Self-interest versus rights

Questions about Objectivism
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Hello, this is my first time posting and I’d like some information on how Rand derives an objectively necessary moral system (as far as I understand it). Anyone is free to reply.

Anyway, a self-described Objectivist told me that Objectivism is necessary for survival because one must value one’s own life in order to keep living. Okay, I can understand how that might hold for practical purposes. However I don’t see how selfishness obliges one to respect the rights of others and not sacrifice them to benefit yourself. When I told him this he replied, “Sacrificing others while refusing to sacrifice yourself is a contradiction and therefore irrational.” This is however a contradiction because there are situations where one might benefit one’s own chances of survival at the expense of others. Let’s study the quote semantically.

Logical contradiction (as opposed to DIALECTICAL CONTRADICTION) is a matter of simultaneously saying, putting forward, or defending both some specific and definite statement and the denial of that self-same statement.

>Sacrificing others while refusing to sacrifice yourself is a contradiction and therefore irrational.

“Sacrificing others” is one statement. “Refusing to sacrifice yourself” is the second statement.

I assume that “promoting your life” means “aiding your survival” in Objectivism. If your goal is promote your value, your own life, it is possible to promote your life by sacrificing others. Example: the guy stealing medicine to survive as mentioned below. So sacrificing others can promote your life.

“Refusing to sacrifice yourself” does not interfere with the goal of promoting your life. Rather, this is consistent with promoting your life.

Therefore, if your value is to promote your own life, then the consistent and rational thing to do is to sacrifice others if doing so promotes this value.

For instance, say there is a person who needs to steal medicine or food to survive. If the person refuse to steal, they die, and following Objectivism would reduce their chances of survival. Therefore I don’t see how Objectivism can be derived solely from the necessity of valuing one’s own survival.

Thanks for reading. Please set me straight.

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Welcome to OO.net. Check out this thread and this one.

For a list of some frequently-answered questions, check out this thread.

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Hello, this is my first time posting and I’d like some information on how Rand derives an objectively necessary moral system (as far as I understand it). Anyone is free to reply.

Anyway, a self-described Objectivist told me that Objectivism is necessary for survival because one must value one’s own life in order to keep living. Okay, I can understand how that might hold for practical purposes. However I don’t see how selfishness obliges one to respect the rights of others and not sacrifice them to benefit yourself. When I told him this he replied, “Sacrificing others while refusing to sacrifice yourself is a contradiction and therefore irrational.” This is however a contradiction because there are situations where one might benefit one’s own chances of survival at the expense of others. Let’s study the quote semantically.

Logical contradiction (as opposed to DIALECTICAL CONTRADICTION) is a matter of simultaneously saying, putting forward, or defending both some specific and definite statement and the denial of that self-same statement.

>Sacrificing others while refusing to sacrifice yourself is a contradiction and therefore irrational.

“Sacrificing others” is one statement. “Refusing to sacrifice yourself” is the second statement.

I assume that “promoting your life” means “aiding your survival” in Objectivism. If your goal is promote your value, your own life, it is possible to promote your life by sacrificing others. Example: the guy stealing medicine to survive as mentioned below. So sacrificing others can promote your life.

“Refusing to sacrifice yourself” does not interfere with the goal of promoting your life. Rather, this is consistent with promoting your life.

Therefore, if your value is to promote your own life, then the consistent and rational thing to do is to sacrifice others if doing so promotes this value.

For instance, say there is a person who needs to steal medicine or food to survive. If the person refuse to steal, they die, and following Objectivism would reduce their chances of survival. Therefore I don’t see how Objectivism can be derived solely from the necessity of valuing one’s own survival.

Thanks for reading. Please set me straight.

There are better replies than mine (her works being the best) and I don’t represent other than my views as someone fascinated by the ideas of Ayn Rand. This is a partial answer but it may help you understand what she’s saying from an additional point of view.

As any Capitalist, Ayn Rand knew that trust enables trade and increasing returns for the involved parties in a scale and manner than sacking, violating trust, contract or law, just can’t. She was very conscious of the creative power of man, which she considered heroic, and self-fulfilling to the point that only that can be considered selfish, in one’s best interest. There is a long term element in this, because her whole worldview seems optimistic.

The only cases when one can somehow benefit from harming others is during an emergency during which only immediate thought is working; or within corrupt systems where the benefit is too short-termed or hollow to be considered a benefit. \

Outside emergencies and war-zones, humans benefit more by a special kind of cooperation regarding the building of trust. The reason for that cooperation is purely selfish, in one’s self interest, as thoroughly explained by non-Objectivist Atheist Richard Dawkins in this early documentary. That is both how intl markets work, and the reason you get to buy groceries from the counter inside a shop instead of through iron bars like in most shantytowns of the World - both are options, but unless trust is continuously built and safeguarded by truly selfish buyers and sellers who refrain from stealing and defrauding respectively, then the default state of mankind seems to be the immediate “benefit” of the shantytown.

