Dante

Saying that yes, life is good for all people in all circumstances, presupposes that all people have some form of goal or some objective, something that they want to do with their life. This, in turn, presupposes that they have implicitly chosen life. Life is only a value if you have chosen it, in the sense that you have stuff that you'd like to do or accomplish in this life. Life is no good to someone who has not chosen it implicitly in some form, by pursuing some goal or taking some action. If I take some action, I am illustrating that I prefer one outcome to another, and am trying to bring about the former. However, performing any action requires being alive, so by showing that I value the outcome of some action taken, I have chosen to use, in some respect, the fact that I'm alive. Thus, I've placed some value in the fact that I'm alive. I've chosen life. However, life is not a value for those who take no purposeful action. Of course, saying that life is a value for all people in the world is a pretty safe bet, because pretty much everyone takes action in pursuit of some goal.

If the deist holds that understanding and is still a deist, then he is admitting the arbitrary into the realm of cognition, as others have argued. This is not consistent with Objectivism.

So instead of the universe always having been orderly (as you understand the word), we have some being whose nature and thought processes have always been orderly, bringing the universe to order. Your scenario simply posits an extra level of order which is completely lacking in empirical support.

I shouldn't think it'd be that complicated; just an "I don't agree with the basis for their arguments, but I think the conclusions they reach are valid for other reasons" every time you recommend it. I would say that without this rider you would be misrepresenting your position and that recommending it in this way is not in your self-interest.

Pragmatism is a denial of absolute truth and objective standards, a proclamation that basically induction cannot work. It is a philosophical position, not always related to what is commonly understood by the word "pragmatic." There is nothing wrong with using the most effective strategy to communicate Objectivism to people, and often the most effective strategy is not to throw the whole system at them, but to let them familiarize themselves with pieces of it, and let them continue from there, using their own mind to guide them. This strategy is "pragmatic," but it is not philosophical pragmatism; you are not denying the validity of absolute truth when you proclaim that there is more than one approach to changing people's minds. Philosophy makes no empirical claims whatsoever about the best way to spread Objectivism; it specifies the logical structure of the system, but not the order in which the elements must be learned and experienced by a human mind.

Seems to me you're better off living in a world with people who are religious but practice little altruism rather than a world of religious (or non-religious) people completely surrendering to altruism. America during the Cold War was a much better place to live than Soviet Russia, despite the prevalence of Christianity, because people's final conclusions about altruism were much more beneficial, even if their starting points were incorrect. People don't need to be completely internally consistent and rational in order to benefit your life. Also, you don't owe it to everyone you meet to endeavor to make them completely rational, but you do owe it to yourself to make the environment around you as beneficial as possible. You do gain some marginal benefit from people moving away from altruism, even before they make it to complete consistency. It is appropriate for you to take steps to make the world around you better, and different situations call for different approaches. I agree with Hotu Matua's perspective on bringing people to rationality. It is a slow process; sometimes experiencing the benefit of partial rationality firsthand can lead the person further along the path towards full rationality. For example, experiencing a mutually beneficial relationship (rather than a relationship based on letting people walk all over you), even if you try it out for the wrong reasons, can teach you a lot about the potentials for egoism as a morality. The logical progression of Objectivism starts at metaphysics and then proceed to epistemology, ethics, and politics, but that doesn't mean individual people travel that same path. Different parts are more or less appealing to different people, and it's effective to take those varied starting points to illustrate why the rest of the system is better than they thought at first blush.

This fact does not follow directly from the concept of identity. The axiom of identity simply states that any object that can be said to exist has a definite form (to my understanding). We cannot know from the axiom whether particular identities are restricted to a single action. For instance, the only way that we would know that man is exempt is by incorporating more information than simply the axiom; information specific to man and his ability to choose whether or not to focus his mind. With only the axiom, we would not be able to say that about man. In other words, we can know every object has an identity from the axiom, but we cannot know if any particular identity is determinant or not without studying it.

If you wish to sufficiently acknowledge and rebut anarcho-capitalism, you must begin by recognizing that not all varieties would support competing firms deciding on what principles of justice are correct. Many would say that anyone (defense agencies, individual people, etc) can properly shut down and punish firms which base their operations on incorrect, subjective principles of justice. Only firms which recognize the proper objective principles of justice operate without violating anyone's rights, and thus only these firms are themselves proper. The argument is, rather, that within this group of firms which all agree on the objective principles of justice, there will be disagreements about the proper legal and criminal procedures to secure the agreed-upon principles of justice. Even among people who agree on the principles of justice, there is room for disagreement on whether statutes of limitations are a good idea, whether a certain crime merits jail time or a fine, etc. It is over this that many anarcho-capitalists envision firms competing. To properly confront these arguments, it is this position which one must attack.

