DPW

If you are having trouble understanding Rand's explanation, you should purchase "Advanced Topics in Ethics," by Darryl Wright, from the Ayn Rand Bookstore. He takes you step by step through Rand's argument in a way that is crystal clear and will enable you to fully understand the basis of the Objectivist ethics. That said, let me try to explain Rand's argument is simply as I can. In "The Objectivist Ethics," Rand argues that there is only one possible ultimate value, life. To reach her conclusion, we need to understand two things: the nature of values and the nature of life. So let's start with values. In the broadest sense, a value is something an entity acts to gain or keep. A value isn't a primary -- it's not given directly in perception. There aren't entities called "values." To grasp that something is a value, we have to see it as a value to something for something. This is what Rand means when she says that the concept 'Value' " "presupposes an answer to the question: of value to whom and for what?" (VOS 16). She is saying that for us to see something as a value, we have to see it as something an entity is acting to achieve, and moreover, we have to see the achievement of that thing as making a difference to the entity. You can validate this point rather easily. Think of anything it makes sense to call a value: money, food, sex, whatever. The reason you can understand those things as values is because you can see that whether or not the entity acting to gain them actually gains them makes some difference to that entity. This is what Ayn Rand means when she says the concept 'Value' "presupposes an entity capable of acting to achieve a goal in the face of an alternative" (VOS 16). An "alternative" means "a difference." So what does it mean to say that the achievement of some goal (or failure to achieve that goal) makes a difference to the acting entity? Let's take the value "money." What difference does it make to a man if he gets money? Well, if he doesn't get money, he can't buy food. So what? What does it matter to him whether or not he gets food? What difference does it make to him? Do you see the pattern that's developing? To grasp that something is a value, we have to see it as the means to obtaining some higher value. But there's a problem: if something is a value only if it is the means to obtaining some higher value, then don't we have an infinite regress (or, more precisely, an ultimate progress?)? Doesn't there have to be some ultimate value to which all other values are a means, and which is not itself a means to any higher value? The answer, of course, is yes. "Without an ultimate goal or end, there can be no lesser goals or means: a series of means going off into an infinite progression toward a nonexistent end is a metaphysical and epistemological impossbility. It is only an ultimate goal, an end in itself, that makes the existence of values possible" (VOS 17-18). To sum up, then, in order for there to be such things as values, there must be some ultimate value: a value to which all lesser values are a means, and which itself is not a means to any higher value. Is there such a thing? Let's go back to our previous example. We can see that money is a value because, among other things, if I don't have money, I can't buy food. So what? What difference does it make to me whether or not I get food? Well, if I don't food, I will no longer be alive. So what? What difference does it make to me whether or not I'm alive? Obviously, it makes every difference to me whether or not I'm alive. If I'm not alive, there is no me. Or, to put it another way, for any other value, whether or not I achieve it determines what state I'm in...but whether or not I'm alive determines whether I'm in any state at all. "Alive or dead" is different from every other alternative: it is a fundamental alternative. It is the only fundamental alternative. All other alternatives exist only in light of the basic alternative of life or death. Life, therefore, meets the criteria of an ultimate value. All lesser values are a means to it, and it is not a means to any higher value. "It is only the concept 'Life' that makes the concept of 'Value' possible. It is only to a living entity that things can be good or evil" (VOS 16). But we're not finished yet. We know that only living entities can have values, but just as important: living entities have to pursue values. They must constantly act in a specific way to achieve the things their lives require or else they will die. This means that not only does life gives rise to values -- it necessitates their pursuit. We can finally answer your question: how does Ayn Rand bridge the is/ought gap? Well, "ought" presupposes another concept: "choice." Unlike other organisms, which automatically act to sustain their lives, human beings don't act automatically. We have to choose to pursue the values that will sustain our life if we choose to live. If we choose to live, we ought to take those actions that will sustain our life. Now, you might ask, why can't we choose some other value as our ultimate value? Well, that was Rand's whole point. Nothing else can be an ultimate value. To be a value is to be a value to an particular organism for the goal of keeping it alive. That's what value means. Let's take an example. Suppose you say that your life won't be your ultimate value. Instead, you propose your child's welfare as your ultimate value. Now, certainly you could say, "That's my ultimate value because I said so...because my child's welfare is intrinsically valuable." But we're not talking about that. We're presuming you are offering your child's welfare as a rational end -- you want to prove that it can legitimately be your ultimate value. Well, okay, so let's ask the big question: what difference does your child's welfare make to you? That's a perfectly sensible question, but to answer it, you have to appeal to some higher value, etc., a process that will ultimately lead to the alternative of your life or death. This is true for any ultimate value you propose. Life has to be our ultimate end. The purpose of morality, a code of values accepted by choice, is to tell us how to achieve that end. It tells us the values and virtues that will enable us to successfully sustain our life. I hope this helps. It's late and I don't have time to edit this, so if you need any further clarifications, let me know.

