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General Discussion
Started by Mr Squiggle at 04-30-2007 11:47 AM. Topic has 19 replies.
  
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 04-30-2007, 11:47 AM
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Mr Squiggle
Joined on 04-04-2007
Posts 35
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Nick, your argument with DonQuixote99 seems familiar to me somehow. I wonder why that is...? I think it is very clear that he/she is not trying to argue with you, but is trying to have a fair discussion with the intention of learning something. Quit trying to 'win' every discussion - it is tiring for other people. If their posts don't live up to your standard, then just don't reply.
DonQuixote99 I agree with you that the premise is that men should want to be rational egoists. However, Rand puts a lot of reason into arriving at that premise. The Virtue of Selfishness makes it a bit clearer than Galt's speach does.
Another spin on this argument is that the best way for man to 'feel' good as a general rule (i.e. over the course of a lifetime) is to acomplish things whilst maintaining integrity. Achieving something without integrity (i.e. getting undeserved rewards) does not make a man feel good in the long run. A man that lives his live getting the undeserved may end up with just as many material rewards as any other man, but it won't have been achieved with integrity. An egoist would reject such rewards because they are not satisfying.
As I said, you need to refer to the Virtue of Selfishness for a full discourse on why it is better for man to achieve things through integrity - I don't have the time or the talent to paraphrase Rand here! One view is that if you look at human actions on a large scale, then acting with integrity will always have better results and allow human beings to flourish. Acting without integrity will have the opposite effect.
The key is ultimately that an egoist acts for selfish reasons. Only an egoist, acting with integrity, can be really independent of other people - he makes his own achievements, and does not depend on anyone else for them. At the other end of the scale, someone that takes undeserved rewards will always be dependent on other people. He can't get any rewards without other people providing them so that he can take them. Similarly he can't get satisfaction or moral justification without other people giving it to him.
Given that, self sufficiency, both in material matters, and in matters of morality and integrity, is always in the best interests of an individual, and dependency is not in the best interest of an individual, the truly selfish man will act with integrity.
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04-30-2007, 7:53 PM
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NickOtani
Joined on 04-21-2006
Posts 323
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Listen, Mr. Squiggle, if you or anyone else finds my posts tiring, then just don't relpy.
bis bald,
Nick
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04-30-2007, 8:21 PM
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NickOtani
Joined on 04-21-2006
Posts 323
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I'd like to address the term "real". I agree that if you catch a bus to the finish line, your victory in the race is in one sense not real. But suppose your main aim in the race was to win the prize money, and you succeed in winning the money by cheating? The money in your pocket is real, even though it has been immorally obtained.
Likewise, if a rational egoist decided that becoming rich would transform his life from misery to joy, and knew of a scheme to defraud a large bank of $10m with no risk of getting caught, would our rational egoist take the money?
To put the question in more general terms: would a rational egoist use fraud to obtain something of great value to him? |
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Londoner, most criminals in jail thought their crimes had no risk of getting caught, but let's set that aside for awhile. The rational egoist would not seek dishonest money because he or she would not sanction doing something to others he or she would not want others to do to him or her. It would be hypocritical, and thus irrational, to do so.
The rational egoist would choose to live in a moral community and be moral within it. It would be in his or her rational self-interest to do so. Choosing to live in a situation where one may get stabbed while one sleeps is not rational when it is possible to live in a secure situation. Then, being a predator in a moral community is, as I said before, hypocritical, irrational, advocating doing to others what one wouldn't want others to do to him or her. And, because one's own interests are often intertwined with the interests of others, advancing their self-interests can also be promoting and protecting one's own, and hurting others can often hurt one's self.
And, there is always the risk of getting caught if one is dishonest. It could be devastating. It could bring shame and dishonor to one's name, as it did for Shoeless Joe Jackson when his young fan said, "Say it ain't so." A rational egoist would not risk something which could bring so much pain. Money, by itself, is not better than a qualitative life. Many rich people are unhappy.
There is more to talk about here. It is true that we cannot be responsible for every needy person just because of his or her need, but I can't respect someone who would turn his or her back on a victim he or she could easily help. I don't respect people who walk in on child abuse or rape and keep going, doing nothing, pretending they didn't see anything. We would want someone to help us if we were the victim. Our first obligation is to ourselves and our own, but lending a hand to save a drowning person, when one is on the scene and easily able to do something, is more moral than turning away and allowing evil to happen. If one allows evil to happen when he or she can easily prevent it, then he or she is evil.
bis bald,
Nick
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04-30-2007, 10:35 PM
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DonQuixote99
Joined on 04-28-2007
sw Ohio
Posts 75
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OK, here's the monstrosity again, with a couple of important revisions:
DON QUIXOTE'S PRECIS OF OBJECTIVIST ETHICS*
1. You should be a rational egoist.
2. If you are a rational egoist, you will prefer real accomplishment (and all that implies) to an illusion (anything else).
3. If you do not prefer real accomplishment, you are not a rational egoist. Since you should be a rational egoist, you are therefore immoral.
*Not representative of the thought of NickOtani, who has explicitly repudiated it.
