Philosophy Now Forum

if the criterion for the moral rightness or wrongness of an action is its consonance with a (supposed) feature of human nature, then selfish and violent actions are morally justifiable - if selfishness and violence are inherent to human nature. I assume you accept that conclusion from your argument.


if selfishness and violence are inherent to human nature


Self-interest, to wish to further one's self, seems to be a common feature of all men and is not synonymous with predation. A self-interested man doesn't steal or enslave, he self-relies, negotiates and transacts.

The selfish man is not immoral simply because he wants, but because his acts enact an price on the unwilling. He's wrong, and he's wrong for the same reason the slaver is wrong.


A man with violent tendencies is not immoral simply because he finds violence easy, nor is he immoral if he self-defends or defends others. His immorality arises he when offends against another. He's wrong, and he's wrong for the same reason the slaver is wrong.

Here's the thing: all men, by nature, self-own but not all men are selfish or violent. To be one's own is a feature of every man, it's his nature; to be greedy or overly aggressive is the burden of only some men.

RCSaunders wrote: ↑Thu Feb 20, 2020 6:04 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Feb 18, 2020 6:20 pm You misunderstand. "Moral duty" simply means "obligation to act on a moral imperative." ...

Every moral principle has an imperative, a duty associated with it. If, for example, murder is wrong, then it means that we all have a duty not to murder. If theft is wrong, then we have a duty not to steal. So don't tee off on the word "duty." It's automatic, in ethics. It has nothing to do with what you talked about.

RCSaunders wrote: ↑Tue Feb 18, 2020 6:06 pm That is still wrong. There is no such imposed obligation as duty.

Sorry, RC. You're still misunderstanding. I think you're reacting to a colloquial understanding of the word "duty," and not realizing I'm using the philosophical term precisely there.

Maybe we can talk about "moral obligation" instead. Every ethical imperative implies (rightly or wrongly) that the recipient is to consider himself morally obligated to do the good, not the bad. That's maybe the simplest way of putting it. We can argue over whether the moral obligation in each case is fair, but we can't really argue that it is not implied.

So, for example, "Murder is wrong," is a statement that implies, "You should not murder," or "You have a moral obligation not to instigate or participate in a murder."

There is no such obligation.

I'm not arguing whether or not it is legitimate. I'm just saying it's implicit in every ethical judgment. That is, unless we actually were to suppose that somebody who says, for example, "Murder is bad" meant to recommend murder to us. But I don't think that's what normal people intend. Normally, they mean "You ought not to murder." And that implies a duty, an "ought" or "ought not" is entailed in their belief and in our agreement with it.

By the way, the original meaning of "ought" is "owe it." As in, "You 'owe it' not to murder." That's obligation. That's duty, legitimate or not.

One kind of knowledge required for making right choices is the knowledge of what is good and bad for the kind of being a human is,

I absolutely agree.

So exactly what is this "knowledge" that we all "require"? What do we "know" about what a human being is?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Feb 16, 2020 10:17 pm

Believing happiness is some kind of emotional feeling is the shallow view of the hedonist.

I agree. But it is not only capable of being misunderstood to be the kind of "dependent emotion" I was just talking about, but the use of the word so generally IS that, that there's almost no chance that if you use it you will be understood aright at all.

That's why I'm glad you filled out your definition as follows:

Happiness is the total psychological state of the individual that knows he is living a life proper and fitting to a human being, in total agreement with the requirements of his human nature and the nature of reality, that he is living his life to the fullest possible, being and achieving all he possibly can. There is a feeling that results from that consciousness, a feeling of achievement, exultation, integrity, and joy derived from one's own virtue and the knowledge that all one is and all one enjoys is his because he has produced it. With or without the feeling, however, it is that kind of successful life that is happiness and all that makes life worth living.

This is not "happiness," per se,

The happiness I described is the only happiness there is

Not at all. Plenty of people have a much more frivolous definition of "happiness," and they think it's an emotion. You and I disagree with them, but we can't say they have the same definition we do.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Feb 16, 2020 10:17 pm So could you explain to me what a "happy and successful" life would look like, in very concrete terms? Could you maybe tell me somebody who has lived the kind of life you are advocating we should live...like Socrates, or Ghandi, or Bill Gates, or whomever?

Probably not. I don't see how I can describe a successful life to someone who does not know the difference between the success of a doctor and a torturer.

Well, personally, I do. But I'm not everyone. And I'm not at all sure, RC, that my personal definition of "success" is quite the same as yours. In fact, I'd be very surprised to find it out, if they were identical.