Guess what direction the society you inhabit is heading?

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It is indeed not a literal contradiction to sacrifice others while refusing to sacrifice yourself, and that is not the correct reasoning to support the notion that we should not sacrifice others. The basis of that notion is the contention that no good can come from human sacrifices for anyone, that predation does not work to advance the predator’s life in the long term. “Rational self-interest” is actually a much more complicated animal than most people suppose, and often the course of action which seems to be “obviously” self-interested is actually self-destructive. That is the case with taking advantage of other people. This principle is known as the “harmony of rational interests” in Objectivism. For more of the reasoning behind why predation is self-destructive and self-defeating, you should check out the threads that softwareNerd linked above.

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Thanks for the quick and very detailed replies. This seems like a nice place; I think I’ll like it here.

It is indeed not a literal contradiction to sacrifice others while refusing to sacrifice yourself, and that is not the correct reasoning to support the notion that we should not sacrifice others. The basis of that notion is the contention that no good can come from human sacrifices for anyone, that predation does not work to advance the predator’s life in the long term. “Rational self-interest” is actually a much more complicated animal than most people suppose, and often the course of action which seems to be “obviously” self-interested is actually self-destructive. That is the case with taking advantage of other people. This principle is known as the “harmony of rational interests” in Objectivism. For more of the reasoning behind why predation is self-destructive and self-defeating, you should check out the threads that softwareNerd linked above.

I’m looking through SN’s link now. So this is basically the prudent predator argument. My issue is that there are only specific situations where predation harms your survival; this isn’t true all the time.

The basis of that notion is the contention that no good can come from human sacrifices for anyone, that predation does not work to advance the predator’s life in the long term. “Rational self-interest” is actually a much more complicated animal than most people suppose, and often the course of action which seems to be “obviously” self-interested is actually self-destructive.

I’m sure that this has been talked about often enough before. It’s just that there are specific situations (like the person who has to steal food to survive mentioned in the first post) where Objectivist ethics run contrary to personal survival. In these situations refusing to be a predator can be detrimental to your survival.

I’m not concerned with whether Objectivism is “good” or not; I’m merely curious as to whether Objectivists really think that respecting property rights always increases your chances of personal survival. Otherwise, the other conclusions that stem from Objectivist ethics (eg the political prescriptions) cannot apply in all cases without adopting values in addition to personal survival.

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It’s is not merely survival that is held as the highest value by Objectivism, but life, more specifically life as a man.

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It’s is not merely survival that is held as the highest value by Objectivism, but life, more specifically life as a man.

Now that would make sense, but that doesn’t prove that these values never require contradictory actions to uphold them. From that, I’d have to assume that my friend who I was having a debate with wasn’t speaking for most Objectivists, or at least the ones on this site, when he argued that an Objectivist will never sacrifice themselves.

My question is, if I have to steal bread to survive, should I instead starve to death to respect someone else’s property? I don’t care about the practical likelihood of this scenario. This is purely hypothetical and I’m looking for a yes or no answer.

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My question is, if I have to steal bread to survive, should I instead starve to death to respect someone else’s property?

Why would you be starving?

Anyway, it would be far more worth your time to read something specific on what the purpose of property rights are from an Objectivist viewpoint, and ask questions about that.

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My question is, if I have to steal bread to survive, should I instead starve to death to respect someone else’s property? I don’t care about the practical likelihood of this scenario. This is purely hypothetical and I’m looking for a yes or no answer.

Okay, but we need to add a bit more context to this question to have an intelligible answer. First of all, in a truly emergency situation, one can be justified in violating property rights. For instance, if I find myself lost and alone in the wilderness with no food, and I come across a vacant cabin with food and shelter, I should not allow myself to starve to death on the principle of property rights (although I would be obligated to make restitution for what I took when I get out of the emergency). In that sort of context, one should take the food.

However, if we’re talking about someone who lives their life this way, living hand-to-mouth through thievery, then they have many more alternatives than simply perpetuating this lifestyle or dying. In that context, this question poses a false alternative. Ultimately, they will be much better off either standing on their own two feet or even depending upon voluntary charity. An act of theft that they commit in this state is simply a perpetuation of an immoral lifestyle, one which the individual should change as soon as possible. In this kind of situation, where one is stealing in the normal course of life, outside of a true emergency scenario, this violation of others’ property rights is most certainly wrong, and also a bad mode of living for the thief.

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Why would you be starving?

Because you need food to survive, perhaps?

