The Perfect Crime

[Quantum Mechanic]

Hi there folks,

I have been actively studying objectivism for about a year now basically by myself.

I've read the two novels, most of the non-fiction, and now I've started reading Brandon's books on self-esteem.

But throughout my experience, there has always been an ethical issue in the back of head that has caused me nothing but problems.

There are two possibilities:

a ) I have misinterpreted the objectivism's stance on ethics

b ) I am totally oblivious to something obvious.

So here it goes:

Good is defined as that which aids in one's own survival. Typically, crime (force and fraud) is not considered good, because it is not in the perpetrator's best interests (ie it does not aid his survival) to violate the rights of other men. The reason it is not in his best interests is because he has conned himself into thinking he has furthered his own survival. He has simply gained something temporarily by leeching off another person. But WHY is this the case? What if a person is able to pull off a remarkably well-planned crime. He is never caught, and is able to live a peaceful life, free from any sort of legal trouble on some tropical island. Why is this NOT in his best interests? Why is this NOT good?

I'm sorry if this sounds very basic, but its something that has caused me trouble for a long time.

Thanks for any assistance.

[DavidOdden]

But WHY is this the case?  What if a person is able to pull off a remarkably well-planned crime.  He is never caught, and is able to live a peaceful life, free from any sort of legal trouble on some tropical island.  Why is this NOT in his best interests?  Why is this NOT good?

I don't think it's totally obvious, and it is a perfectly reasonable question. One fact is that the scenario requires something impossible: the ability to see the future. Moral evaluation is about the choices that a man makes, not about the "final" result of those choices. So if you chose to kill a person, it might be that the person would have otherwise been a hero and saved thousands of lives by inventing a wonder drug, or he might have otherwise been a mass murderer. The morality of your killing the person is not determined by the nature of unrealised, unknown events in the future. In othre words, the ends do not justify the means.

You may hope that you won't get caught breaking into the bank, and you might hope that you wouldn't get tracked down and brought to justice, but that desired outcome is not guaranteed. If you recast your scenario not in terms of what does, hypothetically, turn out to happen (making the criminal very lucky), and restate it in terms of his wishes -- "He steals money, wishing that he would not be caught", then the prudent predator scenario does not seem at all "reasonable".

[Quantum Mechanic]

Thanks for the reply David.

Your post adds some clarification, but I fear that the problem is more fundamental.

You assert that this scenerio requires the impossible (ie precognition). But let's say our criminal has successfully lived out the remainder of his life without ever being caught (as I'm sure many people have done in history). Why were his actions evil?

[KevinD]

Leonard Peikoff asked Ayn Rand exactly this question when he was 18 years old, and presented her with what he believed to be a fairly flawless con man scheme. In his talk "My Thirty Years With Ayn Rand: An Intellectual Memoir," he reported:

"Ayn Rand . . . analyzed the example patiently for thirty or forty minutes, showing me on my own material how one lie would necessarily lead to another, how I would be forced into contradictory lies, how I would gradually become trapped in my own escalating deceptions — and why, therefore, sooner or later, in one form or another, my con man scheme would have to backfire and lead to the loss of the very things I was seeking to gain by it. [. . .]

"'The essence of a con man's lie,' [Ayn Rand said], 'of any such lie, no matter what the details, is the attempt to gain a value by faking certain facts of reality. . . . Can't you grasp the logical consequences of that kind of policy? For instance, since all facts of reality are interrelated, faking one of them leads the person to fake others. Ultimately, he is committed to an all-out war against reality as such. But this is the kind of war no one can win. If life in reality is a man's purpose . . . how can he expect to achieve it while struggling at the same time to escape and defeat reality?'"

Dr. Peikoff discusses this issue in much more detail — complete with analysis of an actual con man scheme — in his book Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, in the chapter on Virtue. (Softcover p. 270.) Here he concludes:

"Virtue, as Socrates held, is one; to cheat on any of its aspects is to cheat on all. The dishonest man is not only dishonest; in Ayn Rand's view, he betrays every moral requirement of human life and and thereby systematically courts failure, pain, destruction. This is true by the nature of dishonesty, by the nature of the principle it involves — even if, like Gyges in Plato's myth, the liar is never found out and amasses a fortune. It is true because the fundamental avenger of his life of lies is not the victims or the police, but that which one cannot escape: reality itself."

