TomerS

Your question is mistaken: A ballon's actions are entirely determined by its nature and so is a man's. In other words, a man's actions are determined by his nature. Like a balloon filled with sand, if you drop a man off of a building he will fall - he is like a balloon in that regard. He also has free will, but free will does not give him the choice of whether or not to fall if he is dropped off of a building. Conversely, free will is about using one's mind to direct one's body. A balloon does not have a mind, so it cannot have free will. Peikoff has to choose how much detail to go into in OPAR or the book would be thousands of pages long, so he leaves many things out and eventually you find it quite easy to figure them out for yourself. But this type of question is common. The lectures by Peikoff called "Understanding Objectivism" deal with dozens of such questions.

"a discourse in which, certain things having been supposed, something different from the things' supposed results of necessity because these things are so."

I applaud you for having found objectivism after being affiliated with the religious right. I applaud your search for answers also. You may be trying to master the answer to a very complicated answer too early in your journey though. Philosophy is hierarchical and you are asking questions about rights, which are pretty much at the very end of the hierarchy. You need to start with metaphysics and epistemology, then move on to ethics, and from there you can move on to rights. I know this doesn't directly answer your questions about abortion, but you really need to have a solid foundation to understand rights and where they come from. Given that you are clear that you're looking for a non-mystical solution, objectivism can offer you the answer. However, it can't give it to you in 100 words or less. You have to go back and do the learning from the beginning.

The baby is clearly human when it is born. It is clearly not human in the first trimester. That trimester is what the abortion debate is all about. There is more to consider in the third trimester. In his lectures on his book, Objectivism, The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, Leonard Peikoff goes into quite some detail about the issue of late term abortions which I won't repeat in this forum (I'll just point out that he argues that in extenuating circumstances they are reasonable). The second thing I have to say is that an ape does not have a rational, conceptual faculty. No ape in history has been up to a task like "go and get 6 red triangular shapes from that pile". They do not posses anything more than the most rudimentary conceptual faculty. That kind of task is what we train children to do at the age of 3 or 4. It's simply not in their nature. They cannot form and hold abstract concepts like numbers, shapes let alone abstractions from abstractions. This has nothing to do with the abortion debate directly, but you do need an ability to differentiate between an ape and a human on the essentials - and it is the conceptual faculty as opposed to the absence of body hair that is the essential difference between man and ape.

You are overcomplicating things, and that is why you are struggling to understand the objectivist position. A woman discovers she is pregnant. Inside of her is an entity that consists of several thousand cells. It is not a human being. The medical technology exists to allow her to remove the embryo. Does she have the right to choose her life as she wants to live it or does the embryo have rights which subjugate hers? To believe that women should not be allowed to choose to abort is to take sides against the rights of living human beings and in favour of entities that are not yet living human beings. The most common mistake of the well intentioned questioner of abortion is that he confuses the embryo for a living human being, which it is not - it is a potential human being. The second most common mistake is to believe that a human being has the right to demand that another human being take care of them. You must make both mistakes to support a ban on abortion. First you must believe that an embryo is a human being. Second you must say that because the embryo needs the woman, she must make the sacrifice of giving her happiness and selfishness up to live selflessly and altruistically for the embryo. To draw some concrete parallels: A rock is a potential sculpture if worked on by a sculptor. An embryo is a potential human being if a woman chooses to let it live inside of her for 9 months. But just as a sculptor must not be forced to devote 9 months to sculpting a rock, so it is wrong to force a woman to nurture inside her body an embryo for 9 months that she does not want. If you don't like the rock-sculptor example because the rock is not alive and the embryo is, let me give you two others. First, imagine you see an injured bird and know that you can take it in to your house and care for it to keep it alive or it will die. Should there be a law forcing you to take it in and care for it for years? Of course not. In this case, the bird, like the embryo is alive, and needs you to keep it alive. But you do not have an obligation to sacrifice your time and happiness for the bird. Another example would replace the bird with a man, and this example is therefore not the same as an embryo because a man has rights. However, a man does not have the right to demand that you sacrifice your life for his. If you choose to care for him, that is within your rights, but it is not within his rights to demand that you take care of him. That is exactly what the anti-abortion groups would have women do though - with beings that are not yet men. So think about it in a context that could be applied to you: there is a homeless man who needs you to take care of him by having him move into your house, and you will care for him for 16 years. Is it okay to force you to do this? Objectivism would certainly say no! That is what the abortion issue is all about - forcing women to breed to create people who they will then have to take care of for 16 years.

