khaight

I'd put the point slightly differently. We act on principle because principles are our only means of projecting the future consequences of our present actions. We can't perceive the future; we have to grasp it using concepts.

As far as I know. There may be some minimum donation, I'm not sure. (I'm well above the minimum donation level; I've been a supporter of Anthem for many years now.) I'm sure if you just drop them a line via the Contact form on their website they'd be happy to answer your questions.

Why can't I? I say that I should have the right to vote, but my friend's 4-year old daughter should not. Where's the contradiction? The obvious rebuttal -- that there's a relevant difference between an adult and a child that warrants my treating them differently with respect to franchise -- is precisely analogous to the position that there's a relevant difference between 'me' and 'some other guy' that could warrant me treating us differently with respect to rights. Let me cast the question in yet another way. As Objectivists, we're egoists. We act in ways that advance our self-interest, and reject actions that harm our self-interest. So why is it always in my self-interest to respect other people's rights? What's wrong with violating someone's rights if I think I can get away with it? Many people do. (The same question can be applied to other virtues, e.g. 'Why is it always in my self-interest to be honest? What's wrong with deceiving someone to gain a value if I think I can get away with it? Many people do.' Etc.) The Argument from Consistency is really just an appeal to the Golden Rule -- you shouldn't do that to other people because you wouldn't like it if they did it to you. But the Golden Rule is hardly an axiom, so what justifies that?

Prior to the last 10-15 years there were basically no Objectivist philosophers with university positions. This has since changed, and the Objectivists who work in academia are producing peer-reviewed work in the normal manner, distinct from the work they do directed to the Objectivist movement. If you're really interested in the progress Objectivists are making into the academic world, I highly recommend becoming a donor to the Anthem Foundation. Their quarterly updates can't be beat.

I've seen this argument -- call it the "Argument from Consistency" -- repeated multiple times in this thread, but I've never found it all that persuasive. The basic premise is that reason requires that relevantly similar entities be treated similarly. Since you claim rights for yourself on the basis of your nature as a human being, you must acknowledge the rights claims of others who are also human beings. But this doesn't really address the criticism, which is that other people *are* relevantly different from you in a key respect: they aren't you. And the standard of moral behavior in an egoistic ethics is your life. But it is obvious that having force used against yourself and using force against another do not impact your life in the same way, and assuming that this asymmetry is irrelevant to the question of why you should respect the rights of others just begs the question. In short, I claim rights for myself because having force used against me harms my life. But why does that mean that I can't rationally maintain that I can violate the rights of others without harming my own life? There's an implicit shift from a self-centered perspective to an impersonal perspective here that needs justification.

Oh, absolutely. You'll never gain a full understanding of any major philosophical point via deduction -- philosophic principles should always be validated inductively. The main purpose of the brief sketch responses possible in a forum like this should be to direct the questioner's attention to various facts of reality that can provide the base and structure for their own inductive investigation. That's what I was trying to do in my earlier reply -- clarify the question and identify a relevant fact. The Objectivist ethics argues that one's own life is the standard by which one should choose one's actions, and that one has to act guided by principles that identify the long-range consequences of one's actions. Inside this context, the question "Why should I respect the rights of other people?" becomes "What would be the effect on my life of accepting, as a principle, that the use of physical force is a virtue?"

This is a digression, but I have to point out that in an egoistic ethics the process of moral judgment bears a strong resemblance to giving advice. Think about it. If someone is acting immorally on an egoistic ethics, they're harming themselves. Moral judgment consists in identifying that harm and recommending that the other person act in a different way that will make their life better. That's advice!

I assume you are asking why violating another's rights is immoral on Objectivist grounds? This is a somewhat tricky point, granted. What it boils down to is that to violate another person's rights you have to initiate the use of force. Now, there are two basic reasons why one might do this. Either one is doing it in accordance with some moral principle which sanctions the initiation of force as morally good or one is acting without the guidance of a principle, i.e. on whim. The latter is clearly not in your self-interest, because your life has specific requirements which must be grasped through reason, and acting based on whim is a rejection of reason. And a principle which sanctions the initiation of force would obviously conflict with all the other Objectivist virtues. I find it clarifying to think of the question not as "Why shouldn't I initiate the use of force?", but as "Why shouldn't I be the kind of person who would initiate the use of force?" Being that kind of person has many implications for one's own life, all of them bad -- ergo not in one's self-interest, ergo immoral.

