Dante

Where intrinsic value is concerned, simply ask for a concrete definition of intrinsic value, including what determines which objects have it and which do not. The argument against intrinsic value is simply the fact that this request does not have a satisfactory response. I would better characterize the choice as pre-rational. By this, I generally mean that life is a metaphysical end in itself; the choice to live is not made for some more basic reason. However, it must also be remembered that the choice to live is not a simple choice that you make once; it's not like choosing whether or not to buy a sandwich. The choice to live is not concrete in the same way, because life is a continuing process, not a static object. Any pursuit of value implies choosing life in *some* respects; adhering perfectly to Objectivism is equivalent, philosophically, to always choosing life in all respects. Most people pursue values that reinforce some elements of the process of life and hinder others. Implied in everything above is "as I understand it," of course.

One of the most significant points that Ayn Rand made was the fact that this should not be the "classic ethical problem." The ethics she created was intended to govern, mainly, ordinary life situations. The premier ethical problem should NOT be an extremely unlikely, life-or-death situation, but rather the situation of everyday life. During every day life, living by your own effort is the best course for you to take in order to further your own life. Theft is both impractical and immoral. Her rules against theft are intended to govern normal conditions; this is what the Objectivist ethics spends most of its time and effort on, because its purpose is to be useful in helping people to live properly. However, admittedly situations arise where living by your own effort is, temporarily, impossible (e.g. you're lost in the woods, starving or freezing, and you come upon an empty cabin). In talking about these "lifeboat situations," one's primary moral imperative is to survive and return to normal conditions where one can provide for oneself. Reimbursement is certainly morally imperative when the emergency situation is confined to you (as it is in my example); with widespread emergency (e.g. a hurricane) that question is less simple. In any event, taxation is not meant to be an emergency-situations-only thing. Taxation occurs continuously in modern-day America. Incorporating theft into everyday life like that is always wrong, in the Objectivist ethics.

I definitely felt that the main villain in the film was imperialism rather than technology, mankind, or anything like that. Obviously it was a mixed bag with imperialism, technology, arrogance, etc all bundled together, but I found much to admire in the main character. Plus, it was visually amazing. A few off-the-cuff environmental comments about mankind destroying the Earth aside, I felt that it demonized aggression and glorified defending your own.

Certainly there are morally good acts which aren't obligatory in the sense that any of a number of alternatives that I could have chosen would have been a morally proper choice, but I wasn't obligated to pick one of them. A good example is perhaps choosing a major in college. I enjoy a multitude of fields, and I think that several of them could be the starting points for a happy, successful career and life. Obviously it's a significant decision which deserves a lot of deliberation, but if you're faced with a few good options and (not knowing the future) you aren't sure which one is best, I'd say you're not morally obliged to any, but choosing any particular one of those would be good. Of course, you're morally obliged to pick one that according to your best judgment will make you happy, and you're morally obliged not to irrationally dismiss (properly defined) superior alternatives. I'd say that in Objectivism, if you consciously pass up an opportunity to further your long-term well-being, that is an immoral act. Rand talked a lot about the "radiant selfishness of being which demands the best in everything;" I'd say this question is really about that one of her claims. She's certainly clear that any failure to pursue the best is a betrayal of oneself. One isn't obligated to spend as much time as it takes to clearly define the best; search costs exist, and some things just aren't important, but consciously ignoring information that you already have about your self-interest is most definitely immoral under Objectivism.

This is a very one-dimensional, mechanical view of self-interest, and it is not the self-interest that Objectivism holds to be the proper standard. It is quite possible for a self-interested person to derive (selfish) pleasure from letting a married couple sit together; indeed, if he has a proper spirit of good will and benevolence that comes from the kind of self-respect that Objectivism advocates, he probably will. This isn't to say that he should automatically give up a seat in the front (maybe he's injured and walking to the back pains him); it's up to his own context and value system, obviously, but there's no a priori reason why sitting at the front is *the* selfish act.

The Dust Bowl itself was a direct result of the Homestead Act, which limited farmers to small plots of land. This structured incentives in such a way as to discourage conservation and protection from erosion; as a result, the droughts of the 1930s were much more damaging than they would have been without government intervention.

