How can a moral code be objective?

Ethics
21

Chien, you should read the essay “Emergency Ethics” from The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand. You seem to have the miscomprehension that objectivist ethics prohibits care for strangers and/or the disadvantaged.

I will read the essay; thank you for referring me to relavent texts. If objectivists care for strangers and/or the disadvantaged, then objectivist ethics is much much more palatable.

As all values stem from the value of life, to all rational men life is a value in it’s own. Therfore the preservation of the life of others is in the interest of a rational man.

You have modified Ms. Rand’s claim: she claimed life is the ultimate value, i.e. life qua man. Here is one of the logical flaws commited by Ms Rand. Life is a precondition for all values: Values –> life. And the contrapositive: ~life –> ~values. This is undisputed. However, saying that life is a precondition for all values does not warrant the illogical jump to the conclusion that life, as an end in itself, is the ultimate, highest of all values. If you modify Ms. Rand’s position and say life is simply a value among many, then yes, I agree.

Another point, objectivsts use the word “rational” sparingly for all positions they hold and the word “irrational” to all claim contrary to their views. Rational means using reason or logic for decision making. Can reason or logic make decisions for human beings? NO. We have to make the decisions by setting up the criteria for judgment, values and objectives. Otherwise, we can rely on computers to make decisions for us. Logic can help us to more effectively achieve our goals (objectives that embody our values) but it cannot set the goals/values for us.

Should you save a drowning man who is a stranger to you?

This depends on the risk there is of losing your most important value, yourself.

Here Ms. Rand’s fallacious claim raises its ugly head. Ms. Rand has not proven to the satisfaction of REASON that life is the most important value of all. Please refer to above.

If the risk is non-existant, then yes, unless you are a psychopath who doesn’t value life at all, you’re morally obligated to save him in order not to act against your own interest.

If the risk is high, it can not be expected that you value life in general more than your own life, and thus you should not take the risk.

The everyday definition of the word sacrifice is acts commited under certain conditions that benefit others while the actor’s interest is harmed. The certain condition I am speaking of is that the actor must believe his/her actions can acheive an agent-neutral value (values that are not related to the actor’s self-interests, for example, valuing your mother’s life) that is greater than the actor’s agent-relative values. The CHOICE of valuing one’s own life above all other values, agent-relative or agent-neutral, is nothing but a choice.

If the person who is drowning is your wife, you can by objectivist ethics willing risk your own life for her sake. Because you value your wife higher than yourself.

Here you are saying objectivsts can value someone else’s life over one’s own life, which is inconsistent with the claim one’s life is categorically the ultimate value. Now which is it? Either or. One’s own life cannot be the ultimate highest value while at the same time, someone else’s life/interests is valued more. You cannot have it both ways; as Ms. Rand said, you cannot have your cake and eat it too.

This is a common fallacy, as altruists only believe solidarity can be achieved by force, and not by the goodness of man.

Pls explain what you mean by solidarity. There are a myriad of different schools of thoughts out there; objectivsts tend to group everybody else under the term “collective altruists” without learning what they are really about.

22

You have modified Ms. Rand’s claim: she claimed life is the ultimate value, i.e. life qua man. Here is one of the logical flaws commited by Ms Rand. Life is a precondition for all values: Values –> life. And the contrapositive: ~life –> ~values. This is undisputed. However, saying that life is a precondition for all values does not warrant the illogical jump to the conclusion that life, as an end in itself, is the ultimate, highest of all values. If you modify Ms. Rand’s position and say life is simply a value among many, then yes, I agree.

Another point, objectivsts use the word “rational” sparingly for all positions they hold and the word “irrational” to all claim contrary to their views. Rational means using reason or logic for decision making. Can reason or logic make decisions for human beings? NO. We have to make the decisions by setting up the criteria for judgment, values and objectives. Otherwise, we can rely on computers to make decisions for us. Logic can help us to more effectively achieve our goals (objectives that embody our values) but it cannot set the goals/values for us.

I fully unterstand your views, but there are some confusion here. What is the value of life? Life for me? Life for you? Life for my wife? Life for a stranger? Life for an animal? Universal life? These are all different values and shouldn’t be mixed into one category. By the grace of nature we are equipped with certain instincts that are essential to our survival. First and foremost, our instinct of survival. If we had no desire to survive then we wouldn’t value life as high as we do. Ergo, the process of assigning value is guided by both reason and the nature of man. There are of course some extreme cases of people who do not value life at all, neither his own nor others’. This tells us that life isn’t the ultimate value for all humans, yet the claim is still valid because you cannot take such extreme cases in consideration.

Here Ms. Rand’s fallacious claim raises its ugly head. Ms. Rand has not proven to the satisfaction of REASON that life is the most important value of all. Please refer to above.