This is wrong. It commits an error Objectivist's detractors sometimes accuse Rand of making: it implies that survival "man qua man" is something added on to life. It implies that life isn't the standard, but that a "fulfilling life" is, with "staying alive" as merely a means to that end. On the contrary, Rand's entire point is that you can't stay alive by simply trying to avoid death. That isn't living -- it's dying. To put it another way, you are saying, in effect, that there is a fundamental difference between two types of values: some keep us alive, and some make life worth living. But there is no fundamental difference between values like food and sex. They differ only in two respects: how often we need to achieve them, and how badly we're impaired when we don't. But note those are differences of degree, not kind. And in all cases, the standard is the same: life.

Oh, that wouldn't have been necessary. But if you are going to go to such great lengths to show in what sense sex isn't a need, it would have been clarifying, at least to me, had you at least noted the sense in which it is a need. But now you've clarified, so thanks.

I disagree. Sex is a need, but it's primarily a need of consciousness. See "The Psychology of Pleasure." Pleasure is vital to your survival, and sex is the most intense and important form of pleasure. This means that sex is not like pancakes -- it's not merely one kind of pleasure that you can take or leave. You need it to be a healthy functioning human being. Will lack of sex kill you? In the long term, yes, in that it will very much hamper you ability to survive -- more precisely, it will dampen you motivation to live, which has the same effect. In this regard, I agree with Peikoff completely when he said that "Celibacy is fate worse than death."

This is wrong. Our needs vary in their urgency, but that doesn't alter the fact that they are still needs. Pursuing life is not the same as avoiding death.