Note that in addition to the attribution and un-attribution, I have eliminated the claim that premise 1. is 'from axioms,' having been assured by two posters that this was an error. I would like to trace the logic from Objectivism's three axioms to premise one, but do not have the materials to do that readily to hand. A project for the future.
Now, Nick, as revised, is it still a monstrosity? All I was really seeking with it is agreement on a foundation we can work from.
Moving along....
| I just said that the rational egoist would prefer the real to the fake, and that hasn’t been refuted yet. All you do is keep questioning something which should be obvious. If one has to choose between the pleasure of winning the race honestly, through one’s own effort, and the pleasure of winning the race by cheating, by taking a bus to the finish line and making people think you won, most rational people will choose the former. We wouldn’t even trust those who would choose the latter because we know they would say anything, cheat, to win. And, think of the shame which would be brought to the person who gets caught. It’s not rational to risk such misery for something one can’t even take pride in, not really winning the race. |
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OK, you are asserting what I call premise 2, above. But that is the premise I'm stuck on, that's where I said we need to 'dig in.' We clearly are talking past each other. Look, what you say is, as you put it, obvious, and I don't question it as far as it goes, but it does not seem to me to go far enough. You don't really mean that what people prefer is a ground for ethics--you undoubtedly reject 'wrong' preferences. So why keep mentioning what people (or most people) prefer? The fact that bad actors won't be trusted, and may suffer scorn, are simply risks a bad actor runs. The risks will vary in different situations, and may be low enough to be 'acceptable,' in a rational rask/benefit calculation. So these risks cannot be grounds for ethics that apply regardless of whether one can 'get away with it' or not. What we need, in my opinion, is not reasons a rational egoist might want to be good, but reasons why he should be good. For example, let us say a rational egoist owns a factory, and encounters adverse supply cost conditions. Unfortunately, he has already signed a contract that obligates him to sell a full year of his factory's output at what will now be a severe loss. Sticking to the contract will ruin him. His less-than-principled attorney assures him that with bad-faith legal maneuvers thay can delay and evade filling the orders until the customer will have to cancel the contract. Should our rational egoist do the 'right' thing and loose his factory, the work of his lifetime? Or should he do the 'wrong' thing and preserve it?
The other points I raised and you commented on were unsuccessful attempts on my part to communicate and illuminate aspects of these issues, and I'll call them moot at this point. I won't belabor them further for now, though I do not necessairily concede agreement with the positions you have put forward. The main issue is addressed above. I will concede one thing--the issue was obsfucated by my introducing the term "sociopath" at one point. We are talking about people of unimpaired rational faculties, so it was an error on my part to use that description as I did.
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05-01-2007, 12:02 AM
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NickOtani
Joined on 04-21-2006
Posts 323
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| OK, you are asserting what I call premise 2, above. But that is the premise I'm stuck on, that's where I said we need to 'dig in.' We clearly are talking past each other. Look, what you say is, as you put it, obvious, and I don't question it as far as it goes, but it does not seem to me to go far enough. You don't really mean that what people prefer is a ground for ethics--you undoubtedly reject 'wrong' preferences. So why keep mentioning what people (or most people) prefer? |
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Egoism is doing what one prefers, or what is in one’s self-interest, or what one finds pleasurable, and yes, it is a ground for ethics. It is hedonism. Utilitarianism is hedonistically driven. Rational egoism is just utilitarianism applied to the individual rather than the greatest number. It’s the greatest good for the individual. And, if we include Mill’s criteria of quality to measure pleasures, rational people would prefer the qualitative pleasures to the quantitative ones. In other words, a rational egoist would prefer to be a human, with all the problems of being a human, than a pig who seems satisfied wallowing in the mud. He’d rather be a dis-satisfied Socrates, than a satisfied fool. And, since honor can also be considered a qualitative pleasure, the rational egoist would prefer it also to material goods.
| The fact that bad actors won't be trusted, and may suffer scorn, are simply risks a bad actor runs. The risks will vary in different situations, and may be low enough to be 'acceptable,' in a rational rask/benefit calculation. So these risks cannot be grounds for ethics that apply regardless of whether one can 'get away with it' or not. What we need, in my opinion, is not reasons a rational egoist might want to be good, but reasons why he should be good. |
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He should be good because it will be more pleasurable for him to be so, on a task/benefit calculation. In the prisoner’s dilemma, being free with no risk is preferable to being free with risk, however small.
| For example, let us say a rational egoist owns a factory, and encounters adverse supply cost conditions. Unfortunately, he has already signed a contract that obligates him to sell a full year of his factory's output at what will now be a severe loss. Sticking to the contract will ruin him. His less-than-principled attorney assures him that with bad-faith legal maneuvers thay can delay and evade filling the orders until the customer will have to cancel the contract. Should our rational egoist do the 'right' thing and loose his factory, the work of his lifetime? Or should he do the 'wrong' thing and preserve it? |
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His integrity and honor is also something he worked on for his lifetime. He has to decide which is more important and what kind of person he would want to be. He might also put himself in his customer’s shoes and wonder if he would like to have the bad-faith legal maneuvers done on him.
Anyway, as I told Londoner, the ethics of emergencies are not the ethics of a philosophy of life.
Bis bald,
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The Atlas... » Ayn Rand's Idea... » General Discuss... » Re: Objection on Ethics
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