Why Live In The First Place?

Ethics
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The only thing it has to do with it is that the entire ethics assumes one has already made this choice; if someone were to choose the other way, and never come into focus, never take any volitional action, then the entire field of morality would be irrelevant to him.

So, the entire Objectivist ethics assumes that one has already made the choice for life? If that is correct, then there is no need for Objectivist ethics in the first place. Which is obviously not the case.

The only thing Objectivist ethics assumes, in this context, is that one is living. It does not assume that one has chosen life, which can only be done on a rational level; and it must be done because at this point, man relies on his rational faculty for survival.

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So, the entire Objectivist ethics assumes that one has already made the choice for life? If that is correct, then there is no need for Objectivist ethics in the first place. Which is obviously not the case.

That is not obviously the case.

Because men do choose life, they need a morality to guide their actions. The Objectivist ethics is the correct morality for one who has chosen life.

The only thing Objectivist ethics assumes, in this context, is that one is living. It does not assume that one has chosen life, which can only be done on a rational level; and it must be done because at this point, man relies on his rational faculty for survival.

Chosing life is chosing to use the conceptual (rational) level of consciousness, therefore the actual choosing must occur before rational thought is possible. Using reason presupposes being in focus, which presupposes having made the fundamental choice. Any attempt to use reason to justify the choice involves a logical fallacy–it begs the question, i.e. it presupposes that which it is trying to prove, i.e. it assumes already having chosen to live in an attempt to rationally justify the choice to live. In effect, having chosen to live is the context of the Objectivist ethics. That is why, time and time again, you see a phrase along the lines of: “If one wishes to live, then…”

Which part of the above paragraph do you reject and why?

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Should I or shouldn’t I value?

This question is even more basic than, “should I live or not?” But words like should and shouldn’t presuppose a value standard. You simply cannot answer a question that involves a value judgment without a value standard. It’s impossible.

That was my point. Before you choose life as a standard, there is no should, because there is no standard.

That choice defines the basis of your morality, but it is itself made before such standards could possibly be applied. And by now I actually think that’s a good thing. It gives you tremendous freedom. It gives you the freedom to choose what to live for.

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So, the entire Objectivist ethics assumes that one has already made the choice for life? If that is correct, then there is no need for Objectivist ethics in the first place. Which is obviously not the case.

Could you explain that?

In a previous post, you speak of a child choosing life automatically. Indeed, all religious people and other non-Objectivists also choose to be alive, and many consider suicide a sin. So, the choice to stay alive does not give you any automatic principles.

The difference is this: The religious person drills down to the root of his existence and finds insufficient real philosophical reason for being alive. The religious person might enjoy life, his work, his family, good food and so on. However, when he thinks about it in philosophical terms, he finds that he has to step back, outside reality, imagine a God and imagine that God must have created him for some purpose.

Philosophically, the Objectivist, looking for the meaning of life stops at the real choice. So, the Objectivist is not saying: “Ah! That is the choice I explicitly made”, but "that is the fundamental choice in reality – whether it is made implicitly or explicitly. That is the starting point. The choice to live is not an ethical choice, but rather “pre-ethics”. The philosopher, finding that life is the basic alternative, asks: well, now what? How should I live? Ethics is the post-“life-choice” exploration to discover the most practical way for a human to live in the fullest sense of enjoying life.

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So you would morally judge the non-volitional actions of living beings such as bacteria, plants, fish, dogs, apes, and children who have not yet started to use their conceptual faculty?

Perhaps I don’t understand the terms. We are using moral in the sense that it involves a choice and knowledge of the implications. But there is a value standard by which we can judge organisms and humans who have not yet come to fully understand morality, and it is the same standard.

Maybe my confusion comes from not understanding the difference between ethics and morality. Is morality applied to all life, whereas ethics is a specialized form of morality that is applied only to volitional beings? If that is the case, then I would judge the organisms you listed morally, but not ethically. I would only judge humans ethically when they fully understand morality.