Smathy's latest post makes some good points and some very bad ones. Let me begin by naming what I think is good in it. First of all, he is correct that pleasure is not a guide to action -- it is not and cannot be man's standard of value. He is also correct that an, if not the, essential aspect of evaluating a specific action is being able to answer the question: what is the person doing with his mind? This is so because any action must be evaluated in the context of moral principles, and as we know, moral principles identify a certain (volitional) relationship between your mind and reality. That said, masturbation is neither moral nor immoral -- it depends on the context. No concrete action can be evaluated out of such a context. But this leaves one very obvious question unanswered: what context must be present to establish the moral status of a particular action? Or, to put it another way, how do we show that a given action falls within the parameters of moral principles? I don't have time to give a full answer, but let's take the case...er...at hand. I never said that pleasure was a proper standard of value. I said, rather, that pleasure (meaning physical pleasure) is innocent until proven guilty. By this I meant that if we establish that some concrete is pleasurable, we have established that it is a value to that extent. That's because, all other things being equal, pleasure as such is a value. Pleasure qua pleasure is self-evidently good -- this must be so, because it is the means by which we discover the concept "value." But the fact that pleasure as such is good does not mean that every pleasurable activity serves your interest. A pleasurable activity can be harmful when it undercuts other higher values. But that doesn't make the pleasure itself bad. This might seem to be a controversial point, but if you think about it for a moment, it's really not. In The Objectivist, Branden tells us, "Even if the motives that lead a person to a particular sexual encounter are neurotic, and even if immediately afterwards, he is tortured by shame or guilt -- so long as and to the extent that he is able to enjoy the sex act, life is asserting itself within him, the principle that a human being is an end in himself is asserting itself." Pleasure is inherently connected to positive spirtual values. The goal is to seek pleasure that isn't undercut by disvalues. But pleasure isn't purely physical (not even minor pleasures, such as eating), particularly not sexual pleasure. In masturbation, fantasy is essential, so it is imperative to ask: what are you fantasizing about? Keep in mind, however, that since masturbation is pleasurable, unless we can establish that what you are fantasizing about is immoral (or that you are faking rather than fantasizing), then the default position is that the act is moral. Which leads to the question: what is it appropriate to fantasize about? Smathy tells us his criteria: I submit that anyone who accepted this idea and tried to implement it would either be unable to masturbate, or would be stricken by guilt. Why? Because it's literally impossible. There is no such thing as your "ideal partner." The "ideal man" is an abstraction. More specifically, it is any man who embodies rational principles. But a lover does more than embody certain principles -- he or she embodies them in a very particular way. That's why we don't fall in love with every Objectivist we meet. And it's not that there is only one particular way those principles are embodied that we can fall in love with. On the contrary, each of us could fall in love with many different people, who each embody those principles in very different ways. And that's the problem. You cannot fantasize about an abstraction, and you cannot project a concrete of this sort. I mean, really, try to concretize this idea. What would fantasizing about your ideal mate, whom you have not met, while your masturbate actually consist of? Would she be screaming "A is A!" as she orgasms? Now certainly, you are projecting a certain kind of consciousness, but the idea that you're trying to make up some imaginary person so you can celebrate your imaginary love for her strikes me as much closer to faking than what I would offer as the kind of fantasizing that should go on during masturbation. My own view is this. As far as I know, most people fantasize visually while masturbating. They picture some person in a sexual way, and perhaps certain physical sensations of touching or being touched by that person. They do not, however, consciously project the kind of consciousness that person has, but they do do so implicitly. In some cases, they are thinking of someone they know, but let's say they are not. Presumably they are imagining someone they find attractive, and as I have argued in the past, when we consider physical beauty, we automatically project a consciousness that matches that beauty. In other words, if all you do while masturbating is think of a beautiful girl touching you, you are doing so on the implicit premise that she is an appropriate partner -- your physical pleasure is therefore tied to values and is therefore completely and utterly moral.

My favorite line of what has now become one of my favorite movies! :-)

You have to acknowledge that Rand discovered them, that you are explaining HER theory, and if you use her words, you must attribute them to her. But this is a contextual issue. When I blogged, it was widely known that I was an Objectivist blogger, so every time I stated some idea, I didn't need to say, "This is Objectivism." On the other hand, since I WAS known as an Objectivist blogger, I tried to be clear when what I was saying WASN'T part of Objectivism.

Volition is self-evident; the existence of particles is a highly sophisticated scientific discover. The idea that the latter could cast doubt on the former is absurd. As to your specific argument: the mind is not the brain.

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Well, that actually raises an interesting question: what is the value of time? I would argue that as such it doesn't have any, except in the sense that extending the amount of it you have is generally a good thing. The value of time equals the value of what you're doing with it. If you are pursuing, gaining, or enjoying a value, then you're not "wasting time." Unless you're compulsive about it, masturbation certainly doesn't fall under that category.

Pleasure is innocent until proven guilty. Unless you are faking (which is distinct from fantasizing), masturbation is perfectly moral -- whether or not you're in a relationship. The fact that pleasure is not the standard of value, doesn't mean that pleasure as such isn't a value. It is, so long as it doesn't undercut a higher value.

