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general refutation of egotism and...

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otemporaomores

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Rand does note a difference in meaning between egotism and egoism in the introduction to the anniversary addition to The Fountainhead and looking it up in the dictionary that came with my word processor I got this: "e·go·tism [gə tìzzəm, éggə tìzzəm]

n

1. inflated sense of self-importance: the possession of an exaggerated sense of self-importance and superiority to other people

2. preoccupation with self: the tendency to speak or write too much about yourself

3. selfishness: selfishness or self-centeredness

Encarta ® World English Dictionary © & (P) 1998-2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved."

It's subtle, but I think there can be seen a distinction here that unlike egoism where one recognizes a general right of people to be their own ends, "egotism" seems to think of oneself as the center of the universe so to speak, that you are the end for which others can rightly be sacrificed to. Sacrificing others to yourself is also in part generally (and primarily) wrong because it goes against the principle of people being ends in themselves. If you don't respect that principle, you undermine the reasoning for what should make you an end in yourself either, why you shouldn't be sacrificed. Additionally, it goes against our nature as man where we survive through reason to produce and be competent to handle reality. Sacrificing others to yourself to survive is not being a producer of value to make your living and that can leave you with a fragile sense of self-esteem as you aren't experiencing ability to handle reality but only to make people do things for you instead and in that case then you are always having to make sure you can still keep up getting people to secure your survival. By sacrificing others rather than producing too you are overall just lessening the value in existence. On your own as one person doing this it may not be so notable a decrease, but if tons of people did it, you'd definitely see impact. If you reject supporting the principles against such sacrificing then you don't have anything with which to argue against large quantities of others doing what you're doing, you've got nothing to justify your opposition, and that could leave you pretty screwed finding yourself back to just resorting to force and nothing more to compete for who gets what. A world that rejects the sacrifice of yourself but not the sacrifice of others would lead to a world overall bad for every individual person.

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Rand does note a difference in meaning between egotism and egoism

Yes, she does, because she said she mistakenly used 'egotist' in the book, but neither 'egotist,' or 'egoism' (or even 'egoist') is relevant to the question, and the questioners mistaken application of the term.

:dough:

It's subtle, but I think there can be seen a distinction here that unlike egoism where one recognizes a general right of people to be their own ends, "egotism" seems to think of oneself as the center of the universe so to speak, that you are the end for which others can rightly be sacrificed to.

Egoism is not the recognition of any "right." Heirarchically, the concept of rights (and the political concepts that follow from it), are formed after moral concepts such as Egoism. The formation of the concept of rights depends on the concept of Egoism.

"On your own as one person doing this it may not be so notable a decrease, but if tons of people did it, you'd definitely see impact."

I get the sense that you mean well, but this statement smacks of Kant's "Universalizibility" principle. "If everyone did it..." "If it was made into a universal law, then such and such..."

"Additionally, it goes against our nature as man where we survive through reason to produce and be competent to handle reality."

I think this is a much better approach! :thumbsup:

Egoism is a virtue, i.e., egoism is a necessary condition of man's survival, but why? Because men have a certain nature: they are living, they possess a certain kind of consciousness; a consciousness which is volitional/conceptual, which necessitates a certain, definite "method" on his part, to remain alive and/or flourish.

Because his mind operates a certain way, he's got to operate it to produce the values he needs for his survival, and he's got to make sure what he produces goes to him, i.e., he's got to be the beneficiary of his actions. He's got to eat the food he makes, live in the house he builds, etc.

Imagine if he did everything he needed to do to live on earth: he figured out what he needed, and how he needed to act, and then he followed his plans, and produced the goods, but then he didn't use the goods or gave them it away? If he produced food clothing and shelter, but was not the beneficiary of those actions, i.e., did not keep and use the products of his labor?

He'd either die immediately, or suffer a slow drawn out, torturous death.

Egoism, is only a small part of morality. It only defines who is the proper beneficiary of one's actions.

Egoism states that a man who produces the goods his judgment tells him are right, needs to be the beneficiary of those actions and/or judgments, if he is to live and flourish.

Sacrificing others to self, makes other men and not reality ones primary orientation. To such a man, reason is no longer his basic means of survival, but parasitism of the product of the reason of others.

When we scientifically search for the necessary conditions for men to live and flourish, we discover there are a whole set of necessary conditions stemming from his nature and the nature of the world he's attempting to live in.