And now we’re back to begging the question. A “no” answer does involve a contradiction, but using that to validate the life-standard presupposes that you are already acting on the life standard, since the only reason to avoid a contradiction is if one chooses to live. Remember, reason is a value according to some existing standard–the life-standard.

Edit to add: To nip any further question-begging attempts to rationally justify choosing to live, I’ll point out that any rational justification involves the use of reason, which assumes that one already holds life as the standard of value. Therefore, the initial choice cannot involve an act of reason, and must be arbitrary. Any rational justification for the choice must be done in hindsight, just as we can only know that the intial choice was arbitrary in hindsight.

At this point, I’m a little confused. Are we talking about the choice of whether or not to live, or the choice to set the focus of your mind for the first time? Regarding the later choice, I’d be willing to wager that a human being has to focus at some level, as a simple fact of its identity.

Isn’t the choice to focus really the choice of how much to focus, and Isn’t the choice to not focus completely impossible short of suicide?

That was my point. Before you choose life as a standard, there is no should, because there is no standard.

That choice defines the basis of your morality, but it is itself made before such standards could possibly be applied. And by now I actually think that’s a good thing. It gives you tremendous freedom. It gives you the freedom to choose what to live for.

Life as the moral standard exists, whether or not it is acknowledged or chosen. The moment life is created, the standard has been imposed. Perhaps one needs to accept a standard before one’s choices can be considered on an ethical level?

If I am using any terms incorrectly, I’d appreciate it if someone formally defined them in this thread, or linked me to another thread that offers a definition.

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Life as the moral standard exists, whether or not it is acknowledged or chosen.

No. A moral standard has to be accepted. Life may exist apart from your acceptance, but it is not a moral standard automatically, because that acceptance has to be made by choice by a concious being. The laws of reality may exist apart from your acceptance, yes, but if that has any relevance to you is based on your pre-moral choice to value life in the first place.

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Perhaps I don’t understand the terms. We are using moral in the sense that it involves a choice and knowledge of the implications. But there is a value standard by which we can judge organisms and humans who have not yet come to fully understand morality, and it is the same standard.

Yes, there is a value standard to judge those people. As I have explained before, taking any volitional action whatsoever implicitly supposes the life standard (for man). People may attempt to act on another standard, when they do this, they are holding two contradictory premises.

Maybe my confusion comes from not understanding the difference between ethics and morality. Is morality applied to all life, whereas ethics is a specialized form of morality that is applied only to volitional beings?

Personally, I use the terms interchangeably, depending on which sounds best in the sentence. Both are applicable only to volitional life.

Isn’t the choice to focus really the choice of how much to focus, and Isn’t the choice to not focus completely impossible short of suicide?

I think that literally everyone does focus, to some degree, at some point. But that doesn’t change the fact that it happens volitionally. I haven’t observed a great deal of children, but I would wager that not all of them start using the conceptual level of consciousness at the same age–in fact I’m sure of it. There are some weirdoes who don’t start to talk until four or five, and as far as I know, that’s the first real sign of conceptual activity.

Then, after that first time, the child has adopted life as the standard–implicitly. The big point is, that before that, they had no standard whatsoever, so they couldn’t have judged by any means that it was good to do so. Invariably, the question of “good” leads back to: Good? By what standard? And before deciding to think, they have none.

I have been equating the choice to live, the choice to think, and volitional action, which may be confusing. I want to emphasize that, for man, they are all the exact same thing. The difference is one of perspective.

Life as the moral standard exists, whether or not it is acknowledged or chosen. The moment life is created, the standard has been imposed. Perhaps one needs to accept a standard before one’s choices can be considered on an ethical level?

Well, of course it exists. If it didn’t, nobody could adopt it. But that doesn’t mean that everyone has to adopt it, even though they do.