Many people discuss the Industrial Revolution as a horrific time of worker abuse. It is important to keep in mind that this is true, if one takes today's standards of working conditions as the comparison. I find that most often, people who make these claims do have a relatively accurate picture of how much life sucked in a sweatshop or factory (perhaps a bit exaggerated), but by far the more common mistake is to forget about the working conditions prior to the Industrial Revolution. Feudalism was not idyllic, it was oppressive. People did not move from farms out in the country full of plenty of food and leisure time to shitty jobs in factories; they moved from starvation and shitty jobs in the country to slightly less shitty jobs with a slightly smaller degree of starvation in the cities. The crappy conditions of factories were a holdover from feudalism; it was capitalism that allowed workers to slowly save and build up capital and improve living conditions. Crappy conditions in factories during or shortly after industrialization were an indictment against feudalism, not capitalism; capitalism is responsible for the amelioration of these conditions over time. THIS is what people don't understand, and what they need to.

I'm currently in the process of applying to graduate economics schools, and I'm interested in working with Austrian economics. There is no "Objectivist economics" per se, but Ayn Rand seemed to defer to the work of Ludwig von Mises on economic issues, and he was a foundational figure in Austrian economics. Having said that, pretty much the only school that has an explicit emphasis on Austrian economics is George Mason University. New York University has historically been the center of Austrian economics, and so there are still some vestiges there as well... but I'd say the best way to do graduate work in good economics is to do it yourself, wherever you end up. I'm applying to at least 10 or 12 schools, most of which do not have an Austrian economist on the faculty; wherever I go, I'll basically just try to do good economics when I get there. Obviously I'll encounter a lot of Keynesianism and bad ideas wherever I go; that's the world we live in, and it is important to learn the arguments of different schools, if only to better counter them. Hopefully that's helpful; I don't have any advice on business directly, just econ.

Well, there's actual empirical evidence out there for the Big Bang.

Yeah, that first part is the misconception.

Ayn Rand's attack on altruism is an attack on benevolence and good will among men. What Ayn Rand actually did was to recognize that the principle motivating altruism is ultimately antagonistic to genuine benevolence and good will. Altruism, as the claim that one's fundamental moral duty is to serve others, places others in an antagonistic relationship to one's own well-being. I can either be selfish or moral, but not both. Such a fundamental principle ultimately breeds hatred among men. True benevolence can only be predicated on a mutual understanding of each man's own primary importance to himself. What Ayn Rand did was to detach benevolence from its companion in the popular mindset, altruism, and show that the two are actually both separable and antagonistic.

Replacing "George Bush" with "Alan Greenspan" would also put that criticism on the map. You hear that one alot... "Greenspan, an adherent of Ayn Rand's Objectivism, screwed up the economy...." blah blah.

One might argue that it is irrational to expect a theft that goes unnoticed to have any effect on the theif's own rights. It is hypocritical, certainly, to expect others to respect your rights when you don't respect the rights of others. But consistency isn't something that one pursues as an end in itself; one requires consistency in one's thoughts ONLY because reality has no contradictions. One's thinking is inconsistent if one tries to get away with acting as if two contradictory facts are true in reality. But what, exactly, is contradictory about me pursuing a "prudent predator" approach, whereby I steal and whatnot only under very special circumstances, where it will likely have no effect on how others treat me? Is there something contradictory between doing something and thinking that occasionally, other people won't notice it? That happens all the time. People get away with thefts all the time. The root contradiction does not, in fact, concern how others will react to your disregard for their property rights, because that depends on their awareness. The root contradiction lies in thinking that isolated acts of theft do not have a spillover effect on one's overall character. One's life is an integrated sum, and deviations can never be contained. That effect will always be present, whether others are watching or not. That is what makes a prudent predator approach not prudent at all. It's true that if all actors are acting rationally, one is best served with respecting property rights, but Objectivism must also give compelling reasons for behaving ethically before we get to a perfect Objectivist society. It has to give people reasons to be ethical even when they might well "get away with it" in the conventional sense; and its response is that they aren't truly getting away with it, when you take the long-term perspective on their lives. But this would imply that if you know that the owner isn't there and no one is watching, you shouldn't care which way you go. My point is that making ethics dependent on other people's reactions to your behavior is an unstable base, unable to provide solid principles. You should go the first way because respect for property rights is an important character trait that will serve you well in most situations of your life, and you can't go the second route without undermining it.