The man who chooses to parasitism others can not escape his nature. Reason is still his basic means of survival. But, now he only passes that nature-given responsiblity on to some other, thinking man; while is own mind disintegrates. It is himself who suffers, and is the object of sacrifice.

Edited by phibetakappa
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I mentioned the difference because I think maybe having a word to specifically denote the people who believe in the sacrifice of others to self could be useful. As for calling it a "right," I used that word because that case also was one where I couldn't come up with a better word for it. Egoism is the basis for rights, where they come from, true, but do you know a better word I could have used there than saying it was the recognition of a "right" for people?

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Egoism is the basis for rights, where they come from, true, but do you know a better word I could have used there than saying it was the recognition of a "right" for people?

You could say it is a virtue.

I mentioned the difference because I think maybe having a word to specifically denote the people who believe in the sacrifice of others to self could be useful.

This is a good point. It may be good to have a specific word for this variation of self-sacrifice.

But, "egotist," is probably not a good choice. A man can be considered an "egotist," or "egotistical," without ever sacrificing anyone; without ever making others the "beneficiary" of his actions.

In common usage, "egotistical" is most often used to describe a man's mannerisms, and superficial interactions with others.

Looter, or moocher are probably better choices.

But, "egoist,' and "egoism" are such proper & good words; and it is such a worthy goal of restoring and/or giving them a positive connotation, its probably counter productive to use such a closely related word like "egotist," to means something so horrible as self-sacrificial, 'brother-cannibal', looter, moocher, and/or parasite.

Edited by phibetakappa
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"Virtue" still isn't right as a replacement word for what I was thinking of, but "right" was as close as I could come I think perhaps because there is no exact English word for this and all I can give is an approximation. (Not saying egoism isn't a virtue, but I was looking for a word about what egoism recognized that variants of sacrificial moral codes didn't recognize.) There's something about people, what they are and what they can do and what they should do but should not be forced to do, what they should be left to do freely and you should not infringe upon, this . . . thing, this state/ability/property/whatever is what kind of word I need to replace "right" for what is recognized and respected with egoism. It's what is theirs, what is sort of like a part of them . . . maybe a little closer is the variant of calling it a "birthright." Something that is theirs or about them by the nature of what they are.

I'm not very familiar with exactly what the "universalizability" thing is and/or the inherent flaws in it. If you mean something like, "Well if EVERYBODY was a baker, imagine what the world would be like! Everything falls apart! So it is wrong to be a baker!" then that is ridiculous of course. I was speaking though meaning that either you tried to (incorrectly) look at sacrifice of others to self as how things should be in principle due to human nature and then see how that principle applied consistently leads to things being crap or else you decide that you want to not treat it as a principle that everybody should follow even though you do think it follows as best from human nature and so now you make an enemy of the human mind itself, thinking you've got to keep most other people from coming to your same "brilliant" conclusion. Trying to make war against the rational faculty is all kinds of problematic and just generally bad as I'm sure you all know already, so I'll leave it at that unless somebody really wants me to type it out.

As for the word choice for people who believe in sacrifice of others to self, "egotist" and "egoist" are quite similar, but that's due to the nature of the formulation of the words. "Altruist" is, as you know, "other-ist" and "egoist" is basically "self-ist." Proper egoists do not believe in sacrifice at all, they believe all people are ends in themselves. You yourself though noted that "egoism" is just mostly that part of ethics denoting who we believe is the proper beneficiary. Somebody who believes in sacrifice of others to self would also believe in the self as the proper beneficiary, but believes for whatever reason that it is either limited to THEIRself exclusively or else that they don't see how much bad would result if everybody believed in sacrificing others to themselves, that it could also end up meaning them getting sacrificed to somebody else too. I think therefore a word of similar format to the other two words "altruism" and "egoism" would be suitable for having it as a word which also dealt with denoting a belief in who is the proper beneficiary in morality, but having it distinguished from "egoism" still of course to denote that altruism and (what I'm calling for now) egotism both support variants of sacrifice, just to different designated beneficiaries, whereas egoism shares the same beneficiary as "egotism" basically, but rejects sacrifice as proper means to that designated end. I'm not dead set on the use of the word "egotism" for these people, but I did mean to say I could at least see an argument to be made for using it if any preexisting word is going to be used. As far as I know, I think of an "egotist" as something much like a spoiled brat where the person seems to think the rest of the world is all there for their sake. I don't think looter or moocher works instead though because each of those is a subdivision of what this word would have to cover, denoting people using one of two different methods of achieving the sacrifice of others to self. If you want to try to make up a new word though, perhaps it may work if you can find another old word root from another language which means "self" that you could as "ist" and "ism" to the end of to make it stand out more notably different from "egoist" and "egoism"

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"Virtue" still isn't...

