What are some examples of values that an Objectivist adopts?
That’s pretty open-ended 
Live by one’s own productive work?
That’s pretty open-ended
Live by one’s own productive work?
You can use specific examples based on your own life.
You can use specific examples based on your own life.
I doubt that will be very illuminating. The specific concrete values that specific individuals pursue are often highly contextual, and only become worth general discussion as examples of a broader principle. For example, one of my current values is the TV show “Robot Chicken”. I programmed my TiVo to record it, and I watch it, and I look forward to new episodes. In Rand’s terms, I act to gain and/or keep it. But in and of itself, this doesn’t mean anything without situating the show in a broader hierarchy of values. “Robot Chicken” does a lot of parodies of TV shows and toys that I remember from when I was a child, which makes it amusing to me. The pleasure I gain from watching it helps me unwind and relax after a day of focussed mental exertion at work. So it’s simultaneously an end in itself (pleasure through laughter) and a means to further ends (recharging my batteries from work, enabling further productive mental focus in the future).
Other people will need *some* values that fill a similar role, but not necessarily the same *specific* values I have. (I doubt my grandmother would appreciate “Robot Chicken”, but she does other things for pleasure and relaxation that I probably wouldn’t enjoy, like playing cribbage.)
The primary value/virtue an Objectivist adopts is reason/rationality.
Objectivism arrives at this from its metaphysics and epistemology: things exist, there’s causation, human beings can figure things out, reason is effective. The best, and most concise summary of the Objectivist Ethics can be found an essay by that name in the anthology titled “The Virtue of Selfishness”.
What does Ayn Rand mean when she says “value” is that which one acts to gain and/or keep?
Think of a plant bending toward (acting) a light source (value); or a herd migrating (acting) to a better climate (value); or a man planting (acting) a crop (value).
Think of a plant bending toward (acting) a light source (value); or a herd migrating (acting) to a better climate (value); or a man planting (acting) a crop (value).
I see. So a value is an action one makes to support his survival?
An action that supports your life is a virtue. A value is what you achieve with virtue.
A vice is the opposite of course.
In this sense a value is anything that you act to gain or keep. An objective value is that which you act to gain or keep that is beneficial to your life.
I see. So a value is an action one makes to support his survival?
Man, you have a lot of questions(For the record, I regard that as a good thing)
I think it might be more proper to say that value is something which is beneficial to your ‘life’. Since there are circumstances in which it would be possible that something which would be good for your life in a philosophical sense might also cause your death or, at the very least, put you at risk of dying.
On this note, I am curious if anyone on this list has circumstances in which they would both put themselves at various levels of risk of dying, that they feel would be philosophically defensible. Obviously this is highly contextual but I would be interested just the same.
Personally I have a lot of trouble with it because I can think of a number of reasons why I would personally put myself in harms way, but have a great deal of trouble actually justifying it. As an example, if someone were to try and put me into a concentration camp(not neccessarily a death camp), I would assume great risk in order to avoid it. But when I think about it, it seems that it might make more sense to just go along with it as complacently as possible in order to continue to survive for as long as possible hoping for a future release perhaps.
Anyways, I look forward to any responses.
You should keep in mind though that life qua man is the standard, not just survival. In such a case the kind of life you may have in the camp could very well be worth less to you than trying to avoid the situation and live as a free person somewhere.
I see. So a value is an action one makes to support his survival?
To whatever extent one’s survival is their ultimate value, yes.
An action that supports your life is a virtue. A value is what you achieve with virtue.
A vice is the opposite of course.
In this sense a value is anything that you act to gain or keep. An objective value is that which you act to gain or keep that is beneficial to your life.
According to Ayn Rand, humans are the only creatures capable of acting to gain their own destruction-- the only creatures capable of vice. (I don’t have the reference for that at hand, but I think it’s in Galt’s Speech.) Technically, I think for a morally corrupt person, evil would be considered a value, since they act to gain or keep it, although it does not support their life (they may or may not think it does).