You are right to argue that the jump from ethics to politics must have more to it than just what is contained in ethics. Indeed, although the thief is harming himself, this is not the basis of legal code or of a theory of rights. After all, in an Objectivist system, people would have the right to engage in all sorts of self-destructive behavior (drug abuse, risky sex, etc). Rights are, as Ayn Rand defines them, "moral principles defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context." Rights are about what you can do to others, and they exist for one, and only one, reason: they are a necessary condition for anyone to live a flourishing, full life. Now, your concern seems to be that rights, defined and created for this purpose, cannot logically extend to minutely small amounts of resources. After all, I am not noticeably harmed by the loss of a single penny, to take an extreme example. How could rights theory punish someone who, say, took a penny out of every bank account in America? It doesn't seem to impede anyone's flourishing. The answer to this has to do more with the necessity of security and constancy in property rights than in tying every little loss to a diminishing of well-being. I may not be appreciably harmed by the loss of a single penny, but I am noticeably worse-off for living in a social system which sanctions the theft of a penny. In a system of absolute property rights, I can be 100% sure that what I produce, I am entitled to, and I will be able to keep. This allows me to construct a rational, realistic plan for my own future, a plan which has as stable a foundation as possible. I am certain that no one will be able to come up to me and proclaim part of my resources as his own (legally). I know, when I go to work, that the money I earn will be there for me when I call on it in the future. Every legal intrusion on property rights such as these will unhinge my secure planning foundation; I am no longer certain that I will be able to lay claim to my resources when I need them. Every legal route to forcible transfers of wealth undermines the strength of everyone's property rights. If, hypothetically, you could lay claim to a penny of the money in my bank account, how much of my money could I realistically lay absolute claim to? Now, it's true that under neither system am I 100% safe from theft, but in one I am 100% safe from legal theft; i.e., I have absolute legal claim to my resources. This provides me with the most secure base possible for rational planning. As Ayn Rand repeatedly emphasized, life is entirely dependent on a process of self-sustaining action. Organisms have to take action to achieve values in order to continue to live. Rational animals like us require the ability to rationally plan for the future and for need-fulfillment in a far-off horizon. It is this need for planning that gives rise to a need for stability, which can be best achieved by absolute property rights. A comparison could be drawn to what the economist Robert Higgs has termed "regime uncertainty." Looking at what FDR did during the Great Depression, Higgs contends that the negative effects of each individual plan from the White House wasn't the full extent of the damage done. Sure, the NRA, the Wagner act, and the WPA each held back recovery on their own. But a lot of the damage done to the economy can't be tied to any particular part of the New Deal. When the president comes out with a different and new plan for recovery every two weeks, what businessman is going to be willing to make large investments, that might not pay off for five, ten, or twenty years? Maybe in a month the president will pass a law that makes such an investment obsolete, or at least less profitable, and all (some of) that money will be down the drain. More than just wasting resources, the New Deal scared off potential investment because of the environment of "regime uncertainty." Now we can see a similarity between this damage and the damage done by unsecure property rights. If there are legal ways to trump property rights, there is a certain amount of regime uncertainty in everyday life; who knows who will come along tomorrow with a legal right to some of my property? Objectivism isn't about simply getting by, or surviving in the short term. Objectivist ethics calls for one's true best efforts, the most rational and most productive one can possibly be. The Objectivist standard isn't simply scraping by, but achieving values to the fullest extent possible, and the Objectivist theory of rights is designed so as to make this possible. And this standard calls for the most secure base of property rights possible, to allow for the best chances of success in achieving values. Objectivist ethics and politics recognizes lifeboat situations, but they are not similar to the situation you have described. Lifeboat situations are generally massive, unforseeable (to a certain extent), and life-altering; life by the normal procedures (production, rational planning) is literally not possible in a lifeboat situation. When an earthquake rocks a city, or a tsunami hits, these are candidates for genuine lifeboat situations. In such situations, property rights can be suspended for a time, until the situation is returned to normal. However, there is nothing abnormal about the environment in which I steal one dollar from a millionaire; we are inside the normal context, where property rights should make my actions illegal.