I'm not very familiar with...

As for the word choice...

After seeing your replies, I realized it was inappropriate for me to criticize your post, because all it does is encourage you to elaborate. If that's how you try to refute the premise that its good to sacrifice others to one's self, then it is.

However, I think its more important that "otemporaomores" get answers to his 2 questions, as opposed to having his post space cluttered with irrelevant content.

My Apologies,

Edited by phibetakappa
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Anyhow, your question had a tragic typo: you want a general refutation of altruism. To do that, you must focus on what that means -- specifically, it means, "refute the moral claim of altruism". That claim is, simply, that the life of others is a higher value than your own life. This principle is logically incompatible with the concepts "value" and "morality", which refutes altruism.

Morality refers to principles which guide your choices, which are judged as "good" or "bad" according to an ultimate standard. A value is simply that which you seek to gain and keep. All values are hierarchically related, in that they must be judged according to that ultimate standard -- that which advances the ultimate standard is good, that which detracts from the ultimate standard is bad. That ultimate standard is your life; and it derives from the fundamental choice which, as a volitional being, you must make: to exist, or to not exist.

If one chooses to not exist, then the discussion (and your life) is over, and there is no concept of "value" or "morality", since you are not gaining or keeping anything. Given the choice to exist, all subsequent choices must logically be evaluated by reference to that choice. Altruism directly contradicts that initial choice, by denying that your existence is the ultimate standard by which choices are evaluated.

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could someone give me a general refutation of egotism (sacrificing others to yourself)?

also could you explain the statement, "the sacrifice of another cannot be beneficial to another"?

Atlas Shrugged is the shortest satisfactory explanation I have found, to those two statements, especially the second one. :lol:

And yes, in general, sacrifice is the hallmark of altruism, not egoism, and not even egotism, at least not exactly. The word egotism describes people who expect others to be selfless, and to sacrifice for the egotist's benefit. So it is a form of altruism, but it is the expectation that others follow the code of altruist morality, for your benefit, and it allows you, the egotist, to stay amoral in the mean time.

Egoism, on the other hand, rejects altruism alltogether, and expects from everyone to act in their rational self-interest, to live and let live. Egoism, unlike egotism, is based on the reality that a propal moral code has to be objective. It is absurd to say that one person should live by a moral code that allows him to sacrifice others, and another, by a moral code that compels him to sacrifice himself for others. It is absurd, and it is foolish. The serfes (the one's who are meant for sacrifice, by the egotist, are not going to be very helpful when it comes to contributing with their rational faculties, even while you rule them, and are eventually going to get together with their pitchforks and torches and burn down your castle-look at how Saddam ended up, a nice hanging by the neck)

The only moral code that allows people to live together without inherent conflicts is one that is objective, and affords individuals the means to achieve a happy, accomplished life: their individual rights, to life, liberty and property. That moral code has to exclude sacrifice of self or others, it has to be egoism. No other moral code affords a person a good life, and at the same time allows him to respect everyone else's rights, and live in peace.

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Sacrificing others to self, makes other men and not reality ones primary orientation. To such a man, reason is no longer his basic means of survival, but rather parasitism of the product of the reason of others.

When we scientifically search for the necessary conditions for men to live and flourish, we discover there are a whole set of necessary conditions stemming from his nature and the nature of the world he's attempting to live in.

The man who chooses to parasitize others can not escape his nature. Reason is still his basic means of survival. But, now he only passes that nature-given responsiblity on to some other, thinking man; while is own mind disintegrates. It is himself who suffers, and is the object of sacrifice.

Here is how Ayn Rand puts the point in "Virtue of Selfishness" (VOS),

If some men attempt to survive by means of brute force or fraud, by looting, robbing, cheating or enslaving the men who produce, it still remains true that their survival is made possible only by their victims, only by the men who choose to think and to produce the goods which they, the looters, are seizing. Such looters are parasites incapable of survival, who exist by destroying those who are capable, those who are pursuing a course of action proper to man.