The issue boils down to: Does a woman have the right to choose how to live her or life or should she instead be forced to have an entity that is not a human being grow inside of her and fundamentally change the course of her life against her choice? A very important fact here is that an embryo is not a human being. Instead, it is an entity that has the potential to become a human being. But it is not able to live outside of the woman. Terminating a pregnancy is not killing a human being. It is killing a rapidly growing group of cells inside of a woman. The reason the issue was so important to Ayn Rand, is that the opponents of abortion hold that women, rather than being free human beings with the right to make their own choices, are instead breeding animals who may not choose for themselves. When you analyze it you see that you cannot have it both ways: Either a woman is a human being who is allowed to choose whether or not to have a child - and either assume or reject the full, long term responsibility of raising the child into adulthood, with all the rewards and costs associated with it - or she does not have that choice. If you take that choice away from her by force, you deny her the ability to live as a human being - a being of conceptual intelligence with free will able to act on her conclusions. Forcing a woman to have a child isn't causing a minor inconvenience, but has a major, long term, life altering consequence. Forcing a woman to be a mother is no different than forcing a man into a profession against his choice - since motherhood is at minimum a 16 year commitment. Even if a man were well suited to a career he were forced into that does not make it right. It is his life and therefore his choice and it is force negates that choice. The same applies to abortion - the choice to avoid entering the profession of motherhood. In this regard, abortion has many similarities to the military draft - a forced profession, imposed against the will the of the individual that leads to the sacrifice of their freedom and happiness. So in summary, on the issue of abortion: human beings have rights, embryos are not human beings, it is a terrible logical error, with terrible consequences to put the (non-existent) "rights" of embryos above the rights of human beings.

Since you're curious both about objectivism and about god, I would recommend that you pick up a copy of Leonard Peikoff's book: Objectivism, the Philosophy of Ayn Rand. (It is also available in audiobook format from audible.com if you have time to listen but not to read.) You are right that the discussion of god goes back to the beginning, and you only have to read and understand chapter one of that book - entitled "Reality" - to get a full and indisputable case of the non-existence of god. If you do keep reading though to chapter 5 on reason, you will see how god is an arbitrary and invalid concept. Do not expect to fully accept and integrate the ideas all at once, but don't accept anything until you do understand it.

I think that was the mistaken conclusion she reached from a mistaken premise, but not a premise itself. If she had begun with that as a premise there would be nothing to conclude from it but itself.

Dominique had not yet read Atlas Shrugged and learned that if she sees a contradiction she needs to check her premises. Dominique's philosophy was logically reasoned from her premises, but one of those premises was that there were no "super" men like Howard Roark. Re-check that one premise and your entire philosophy changes from one of self-immolation to practical hero-worship.

SoftwareNerd, I agree with you that it would be counter to Rand's intent to say that others' appreciation afer the fact is of zero importance. I only emphasize that it is however of zero consequence in determining whether or not to do a thing. I think Ayn Rand would say that whether or not you choose to undertake an activity should be not at all influenced by what other people might think of it. This quote sums up that comment: "I decided to be a writer not in order to save the world, nor to serve my fellow man, but for the simple, personal, selfish, egotistical happiness of creating the kind of men and events I could like, respect and admire." Similarly, in chapter one of The Fountainhead, when Keating asks Roark his opinion about taking the job with Francon or taking a scholarship, Roarke responds with something along the lines of "You've already made a mistake by asking my opinion". (sorry for my imprecision here, my copy of the book is on loan). Roarke is saying that you should not do a thing to impress others, but for yourself.

Actually, you are innacurate in concluding this. Your error is in who places the importance on what. Rand places importance on recognzing the accomplishments of others, not on earning others' recognition of one's accomplishments. None of Ayn Rand's heroes ever does anything for the sake of earning the recogition and acknowledgement of other men (even ones they respect). That they earn the respect of other men for behaving in accordance with their ideals and their talents is a consequence of, but not the purpose of their behaviour. Rand held this view in every aspect of her philosophy. She even holds to it when she describes and defines love. She states that you love a person because you admire their values and accomplishments. Love, she concludes, is therefore a selfish emotion, in that you obtain for yourself that which you admire and value.