But as soon as you say “positive emotions” you’ve already assumed an implicit standard right there, without which your ‘fundamental’ provides no guidance.
Hey Dante, (though anyone interested is invited to contribute)
I believe, based on my experiences thus far on the board, that you and I have a similar understanding of ethics. However, I’d like to play a bit of devil’s advocate here, and take up some of human_murda’s critique, because the precise formulation of some of this has been and remains a little fuzzy in my mind. Furthermore, recent experiences in other threads have led me to believe that a precise formulation of one’s ethical standard is ultimately very important in terms of subsequent application. So I would like to see these issues delved into somewhat deeply, if possible, and the objections framed in the strongest possible terms so that they can be handled decisively. I hope to contribute to this effort, if I can.
I’ll use your other example of a positive emotion here, remorse. Now, in both these cases (Voldemort and Grindelwald), the remorse would be over things deserving of it, which makes it a positive emotion. However, plenty of people feel remorse over things they shouldn’t; they feel remorse about being born with more opportunities than others, about surviving incidents in which others have died (survivor’s guilt), about having to kill another when the situation required it (the remorse a soldier often feels coming back from war), etc. In each of these cases, remorse is a negative emotion, because it is directed at something it shouldn’t be. The good, proper course in each of these situations involves the person really coming to understand that the remorse isn’t deserved, and shedding it. This is what I (and Rand) mean when we say that this is why emotions cannot provide fundamental guidance, that they are not “tools of cognition” in her words. We need a preexisting standard of the good in order to evaluate our emotions.
Agreed.
Now, let’s be clear that Lily Potter sacrificing her life for her son is entirely appropriate and moral according to Objectivism, even though it resulted directly in her own death. This comes from the difference between (long-term) survival as the standard and survival as the goal. We should choose our values during our lifetime according to what is good for our lives and happiness. We should choose careers that are fulfilling; friends and romantic partners that treat us well and make us happy; etc. As we live our lives, naturally we become emotionally invested in these particular values. We would bear great cost to protect them (isn’t this part of what it means to care about someone or something?). Ultimately, with the things we care about the most, we might even be willing to die for them. This is a result of how much we are invested in the things and people we care about.
Before I probe this position, I’d like to preface with a quote from Rand and then commentary by David Kelley on the salient issue. (I expect some of this has already been quoted in the thread, but I’d like to have it all together.)
From “The Objectivist Ethics”:
An ultimate value is that final goal or end to which all lesser goals are the means—and it sets the standard by which all lesser goals are evaluated. An organism’s life is its standard of value: that which furthers its life is the good, that which threatens it is the evil.
Without an ultimate goal or end, there can be no lesser goals or means: a series of means going off into an infinite progression toward a nonexistent end is a metaphysical and epistemological impossibility. It is only an ultimate goal, an end in itself, that makes the existence of values possible. Metaphysically, life is the only phenomenon that is an end in itself: a value gained and kept by a constant process of action.
From The Logical Structure of Objectivism (“Flourishing and Survival”):
Although Ayn Rand made it clear that she meant her morality to ensure a rich, fully human life, it is the bare fundamental alternative of survival versus death that stands at the root of all values.
Several admirers of Rand’s approach to ethics have debated the sense in which survival can serve the most basic criterion of ethics. Here we have argued that survival is the literal alternative of life versus death, existence versus nonexistence.
Okay. Against this backdrop, let’s go over your position regarding Lily Potter’s “sacrifice.”
Now, let’s be clear that Lily Potter sacrificing her life for her son is entirely appropriate and moral according to Objectivism, even though it resulted directly in her own death. This comes from the difference between (long-term) survival as the standard and survival as the goal.
I’m not certain I understand the distinction drawn between “survival as standard” and “survival as goal.” Since Rand employs both terms in her quote, here it is again (with emphasis added):
An _ ultimate _ value is that final goal or end to which all lesser goals are the means—and it sets the standard by which all lesser goals are evaluated. An organism’s life is its _ standard of value _: that which furthers its life is the good, that which threatens it is the evil.
Taking the above, I understand life (i.e. “an organism’s life”) as being that ultimate value, that final goal, that end-in-itself which qualifies it to be that organism’s standard of value. It seems to me that there’s no meaningful difference here between treating an organism’s survival as its goal, and that organism’s survival as its standard of value. Instead, the organism’s survival is its standard of value because it is its goal.
So when you speak of “the difference between (long-term) survival as the standard and survival as the goal,” I shall need that difference to be explained a bit more.
We should choose our values during our lifetime according to what is good for our lives and happiness.
Don’t the Rand and Kelley passages, taken together, make clear that an organism’s values can only be good insofar as they serve the ultimate value of it’s life, which is survival, “the literal alternative of life versus death”? So per Objectivism (as understood through these Rand and Kelley quotes), wouldn’t it be more correct to say that “we should choose our values according to what is good for our survival”? (And note: this is not “survival qua organism,” and not “survival qua man,” but the literal survival of the organism which is meant to hold values, and make decisions/take actions there upon. Thus, Objectivist Ethics would never call upon me to sacrifice myself for “a human life, as it should be”; my ultimate value is quite literally me.)
