Maarten

But if you can't even morally obligate someone to help out in such a situation (which is my understanding from the Objectivist ethics), then how do you justify making it legally obligatory? This just seems like a way to enforce altruistic behaviour. You are under no moral obligation to report what you see happening to a third party, and it is very strange to give the government the power to force you to do so in this case.

One difference is that the Objectivist concept of Justice is actually backed up by something, and the Islamic justice isn't (by which I mean it's not grounded in reality). By which I mean is that an Objectivist could explain much better why he thought Saddam deserves to die without resorting to arguments from authority (i.e. my book says it has to happen, so it has to happen). I think the difference is huge, actually. To ask for the death of an innocent person is lightyears away from asking that someone who is essentially a mass-murderer gets his just desert. You can't just throw both on one pile and say: Demanding that someone dies is bad, always.

I agree with Daedalus that citizens living in a certain country are ultimately responsible for the actions of their government. No state can rule without the (implicit) consent of the people.

I agree, I think she defined an emergency something like" A situation with a limited timespan which makes normal human survival impossible"

But it is not retaliatory force when you force an innocent bystander to do something. Hmm, I should probably amend that. But still, don't you agree that it creates a precedent for the use of force against innocent individuals? Once you allow that, anywhere, it becomes much easier to slowly expand when it can "properly" happen. I think this would give statists a huge opening for moving towards a state with less freedom.

My in game name is also Maarten. Position is 2:337:7 =)

Daedalus, I don't think the issue is that the blame rests on the criminal. The fundamental fact here is whether or not you allow the government to initiate force at all. It's a bit like saying: It's not a problem that someone gets shot, because we are properly blaming the bad guy for it. If I were having my rights violated in that case that wouldn't matter to me one iota.

I mean my graduation papers there, to avoid misunderstandings (On a slightly different subject) From my own observations I think the ability of most of my fellow students (and the average as well) is appalling. Most of them just sit there like corpses when whoever is giving a lecture is talking, and only a small percentage ever asks questions. The reason I don't understand it is that when I ask a good question you suddenly see everyone making notes (regarding the answer given), but none of them ever bother asking those things on their own. It's like they just sit there and assume that their presence will make them smarter... How? Somehow. I am probably the most interested student there, yet you wouldn't see that from my grades. They're not awful, but certainly not excellent either. I mostly attend classes to exercise my creative thinking skills, and see if I can think of interesting questions to ask the professor. Asking something that they have never even thought about makes my day far more than any high grade ever would. My trouble in motivating myself is probably my single biggest flaw, and the one I am most unhappy about. I will check out that book you mentioned, though

Motivation has been a problem for me for almost as long as I can remember. I used to think it was because the material was too easy. I was always bored in class, and I can pass most classes in high school and university with a minimum of effort. The biggest problem is that on the one hand I don't learn things for outside reasons, whether they be approval from others or getting good grades, because it's most important that I actually learn things and exercise my mind, so to speak, by trying to think of intelligent questions to ask on the subject. However, I have a lot of trouble in motivating myself to actually study for my tests, because frankly it doesn't matter that much whether I get average grades or excellent ones (which is because I do not see a connection between grades and how much you actually learn.) Basically I feel like I am serving time in prison nowadays. If getting the paper wasn't so important for the type of work I want to do I would prefer to start working as soon as I could, because like in the other topic most people said, the amount of useless classes is staggering. I still have a little over 2 full years to go, and I do not want to completely waste that part of my life. I guess what I want to ask is if anyone has good advice for me, or knows of a good book on the subject that could help me motivate myself. I honestly can't understand why I can't motivate myself in this area. It's probably something I have accepted that is causing problems, but I have no idea what it is. Thanks in advance

Besides, there is no such thing as the public. It's usually just means that some group controls it at the expense of the rest...

The problem is that it steps beyong the boundaries of what the government should properly do, and it creates a dangerous precedent in this way. It's like allowing a robber to take a little bit of your cash, or letting the government tax you for a minor amount. Once you surrender the principle you are lost.

I think you are right. The law of causality only means in this case that humans MUST choose by their nature, not that they don't have a choice. As a volitional being we are required to make choices about everything by our nature, and the most basic one of that is to focus or not. If one chooses not to focus then there may not be many other choices to make, but that does not mean they lost their volition. Besides, the very fact that we're arguing about this subject implies the validity of volition.

How is compelling someone to testify not (the threat of) initiating force against them. You're basically pointing a gun at the head of an innocent person and saying: You do this. How is that not coercion?

Isn't saying that women should ask like this and men should ask like that creating a double standard in morality? I thought that the purpose of morality was to determine how man should live, and as far as I know none of it applies solely to men or to women, nor should it in my opinion. How is saying that a certain type of behaviour is not moral for a man different from saying that Rationality is a virtue only practiced by men? I don't see any good evidence in regard to the other parts of the Objectivist ethics that create an artificial split, and I don't think there should be one here. Sure, men and women aren't exactly the same, but both are man. It's not like we have two completely different species here that deserve a different way of treating them. Gender is not an essential to the definition of what man is, just like someone with less than ten fingers doesn't require a different subset of morality to deal solely with what he should and shouldn't do.