So that means we need to establish more than that person X has been "successful." Because between the doctor and the torturer are many, many gradations of "success"; and there's no universal agreement on what each is.

A, "concrete," example of a, "happy successful life," would unlikely be any you have suggested.

Well, then, you can see that we have a disagreement with an awful lot of people. Many people would call Socrates "great," and attribute to him a truly noble life of pursuing wisdom. Many would call Ghandi great, maybe for his work in the independence of India or for his ethical thought. And people who are technologists, or perhaps who want to be wealthy, would surely hold up somebody like a Bill Gates as a gold standard of "success" in their endeavours.

So this raises the question, how do you explain what you mean by "a happy successful life" to someone who thinks one of the people I suggested if a very good example of that?

I know and have known many individuals who, as far as I know, are or were totally happy and successful, but it is not possible to make such a judgement about others absolutely, and I think it is wrong to do so.

I think that's pretty much self-evidently untrue.

In the first place, what do you mean by "wrong" there? It's not immoral, surely. And there's no guarantee their assessment is going to be incorrect, so it's not "wrong" in that sense either, necessarily. Moreover, any one of us who wants to make his/her own life "happy and successful" is going to have to hold some personal conception of what that's going to look like when he/she gets there...so I think it's obvious it's not "wrong" for him/her to frame one.

There is one thing I do know, no two successful individuals will have very similar lives except in the principles they live by. All the successful individuals I have known have lived very different lives.

That's no problem at all.

You say you recognize them as "successful." So it's clear that you have some means for doing so. All I'm asking is, what are those means you are using, when you place a new individual in your category of "successful individuals"?

Some observations I will make is that some of the most successful were successful almost their entire lives, some got their acts together rather late in life, all were totally self-supporting, most are wealthy, and some are extremely wealthy.

Okay, so there are some of your criteria.

They were something (you don't say exactly what, except this undefined word "succsessful" again) for a long time. But at the same time, you say they only really "got it together" at the end of life? But they're self-supporting, wealthy, and perhaps extremely so...

What else?

What is a human being? A human being is a volition, rational, intellectual being, the only such beings in this world.

Well, yeah...but volition can pretty obviously be used for many bad things, as well as good ones. I doubt you'll hold Hitler or Stalin up as examples of "successful" people, though both had plenty of "volition."

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Feb 14, 2020 5:35 pm The biological definition can't be what you have in mind, then. What is a fully-actualized human being in the sense you want us to be more individualistic to become? [Emphasis mine.]

You've made an unwarranted assumption which is quite telling. I do not want others to be or do anything.[/quote]
Well, please don't make a frivolous distractor out of one word-choice here, RC. I'm not saying you are being in the least demanding or autocratic. I'm asking you what criteria you use to know what a "happy and successful" person is.

In fact, this seems to be what I'm asking you over and over again, each time in different words.

So let me stop there, and see what you can do to define "happy and successful," so I can see if I or others should agree with your assessment method.

The only purpose human beings have is the use and enjoyment of their own lives.

Well, Jeffrey Epstein enjoyed his...until the end. So did Jimmy Saville...all the way, apparently. Ghengis Khan probably enjoyed his; he certainly got a lot of his desires. And plenty of others whom the rest of us would surely want to call "immoral" and "bad." Moreover, we would not merely want to say they wasted their lives, but much worse, used them in active creation of evil and victimizing of other human beings.

If the only purpose human beings have is "enjoyment" of their own lives, then would it not obviously be the case that every psychopathic pedophile predator would be living what you would have to call "a good life."

After all, he would certainly be untroubled by the twinges of altruism...

You really believe the sexually disfunctional and those who's lives are controlled by irrational desires and passions, because they have, "pleasure," are enjoying their lives?

Well, if all I had was the criterion you gave me "enjoy your own life," then I would HAVE to. I'm not inclined to, though.

So I'm asking you to clear that up for me. Or else, there's no way a rational person is going to be able to agree with your claim without embracing guys like Epstein and Saville in their assessment. And I don't think any rational -- or moral -- person is going to be content to do that. Which would then suggest to them that you're simply wrong about that. "Enjoyment" would be no useful criterion at all, then.

Do you really believe Jeffrey Epstein and Jimmy Saville enjoyed their lives?

They seem to have committed their actions over, and over, and over again. And while Epstein died at the end, it was fairly quick and compared to what some people go through, quite painless. Saville got away with it all, we'd have to say. So they sure seemed to "enjoy" what they were doing.

And any psychopath or sociopath can "enjoy" the suffering of others. A rapist, no doubt "enjoys" humiliating and harming victims. When Hitler hung up on meat hooks all the participants in the plot to kill him, he apparently watched the film repeatedly. I have little doubt he was "enjoying" it. And he's far from the lone case of such a thing.