Technically, I think for a morally corrupt person, evil would be considered a value, since they act to gain or keep it, although it does not support their life (they may or may not think it does).
“Value” is one of those concepts that actually has two definitions, a generic one and a fully consistent one. (See Peikoff’s lectures on “Unity in Epistemology and Ethics” for a discussion of this.) The generic definition of value is the classical “that which one acts to gain and/or keep”. In this sense a value is simply the object or goal of an action.
A detailed analysis of the concept of value, such as that performed by Rand in her essay “The Objectivist Ethics”, reveals the roots of the concept in life. On this basis, one realizes that to truly gain and/or keep something, one cannot undercut its underlying requirements or preconditions. And since life underlies all values, it follows that no object or goal which is incompatible with life is actually a value. This leads to the second definition of value, based on a fully consistent understanding of the concept. In this sense value is that which contributes to or supports life. Objectivists sometimes refer to values in this context as ‘objective values’.
Although this two-definition model seems a bit unusual, it’s actually pretty common in concepts tied in some way to volition. Another example of a two-definition concept would be “egoism”. In the fully generic sense, any ethical system that advocates the pursuit of self-interest as morally good is a form of egoism. But many systems which are egoistic in the generic sense advocate actions which, in a fully consistent context, are not actually self-interested. (Nietzsche and Stirner are good examples here.)
I leave applying this sort of analysis to the concept “libertarian” as an exercise for the student. B-)
According to Ayn Rand, humans are the only creatures capable of acting to gain their own destruction-- the only creatures capable of vice. (I don’t have the reference for that at hand, but I think it’s in Galt’s Speech.) Technically, I think for a morally corrupt person, evil would be considered a value, since they act to gain or keep it, although it does not support their life (they may or may not think it does).
Humans aren’t the only species that act toward their own destruction, many animals do that. Humans are the only specieas that can choose to act toward their own destruction.
And yes, there are two definitions of value and vice.
Humans are the only specieas that can choose to act toward their own destruction.
This is completely accurate.
But you must be careful here:
Humans aren’t the only species that act toward their own destruction, many animals do that.
It is precisely because other animals possess no volition or rationality, and live in a perceptual world unable to project future events, that they never act toward their own destruction.
So even when animals persue a reproductive strategy which ultimately leads to their deaths, as far as they understand they are acting in support of their lives.
That’s what I meant mark. You don’t have to know the consequences to be acting toward your own destruction. You are still ACTING. Acting without knowledge but still acting.
But i understand the distinction that you are drawing. I don’t mean to imply that animals consciously act toward their own self destruction.
“Value” is one of those concepts that actually has two definitions, a generic one and a fully consistent one… The generic definition of value is the classical “that which one acts to gain and/or keep”…A detailed analysis of the concept of value, such as that performed by Rand in her essay “The Objectivist Ethics”, reveals the roots of the concept in life… Objectivists sometimes refer to values in this context as ‘objective values’.
…Another example of a two-definition concept would be “egoism”… I leave applying this sort of analysis to the concept “libertarian” as an exercise for the student. B-)
Yes, I agree with all of this.. although I’m not entirely convinced “libertarian” is a concept…
Humans aren’t the only species that act toward their own destruction, many animals do that. Humans are the only specieas that can choose to act toward their own destruction.
And yes, there are two definitions of value and vice.
Yeah, good point. That’s why I said “acting to gain,” to imply that they can have that end in mind. I guess the traditional way of stating it is that only humans are capable of vice because only humans are volitional, but I think it adds something to emphasize that “vice” means volitionally acting to one’s own destruction.
On this note, I am curious if anyone on this list has circumstances in which they would both put themselves at various levels of risk of dying, that they feel would be philosophically defensible. Obviously this is highly contextual but I would be interested just the same.