It doesn't have to be the thief's explicit objective in order to be morally binding on him. The thrust of the Objectivist ethics is that so long as any of the thief's stated objectives includes survival, continuing to exist on this planet, he must either accept the standard of man's life qua man to further his life, or accept a contradiction (attempting to continue living while engaging in actions that undercut his ability to continue to live, long-term). Now, the vast majority of people do indeed accept contradictions in their moral code, but the point is that there is only one objective moral code which is fully and completely compatible with a course of life (without contradictions), and that code does not include theft. The Objectivist ethics is not deontological, in that it is only the initial choice to live which makes it binding, but it is not subjective either, in that it is compatible with any given end whatsoever, and it applies to anyone who wants to live. The theif's particular objectives don't matter and are most likely self-contradictory. How exactly do you "forfeit your own" rights when you commit an act of theft? I understand that in a free society, based on property rights, when someone commits an act of theft, they forfeit some of their rights, allowing the government moral sanction to lock them up for a bit... but outside of that context, what exactly do you mean when you make this claim? Is it that any act violating others' rights makes your own rights more likely to be violated? This claim is highly dependent on the social context, which is exactly what an objective morality is not supposed to be. Is your claim merely that I lose the moral high ground when claiming my rights, and I become a hypocrite? You must then indicate why I should care about that. You're still gaining a value from theft (fun, in this case), and you're still internally undermining your own respect for production and property rights (production and product), and it is precisely this respect that you need to be able to live the best life possible. It is not important (primarily) because one day the guy might see you, and come vandalize your lawn, it is important because it undermines your own character, which is of primary, selfish importance.

Ethics is not about helping others to flourish. If you act ethically, you will be in a position to truly help those around you, but only because of the harmony of rational interests. No, ethical behavior in Objectivism is driven by a primary concern for one's own flourishing. The point is, stealing is not truly in your own rational self-interest, and here's why. First of all, theft is not a dependable strategy for sustaining your life in the long term. Being able to produce value yourself and do it well is a much better, more sustainable, and more reliable strategy for producing value and securing your own flourishing. Basically, being able to earn money is a much more useful skill than being able to steal it. Think about how many millionaires or billionaires got there through business vs through theft. So, production should be one's primary means of gaining values, simply because it's the best for oneself. But how does this translate into not stealing one little dollar? Well, this has to do with an understanding of character and its importance in one's life. One's character is basically a fundamental, gut-level orientation to either ethical or unethical behavior. Think of it as a strong wind blowing in a certain direction. If you have a basically productive character, you're always looking for opportunities to produce more, do it better, etc. If you have a fundamentally unproductive character, you'll always be looking for ways to avoid work, to get something for nothing. Working will take much more effort. If production is going to be your main method of gaining values, then you're obviously going to have the best life and best opportunities if you have a productive character. But how do you get one? You have to build it, act by act. Each action you take to attempt to gain value, either by work or without effort, adds to your character in whichever direction. Every little act of theft or procrastination or whatever is a little note to your subconscious that you don't need to exert effort to get what you want. Since that's not true usually or as a general rule, that's a bad message to be sending yourself. Even if you could get away with it in this instance, or even if you don't think it's a big deal, like a dollar from someone who can afford it, it's a little step down the wrong path, and coming back from that will take additional effort. The more "advantageous" the theft would be in terms of money, the more harmful it is to your predisposition towards production. One dollar is only a tiny setback, but it's only a tiny amount of money. Theft is just never worth it, once you consider all the costs.Thus, it's in your own self-interest to refrain from actions such as the one you describe. The Objectivist case against theft is thus basically the recognition that it won't work out over the long term, plus the fact that building a virtuous character is a big part of one's self-interest. "To deal with men by force is as impractical as to deal with nature by persuasion." - Ayn Rand

It is explained most expansively in Rand's essay, "The 'Conflicts' of Men's Interests."

