequence of value or that life can arise from value. Life is the primary here and so there is no such thing as "value" apart from life. Life gives rise to the concept "value". Now obviously life could not arise without something being there to support it. But whatever those things are, they cannot be called values until there is life. On with my list: - Yes, clearly Rand connected ethics to reality and discovered and formulated a completely rational, reality based ethics. She, herself, described this as her greatest achievement. Actually I'm not sure she used the word "achievement" because she may reserved that for "Atlas Shrugged" but along those lines. She may have called it her greatest "philosophical achievement" or "innovation". It is more than just one insight, it is an entire ethical system. - As a consequence I think we must say that hers is the first and only completely rational, completely integrated philosophical system. I'm sure Aristotle considered his system integrated and rational (and I suppose some will argue that Kant's system was integrated) but we know now that hers really is the only completely rational, completely integrated philosophical system. To continue, and again I'm not absolutely positive of all of these: - All property is fundamentally intellectual in nature: this sets her apart from Locke and Smith and their labor theory of value and totally destroys the libertarian and utilitarian view of property. - She solved the problem of universals - Her epistemology is really unique with insights such as that essence is not just metaphysical or epistemological but a marriage of the two. That essence is an aspect of existence as isolated by our minds. - Measurement omission as the method of concept formation - She solved the is/ought problem - The important philosophical difference between the metaphysical and the man-made - The primary choice as the choice to focus (I'm not sure this is hers) - Concept as objective (not sure) - Certainty as contextual (not sure) - Reason as man's basic means of survival (I heard Peter Schwartz describe this as originating with Rand) - Values as objective (not sure) - There is no dichotomy between the moral and the practical And I don't think that list is complete. I think there are many more. How's that?

I wasn't talking about you and whYNOT. I was talking about your little tete a' tete with Jonathan in which I was mentioned and derided, which is what I quoted last time. I expect it from Jonathan but not from you and certainly not from a moderator.