Okay, I’ve pretty much gotten the answer I was looking for. Namely that Objectivism doesn’t have any one absolute value and that morally right action depends on the circumstances. The issue of military service as an Objectivist and whether this can hinder self-preservation is another thread. But thanks for the responses.

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Okay, I’ve pretty much gotten the answer I was looking for. Namely that Objectivism doesn’t have any one absolute value and that morally right action depends on the circumstances. The issue of military service as an Objectivist and whether this can hinder self-preservation is another thread. But thanks for the responses.

Well yeah. Absolute does not mean without limit, for nothing in reality is limitless. And it doesn’t mean “property rights are intrinsically good,” for that would mean “good apart from human life.” Absolute means pure, complete, unadulterated. The only way to have absolute (i.e. non-subjective) moral values is by adhering to context precisely because reality is always contextual. There is no such thing as “reality without circumstances.” That would be nonsense. So too a rational ethics must reflect this fact. And so too property rights are not limitless, non-contextual floating abstractions with intrinsic moral value. It’s not about admittedly unlikely hypothetical thought experiments, like scenes out of the Disney movie “Aladdin” or “Prince of Persia.” Such implications are insufficient to demonstrate the un-usefulness of egoism. It’s about life in the real world, the long-run principles of behavior that are going to benefit you in the real world.

Rand does not look at the short run and go “Hey, you might be able to get away with initiating force this one time and have more stuff because of it.” You cannot flourish as a human being while living a life of consistent or even inconsistent dishonesty, graft, deception, fraud, or by brute force. You make an enemy of honest men, on whose production you depend rather than your own. You become a parasite destroying those better than you, on whom you depend, and you suffer psychologically as well as physically. You declare essentially to other human beings “Hey look at me. I am an animal, and if you want to live, you must treat me like one. Eat me or I will eat you first.” Peaceful cooperation and the trader principle, on the other hand, enables long-term harmony of interests and mutually beneficial interpersonal relations.

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Okay, I’ve pretty much gotten the answer I was looking for. Namely that Objectivism doesn’t have any one absolute value and that morally right action depends on the circumstances.

It’s true that if you’re looking for principles and values with no reference to context, you won’t find them in Objectivism. However, there is a huge difference between the Objectivist view and the pragmatic view that there are no absolutes in morality, that rules are just guidelines, and in any particular case we might well find that the rule or principle doesn’t work. Objectivists view moral principles as contextually absolute. This means that, in order to form principles, we look at the fundamental facts about certain contexts. The principles that we draw from those fundamental facts apply in an absolute sense whenever that context obtains.

We might draw an analogy between the scientific principle that water boils at 100oC. This principle depends on certain conditions being true: we are in Earth’s atmosphere at 1 atm of pressure. However, if these conditions are met, we do not have any doubt about whether the principle holds true. Within that context (Earth’s atmosphere, 1 atm of pressure), the principle is absolute.

This view is certainly an unusual alternative to most common ways of thinking about morals and principles, and it takes some familiarizing, but I believe it is the correct view to take.

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This view is certainly an unusual alternative to most common ways of thinking about morals and principles, and it takes some familiarizing, but I believe it is the correct view to take.

I don’t see how it’s unusual at all. Some, not all, forms of moral relativism can work this way. People are willing to change their principles when conditions change drastically. I’d even argue that most people approach morals this way.

Peaceful cooperation and the trader principle, on the other hand, enables long-term harmony of interests and mutually beneficial interpersonal relations.

From this I get the impression that Rand’s philosophy is meant primarily not to promote one individual’s well being but as a moral code that a society of people follow to maximize their collective well being. Correct me if I’m wrong.

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From this I get the impression that Rand’s philosophy is meant primarily not to work on the individual level but as a moral code that a society of people follow to maximize their collective well being. Correct me if I’m wrong.

That may be the case with Aristotle, but this is one of the areas where Rand departed with him. Since society as a whole is nothing more than a group of individual men, the individual is the primary moral unit. Rand’s social virtues (the ones dealing only with interpersonal relations) and politics, e.g. the non-initiation of force principle, is for upholding individual morality in a social context. Rand’s morality holds “man’s life qua man” as the standard of value, but “man’s life qua man” is an abstraction that applies to all men as a standard. Therefore the purpose of each man acting according to that standard is his own life and well-being. This is what a policy of “selfishness” means, each person’s life and happiness is their primary moral responsibility. It just so happens that force is detrimental to each of our lives and values, so if you hold the individual’s life as the primary moral unit, you must proscribe physical force in the realm of social interactions, which means you must hold man’s rights as inviolable. It’s not hard to see how the use of force and fraud, a life of exploitativeness and violence, frustrates value-pursuit and make happiness impossible for the criminal as well as the victim.