It doesn't seem to me that the structure of the word itself implies this. Just looking at the word, I would glean that the person so described supported (what they believe to be) the minimal state. It is true that the common perception of minarchism is that it is adopted by those who think of themselves as less extreme than anarchists. However, that's not an argument against Objectivists using the word to describe themselves, any more than the fact that the word "selfish" is commonly understood to be someone who sacrifices others is an argument against Objectivists describing their morality as selfish. Rand chose selfish not because of its common connotations, but rather to take the word back from such connotations, because the structure of the word itself portrayed exactly what she intended: someone fundamentally oriented towards themselves. It seems to me that the word "minarchism" is in a similar state; commonly understood as a libertarian holding out against the logic of anarchy, but in actual structure simply conveys the idea that the state should be kept only to its proper minimal duties.

If rights are properly formed, then no "should" would ever conflict with a natural right. Rights limit what I can do to you. For example, I am not allowed to physically prevent you from harming yourself. Egoistic morality tells me that I am not obligated to protect you from yourself, either; morality is not about me helping you. They coincide. I think thinking about having a natural right to do this or that is the wrong way to think about it. Rights don't define everything we can do; they define what we can't do to others. If I'm talking about taking an action which affects only myself, it's not that rights permit me to do it; rights simply don't apply. Rights govern social interaction only. If you're talking about possible actions that rights do not prohibit, that's simply any action I can take that would not impinge on the rights of others. There are infinitely many conceivable choices that I can make in that sphere; if you're saying that morality does not provide any sort of guidance whatsoever in any situation not involving rights violations, I'd say that's not a very useful or informative morality.

True. It is true that helping strangers who have no conceivable connection to oneself is not beneficial. However, assuming that all strangers are in this relationship to one's life is entirely unrealistic. The most obvious value to be gained by helping strangers is their potential relationship to you as value-producers in the future. I can't tell you how many current friends of mine became friends of mine beginning with a kind gesture extended to them when they were a stranger to me. Effort expended to help strangers can turn into friendships, relationships, beneficial business contacts and partnerships, etc. In many situations, the likelihood of this is very small. For example, there is little likelihood of this sort of benefit accruing from me sending money to starving children in India or some such thing. This type of potential benefit obviously favors helping those in your own university, community, company, etc over more distant strangers. However, there is another kind of benefit available from helping strangers, and that is the psychic benefit from encouraging the pursuit of objective values by others. You may gain some rational satisfaction from contributing to a cause which teaches the uneducated valuable skills and puts them in a position to support themselves. Even if you never anticipate that your life will be made better by someone who went through the program, you value self-sufficiency and value production, and you gain some happiness from seeing others accomplish that. This type of benefit is possible even with very distant strangers; however, it is only possible with certain types of activities. Simply giving money to the poor indiscriminately is not likely to do anything but encourage their dependence on charity; this type of giving does not benefit me because I am not encouraging any rational values. However, if charitable giving is structured in a way which promotes self-sufficiency and rational values, I may legitimately gain satisfaction by giving to it. Obviously, this satisfaction doesn't go very far. An acontextual orgy of giving to others, even if done in a way which actually promotes self-sufficiency, is likely to end with the giver being impoverished and unable to pursue other values that he/she has neglected. However, if effort to help strangers is expended in the right way, and if it does not endanger his or her other rational values, it can be beneficial to and proper for the giver. This is why I would characterize charity as a marginal issue in ethics; it is likely to hold a low place in one's value structure, far below pursuing a career or helping out loved ones and friends.

Is it immoral for me to follow my father into a career in medicine, simply because it is expected of me, when what I would really love to do is become an economics professor? Objectivism would say that yes, taking this action is immoral. Why? Because I'm sacrificing something of great value to me and getting little in return. Assuming I have chosen to live, I have a moral obligation to pursue my own happiness; that is to say, sacrificing myself and my happiness is immoral. When I say that I have a moral obligation to take that career as an economist, what I am trying to convey is that morality dictates that we pursue properly-formed selfish values. These dictates of morality are what I refer to as moral obligations. Morality dictates that we look for rational values in all that we do. To look back at the situation of helping strangers, morality still dictates that we look for rational values in others. When we find them, we should pursue them to an extent that is consistent with our hierarchy of values overall. It would be irrational to ignore all value except that to be gained by helping strangers, but it would also be irrational to neglect helping strangers entirely when they hold a true rational value to us. Forgoing the value to be gained from helping strangers is immoral in the same way as forgoing the value to be gained by pursuing the career that I like. My moral obligation to do both of them, given a favorable context, derives from my commitment to selfish values.