You may denegrate Ayn Rand

I don't. I just disagree with her. I like a few aspects of her ideas, and think a lot of what she says is off. But in all of that, I have absolutely no animus toward her. She had her right to say what she thought, and I have my right to reject it, if it seems irrational or mistaken to me, when I have rational grounds to do so.

Fair enough?

I do not believe, "all men mean well," but I think you do, and I appreciate that.

RC

Likewise, RC.

That's why I am still very interested in figuring out how you identify a "happy and successful" life. Your view matters. I just don't quite know what it is.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Feb 20, 2020 3:03 pm

RCSaunders wrote: ↑Thu Feb 20, 2020 2:24 pm I'm the one that pointed out that the majority of mankind is deluded. Genius is always the exception, that's what makes it genius. Funny, huh?

Well, yeah...but genius is also RARE, which is why the majority of people are more probably right, though there are no guarantees, and although, as per the Bandwagon Fallacy, it is not true that the truth or falsehood of any particular claim can be established on the basis of popularity.

If many people thinking something doesn't make it right -- and that's right, it doesn't -- then as sure as shooting, the fact that only one person believes it doesn't help make any case.

The number of people who believe something has nothing to do with whether or not something is true, unless you are talking about the results of a poll. If eighty percent of people believe the world is flat than it is true that eighty percent of people believe the world is flat. The world is not flat, even if everybody believes it is. If only one person knows the world is not flat, but a sphere, that person is right, even though he is the only person in the world who knows it. He is not right because is in the only one that knows it, he is right because the world is a sphere.

When most of the world believed the world was flat, some individual had to conclude the world was not flat, and would have known that in defiance of the belief of the whole world. Almost all significant new knowledge has come that way. Like it or not, every new discovery in history was made by someone in defiance of what was believed by everyone else at the time, and usually was condemned for that discovery by the masses.

Such discoveries and the geniuses who make them are certainly rare. That's my point.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Feb 20, 2020 3:03 pm But back to the rare geniuses.

To be honest, we've got to give the Collectivists their due...they're not wrong to say that every genius grows up in a particular society, is educated by them, learns his craft by them, and gains his influence through them. Moreover, the science, the art or the activity in which the genius expresses his genius always existed long before the genius himself existed...that, too, was a social product. And when the productions of his genius have their full benefit, it will be not merely in the lifetime of the genius and to himself, but his achievement and legacy will be perpetuated only through other people, through his society.

In all those ways, other people are instrumental in producing the phenomenon of the genius. On every side, he is shaped, supported by, dependent on, and in relation to other people. Admitting this fact does not diminish his genius...but it locates him in a social context that makes his genius possible.

Whenever a new discovery is made all the things you and collectivists say the discoverer owes the discovery to were available to everyone in society at that time, but only the genius that actually made the discovery did the work necessary to make it. Why do you want to minimize that? What do you have against accomplishment, especially when it is an accomplishment no one else has ever made.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Feb 20, 2020 3:03 pm John Galt, mythically, is an architect. But John Galt did not invent architecture. Nor would John Galt build great skyscrapers in which he would live alone. Nor, if Galt were the total story, would Rand be celebrating his mythical genius, because in this sense, Rand herself is one of the members of that society that incubates the John Galts of the world. And her readers are another level of society that is involved in the process of valourizing John Galt.

Well that tells me a lot. John Galt was the hero of Atlas Shrugged and was a design engineer. It was Howard Roark, the hero of The Fountainhead that was the architect.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Feb 20, 2020 3:03 pm Without society, John Galt [Howard Roarke] is nothing.

Do you have any idea how absurd your argument is. Without sick people, Doctors are nothing, without hungry people, farmers are nothing, without a people who need and want things, no producer is anything.

It is interesting that you think Rand valourized or glorified the architect, Howard Roark, but, if you read the book (and if you didn't, you have some chutzpah to be criticizing it) you did not find that Rand ever described Roark as being a hero, she only described the kind of man he was and what he did. Unless you think that kind man doing those kinds of things are heroic, than Rand never valourized Roark.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Feb 20, 2020 3:03 pm So any idea that "the exceptional man" is a complete answer to how history moves along its course, or how civilization develops, is simply not plausible.

Whoever said that? Except for the last 300 years, there was very little human progress and almost all progress was quickly replaced by decadence, because most of history has been dominated by those seeking political power which always suppresses any real advances in culture and knowledge. Every ruler, queen, king, emperor, czar, imam, Kaiser, maharajah, Pharaoh, shah, Pope, shogun, sultan, and religious leader has been a negative influence on human progress.