No it doesn't, since Ayn Rand knew full well what you may not: the "ruling clique" is necessarily a temporary gang, whose rule always ends in (its own) bloodshed. As hunterrose indicated, the ruling clique "wins" only in the sense that the last lemming over the cliff wins: he dies last...but he still dies.

Thanks!

I'm very excited to announce that the first issue of Axiomatic, an online magazine for Objectivists, is available. Here's our first month's line up: The Value of Risk by Don Watkins. Unlike a man's attitude toward some particular activity, such as golf, a man's attitude toward risk is reflected in all his choices and actions. It therefore reveals something much more fundamental about his soul. Einstein's Contributions to Quantum Theory — Part 1 of 3 by Travis Norsen. Understanding Einstein's objections to the orthodox quantum theory — and the details of his attempts to construct a reasonable alternative — is a necessary first step toward untangling the quantum mess and constructing a fully rational theory. Last Gasp for The God of The Gaps by Greg Perkins. Why does religion continue to thrive in this scientific, technological age? Because, despite mankind's technological progress, we have been morally stagnant since the rise of Christianity. So long as people reject the possibility of a rational ethics, an irrational metaphysics and epistemology will continue to dominate. The Axiomatic Interview with Andrew Bernstein. Andrew Bernstein, author of The Capitalist Manifesto, sits down with Axiomatic to discuss his new book, the role of epistemology in grasping the case for capitalism, hurricane Katrina, and his future writing projects. Bonus: The Nature of Broken Units by Don Watkins. If a concept doesn't mean its definition, but its referents, including all the characteristics of its referents, then how can we define man as a rational animal when some men lack a conceptual faculty? And how can we make general claims, such as, "Man sees color," when some men can't see at all? Subscribe by October 31 and get twelve issues for only $65 -- that's $55 off the issue-price. You can also purchase six issues for only $40, or try out our first issue for a mere $10. Thanks for your interest! Best, Don Watkins http://www.axiomaticmagazine.com

I have written on this subject in the past, but I am doing a much more extensive treatment of the issue of addiction for an upcoming issue of my magazine, Axiomatic. Keep an eye out for it. In the meantime, I second the recommendation of The Truth About Addiction and Recovery. (And if you would like to discuss some of these issues, feel free to email me at: egoist(at)gmail(dot)com.) Don Watkins

No, you should respect another man's rights because rights are the principles that define the conditions necessary for man's survival in a social context. Theft is dishonest because the intiation of force necessitates every vice: dishonesty, injustice, dependence, etc. You're not thinking in principle. If something is destructive to human life in principle, it has to be destructive to both the victim and the perpetrator. I feel like I should expand on this point but I have made it again and again. You are asking the wrong question. You are asking, "How is this action destructive to the perpetrator?" The proper question is, "Is this principle proper for man?" Until you grasp that man must live by principle, you will not be able to grasp which principles man must live by. Don Watkins

But it is defined as "faking reality." That's what dishonesty means. As to your last point, if you establish that property rights are a fact, then pretending that someone else's property is yours is dishonest. That isn't circular. It would only be circular if I said that the justification for honesty as such depended on the prior justification of property rights. I have been absolutely clear in stating that it doesn't. Now, as to this example, if a man rationalizes stealing, then yes, he's being dishonest. If he pretends to himself that his action is no different than taking honey from a hive then he is faking reality in his own consciousness. But now, let's say he was convinced that his action really wasn't wrong, that taking the wallet really wasn't theft (I'm not saying that's actually possible, but I'll stipulate it to clarify the principle involved) -- then, to that extent, he isn't being dishonest. But in that case it doesn't matter because he's still not better off than the man who knows stealing is dishonest...no more than a man is better off drinking poison if he thinks it's spring water. Don Watkins