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I don’t think it’s possible for a child, even a young adolescent, to really accept “life is the standard” in explicit terms. A good young person would have a mix of moral premises that are something along the following lines:

  • Life is fun
  • Knowledge/learning is fun
  • Creating is fun
  • If one works, one can earn money to buy lots of good stuff
  • Hurting others is bad
  • … etc.

Then, as the young person begins to understand philosophy, they are struck by this basic conflict: if life is fun and happiness is what I life for, then why should I not be doing drugs, robbing banks, etc. What is wrong with hedonism?

Objectivism says: hedonism is impractical.

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Then, as the young person begins to understand philosophy, they are struck by this basic conflict: if life is fun and happiness is what I life for, then why should I not be doing drugs, robbing banks, etc. What is wrong with hedonism?

And some people (a great many) never even reach that point.

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As far as I understand the Objectivist Ethics, the choice to live is the fundamental choice. And once you accepted life as the ultimate standard, you have a measuring stick which helps you make choices in your life.

But all this seems to lack a foundation, because on which grounds do you make the choice to live in the first place? I value life because I just happen to value it, seems to be the answer. I don’t feel right about that, because it makes the very basis of ethics, valuing life at all, subjective.

First, in the interest of being 100% forthcoming, I am not what you would classify as an Objectivist, so my answer will probably not fully coincide with what the established philosophy states. I guess you could qualify my philosophy as a mish-mash of Objectivism, Thomism, and the various Aristotilean philosophers of the enlightenment. The primary thing that would disqualify me as an Objectivist is my different view of metaphysics, which are more in line with Aristotle’s philosophy than Ayn Rand’s (though I have accepted Ayn Rand’s epistemological interpretation of the nature of a metaphysical object (such as the “redness” of the color red)." Consequently, I am merely offering my opinion into the cougher of intellectual discussion, though it is obviously different from what others here will say.

The nature of man is obviously separate from that of any other object, that is the “law of identity”. So in order to begin analyzing the choice “to live”, we must understand “who” or “what” life we are speaking of. Both Objectivism and Aristotle agree man is an animal whose distinct feature is one possessing a rational faculty, ergo the ability to make choices based on analysis and synthesis. Implied in man’s metaphysical existence is the propensity to think, and his free will begins with the ability to either think or not (Aquinas referred to it as Volition vs. Nolition).

However, in order for man to think, he must be alive. But in order for man to choose whether to live or die, he must first contemplate the choice, ergo he must think. Essentially the 2 go hand in hand, and the only way that they can come into conflict is if man does what is against his nature, not think. Since free will (in the words of Aquinas) is dependent upon a person being of a rational mind, it is surrendered when one does not think. This also means that the minute that you believe yourself not to be free, your thought process reverses itself, the ultimate consequence being the end of your humanity.

I have always believed that there is a strong belief between the despair of feeling determined and life thus being something you have no control over and the confusion that comes with not understanding the strong link that exists between thought and choice. When you have the power of moral clarity that comes with knowing yourself and why you desire to make the choices you make, despair is not something that ever enters into your thought process, because such things are dependent upon confusion.

In logical terms this would state the following.

  1. Every moral choice is dependent upon thought.

  2. Every thought implies a choice.

  3. The choice to live is dependent upon your thoughts on life.

  4. Your thoughts on life are dependent on the fact that you are alive.

Ultimately one of these 2 phenomena (choice and life) are determined by thought. Thought determines whether you have choice, and choice determines whether you will live to continue to think or to die and thus not to think again (and if you are an Atheist, this implies an end to your existence).

As a person who does believe in an afterlife, my speculations on it’s nature are completely dependent upon my perception of material reality, for that is what all abstractions are dependent upon. Any concept of the immortal soul or God begins with individual thought, though obviously if both exist they would be independent of my thoughts, which mean that my speculation could be at error. But I do think that our choices are a determining factor of how such an existence would be for the soul.