Yes, yes–Hell yes! B) I can think of plenty of such circumstances. Life requires such risks, and a full life often entails high risk. “Survival” in a concentration camp would be dying a slow death, even if it wasn’t a death camp. I’d be right there with you trying to escape. For other dramatizations of this principle, see Atlas Shrugged. There are several scenarios in which I believe Ayn Rand was attempting to illustrate this point. I think this statement from the novel’s hero in response to the villains’ morality sums it up [Edit: bold added for emphasis]:
"You seek escape from pain. We seek the achievement of happiness. You exist for the sake of avoiding punishment. We exist for the sake of earning rewards. Threats will not make us function; fear is not our incentive. It is not death that we wish to avoid, but life that we wish to live.
“You, who have lost the concept of the difference, you who claim that fear and joy are incentives of equal power—and secretly add that fear is the more ‘practical’—you do not wish to live, and only fear of death still holds you to the existence you have damned. You dart in panic through the trap of your days, looking for the exit you have closed, running from a pursuer you dare not name to a terror you dare not acknowledge, and the greater your terror the greater your dread of the only act that could save you: thinking. The purpose of your struggle is not to know, not to grasp or name or hear the thing I shall now state to your hearing: that yours is the Morality of Death.” [Atlas Shrugged, Part Three / Chapter VII, <as_942>]
For further clarification of AR’s position on risk in Atlas Shrugged, there is also this excerpt from the “Notes While Writing” chapter from Journals of Ayn Rand:
"February 15, 1947
Note: Creators never act with pain as their motive. This is illustrated by Dagny and Rearden. This is the principle behind the parasite’s accusation that people like Dagny and Rearden “have no feelings.” They feel—and much more profoundly than any lesser person or whining parasite (the parasites neither think nor feel)—but they are not run by their feelings, and they are not afraid of pain. Nothing they do is ever motivated by a desire to avoid pain or to be protected against it; they act on the motive of happiness, on the desire to get what they want, at any cost, even if pain is part of the cost.
They suffer more than any parasite could ever bear or imagine (except that it’s a different form of suffering, it’s clean, it doesn’t go all the way down nor damn the universe), but they know how to stand pain, and they don’t care too much about it, they don’t actually give it any thought, they don’t include it in their calculations or consideration of cost, they just meet it when it comes, stand it, brush it aside and then go on—and they win. They win over all pain, to the happiness which they want and which they are.
The parasites are motivated by pain. They are the motors and the embodiments of pain. The parasites, in effect, say to the creators as an accusation, as a statement of damning sin and guilt: “But you don’t suffer—you’re not unhappy—you’ve never been unhappy.”
This is the difference between considering suffering an accident, a temporary exception—and suffering as a basic principle, a major concern, a main motive, suffering as the norm and the nature of the universe. <jrnl_554>"
I find it very informative to compare this attitude in Objectivism to other ethical systems, such as Hedonism, in which avoidance of pain is either viewed as equivalent to seeking happiness, or of a relatively notable importance. Similarly, “Survivalism” as has been mentioned could be described as a morality which seeks to avoid death. Objectivism seeks to gain life-- ie, life qua man, flourishing, or eudaimonia as the Greeks would have called it. So (in my understanding) it doesn’t concern itself with avoiding death directly, but only as a consequence of pursuing and achieving life.
"You seek escape from pain. We seek the achievement of happiness. You exist for the sake of avoiding punishment. We exist for the sake of earning rewards. Threats will not make us function; fear is not our incentive. It is not death that we wish to avoid, but life that we wish to live.
Thanks Bold Standard. I had not thought to connect it to “escape from pain” thing. That makes perfect sense to me now. Just what I was looking for. It was one of those things that seemed right intuitively but that I had trouble defending in conversation. Thanks again.
My best regards,
Gordon
What are some examples of values that an Objectivist adopts?
Do you mean philosophical values or personal values?
My highest philosophical values are reason, purpose, and self-esteem.
My highest personal values are my particular beloved work (my central purpose in life), my particular friends, and my particular favorite leisure activity.
What about you?