My understand is that the philosophy of rational self-interest, as forwarded by the Objectivists, contains a moral system founded first on the pursuit of maintaining a high degree of “conceptual” volitional consciousness and freedom as a human being. Anything that robs one’s life or robs one’s essential humanity is opposed to that value. The Objectivist favor of capitalism stems from a belief that capitalism is a system that does much to preserve this value (the essential freedom and humanity of individuals). Objectivists are classical libertarians, but not Libertarians (and in fact make much of their opposition to that party).
I believe that an Objectivist would welcome the challenges posed in the post above, but might not consider them a strong challenge to his beliefs simply because they aren’t very realistic scenarios. Objectivists generally feel that ethics need not be crafted to cover every scenario under the sun, but instead act as a general guide to a principled life that upholds the pursuit of freedom and humanity.
“If you’re genuinely selfish, then why do you want me to be selfish too? Doesn’t that make you concerned for my welfare? Shouldn’t you be trying to persuade me to be more altruistic, so you can exploit me?”
In the long run, exploiting others seems likely to end up a dead end road. It might be rational and rewarding in the short term, but ultimately it is destructive. Furthermore, it seems to be a violation of principle. If I believe in my own freedom and that I would not want to be misled, I should not attempt to rob the freedom or mislead others without significant compelling reason. Otherwise, I’m setting one standard for my own rights and another for others. By my example, then, there would be no objective ethical standard for me to object against someone attempting to mislead or exploit me. After all, if I set a subjective standard for behavior why shouldn’t they? But this isn’t rigorous logic and smacks of a rationalization as referenced here:
“But what I really want to know is this: Did you start out by thinking that you wanted to be selfish, and then decide this was the most selfish thing you could possibly do? Or did you start out by wanting to convert others to selfishness, then look for ways to rationalize that as self-benefiting?”
The problem seems to be more general: argument with the intent of converting. That intent alone seems to cast suspicion on the proceedings. A rational person would, it seems to me, be willing to lay his arguments on the table for review and criticism and discussion. If, at some point in the future, others agree they are rational arguments and adopt them as beliefs then everyone should be happy because the objectives of truth and learning have been fulfilled. But “converting” demands immediate capitulation to the point of discussion. No longer is the discussion about the sharing of ideas: reward motivators have entered the room.
Self-edification that one’s own view has been adopted by another seems to be a reward motive. Gratification that a challenge has been overcome seems to be a reward motive. Those motives soil the discussion.
And the one said, “You may be right about that last part,” so I marked him down as intelligent.
The man is intelligent, not because he agreed with Eli’s point, but because he was reviewing his beliefs in light of new information. His motive was not (at least not entirely) conversion, but genuine debate and learning.
“Intelligence is a dynamic system that takes in information about the world, abstracts regularities from that information, stores it in memories, and uses it knowledge about the world to form goals, make plans and implement them.”
The speaker is doing just that. He might later choose to reject the new information, but at this time he is indicating that the new information is being evaluated.
My understand is that the philosophy of rational self-interest, as forwarded by the Objectivists, contains a moral system founded first on the pursuit of maintaining a high degree of “conceptual” volitional consciousness and freedom as a human being. Anything that robs one’s life or robs one’s essential humanity is opposed to that value. The Objectivist favor of capitalism stems from a belief that capitalism is a system that does much to preserve this value (the essential freedom and humanity of individuals). Objectivists are classical libertarians, but not Libertarians (and in fact make much of their opposition to that party).
I believe that an Objectivist would welcome the challenges posed in the post above, but might not consider them a strong challenge to his beliefs simply because they aren’t very realistic scenarios. Objectivists generally feel that ethics need not be crafted to cover every scenario under the sun, but instead act as a general guide to a principled life that upholds the pursuit of freedom and humanity.
In the long run, exploiting others seems likely to end up a dead end road. It might be rational and rewarding in the short term, but ultimately it is destructive. Furthermore, it seems to be a violation of principle. If I believe in my own freedom and that I would not want to be misled, I should not attempt to rob the freedom or mislead others without significant compelling reason. Otherwise, I’m setting one standard for my own rights and another for others. By my example, then, there would be no objective ethical standard for me to object against someone attempting to mislead or exploit me. After all, if I set a subjective standard for behavior why shouldn’t they? But this isn’t rigorous logic and smacks of a rationalization as referenced here:
The problem seems to be more general: argument with the intent of converting. That intent alone seems to cast suspicion on the proceedings. A rational person would, it seems to me, be willing to lay his arguments on the table for review and criticism and discussion. If, at some point in the future, others agree they are rational arguments and adopt them as beliefs then everyone should be happy because the objectives of truth and learning have been fulfilled. But “converting” demands immediate capitulation to the point of discussion. No longer is the discussion about the sharing of ideas: reward motivators have entered the room.
Self-edification that one’s own view has been adopted by another seems to be a reward motive. Gratification that a challenge has been overcome seems to be a reward motive. Those motives soil the discussion.
The man is intelligent, not because he agreed with Eli’s point, but because he was reviewing his beliefs in light of new information. His motive was not (at least not entirely) conversion, but genuine debate and learning.
“Intelligence is a dynamic system that takes in information about the world, abstracts regularities from that information, stores it in memories, and uses it knowledge about the world to form goals, make plans and implement them.”
The speaker is doing just that. He might later choose to reject the new information, but at this time he is indicating that the new information is being evaluated.