In "The nature of government" ( I think) AR talks about that any group can only have rights derived from individuals. This includes the government, as there are no rights specifically for them, except what we decide to give them. The only right individuals have that even remotely concerns this is the right of self-defense, which is delegated to the government for protection. I know AR said multiple times that there is no right to violate someone's rights, because that is a contradiction in terms, yet that is what we are discussing here. You're trying to justify the initiation of force against quite possibly innocent people, in that they did nothing to violate anyone's rights. The government is never justified in initiating force, its only function is the retaliatory use of force against criminals. Legally obligating a witness to report a crime they see is essentially the same as demanding that someone rescue a person in need if it does not endanger them, and I think I remember quite specifically that there is nothing in the Objectivist ethics that says you should help someone else (who you do not know), so there is even less basis for making a law for it. I mean this in the sense that as soon as you obligate some form of this, you're on a slippery slope and there is really no fundamental principle left to say "No!" when the government asks for the next step. Surrendering your rights like this is basically the same as allowing a little bit of irrationality into your thinking; both will spread and corrupt the rest.

One thing I found odd is that from the journals Richard finds of about 3000 years before, you get the very strong impression that their way of life is exactly the same. There's no progress worth speaking of in regard to either technology or magic (as that is mostly in decline).

I think what they're trying to say is that when you have enough evidence supporting a claim, and nothing against it (so there are no proper grounds for doubting the certainty) you can regard it as true, which means that the statement refers to a fact, i.e. something in reality (that is true). If a skeptic says: but it could be otherwise, but is unable to give reasons why in this specific case that is true, then you should regard it as arbitrary and reject the "doubt".

As long as you very strictly define when this is permissible and when it is not, I think your argument is correct, and it doesn't leave room for abuse by the government. Due to the initiation of force against essentially innocent people it is important to properly delimit when it can happen to avoid creating a precedent for expanding governmental power.

I think the distinction here is that Saddam pretty much forfeited his rights when he became a dictator and slaughtered a lot of people in his country. The cartoonists have done no such thing. I think in the first case it's more of a call for justice, and not inciting others to initiate force against innocent civilians.

Most of our media is also quite leftist, here in the Netherlands. There are a bunch of weblogs and things like that are pretty popular, but I am not actually sure how much better they are. It's been a while since I read any of them, and I have known about Objectivism for less than that time (so I don't know how much in agreement I am with them). There are certainly no prominent Objectivist-like weblogs here, or anything even remotely like it as far as I know. Well, there probably are a few of them out there, but I don't think they get many attention. Most of my friends, for example, seem to think that our system is fine as it is. No matter what I try to point out about how it is totally unjust (among other things), I can't get a lot more than a cynical shrug out of them. I think the biggest downfall of our political system is that it's rule by consensus, and almost everyone I know regards compromising about things the most important value in politics (and the only practical one). I think a lot of the false views on these subjects come from both an intrinsicist view of values (in the sense that how you get the value doesn't really matter, i.e. the end justifies the means) and people trying to justify capitalism on the grounds of the public good. I still get a laugh every time some guy on the economic news channel starts talking about how "our economy is doing well because people are consuming more" I guess no one over there has ever heard of the concept of production that necessarily preceeds consumption.

I agree, my point was merely that it's important to ask him to define humility. If he doesn't do that, then any discussion about the subject is rather futile.

I would agree that humility is bad if you meant it as the antonym of pride. If pride is moral ambitiousness, or the desire to perfect your character, improve upon your flaws and deriving self-esteem from your character, then the opposite of this would be one of the worst possible "virtues". It would require you to cherish your flaws like a pig rolls in the mud, so to speak. I doubt that he explicitly sees humility as something like that, though. You could try and convince him that the concept means something wholly different from what he thinks it means. Perhaps he just regards it as a form of respect for other people.

I think for rule number 1 you should establish a certain time frame in advance, in order for it to work. Not sure what would be best, but for example: You have to respond within one day to the other person's post, and if you cannot refute it by then you have to concede?

I would say that if one has to choose between their own life and someone else's (who I assume you don't know, and therefore has far less value to you than your own life does) then I think you should choose your own life. Just like in a situation where someone jumps into a near-frozen river to save a total stranger and thereby greatly endangers his own life, I would say that it is immoral to sacrifice your own life for such a purpose. At the very least it would indicate that you don't value your own life much at all. Of course this changes when you have to choose between someone you love and yourself, but in this scenario I think that someone who truly values his own life should act in accordance to his values. I agree with most of the rest of you that these sort of "lifeboat scenarios" are rather silly to use as examples to see how a moral code works. Like AR said in that article about emergencies, if we lived in a universe where emergencies were the normal order of the day, then we would be unable to survive. We don't live in such a universe, and in my opinion it is pointless to spend endless time debating what to do should such a situation ever come up. In a way this is similar to arbitrary statements; if there is no reason to suspect you will ever come across such a situation, then you shouldn't spend your valuable time thinking about it; just dismiss someone's "problem" out of hand. Another thing I notice is that these scenarios are usually set up in such a way as to make any rational solutions impossible, which is not a very realistic scenario at all. This is not very different from someone stacking the deck when you play cards with them. And because the main use of these hypothetical situations should be to derive some sort of principle from them that tells you how to act (at least, I think that's what the purpose is...), such a heavily-modified situation that it would never ever occur like that in real life is not a very good basis to draw any conclusions on.

Yes, but this still leaves the question whether or not land can properly be property. What are the main reasons that this is so? The right to property means that you have the right to keep what you earn (or create), but how does this apply to land? You could say that as soon as you change the land in some way it becomes yours by right (if it is previously untaken), in a first come, first serve basis. Is that the basic view of Objectivism in this matter?