Clarification of a point in The Objective Ethics

[tjfields]

Craig24,

 

You wrote, "Ok, what is the alternative.  What does have ethical implications?" I do not know. That is one of the questions to which I am seeking answers.

 

I asked this question in this forum because, based on reading what some Objectivists have written and personal interactions with Objectivists, it appears that the philosophy of Objectivism provides its adherents with answers to my questions.

 

If the philosophy of Objectivism does provide the answers to my questions, that would be wonderful as my search would be over. While I have received some well thought out responses thus far, I am still not satisfied that my question has been answered, therefore, I continue to ask.

[tadmjones]

tadmjones,

 

While I thank you for providing an answer to my question, I do not understand your answer in post #48. To me, your answer is not specific, it is open to interpretation, and leaves me no closer to understanding how one derives ethical principles from facts.

 Rand identified five branches of philosophy ethics/morality is one of them. Her system is a closed philosophic system all branches are interdependent, so to fully understand any particular branch one needs to understand the others as well in this case some understanding of metaphysics and epistemology are necessary to answer the question as to how to derive ethical principles from fact.

[tjfields]

Thank you all for the discussion and your input. I appreciate the time and effort that you have made. However, I am still struggling. Please allow me to restate my questions and the clarification that I seek of the quote in the original post. I will use the following scenario:

 

I live alone on an island in the middle of the ocean. There is no one else on the island, no one ever visits the island, and there is never any communication with any other person. I am completely alone on the island.

 

How I got to the island is irrelevant. I will never leave the island.

 

The island and the ocean immediately around the island provide a wide variety of resources. I use my reason and my ability to think to devise ways of turning the resources available to me into those things that I need to live, e.g. I make tools for gathering and/or hunting food, I devise means of collecting and storing fresh water, I discover or construct shelter.

 

Over time I have become so efficient at providing for my basic needs that I am able to devise ways to use the resources available to make my life better, i.e. provide luxuries and means of entertainment.

 

I live my life to the fullest of my ability given the circumstances in which I find myself.

 

One day, a man washes up on the beach. This man is alive but unconscious. I have never seen this man before and I have never had any interaction with this man. Due to being unconscious, the man has not interacted with me in any way. I do not perceive any kind of threat or danger from this man.

 

I walk up to this man and I kill him. I then continue with my day. The tide washes the body out to sea that evening and I never see the body again. I continue with my life exactly as I did before the man washed up on the beach.

 

Given the scenario, I ask the following questions: Was it morally or ethically wrong for me to kill the man on the beach and if so, why was it wrong?

 

Now, if I presented this scenario and questions to a Christian, I would expect the Christian to say that it was morally wrong for me to kill the man because the Bible says that it is wrong to kill another and the Bible is the word of God. After a few more questions from me concerning the validity of the Bible and the existence of God, the Christian will inevitably state something to the effect that he knows his position is correct because he has faith. At this point, the discussion is over because the Christian has shut down his mind and no amount of logic or reason will do anything to alter the Christian’s moral and ethical position which is derived from a belief in a supernatural power.

 

I present this scenario and the questions to the Objectivists on this forum in the hope of getting an answer supported by logic and reason. The answer that I have received to these questions in the past has usually been: yes it was morally wrong to kill the person because man is an end in himself and must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself (see the quote in the original post). This is not clear to me. It is not clear to me how one goes from the facts presented in the quote and the morality implied in the quote. I have come up with this scenario to, hopefully, simplify the process.

 

Any help with this issue will be appreciated.

[Boydstun]

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TJ, concerning #53, would you exclude as outside the realm of logic and reason the opportunities for enhancing your struggle for existence and your enjoyment of existence by doing what you can to help the washed-ashore man survive? I gather from #40, that bringing facts into a decision about what course to choose is automatically unreasonable in your view. “The fact that a man must consume nutrients in order to live . . . is neither good nor evil, it just is.” Is there any way in which you think such a fact provides guidance about what you ought to do.

 

Come along now. You are not a blank on such issues. You have positive values to share. Again, person-to-person. Help us out. Just say No to prosecution.

 

Would you say that pleasure and absence of hurt are good reasons for selecting certain actions and not others? Would you say they are causes of such selections, but not reasons for such selections?

[tjfields]

Boydstun,

 

I would not exclude as outside the realm of logic and reason the opportunities for enhancing the struggle for existence and the enjoyment of existence by doing what I could to help the washed-ashore man survive. I admit that the possibility exists that had I not killed the man, my life on the island would have been improved. However, this does not tell me whether or not it was morally right or wrong to kill the man. Unless the basis for morals and ethics is the determination of whether or not another person or persons can benefit you, i.e. it was morally wrong of me to kill the man who washed up on the island because that man may have been able to benefit me in some way but it would not have been morally wrong of me to kill the man who washed up on the island if I had determined that the man would not have benefited me in some way. Is this what you are suggesting?

 

I do not think that bringing facts into a decision about what course to choose is automatically unreasonable. Facts do provide guidance about what you ought to do and I think that facts serve as the basis for any and all decisions to be made. However, as I tried to explain, while facts may provide guidance about what you ought to do, those facts do not, as far as I can see, tell you whether or not what you ought to do is morally right or wrong.

 

Since you mentioned it, let us continue with the fact that man must consume nutrients in order to live. Does this fact tell you what is morally right or wrong? Does the fact that man must consume nutrients to live mean, by the merit of being a fact, that it is morally right to consume nutrients? 

 

I am not sure what you mean by, “Just say No to prosecution.” But I will share my thoughts on the scenario that I presented. My first reaction would be to say that it was morally wrong to kill the man who washed up on the beach. However, at this point, I cannot tell you why it is morally wrong. I have been indoctrinated for many years, starting at birth, with Judeo-Christian ethics which claim that God said killing is wrong therefore it is wrong. Additionally, I live in the United States were the legal system prohibits murder and the culture, also heavily influenced by Judeo-Christian ethics, states that murder is wrong. So, I do not know for sure if my judgment that killing the man who washed up on the beach is morally wrong is based on logic and reason or if it is based on years and years of conditioning. I am searching for the answers.

 

I would say that pleasure and absence of hurt are reasons for selecting certain actions and not others. I am not sure in what way you are using the word “good” in your question so I cannot say that pleasure and absence of hurt are good reasons for selecting certain actions and not others.

[Boydstun]

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Morally right or morally wrong means to me only: which should be chosen in certain kinds of situations with certain sorts of consequences. I believe I mentioned, by link, that I am not an ethical egoist. However, I think Rand was right to say that choices affecting the course of your own life are within what should be called moral choices. She takes humans, rightly so, to be not only animals who live over a span, but who choose to some extent what sort of life they might win. That is, they not only have life, but are capable to some extent of making a life and a character. I think, beyond Rand, that the core context of moral choices is effect on persons, more specifically, as Nozick puts the nerve of it, moral responsiveness is responsiveness to value-seeking selves as value-seeking selves (1981). Selves are centers of human lives and both form the compass of what I would call moral choices of which thing to do.