What I said is that any progress in the human condition is do to individuals, who are exceptional:

In the entire history of the world every advance in civilization, every gain in knowledge, and every improvement in the human condition has come solely through the efforts of independent individualists. They and they alone are the creators, innovators, and discoverers of the world. These men are all there is of positive importance in all of history; all the rest, the tyrants, the dictators, the famines and plagues, earthquakes, floods, the mass of ignorant and superstitious humanity, the crimes and the wars were important only in the negative." [From my article, "Only Individuals," which explains how I know all progress comes only through individual efforts.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Feb 20, 2020 3:03 pm And it runs the danger of leaving many opportunities for the Collectivists to point out giant holes in the theory, like I have above.

But you haven't. You just made all the same specious arguments the leftists make, though none of it actually matters. You and the leftists can stamp you foot and insist that every one is important, and everyone is. Unfortunately most are important in the negative, and most never learned the truth, the producers can live without the consumer, but the consumers cannot live without the producers.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Feb 20, 2020 3:03 pm To advance the case for the importance of the individual, it is thus better not to ignore completely the role of society in making him what he is. By so doing, we disarm the Collectivists of many perspicuous objections that we would otherwise surrender to them.

So this is some kind of social thing for you, a struggle between whoever the "we" is you are a part of, against the collectivists. Why? The collectivists cannot win anything. They can steal for a while from those who have not learned to protect themselves from them, but in the end, they will run out of other people's money, and that will be that.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Feb 20, 2020 3:03 pm Anyway, does anybody actually find Rand's novels readable, let alone plausible?

Somebody apparently reads and appreciated her writing ability:

The Fountainhead became a worldwide success, bringing Rand fame and financial security. In 1943, Rand sold the rights for a film version to Warner Bros. and she returned to Hollywood to write the screenplay. Finishing her work on that screenplay, she was hired by producer Hal B. Wallis as a screenwriter and script-doctor. Her work for Wallis included the screenplays for the Oscar-nominated Love Letters and You Came Along.

In 1991, a survey conducted for the Library of Congress and the Book-of-the-Month Club asked club members what the most influential book in the respondent's life was. Rand's Atlas Shrugged was the second most popular choice, after the Bible. Rand's books continue to be widely sold and read, with over 29 million copies sold as of 2013.

In 1998, Modern Library readers voted Atlas Shrugged the 20th century's finest work of fiction, followed by The Fountainhead in second place, Anthem in seventh, and We the Living eighth; ...

First published in 1957, Atlas Shrugged remained on The New York Times Bestseller List for 21 weeks, peaking at number four. Sales of Atlas Shrugged averaged 74,000 copies per year in the 1980s; 95,300 copies per year in the 1990s; 167,098 copies per year in the 2000s, and 303,523 copies in the 2010s. In 2011 alone Atlas Shrugged sold 415,000 copies.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Feb 20, 2020 3:03 pm She was a lousy writer, really...certainly no Shakespeare, Dickens or even Grisham...more a raw propagandist than a shaper of compelling and engaging narrative.

Of course she was not Shakespeare, but either were Dickens or Grisham. Thinking you're mixing genre's here. With a couple of small exceptions, I very much dislike Dickens and find Grisham unreadable. Now if you had compared her to Hugo, Dostoevsky, or even Nabakov, Rand would have agreed with you they were better writers. I think it is a stretch (and perhaps a bit prejudiced) to call a writer, with her much success, "a lousy writer." What do you base that judgement on--are you a literary critic? I was a very successful professional writer for many years and I can assure you, most writers for whom English is a first language cannot write as well Rand did, and English was a second language for her.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Feb 20, 2020 3:03 pm Her characters are stick figures, really...stand-ins for concepts, rather than embodied human beings. To get through her stories is labourious, like running in a swamp, up to one's knees in mud. And Rand herself was is in such radical rejection of the Collectivist ideologues of her past that she herself became nothing but an ideologue for the other side -- and it's hard for any author to remain open to experience, art, opportunity and intuition while rigorously aiming, at the same time, to arrive at a particular point she has chosen long before she started.

I've read these kinds of criticisms before. They are just not true. Her characters certainly are not the shallow neurotic creatures that fill the pages of most popular literature. Both Atlas and the Fountainhead are demanding books, and require a little more ability to read, understand, and appreciate than today's latest romance or thriller novels. If you have read her shorter works, and, We The Living, your criticism does not seem ingenuous. The joke is on all those academics that cannot stand how clearly she illustrated exactly what they are. Someone once said to me that everyone he knew hated Ayn Rand. I said I would expect that, those who hate Ayn Rand hate her for same reason cockroaches hate the light.