P.S. - If you don’t buy this afterlife stuff, feel free to disregard my last paragraph. :smiley:

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Then, as the young person begins to understand philosophy, they are struck by this basic conflict: if life is fun and happiness is what I life for, then why should I not be doing drugs, robbing banks, etc. What is wrong with hedonism?

And some people (a great many) never even reach that point.

Yes. I should have clarified, that I was talking about an ideal case.

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The wish to live is as much a part of man’s nature as are his faculty of reason and his capacity to exercise it volitionally. We ALL wish to live. Even the suicide terrorists do: They hope Allah will reward their act with 72 virgins and all the other prequisites of life in Paradise. Even the sick or bereaved person who is about to end his life wishes he could live qua man; he regrets having no better alternative than death. The same goes for the man who chooses to die rather than live as a slave. Even the nihilists who hate life hate life because they wish it were different.

You have no choice about whether you wish to live. What you can choose is whether or not you do what is necessary in order to live.

When you make a choice, you choose between two possible actions. You choose by considering the likely consequences of either action and evaluating them with reference to some standard. In the case of the fundamental choice, the actions you choose between are the use of reason and evasion; the consequence is either your survival or your death; and the standard you use is the wish to live that is part of your nature.

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:slight_smile: The answer is so obvious, Why live/ struggle too? Simply:

BECAUSE I CAN HAVE FUN WHILE LIVING.

By fun I also mean what I want.

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When you make a choice, you choose between two possible actions. You choose by considering the likely consequences of either action and evaluating them with reference to some standard. In the case of the fundamental choice, the actions you choose between are the use of reason and evasion; the consequence is either your survival or your death; and the standard you use is the wish to live that is part of your nature.

Considering the consequences presupposes that one has already made the fundamental choice, so the fundamental choice cannot be made by reference to any standard whatsoever. Any consideration at all is done in hindsight, and it is a consideration of whether or not to continue with the earlier choice.

:slight_smile: The answer is so obvious, Why live/ struggle too? Simply:

BECAUSE I CAN HAVE FUN WHILE LIVING.

By fun I also mean what I want.

Fun is only a value by reference to a standard. You can’t use that as a reason prior to holding a standard. It begs the question, just as every other explanation of why one might choose to live in the first place.

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:slight_smile: The answer is so obvious, Why live/ struggle too? Simply:

BECAUSE I CAN HAVE FUN WHILE LIVING.

By fun I also mean what I want.

So you’re saying that whimsical pleasure of the moment is why we should live? How do you decide between huge amounts of pelasure that results in you living half as long, vs. half as much pleasure and twice the life-span? I think you’ve suggested the proper ethic is “live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse”. Is that a fair summary of your morality? If not, why not?

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I think the best immediate response to the ultimate question: “Why should I choose to live?” is: “Why would you choose NOT to live?”

Think of the countless reasons which could make your life worth choosing over nonexistence: getting your PhD, enjoying a fine Cabernet, making that girl you like laugh, jogging 5 miles, etc. These reasons JUST ARE the responses to “Why should I choose life?” There isn’t some further abstract principle doing the final ethical justification: the concrete, inductively grasped facts of what makes life worth enjoying speak for themselves.

A philosophical validation of why these activities are worth pursuing requires some work, but from an experiential standpoint, the proof is in the pudding. (For instance, I can feel awesome after writing a poem regardless of knowing WHY I feel that way.)

To demand some further principle answering the ultimate question is akin to saying: “I know existence exists. But what proves THAT?” The existence axiom is implicit in perceiving concrete entites. Likewise, the ‘axiom’ of your life’s ultimate worth is implicit in experiencing that which brings you happiness or fulfillment. (Of course, the facts surrounding what activities bring noncontradictory joy and what do not is a complex discussion belonging to another thread.)

Perhaps I’m misinterpreting, but I’m concerned with some of the above posts if they’re claiming that the Objectivist position on the ultimate choice to live is that the choice is arbitrary. “Arbitrary” means “unsupported by good reasons.” If the ultimate choice to live is, in fact, arbitrary, then the nihilist or the typical academic philosopher can get away with asking why one should accept the Objectivist ethics as opposed to something else.