Yes, of course, and oftentimes in a real-world situation with context, the costs outweigh the value gained. In this situation, the obligation deriving from integrity goes the other way; it is immoral to extend help and forgo something of greater value. However, in assuming zero cost I simply responded to an unrealistically-formed question, and I think the logic of the answer has significance for real world situations. In real world situations, if you take the full context into account and still feel that helping a stranger is the most objectively valuable action you can take at present, you are obligated to take that action by integrity to your values. Because the obligation to help derives from an egoistic ethics. It is fidelity to your own egoistic hierarchy of values that drives the obligation I am talking about. The well being of strangers carries a non-zero value to me, and it therefore fits somewhere within my hierarchy. In some situations, I will judge that promoting that value (the well-being of a stranger) will be the best course I can take to further my overall value structure, and in those situations I am obligated to help. Your actions are not taken "for the sake of" the person you are trying to help, in the sense that your moral code is not built around their well-being. You're still ultimately acting for your own sake. However, other people factor into your own value structure to varying degrees; loved ones factor in very heavily, friends less so, and strangers still less so. Acting for your own sake requires mutually beneficial relationships with each of these groups of people. In a sense, I am saying that you would never be obligated to help a stranger when helping him is not a mutually beneficial action. When you judge that extending help will be the most beneficial action possible for yourself at that moment, you are obligated to take it.

When discussing Objectivism, it certainly is. Pride is among the seven key virtues of Objectivism, and pride is considered to be concordant with moral ambitiousness. I feel that the best way to illustrate the Objectivist view on moral ambitiousness is simply to quote Rand, and then elaborate a bit. When discussing pride in Galt's speech, Rand speaks of, "that radiant selfishness of soul which desires the best in all things, in values of matter and spirit, a soul that seeks above all else to achieve its own moral perfection..." as the beginning of self-esteem, and of pride being essential to achieving self-esteem. In The Objectivist Ethics, Rand says, "The virtue of Pride can best be described by the term: “moral ambitiousness.” It means that one must earn the right to hold oneself as one’s own highest value by achieving one’s own moral perfection—which one achieves by never accepting any code of irrational virtues impossible to practice and by never failing to practice the virtues one knows to be rational—by never accepting an unearned guilt and never earning any, or, if one has earned it, never leaving it uncorrected—by never resigning oneself passively to any flaws in one’s character—by never placing any concern, wish, fear or mood of the moment above the reality of one’s own self-esteem." So that's what Rand said about it. I personally agree strongly with the sentiment that having high self-esteem and a high sense of self-value automatically leads to searching for and selecting the very best for oneself. Most people have spheres of their life where they place their happiness very high among their concerns (when choosing friends, for instance) and other spheres where they tend to sacrifice their own happiness to other concerns (when dealing with relatives and family members, for example). Moral ambition in Objectivism is simply the desire to hold oneself as a supreme value in all spheres of life, rather than just some or most.

In short, this is the step I would disagree with. First of all, I would certainly agree that accidental self-injury is not necessarily immoral, although there is room for issues like self-negligence to enter into the argument. However, deliberate self-injury, while not rights-violating, is very much immoral (in the context of a morality in which each man should hold his own rational self-interest as paramount). A normative conception of rights is certainly part of an overall moral code, but it is not equivalent to morality. Rights are normative statements about which actions towards others should be permitted and which should not be. Certainly any conception of rights has to derive from morality, and a defense of natural rights which is not based on a definite morality cannot succeed. However, this does not mean that rights cover the entire extent of morality. Objectivist morality is, to quote Rand, "a code of values to guide man’s choices and actions—the choices and actions that determine the purpose and the course of his life." Morality assists man in every action open to his choice, by giving him a standard by which to compare alternatives. That standard in Objectivism is the life proper to man. Now, how people should treat others is certainly part of morality, and what they absolutely cannot do to others (rights) follows from the premises of morality. However, Objectivist morality is not limited to social interaction. This is expressed most clearly when Rand contrasts her own view of morality against those who think that morality only governs interpersonal actions, and that man would not need morality if he were alone on a desert island: "You who prattle that morality is social and that man would need no morality on a desert island—it is on a desert island that he would need it most." Even by himself, he needs to be rational and purposeful in sustaining his life, and this is the essence of morality. While self-injury is outside the scope of many proffered moralities, it is certainly covered in Objectivism, which tells man to refer every choice he makes to his own long-term self-interest. If injuring oneself is not in one's long-term self interest, then taking that action works against one's standard of values (one's own life), and is opposite to the dictates of morality. Thus, it is immoral. Now certainly not all self-injuries are poor long-term decisions. Breaking one's wrist to escape a kidnappers handcuffs can certainly turn out to be a self-injury with very positive long-term results. However, disregarding one's self-interest and doing harm to oneself works against one's life, whether or not he has the right to do it. In short, there is a difference between saying that you should not interfere with others' governance of their own lives (rights) and saying that there is no wrong way to govern one's own life (morality only extends as far as rights). Objectivism maintains the former, but strongly disagrees with the latter.