We should choose careers that are fulfilling; friends and romantic partners that treat us well and make us happy; etc.
Insofar as that happiness is evaluated as “good” against the ultimate value, yes. “[T]hat which furthers its life is the good.” A given career, friend or romantic partner – even one’s happiness – would not be good, but bad, if it did aught but further one’s life, which is survival.
As we live our lives, naturally we become emotionally invested in these particular values. We would bear great cost to protect them (isn’t this part of what it means to care about someone or something?). Ultimately, with the things we care about the most, we might even be willing to die for them. This is a result of how much we are invested in the things and people we care about.
If this is the case – and if survival is our ultimate value and our standard of value – then isn’t it evil (that is: contrary to one’s ultimate end and goal) to allow one’s self to become emotionally invested in any particular value, such that one would ever be willing to sacrifice itself (the greater value; the ultimate value) for the lesser end of that particular value – the things and people we care about? Doesn’t a certain detachment, in the name of one’s own survival, become the good?
Besides that… suppose I were emotionally invested in this manner in my wife. If I were willing to “sacrifice” myself for the sake of my wife, then could I reasonably say that my life (i.e. my survival) remained my ultimate value? Or if not… then aren’t I implicitly appealing to some standard apart from survival alone as my standard of value?
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Since we’re here, regarding the “cancer argument”…
There is no commandment that one commit suicide at any time, just recognition that conditions may become such that the standard of life qua oneself is no longer realistically feasible and when and if such a point comes up you’ve exited the realm in which Objectivism is applicable. When such a point has been reached depends on those above mentioned variables, but once that point has been reached, it means Objectivism can’t say what one should do nor can it condemn one for what choices one does make. It’s kind of like life boat situations or inseparable conjoined twins.
Ethics are a guide to action, are they not? And I would expect that a rational philosophy for a rational animal would entail a rational ethics. 
If we say that “Objectivism can’t say what one should do” in certain situations, does that mean that there is no reasonable way to determine whether one should ever commit suicide, or “sacrifice” oneself for a loved one? That such momentous decisions are therefore based upon a whim? Because I don’t think I can agree with that.
If my wife suffered from some terminal disease (which we can call cancer, if we’d like) such that she would suffer great torment for the rest of her days with no reasonable hope of recovery, I would like her suffering to end sooner rather than later. If she said, “but no – my survival is my ultimate end, so to commit suicide, even now, would be evil,” I would call that nonsense (or probably something far worse). And yet… that does seem to be the Objectivist position, as stated above. And it would make me very unhappy should she take it seriously enough to try to bear through such unremitting pain. Insofar as I think my advice of suicide in such a case would be reasonable, I believe that I am appealing to a rational standard of value, which appears to imply a rational ethics, though with some other (yet unrecognized) ultimate standard of value apart from “survival.”
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What is more, in another thread I made an attempt to defend pleasure as “good” with respect to life as the standard of value. Honestly, I never thought I would be called upon to have to defend pleasure, as such, but perhaps this confusion as to the ultimate goal, or standard of value, helps to explain why an Objectivist might need to see verification that pleasure is anything worth seeking at all.
In searching for Ayn Rand quotes to try to explain what role I think pleasure itself might play in Objectivist Ethics, I found this, on the experience of art, from “The Goal of My Writing”:
The importance of that experience is not in what he learns from it, but in that he experiences it. The fuel is not a theoretical principle, not a didactic “message,” but the life-giving fact of experiencing a moment of metaphysical joy – a moment of love for existence.
I’d already quoted this much to provide my background for asserting that physical pleasure acts in similar fashion. There was a stronger case I could have made, but I did not want to invite a tangent into that discussion. But that tangent finds its proper home here. Rand continues:
No matter what its consequences, that experience is not a way station one passes, but a stop, a value in itself. It is an experience about which one can say: “I am glad to have reached this in my life.”
If Rand means what she says here – if there exists “a value in itself,” something that is to be experienced “[n]o matter what its consequences” (including, presumably, for the survival of the organism), then how can we speak of the Objectivist Ethics as though there is one “ultimate value,” which is survival, “the literal alternative of life versus death”? In speaking here of “a value in itself,” in recognizing that one may reasonably choose suicide (I seem to recall her discussing Toilers of the Sea in that context? or maybe I misremember?), in recognizing that a reasonable man may “sacrifice” himself for a loved one, isn’t Rand implicitly recognizing that “survival” is not the ultimate value for a rational ethics?
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Finally, I don’t mean to imply that I think that David Kelley’s reading of Rand’s Ethics is necessarily correct. I’m open to the possibility that he is mistaken. However, I would still like to address my critique towards his interpretation, which I think is apparently supported by at least the quote of Rand’s I’ve provided, appears to be the source of this thread’s questing, and is potentially a common misread, if it is a misread at all.