But the ultimate choice to live is not arbitary. For healthy individuals in relatively free societies, there are lots of reasons favoring them to seek/enjoy their lives. Given those reasons, what basis - on balance - would give them better reasons to choose death?

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“Arbitrary” means “unsupported by good reasons.” If the ultimate choice to live is, in fact, arbitrary, then the nihilist or the typical academic philosopher can get away with asking why one should accept the Objectivist ethics as opposed to something else.

The nihilist or the typical academic philosopher cannot get away with asking that, because by asking that question, they are engaging in a conceptual activity which means they have already implicitly chosen to live. There is an alternative to the Objectivist ethics, and that alternative is to lay down, shut one’s mouth, turn off ones mind and let oneself die (remember what happened on Miranda in Serenity?)

Now, for a person who has already chosen life, that seems grotesque. And it is grotesque–by reference to the life standard. A person who has chosen the life standard has values he can use to make this decision, such as all the ones you named, all of which are values according to a standard. One cannot have concepts of “good” or “better” or “preferable” prior to holding a standard of value, so any reference to value judgment cannot play into the intial decision.

Most people (the vast majority) needn’t worry about how the fundamental decision is made, whether it is arbitrary or according to a standard, because it’s largely unimportant in regard to their own lives–they have already chosen, and now have a standard that tells them life is better. The only people who need to worry about this question are those with an interest in technical philosophy; it’s definitely more of a philosophy for Ragnar thing than philosophy for Reardan.

That said, I keep seeing the same basic (fallacious) counter-position over and over, so unless I see something truly new, like a reason for choosing one way or the other that does not appeal to some standard of value, I’ve said everything I have to say here.

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Now, for a person who has already chosen life, that seems grotesque. And it is grotesque–by reference to the life standard. A person who has chosen the life standard […]

You don’t choose the “life standard.” You have it. It is a part of your nature: As a living organism, your goal is to survive.

You can choose to identify and act on this fact, or you can choose to evade it and pretend that you are pursuing some other goal, or no goal at all. But you cannot alter the fact that you are a living organism and that life is a process of self-generated, self-sustaining action.

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You don’t choose the “life standard.” You have it. It is a part of your nature: As a living organism, your goal is to survive.

You can choose to identify and act on this fact, or you can choose to evade it and pretend that you are pursuing some other goal, or no goal at all. But you cannot alter the fact that you are a living organism and that life is a process of self-generated, self-sustaining action.

Thank you for posting something new, instead of the same exact argument that has been popping up repeatedly in this thread. (I see that you posted it once before and I missed it.) :thumbsup:

It is interesting to think of it that way, but I disagree. I think it’s imprecise. The statement “as a living organism, your goal is to survive,” while true for most organism, is not universally true. There are some whose goal is simply to reproduce, take the praying mantis, for example, for whom reproduction is suicide. There are probably others, but even one counterexample disqualifies a universal.

Also, in the case of other organisms whose goal actually is to survive, that’s not entirely the same thing as it means for a human to have a life-standard. For them, it is mere physical survival. For us, it is having a happy life, a life that is proper to a rational animal. For us, it is a goal dependent on the conceptual faculty.

Since, for man, it is dependent on the conceptual faculty, having that goal depends on using the conceptual faculty. Prior to using it, there is no goal. As you know, Objectivism holds that the conceptual faculty is used by choice. And, as I said earlier, as soon as one makes that choice (which, to the best of my knowledge, we all do, to some degree), one also adopts life as the standard of value.

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as soon as one makes that choice (which, to the best of my knowledge, we all do, to some degree)

If we all do it, could it be that it is not a choice at all? :wink:

IMO, the metaphysically given processes of a child’s development prompt all men to begin to think. (This is why, for example, even the dumbest people have been able to learn to speak.) It is the continuation of thought that is up to the individual’s choice.