Why would a person who values his own happiness settle for second-best in satisfying his rational preferences? It seems like a failure of moral ambitiousness to me. There is no absolute downside, but you are not as well off as you could be; there is an opportunity cost that the chooser is bearing unnecessarily, by choice.

Yes, I definitely agree that it's theoretically possible to come up with a choice limited to only moral options. I think that's a clearer way of stating it than simply trying to say "Not all choices are moral choices," because when talking about Objectivism, that can be taken to mean that sometimes you shouldn't try to figure out which option is better for you. That's pretty much what I mean when I say "moral evaluation" in the context of Objectivism, because Objectivist morality gives guidance in any choice that affects the actor's life, rather than just what are onventionally thought of as "moral" choices, such as how to treat others, etc.

Every little rational choice helps, and every little irrational choice hurts, but obviously some are very significant and some are relatively unimportant. That's all I meant when I said that not everyone puts your well-being significantly at risk.

To formulate this argument properly it must be made explicit what subjects all of the value judgments are referring to. Bad for whom, cost to whom, etc.

Yeah, the negative consequences of getting involved obviously figure very heavily in deciding, and any person with significant feelings of self-esteem and self-worth will obviously take their own safety very seriously. I've never been in a situation like what we're describing, and I really don't know how I'd react to one. Once you've determined which course is best for you, there is no wiggle room in following through, yeah.

In one sense, yes; in another sense, no. I don't think you'll be successful in squeezing my opinion on this into a one-word answer to this question, despite your evident desire to do so. Here is my opinion, in more than one word (again). All choices must be evaluated as to what effect they might have on promoting your life. In that sense, all choices must be morally evaluated (this is not moral evaluation in the conventional definition of morality, but then Objectivist morality isn't exactly conventional). However, if after some evaluation, you cannot decide which option would be more beneficial, then it's not immoral to go for either option (if you can't decide whether you want vanilla or chocolate after thinking about it, you can just pick one). In that sense, some choices have multiple moral options or zero immoral options. Saying that when faced with a choice, one path is usually (marginally) better than the other is not saying that your "philosophical and emotional well being" are significantly at risk with every decision you make. Making the claim that, on average, I prefer one flavor to another is not the same as making the claim that people gain nothing from variety or "switching it up," or that I should always choose that flavor regardless of context. Every time you're faced with a choice, you at least try evaluate the alternatives to some extent, yes? Its entirely possible that faced with the same choice several times, your preferred path could change; repetition is boring. However, once you size up the choices facing you at this particular moment, and definitively determine which path would make you happier, going on to purposefully deny yourself that path by placing something else above your happiness (adherence to a morality which values asceticism, or sacrificing your happiness for the sake of others, or w/e) is going against the path Objectivist morality would tell you to take. I don't really understand the concern with that statement. I'm not saying anything about how people make decisions, or making any empirical claim about preferences. All I'm saying is that once all that determination judgment stuff is done with, and you have an option which you think (at that moment) will maximize your happiness, morality tells you to go with that choice. Going with any other option goes against the dictates of that morality, and that's usually what we refer to as immoral. Of course, your judgment could be wrong (you could be more sick of vanilla than you thought, you could get food poisoning, etc). Nothing that I'm saying contradicts the fact that the path to greatest happiness is very difficult for people to determine. Once you have a reasonable guess as to the right path, though, morality tells you to follow it. I don't know of too many other ways to say this.

Okay, yeah, there's no arguing with those people. Most people though, including religious people, at least think that they take reason and logic seriously.

Buying implies cost. Also simply taking it for free and reading it implies space and time cost. However, if you were able to costlessly gain a potential value, whatever the value, you should, whether a book or a person's well-being. The point is not that you should take any action you know little about. The little you know about it is crucial. If the little you know about it indicates that it will probably gain you a value at little cost, you should. The little that I know about random strangers is that the vast majority of them don't deserve to get mugged or hurt. The average stranger holds value to me, unless and until he/she forfeits it. Books are an imperfect analogy when you extend it to here, because the average book sucks. I would not assume the average book to have a positive value for me. I do see what you're saying about getting more information, though. Assuming that is possible in the situation, I would say that that is a viable moral alternative to acting for a potential value.

Who are these Libertarians, specifically?