One more, just released: Capitalism Unbound - by Andrew Bernstein. Biddle's book focuses on ethical issues. It starts with an explanation of why religious and subjectivist ethical systems do not and cannot lead to personal happiness and success, moves to an essentialized explanation of Rand's case for an objective ethics, works through the various virtues that follow from that, and finishes up with a brief discussion of why freedom is a requirement for practicing such an ethic fully. Bernstein's One Lesson book is a full overview, touching on all the major elements in the philosophy apart from esthetics. It tries to tie all of the key principles of Objectivism back to a single integrating observation (the 'lesson'), viz. that everything good in life flows from the exercise of man's rationality. Bernstein's Capitalism Unbound, which I've only briefly skimmed so far, looks to focus on politics and the moral basis of economics. I haven't even done that much with his Ayn Rand for Beginners. I would give the One Lesson book to someone who had expressed an interest in the philosophy overall. I'd give Loving Life to someone who was looking for an alternative to the religion/subjectivism dichotomy in morality, i.e. someone looking for a way out of the "God is dead so everything is permitted" problem. And I'd give Capitalism Unbound to someone who is already sympathetic to political freedom but doesn't understand the ethical foundation required to properly defend it.

This is also true. I bought a house in 2003, and the first thing I did when I decided to enter the market was go down to the bookstore and buy several books on mortgages and the home-buying process. I read them all too, before I contacted a real estate agent. The research paid off in exactly the way you reference -- the banks were willing to lend me substantially more money than my own calculations suggested would be prudent. I declined to take them up on their offer. The result is that I bought less house than I might have, but I can actually afford it so it isn't a financial albatross now that home values have declined. There is a vast amount of good information about responsible home buying, and responsible financial management more broadly. But you can't force a mind -- all you can do is allow it to experience the consequences of its choices.

This sounds like a variation on the Argument From Intimidation, a fallacy identified and analyzed by Ayn Rand in an essay of that name.

I still think that, as has been noted earlier in the thread, if one enters into the mortgage contract with the deliberate intention of defaulting, that would be fraud. It takes time, effort and money to go through the process of repossession, and while that process is underway you would be living in the house. You would have obtained a material value under false pretenses. The material value is the house (until repossessed), the false pretense would be the promise to pay the mortgage, which you never intended to keep.

I would not consider it so. In my judgment (and I think that of most if not all of the posters here) Kelley's ideas diverged from Objectivism many years ago. I'd recommend the material on ARI's website over Kelley any day. Diana Hsieh's "False Friends of Objectivism" archive documents her reasons for halting her support for Kelley and his organization in some detail, including some analysis of issues like the open system. I recommend reading through her posts on the topic.

Andrew Bernstein's Objectivism in One Lesson is a short, solid introduction to the essentials of Objectivism. The main benefit it provides over Rand's own essays -- and it shares this with Peikoff's Objectivism -- is the presentation of the overall structure of the philosophy. Rand's essays, while brilliant and foundational, are often scattershot. Discussions of important issues are found in odd places, and the reader is left with the difficult task of tying it all together himself. (Two examples: Rand's best discussion of the objective theory of value is in her essay "What is Capitalism?", and her best discussion of the factual basis of justice is in the chapter on definitions in Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.) Getting the integrated view is important. Objectivism really is a system; understanding and applying the ethical and political principles is really not possible without grasping how they flow from and relate to the metaphysical and epistemological ones.

One difference I can see -- in the first case, one would find it unbearable to live without the loved one knowing that one could have acted to save her, but chose not to do so. In the second, that choice is not part of the scenario. The loss of the loved one is simply a fact. In effect, in the first case one gives up one's life to save the loved one because not doing so would require a repudiation of her value; in the second case that does not apply.

According to the December 2009 Impact newsletter on ARI's website, there were 460 attendees at OCON 2009, an all-time high for an East Coast venue. I believe that attendance at OCON 2008 was a little bit higher. OCON 2007, the one in Colorado celebrating the 50th anniversary of the publication of Atlas Shrugged, set the all-time attendance record at slightly over 500.

It's worth noting that 'fraud' is not a moral concept; it is a legal one. The moral principle most directly applicable to this situation is honesty, and its specific formulation is worth noting: the commitment to never attempt to gain a value by faking reality. If you deliberately enter into a mortgage contract with the intention of getting a place to live without paying for it, that is clearly a violation of the virtue of honesty as formulated above. On the other hand, if the situation has simply changed in such a way that continuing to pay on the mortgage would constitute a sacrifice, and you decide it is in your self-interest to return the house to the bank and take the hit on your credit report, that is not a violation of the principle of honesty. Which value are you trying to obtain, and what part of reality are you trying to fake? Here's a concrete scenario in which strategic default might be moral. Suppose that you bought a house as a 'fixer-upper', with the intent of remodeling it and selling it for a profit a few years down the road. Then the market collapses, such that it would take you many more years to be able to sell even the remodeled house for enough to make your investment back. Selling the house wouldn't even make you enough money to cover what you own on the mortgage. In such a situation it might well make sense to just wash your hands of the whole situation, give the house back to the bank and move on. In essence, you bought the house as a means to an end, and due to circumstances beyond your control it ceased to be a means to that end.