Yes, I agree, and I believe this is how I characterized altruism. Altruism specifies the proper beneficiary of moral action: other people. This means that altruism specifies a subset of moral codes, rather than a particular moral code. It fixes one aspect of a moral code: the beneficiary. Thus, the combination of this principle with irrational elements will result in traditional altruist code advocating sacrifice. However, sacrifice only arises in an altruist moral code lacking the principle of the harmony of interests. This principle basically says that sacrifice doesn't work. Again, specifying that the proper moral beneficiary is other people and saying that sacrifice doesn't work are not contradictory statements. One is a statement about proper ends, and the other is a statement about the efficacy of certain means to certain ends. Sacrifice is derivative, not primary for altruism as I have defined it. Altruism does not advocate means which are conceded to be inimical to its stated ends. I'm saying that if you remove conflicts of interest, changing the intended beneficiary (from oneself to others) does not change prescriptions for actions at all. You can define altruism as a morality of sacrifice, as is often done in Objectivist literature, but what I am saying is that this definition bundles together two things: the definition of the proper moral beneficiary and the disharmony of interests. I agree with what you've said completely.

My question, put concisely, is this: Does the acceptance of the harmony of rational interests eliminate any difference between the demands of egoism and those of altruism? I've defined egoism as the principle that the primary beneficiary of one's actions should be oneself, and altruism as the contrary principle that the primary beneficiary of ones actions should be others. Given this, egoism advocates taking actions which will benefit oneself, while altruism advocates acting for the benefit of others. The principle of the harmony of rational interests, however, says that two people's rational interests cannot conflict. If my taking an action is not in my interest, it is also not in your interest. If this principle is true, does this make the practical demands of egoism and altruism indistinguishable? To give a concrete example: I am an employer looking to hire a new worker, considering two candidates. One is better qualified, but the other is in much greater material need of income. I think everyone here would agree that, without further context given, egoism would generally counsel me to employ the most qualified employee. However, let's say that I am an altruist familiar with the harmony of interests. Thus, I am attempting to promote the interests of others. With knowledge of this principle, I can easily see that if I employ the less-qualified worker, I am putting him in a position which is not conducive to his happiness. He will be out of his depth; constantly under the stress of being underqualified. Any pride he gains from his employment will be partially false pride, not based on real virtues, and thus inimical to his self-interest. Thus, as an altruist, my course is clear: hire the more qualified worker. Is this point right? Wrong? Unimportant? Uninteresting? Old News?

Thanks to all those who replied and weighed in. I had already encountered Tara Smith's brief exploration of virtue ethics in the Intro to ARNE, which was in fact what prompted my question in the first place. She states that it permits a modicum of self-interest into the realm of morality, yet cannot usually be classified as egoism, but does not go into much more detail. I'm looking into book overviews of the subject, but have not yet found a cheap one, nor one which discusses Objectivism. To weigh in on the discussion that's been going on through most of the thread... I'm not prepared to reject "virtue ethics" as a bogus classification for the reason that "all ethics requires virtue," for the same reason that I don't object to the classification of "supply-side" economics simply because all economics talks about supply. Virtue ethics is a name, not a description. (According to my limited understanding) virtue ethics means much more than just ethics which *includes* discussion about virtue. I agree that all ethics, in some way, must discuss virtue. Virtue ethics, however, is the *particular* name for a *particular* attempt to escape the consequential-deontological dichotomy in ethics. I see this as possibly relevant to Objectivism because O'ism represents such a third option. Tara Smith in particular, in Moral Rights and Political Freedoms, presents her "teleological" conception of rights as the solution to a false alternative between consequential and deontological rights. I was thus wondering if anyone had access to a succinct comparison of the similarities, differences, and relations between virtue ethics and Objectivism (although I appreciate the sources provided so far). /attempt to re-rail thread.