That’s a very poor rationalistic explanation, but hope it helps. The best thing to do is to look at what kinds of behavior involving other people truly in the long-term benefits your life. Is it being a criminal, is it living the life of Aladdin stealing bread in the market, or is it being honest, productive, and goal-oriented?

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That may be the case with Aristotle, but this is one of the areas where Rand departed with him. Since society as a whole is nothing more than a group of individual men, the individual is the primary moral unit. Rand’s social virtues (the ones dealing only with interpersonal relations) and politics, e.g. the non-initiation of force principle, is for upholding individual morality in a social context. Rand’s morality holds “man’s life qua man” as the standard of value, but “man’s life qua man” is an abstraction that applies to all men as a standard. Therefore the purpose of each man acting according to that standard is his own life and well-being. This is what a policy of “selfishness” means, each person’s life and happiness is their primary moral responsibility. It just so happens that force is detrimental to each of our lives and values, so if you hold the individual’s life as the primary moral unit, you must proscribe physical force in the realm of social interactions, which means you must hold man’s rights as inviolable.

Often though only other people’s initiation of force is detrimental to my life. The ideal morality for me is usually to maintain my freedom to initiate force while denying that right to others.

That’s a very poor rationalistic explanation, but hope it helps. The best thing to do is to look at what kinds of behavior involving other people truly in the long-term benefits your life. Is it being a criminal, is it living the life of Aladdin stealing bread in the market, or is it being honest, productive, and goal-oriented?

Maybe not usually. But most dictators and emperors lived quite well, or at least better than the plebes.

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From this I get the impression that Rand’s philosophy is meant primarily not to promote one individual’s well being but as a moral code that a society of people follow to maximize their collective well being. Correct me if I’m wrong.

Yes, that is incorrect. Ayn Rand’s moral philosophy is focused around the task of providing a moral code appropriate to helping individuals fully and consistently pursue their own lives. As such, many of the virtues in her moral philosophy are not primarily about relations with others at all (e.g. rationality, productiveness, pride). Those virtues that are only important in a social context (e.g. justice) are still valid by virtue of the fact that they play an essential role in an individual achieving his or her own well-being. There is no role for ‘collective well being’ in the Objectivist ethics.

Now, rights are certainly a political concept, and Rand’s politics is focused on the question of what sort of social system allows individuals to achieve their own well-being, so in that sense rights are part of a moral code that a society should implement for the sake of the people in that society. However, if we’re talking about individual moral decision-making, for Rand that is always focused on the well-being of the individual doing the choosing.

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However, if we’re talking about individual moral decision-making, for Rand that is always focused on the well-being of the individual doing the choosing.

I can come up with situations where Objectivism does not advise self-interested behavior. For instance tyrants (let’s say Francisco Franco) greatly improved their well being by forcing themselves to the top of the social hierarchy.

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Maybe not usually. But most dictators and emperors lived quite well, or at least better than the plebes.

I would argue that they did not. Under a complete account of well-being, including psychological health, a healthy moral character, and material wealth, the only way to achieve “the good life” is by treating others as individuals to be traded with, rather than subjects to be ruled. The paranoia and psychosis alone, which is run-of-the-mill for “successful” dictators, should give one pause in saying that they lived well.

It’s not a question of whether the ruler or the subjects lives better in a dictatorship, but whether either of those lives can truly compete with the life of a free man who interacts with others as equals, as trading partners, as independent valuers. In truth, they cannot.

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Often though only other people’s initiation of force is detrimental to my life. The ideal morality for me is usually to maintain my freedom to initiate force while denying that right to others.

Maybe not usually. But most dictators and emperors lived quite well, or at least better than the plebes.

Obviously Objectivism challenges that any denial of rights to others is in your rational self-interest. Why is denying the right of life to others beneficial for you? You would be no better than an animal then. A parasitic one, since you depend on the productivity of others. What are you going to do when your hosts don’t support you anymore, for example, if you kill them off, or if they stop producing, or can’t support both you and them?

Since you have abandoned rationality, how then can you justify this state of affairs? Certainly not by appeal to logic.

Most dictators were psychotics and megalomaniacs, and drove their nations into destruction while piling up mountains of skulls, until their own people or the enemies they made killed them. Is psychosis your standard of mental health? And is dying by the sword you lived by your standard of well living, then?

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I would argue that they did not. Under a complete account of well-being, including psychological health, a healthy moral character, and material wealth, the only way to achieve “the good life” is by treating others as individuals to be traded with, rather than subjects to be ruled. The paranoia and psychosis alone, which is run-of-the-mill for “successful” dictators, should give one pause in saying that they lived well.

Well, in the absence of a scientific way to measure well-being we’ll just have to disagree there. But I doubt that Franco would have been better off if he chose not to rule one of the world’s largest countries for decades. I haven’t seen anything to suggest he was having constant anxiety attacks or psychosis.