Dishonesty refers to the vice of faking reality -- it doesn't specify which facts you're faking. What it says is that, whichever facts you do fake, you're harming yourself. Man has rights because he lives by reason...so it's irrational for him to violate property rights. That isn't circular. It's consistent! Don Watkins

There are a couple points here: What is the justification for honesty? What is the justification for property rights? How can we say it is dishonest to violate property rights? Well, I've given the justification for honesty. The justification for property rights, while not depending directly on the virtue of honesty, does presuppose it. That's because the rights is a political issue and political philosophy necessarily presupposes all of ethics. Now Doug basically gave us the argument for property rights -- a property right is a recognition of a fact: that a man is entitled to the use and disposal of that which he produces. How can this right be violated? Only by force. Well, what's something unusual about force? That the man who engages in force necessarily violates every moral principle: rationality, independence, integrity, honesty, justice, productiveness, and pride. But you are right in one sense. It's wrong to use stealing as an example of dishonesty when we're trying to establish the truth of the virtue of honesty, since stealing comes later in the hierarchy, but that's quite apart from the issue you raised. Don Watkins

And I'm saying that's wrong, and moreover, that it's certainly not the Objectivist position. Notice that Peikoff introduces the concept of evasion under his discussion of rationality. That's not to say that evasion isn't involved in dishonesty -- it is. It's just not distinctive of dishonesty. I get your point, but I'm saying that evasion is the opposite of rationality, not of honesty. Rationality says, "Look at reality!" Evasion is the policy of looking away from reality. It is therefore the opposite of rationality. In other words, you're either being rational or you're evading. Honesty is something more. Quoting Peikoff: "If rationality, as we may say, is the commitment to reality, then honesty is its obverse: it is the rejection of unreality. The exponent of the first acknowledges that existence exists; of the second, that only existence exists" (OPAR 268). Because faking, as Objectivism uses it, means more than pretending something isn't -- it's pretending something else is. If I suspect my girlfriend is cheating on me but I push the thought out of my mind, I'm evading. If my girlfriend tells me she's not cheating on me when she actually is, she's faking. Don Watkins

Megan, It was actually Leonard Peikoff's formulation, not mine. An essential component of honesty is the refusal to fake reality. Faking requires evasion, but evasion doesn't necessarily require faking. If you re-read the relevant sections of OPAR I think you'll see the distinction. Don Watkins

Let me start with you final pargraph: Absolutely not. Where in my argument for honesty did I mention property? The argument for honesty depends on a specific context, namely the primacy of existence, man's life as the standard of morality, man's need for moral principles, and rationality as the basic virtue. Whereas rationality says "don't evade reality," the virtue of honesty says "don't make up a new one." The reason dishonesty can't be to your interest is because you have to act on principle, and a principle that puts you at war with reality cannot be to your interest if your goal is to remain in reality. This represents another failure of yours to grasp hierarchy. This is a question about the nature of property. The virtue of honesty long preceds the question of property rights. Don Watkins

What do you mean "has the principle"? How would he justify that principle? What rational man could conclude that the root of property isn't thought but "might makes right"?

Yes, according to Objectivism, concepts are open-ended: they therefore subsume all instances, past, present, and future. That's what makes them useful. Of course, I shouldn't need to tell you this. If you're trying to grapple with Huemer, the least you could do would be to read Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, where Rand discusses her theory of concepts. And no, Rand does not collapse sense and reference. A concept means its referents -- it therefore subsumes all of their characteristics, known and unknown. To know the meaning of a concept, however, is not the same thing as knowing everything about the concept's referents. To know the meaning of "man" for example means that you can identify instaces of the concept (actual men)...even though there's lots you don't know about them. Huemer, however, skews the issue by using the example of a concrete, rather than a concept. And for good reason. For an in-depth critique of Huemer's errors on this point, see this post, including the comments. (By the way, I'm not endorsing the entire post, which I didn't right and haven't read in-depth, but it is helpful.) Don Watkins