Oh, sorry, let me make the analogy's connection clearer. I'm not saying that two people will act differently based on the same input. I'm saying that their perception will be different. A person's action depends on his choice. A person's perception, however, does not (and neither do the programs in my analogy; the functions they perform on the data are deterministic). I'm conceding that two people perceive the same inputs differently, but arguing that this does not make one an incorrect connection with reality. I completely agree, depending on what you mean by "accuracy". It is not inaccurate in that the information you get could be false (a misrepresentation of reality), but it is inaccurate in that the information might be very little and thus relatively uninformative (and hard to interpret). It can't be wrong, but it can be severely limited, depending on conditions. However, the information gained can also be extremely extensive, when those conditions include research labs and advanced observational equipment. Our senses giving us perceptions with missing information (meaning less information than we might like, not meaning that some information which should have been processed according to our senses but wasn't) does not invalidate the truth of what is given; only incorrect information would do that. I have been arguing that perceptions are directly connected to reality outside ourselves. Under this definition of truth, this is simply another way of saying that our perceptions are true.

Heh. I just tried to do that back on the last page.

I think, as I said above, we're belaboring under different definitions of truth. To quote Ayn Rand for the Objectivist definition, "Truth is the recognition of reality." Truth means being connected to reality. If you could give your definition of truth, I think that would help to clear up a lot. Discussions like this tend to turn into people talking past one another, based on differing definitions; let's try to avoid that.

Okay, so perception leads to information which is particular to a given person. This is true, but it does not imply the unreliability of the senses. I'll give another analogy. Let's say I have two computer programs. I put the same parameters and data in both. One program produces a linear regression of the data. The other produces an exponential regression. I've put the same input into two systems which are slightly differently composed, and I've gotten two outputs. Does the second output invalidate the first? Does the difference between them imply that they must be fallible? Obviously not. Two different things have been done with the same information; they should produce two different results. If they didn't, something would really be wrong. Both regressions are true, because they are both based on mechanical manipulations of the same data; either regression could not have turned out differently than it did. They're both valid. This is the point with sense perception. Everyone's involuntary neural processes produce the only information that it's possible for that particular person's system to produce; they're all accurate, since they're all systems in reality and reality's laws are consistent. Their differences are not contradictory. Pronoun use here is confusing. The aspects of the object which are not perceptible to us simply don't send us any information at all. There is no information to be false. If I have a sheet of paper which is black on one side, white on another, and it's sitting on the table in front of me such that I can only see the black side, it's true that I don't know that the other side is white. However, this doesn't invalidate the knowledge that I get from looking at the black side. I couldn't describe with any certainty the unseen side of the paper, but I could describe with absolute certainty that which I do see (ignoring the fact that actually putting perception into words involves the conceptual faculty, which is fallible). Also, wow. I've just realized how naturally I slide into an analogy. I really should branch out. I'm taking true to mean validly in connection with reality. What definition of truth do you think our perceptions should be able to produce in order for them to be valid? Free will has another interpretation, which is not dependent on the replaying of moments in time: if we had all the information about the current states of all the matter in the universe, we could not predict with certainty every future state, because of the element of human choice.

I didn't see this comment before, but I think it sheds some light on our conflicting definitions, and what we actually mean when we defend perception versus what you seem to think we're defending. No one here claims that perception of an object gives absolute knowledge of that object, in the sense of all the knowledge it's possible to know about the object. Rather, our claim that sense perception is inerrant simply means that it results directly from inerrant processes. It is not exhaustive, but it is valid. For instance, you might say that I cannot tell from sense perception that my watch is composed of incredibly tiny atoms and mostly empty space. This is true. However, it's also helpful to think about this: how do we know that it is composed of atoms? Well, we know from experiments like the gold-foil experiment, which illustrated that gold foil is made up of small clusters of positively-charged particles inside mostly empty space (it was not able to detect electrons). However, how did we know the results of that experiment? How did we get that information? We used sense perception on the results. We looked at the impact of alpha particles that we sent through the gold. Ultimately, it all comes back to sense perception. Only sense perception, sometimes augmented by human inventions, leads to knowledge, and it leads to contextually true knowledge because of its direct connection to reality.