(Dr. Peikoff's "My Thirty Years" talk is reprinted in the book The Voice of Reason. Above quotes were transcribed by me from a recording of the talk, and may differ from the printed version.)

[Areactor]

the ends do not justify the means

Out of curiousity, if the ends doesn't justify the means then what does?

[jedymastyr]

Out of curiousity, if the ends doesn't justify the means then what does?

Nothing should need to justify the means--the means should be rational in the first place

[khaight]

One other thing to bear in mind is the difference between ex ante and ex post assessments of actions. It's one thing to look back at an action in the past and conclude that it worked out; it's something else to conclude that an action is a good idea before you take it. Ethical principles are concerned with guiding action ex ante.

Putting the point in a different context: just because one person ate some random mushrooms, got lucky and survived doesn't mean it's a good idea to eat random mushrooms. Similarly even if one man managed to rob a bank, get lucky and get away with it, it wouldn't make robbing banks a good survival strategy.

This isn't the most fundamental argument against the "prudent predator" scenario, but it's an important distinction that (I find) is often overlooked.

[Evangelical Capitalist]

Good is defined as that which aids in one's own survival.

Close, but incomplete. The good is defined as that which aids in one's life, as man, i.e. as a rational being. Life, for man, is more than mere survival. Survival as a leech or as a parasite is not life as man.

[Quantum Mechanic]

That might be what I was looking for Evangelical Capitalist.

Thanks everyone, I'll begin the digestion procedure.

[Fred Weiss]

That might be what I was looking for Evangelical Capitalist.

Thanks everyone, I'll begin the digestion procedure.

You might also find the following article by Tara Smith helpful:

http://journals.kluweronline.com/article.asp?PIPS=5139594

Fred Weiss

[Bearster]

So if you chose to kill a person, it might be that

Nope. Faith in the arbitrary is *not* why one ought to be honest.

Kevin Delaney offers the correct reason.

[source]

It's really odd that nobody remembered Howard Roark when he destroyed the buildings near the end of the novel. Also, Dagny Taggart killed a person when she was rescuing John Galt. Those were also crimes.

khaight said that what justifies the crime aren't things that come after the crime (ex post), but thos that lead to the crime (ex ante). Howard's crime isn't justified because he was afterwards able to build a skyscraper. When he got to court he didn't speak of how he did it so that he could build the buildings himself, his speach went far into the past and he justified his "crime" by things that happened before his crime. Just as well, Dagny's crime isn't justified because she got to rescue John Galt. Neither is it moral because she didn't get caught afterwards.

When one kills someone in self defense, this killing a person isn't judged by stating that one of the victim's grandsons might have been an honest person and in fact a great scientist. (if it were, we'd all be guilty) It is judged by circumstances at the moment of crime and before it. What might have happened in the future is not a matter of concern to anyone.

[Betsy]

It's really odd that nobody remembered Howard Roark when he destroyed the buildings near the end of the novel. Also, Dagny Taggart killed a person when she was rescuing John Galt. Those were also crimes.

Not true.

The jury decided that Roark had NOT committed a crime because he destroyed HIS OWN property. It was his own property because he had created it, agreed to sell IF it were built as designed, and was not paid, so he retained ownership.

Dagny killed a man who was given a choice and chose not to step aside. He physically stood between her and the rescue of an innocent man being held by force. If that is a crime, so was the killing of German soldiers guarding concentration camps while American soldiers were liberating the inmates. As for that being technically a "crime", in the context of that part of the novel, the rule of law had completely broken down and was non-existent.

[BreathofLife]

As a rational being it is not in one's own interests to violate the rights of others because by doing so you lose all claim to your own rights.

Therefore you steal- you have no reason to complain when someone steals from you.

probably the shortest answer to the original question.