whYNOT

If one can name the emotion, say embarrassment, ascertain that it is appropriate to a circumstance, say somebody says something about you or reveals some personal information, can connect your emotion to a value-judgment and objective value, say your self-esteem or valued privacy - that embarrassment is then an objective and rational emotional response. Not unfailingly, and least for everybody who believe in the subjectivity and absolute, quasi-mystical insights of their emotions, and who'll identify by way of their emotions, completely - but the aim of having "objective" emotions is achievabl

What Rand shows, here and elsewhere, is required - presupposed - of one, is to be able to comprehend the chain between man and an individual, also, between standard and purpose. Or else, either one may soar into a free-floating abstraction in which man/standard is the ethical ideal, unattainable in practice by each man - or, into solid empiricism, by which man-individual, standard-purpose are identical concretes with no conceptual distinctions. The one route likely resulting from rationalism, the other method leading to moral subjectivity. Conversely: what is "proper to man", the standard

[By Barbara Branden; thanks to Peter Taylor] From: BBfromM To: atlantis Subject: what's wrong with 'solipsistic' egoism? Date: Sun, 4 Feb 2001 09:14:22 EST. Luka wrote: "What is wrong, logically, with the claim that the standard of value for any given person is the type of life that he wants for himself? For those of you who disagree with this claim, I'd like to hear a non-duty based reason to reject that standard". A lot is wrong with the idea that the standard of value for any given person is the type of life that he

I suggest to read what's in front of you in the book to understand better; I asked where you see "MY life is my standard of value ..." Can you? Otherwise mere repetitions of the error get you nowhere.

What looks minor, even semantical quibbles over phrasing, is like setting off on a boat voyage with a faulty compass bearing. The further you progress the farther off course you go - you aimed for Ireland and ended up in Portugal.

Why it must be stated so David, is that Rand traces the ethics from its metaphysical base, i.e. from existence and consciousness, the nature of all life and man's nature. "Radical", in short. The O'ist principle stated by Rand is the essence of all that, as you know from Rand's comprehensive preamble in VOS. What value one places in another man is of course by one's own standards (virtues) one derived from the *standard* of value, man's life.

Consider what Rand did NOT write: 1. Life is the standard of value. 2. A man's (or woman's) life is THE value. 3. The individual's life is his OWN standard of value. They are each erroneous and misleading or insufficient: and arbitrary, intrinsicist, or subjective, I maintain. Rather, she expanded upon and substantiated this precise version: "The Objectivist ethics holds man's life as the *standard* of value - and *his own life* as the ethical purpose of every individual man". [- and woman, I'd suggest, to be painstakingly clear]. So, this bears little relati

Miss of the point, Luke77. It's your rendition which will turn to subjectivity, I have said, not Rand's. You've made a misinterpretation of Rand, replacing or conflating man's life with "my" life. And - mistaken the metaphysical abstraction for a concrete. Read that section in VoS again and show where she wrote "...one's own life as the standard of value..." I think it could be put that man's life is the bedrock of value - "the source of and capacity to value" - from which each individual's value-in-himself is derived and gauged by. Without that metaphysical foundation yo

Do you require an objective base for the ethics? Simple as that. How do you know that the "criteria of valuing oneself" and pursuing happiness is objectively good, or just what one feels like, subjectively? Is it revealed - intrinsic - knowledge? Or informed by one's instincts? On whose authority? The proposition of rational egoism must be justified exhaustively, and that Rand did. Concluding: "The Objectivist ethics holds man's life as the ~standard~ of value -- and ~his own life~ as the ethical ~purpose~ of every individual man". If you see the distinction between "

Hi Luke77: If "your life is your standard"[of value] ... by what standard is that to be held, by an individual? Do you see that this rendition becomes circular and/or subjective? I.e. My own life is the standard of my own standard of value ... ? Which in itself does not preclude e.g. hedonism or trampling on others. One first requires an abstract standard by which to judge and choose *which* are one's own standards and *why*.. "Man's life" - living as "man" and all that entails - provides that standard (or "gauge") of value for each of us. Now we have an obj

As best I can tell, the morality of capitalism stems from the morality of the individual's freedom to act. Therefore, the freedom to produce, to create, to own, to trade - with others, with that same freedom. In this formulation (positive) individual rights leads the way and capitalism the direct offshoot. While neither is an ethical code per se, I think these moral systems would in practice be highly discouraging of prejudices like racism (already evident in the reduced Capitalism, as we know it) but a govt. would not and could not ban and censor the voiced articulation of them. (Until interf

If they are both the same, flip a coin. To repeat the obvious, this is not one public persona against another persona, this is ideological war and we all are involved. If no more that the GOP and conservatives represent a temporary block against what will be an inevitable surge to the far Left by Democrats, until such time as the latter regain some sanity. Perhaps. When/if they lose and break up into constituent, political sections now glued together by "beat Trump", at all costs. The players, Biden, Harris, are rehearsed in their parts, they personally don't count for much in the greater

"The power to unite people" (Mandela) that sport has, can be turned to the power to divide. And by the very individual sportsmen, no less, who most benefited from that good-willed unity.

SL. Good line of thought. I hadn't thought of nominating emergent to this individual level. But, yes - why not borrow the term? That "a volitional consciousness" is personally "emergent" by the effort and for the purpose of each individual, (his concepts, rational virtue, etc.) is what Rand must have meant by "the self-makers of our own souls". And observably and empirically so, with a brain's constantly newly-forming neural pathways, as the neuroscientists testify. For emergent properties, argued and debated in the original, classic, biological sense (most importantly to us, one of

If one defined subjective as "of and due to and dependent upon the perceiving subject's consciousness", does that hold? Naturally there are physical, biological differences among all brains as among all bodies, but consciousness is consciousness. If "subjective" were accepted in the colloquial meaning (as it usually is): loosely as "variably specific to each person" - I'd agree. The proper one - opposed to objectivity - has to be maintained by O'ists, though. Therefore the careful distinction between "personal" and subjective (that Rand made some times). Otherwise, great. There is an identifia