The men who attempt to survive, not by means of reason, but by means of force, are attempting to survive by the method of animals. But just as animals would not be able to survive by attempting the method of plants, by rejecting locomotion and waiting for the soil to feed them—so men cannot survive by attempting the method of animals, by rejecting reason and counting on productive men to serve as their prey. Such looters may achieve their goals for the range of a moment, at the price of destruction' the destruction of their victims and their own. As evidence, I offer you any criminal or any dictatorship. (25-26)

Or to restate the point in another way. Sacrificing others to self "is an act of raising your victims to a position higher than reality." In Galt's Speech, "Atlas Shrugged," pg 937 Ayn Rand states,

Honesty is the recognition of the fact that the unreal is unreal and can have no value, that neither love nor fame nor cash is a value if obtained by fraud—that an attempt to gain a value by deceiving the mind of others is an act of raising your victims to a position higher than reality, where you become a pawn of their blindness, a slave of their non-thinking and their evasions, while their intelligence, their rationality, their perceptiveness become the enemies you have to dread and flee—that you do not care to live as a dependent, least of all a dependent on the stupidity of others, or as a fool whose source of values is the fools he succeeds in fooling—that honesty is not a social duty,not a sacrifice for the sake of others, but the most profoundly selfish virtue man can practice: his refusal to sacrifice the reality of his own existence to the deluded consciousness of others."

Man has a certain means of survival that is consonant with his nature. He is a certain kind of living being, possessing a certain kind of consciousness, one that operates by reason. Reason depends on volitionally adhering to reality via the method of logic (OPAR, 116). The facts of reality sets the terms for his survival, and his basic method is to consistently attend to reality, and draw conclusions as to who he is as a human, what he should be doing, and how to do it.

However, to victimize other men is not consonant with his nature. Reality no longer sets the terms, but his victims he must parasitize, i.e., others and not objective reality set the terms. He sacrifices is mind. When he chooses to operate as a parasite on other men, his fundamental nature has not changed. His basic means of survival has not changed. He still must survive by the production of goods, only now his victims are who produces them.

Ayn Rand, called this practice "moral cannibalism," not 'egotism'. "The Objectivist ethics holds that human good does not require human sacrifices and cannot be achieved by the sacrifice of anyone to anyone" (VOS, 34).

The moral cannibalism of all hedonist and altruist doctrines lies in the premise that the happiness of one man necessitates the injury of another.

Today, most people hold this premise as an absolute not to be questioned. And when one speaks of man's fight to exist for his own sake, for his own rational self-interest, most people assume automatically that this means his fight to sacrifice others. Such an assumption is a confession of their own belief that to injure, enslave, rob or murder others is in man's self-interest—which he must selflessly renounce. The idea that man's self-interest can be served only by a non-sacrificial relationship with others has never occurred to those humanitarian apostles of unselfishness, who proclaim their desire to achieve the brotherhood of men.And it will not occur to them, or to anyone, so long as the concept "rational" is omitted from the context of "values," "desires," "self-interest" and ethics.

The Objectivist ethics proudly advocates and upholds rational selfishness—which means: the values required for man's survival qua man—which means: the values required for human survival—not the values produced by the desires, the emotions, the "aspirations," the feelings, the whims or the needs of irrational brutes, who have never outgrown the primordial practice of human sacrifices, have never discovered an industrial society and can conceive of no self-interest but that of grabbing the loot of the moment.

The Objectivist ethics holds that human good does not require human sacrifices and cannot be achieved by the sacrifice of anyone to anyone. It holds that the rational interests of men do not clash—that there is no conflict of interests among men who do not desire the unearned, who do not make sacrifices nor accept them, who deal with one another as traders, giving value for value (VOS, 34).

Edited by phibetakappa
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In short, you're sacrificing your interests by sacrificing others.

Yes, this is correct if we recognize the concept of "interest" to be inclusive of our supreme interest we have in keeping our mind in full contact with the facts, over the long-term of our lives; as opposed to limiting "our interest" to mean whatever we feel like in the short run.

In other words:

Rational self-interest.

Secondarily, after sustaining our rationality we can then conclude, "Hey, other people, like me, who are productive and respect my rights, who I can work with, are DAMN GOOD! I should really work hard to surround myself with good people. So, why the heck would I steal from them, and or try to get laws passed that loot from them? That would just piss them off. Life, is so much easier if I consider others and respect them, because hey they trust me, and we can work more easily together."

:-)

Edited by phibetakappa
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