This is not true. By observing the nature of human beeings, we can observe that humans possess a strong will to live. We observe that humans will go to extremes to stay alive. By the use of reason we realize that this is an intricate part of our nature. Without this latent will to outlive, we would perish. From there we can by the use of reason determine that life is our most important value (except for the aforementioned extreme cases of psykopaths)

That is a logical and rational conslusion of why life is our most important value.

The everyday definition of the word sacrifice is acts commited under certain conditions that benefit others while the actor’s interest is harmed. The certain condition I am speaking of is that the actor must believe his/her actions can acheive an agent-neutral value (values that are not related to the actor’s self-interests, for example, valuing your mother’s life) that is greater than the actor’s agent-relative values. The CHOICE of valuing one’s own life above all other values, agent-relative or agent-neutral, is nothing but a choice.

Values are not exclusively determined by choice. Most of our values are determined subconsciously. You cannot for instance choose not to value your wife anymore, nor can you choose to stop to value life. However, some values require some level of choice. “Do I choose to believe this person? What are my senses telling me?”. And by the use of reason you can also discover irrational values.

However, the act of self-sacrifice almost never occurs naturally. It is promoted by altruism, but even with altruism as the ethics of the last millennia, taxes are collected at gunpoint. Because altruism is not compatible with the nature of humans. Many acts that are considered noble and virtuous, and even selfless, are acts of self interest.

If ou save a drowning man, many would call it a selfless act. Yet this is a quite horrendous claim, as it implies that other men have noe value to you. This is the fallacy of altruism.

Here you are saying objectivsts can value someone else’s life over one’s own life, which is inconsistent with the claim one’s life is categorically the ultimate value. Now which is it? Either or. One’s own life cannot be the ultimate highest value while at the same time, someone else’s life/interests is valued more. You cannot have it both ways; as Ms. Rand said, you cannot have your cake and eat it too.

Life is the ultimate goal, but it’s not necessarily your own life. If you love your wife highly enough to say you would die for her, you value her higher. This is not opposed by objectivist ethics. However, if you value other persons higher than yourself, it’s relative to the value of your own life - if your wife dies you would find your own life unbearable and worthless, so by valuing your wife higher than yourself, you try to avoid the situation of losing her, and becoming depressed and possibly commit suicide. This is of course not your conscious reason for valuing her.

I hope this cleared up some of the confusion.

23

Chien, before I make a reply, may I suggest that you read “The Objectivst Ethics” and then be more clear what your particular problem with Objectivist ethics is. You shouldn’t give general things such as “I don’t agree with it, it is unreasonable, unprovable, bla, bla, bla”. You shouldn’t ask anyone to prove or demonstrate really general principles which would take very long essays (if not a whole book) to do so adequately.

Now, as to the reason why “life” is the most important value, if I am not mistaken it is because life is, not just the precondition of value, but also the reason one lives for in the first place. But “life” in Objectivism is MUCH more than mere survival. It is the pursuit of hapiness through the achievement of rational values. Thus if a person values another highly, he may risk (or even give up) his life* to save that other.

To be more precise: if the alternative is either one’s own death and or the death of a loved one, consider the conditions of each. The Objectivst ethics would say that one should choose which ever is more valueable. If one loves another to extent that the nonexistence (i.e., death) of the loved one would mean total misery and suffering, then properly, one’s own death would be the better choice.

Think about why Howard Roark says that he would give his life to save Gail Wynand, or why John Galt says that he would kill himself if they ever attempt to torture Dagny to get him to talk. There is no contradiction or reversal there when one realizes that “life” in the greater sense is much more than just mere survival.

Think about this for now (John Galt to Dagny, Atlas Shrugged, Chapter 8, Part 3):

“You must take their side fully, consistently and loudly as your capacity for deception will permit. You must act as one of them. You must act as my worst enemy. If you do, I’ll have a chance to come out of it alive. They need me too much, they’ll go to any extreme before they bring themselves to kill me. Whatever they extort from people, they can extort it only through their victim’s values–and they have no value of mine to hold over my head, nothing to threaten me with. But if they get the slightest suspicion of what we are to each other, they will have you on a torture rack–I mean, physical torture–before my eyes, in less than a week. I am not going to wait for that. At the first mention of a threat to you, I will kill myself and stop them right there.”

“I don’t have to tell you […] that if I do it, it won’t be an act of self-sacrifice, I do not care to live on their terms, I do not care to obey them and I do not care to see you enduring a drawn out murder. There will be no values for me to seek after that–and I do not care to exist without values.”

*(Observe the subtle differences in the definition of “life” in two different context: the former “life” as the pursuit of hapiness through the achievement of rational values, and the latter “life” as a mere state of being alive, i.e., survival).

BTW, valuing your mother’s life, provided that she, too, values yours, is NOT AT ALL “agent-neutral” or self-sacrificial. It DOES serve you interest love your family (on certain conditions, of course). Again, why are you assuming that valuing anyone other than yourself is agent-neutral?