There is a standard definition of a syllogism as an argument with a certain kind of three-term structure built around a middle term, but there isn't a brief formal definition of such in Aristotle as far as I know. He has a discussion of the nature of a syllogism at the beginning of the Prior Analytics, but the overall discussion is too long to quote and any part I could excerpt would be tagged as 'unclear'. Dare I ask why you want to know?

I don't have a definitive argument, but I do have an analogy. Strategic default looks a bit like divorce. When you get married, you make a lifetime commitment -- "for better or for worse, in sickness or in health, till death do you part" is the traditional formulation. You don't just walk away at the first sign of difficulty, because doing so would make it impossible for you to have the profound values that flow from a decades-long romantic relationship. But sometimes things change so dramatically that you're no longer talking about momentary difficulties in an otherwise sound relationship. The marriage itself has gone sour, and sticking with it would mean dedicating a large portion of your life to the pursuit of something that is no longer a value to you. Strategic default could be viewed in a similar light. And here's a thought on analysis. We can divide immoral actions into two broad groups -- the categorically immoral and the contextually immoral. The former are actions that are wrong regardless of a person's specific value hierarchy. No matter what your values are, it is immoral to be dishonest, to be a parasite, to be irrational, etc. The latter are actions that involve a sacrifice, a surrender of a greater value for a lesser. Sacrifice is immoral, but whether a specific action counts as a sacrifice depends on how your values are prioritized relative to each other, and this ordering has options. Another person's value hierarchy can be legitimately different from yours, which means an act that would be a sacrifice for you might be perfectly moral for him. So we should start by asking whether strategic default is categorically immoral. If it is, we should be able to identify a specific moral principle which it violates. If strategic default is not categorically immoral, only then does it make sense to look into the possibility that it is contextually immoral -- and to identify the specific impact that it has on one's values in hierarchical context.

I'm liking this guy a bit more, now...

My understanding is that the AS show has been filmed and is 'in the can' -- the only question is the airdate. It's not likely they're going to go to the bother of shooting the episode and then never air it. It's sort of a moot point for me anyhow since my cable provider apparently doesn't carry the Fox Business Network.

There was a report on HBL from an Objectivist who was at the taping of the special on Tuesday. Apparently it started off with an interview with John Allison, and there was a panel discussion with Yaron Brook, Brad Thompson and Allison, with audience Q&A. Later they had Nick Gillespie, who is the editor-in-chief of Reason.tv and Reason.com. He's more of a libertarian. But it certainly seems like a number of quality Objectivists were representing. I suppose editing could turn it into a hatchet job, but I'm cautiously optimistic. At least Stossel was talking to some of the right people.

I think the tactic described by Eric Raymond in this blog post might be worth trying. If a person says they want to be kept like a pet, treat them like the dumb animal they are claiming to be. When they object to your denigration of their mind and judgment, point out that they've already denigrated it themselves by rejecting the freedom which its exercise requires. And if they don't object, they're a lost cause anyhow. Just walk away.

And note which statement of yours I was responding to: "One needs protection from other individuals, not just Govt.". Guess what provides that protection? That's right, government. Or are you advocating some kind of anarchism? Rand disagreed. She laid out the Objectivist position in her 1964 essay "Government Financing in a Free Society", which is reprinted in The Virtue of Selfishness. There, she writes that "In a fully free society, taxation -- or, to be exact, payment for governmental services -- would be voluntary." You may not agree, but the Objectivist position on compulsory taxation is clear and unequivocal.

Your implicit premise seems to be that if voting is part of the political system then any issue is subject to voting. With a constitutionally limited government that simply is not the case. Issues of taxation, for example, are not subject to vote because a proper government doesn't have the authority to take its citizens property by force, period. But there are many concrete issues facing even a legitimate government where there are a range of possible options all of which are compatible with the principle of individual rights. Consider a question like "Should the government hire more police officers?" There is no principle from which you can deduce the answer to that. Subjecting the issue to unanimous vote would allow criminals to veto the hiring of police, which would be ludicrous. But some kind of vote seems a reasonable way of addressing the question, by getting a sense from the public whether it thinks the existing police force is doing an adequate job of protecting their rights.