I'm not a defender of Rand or her philosophy. She got too many serious things wrong, which I have criticized elsewhere. I do know that most of her critics do not really know what she wrote. She did not get everything wrong, and what she got right terrifies the immoral and second-handers, which is a great source of entertainment to me.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Feb 20, 2020 3:03 pm But balance...nobody accuses Rand of having much of that.

Either do I, have balance that is. There is no, "balance," between moral and immoral, truth and falsehood, or right and wrong. I am an extremist and have no use for any kind of moderation. The perfect moderate is a moderately faithful husband who is moderately sober and moderately honest.

How's that for balance?

RCSaunders wrote: ↑Thu Feb 20, 2020 9:59 pm The number of people who believe something has nothing to do with whether or not something is true

Yeah, I said that.

But the fact that practically nobody believes does not help at all. Just because somebody has an unique idea doesn't make it more probable that's it's a good unique idea. In most cases, it's something nutty, and only on very, very rare occasion is it a product of genius. "Genius," by definition, is extremely unlikely in the individual case.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Feb 20, 2020 3:03 pm But back to the rare geniuses.

To be honest, we've got to give the Collectivists their due...they're not wrong to say that every genius grows up in a particular society, is educated by them, learns his craft by them, and gains his influence through them. Moreover, the science, the art or the activity in which the genius expresses his genius always existed long before the genius himself existed...that, too, was a social product. And when the productions of his genius have their full benefit, it will be not merely in the lifetime of the genius and to himself, but his achievement and legacy will be perpetuated only through other people, through his society.

In all those ways, other people are instrumental in producing the phenomenon of the genius. On every side, he is shaped, supported by, dependent on, and in relation to other people. Admitting this fact does not diminish his genius...but it locates him in a social context that makes his genius possible.

Whenever a new discovery is made all the things you and collectivists say the discoverer owes the discovery to were available to everyone in society at that time, but only the genius that actually made the discovery did the work necessary to make it.

You just conceded my point. The genius doesn't work in a vacuum.

Why do you want to minimize that?

I did not minimize anything. Genius is great. But geniuses do not make their achievements ex nihilo.

What do you have against accomplishment, especially when it is an accomplishment no one else has ever made.

"Against?" What makes you think I have something "against" it?

I'm all for it.

John Galt was the hero of Atlas Shrugged and was a design engineer. It was Howard Roark, the hero of The Fountainhead that was the architect.

I stand corrected. Culpa mea. They're not memorable characters.

Except for the last 300 years, there was very little human progress

Heh. The old "Dark Ages" myth, eh?

People sat around and did nothing, from the end of the Roman Empire until the Enlightenment? The Renaissance scholars would be so disappointed to know they were such slugs.

But you might want to take a look at this short clip. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cqzq01i2O3U

What I said is that any progress in the human condition is do to individuals, who are exceptional:

And every individual who was exceptional is due to the people who raised him, educated him, introduced him to his craft, and then celebrated his achievements and distributed the goods of them. So those are just two sides of the same coin.

You and the leftists

Heh. Nobody's ever accused me of being Leftist before. I'm amused.

henry quirk wrote: ↑Thu Feb 20, 2020 6:01 pm As I pointed out up-thread, some things are real unambiguously, like a stone; some things are real but only exist when certain conditions are in place, like fire; some things are real but only exist in a certain context, like my hunger.

I believe morality (the rightness or wrongness of an action) is real, not like the stone, but like fire and hunger.

Morality exists only in certain conditions, only in a certain context. The conditions are man's universal nature (his intrinsic desire to be his own, for example). The context is the individual (as he forms intent and acts).

Simply: it is wrong to enslave a man because it is not in his nature (not in the nature of any person) to be property.

To leash a man is a violation of him because he belongs only to himself.

Anyway, I think I deserve a or a from somebody cuz I answered Pete's question, what could make morality (the rightness or wrongness of human action) objective (independent of opinion)? Don't care if any one agrees with my minimalist libertarianism or its grounding, I just want my goddamned kudos.

henry quirk wrote: ↑Fri Feb 21, 2020 1:33 am I think I deserve a or a from somebody cuz I answered Pete's question, what could make morality (the rightness or wrongness of human action) objective (independent of opinion)? Don't care if any one agrees with my minimalist libertarianism or its grounding, I just want my goddamned kudos.

🦨

Lacewing wrote: 🦨

henry quirk wrote: ↑Fri Feb 21, 2020 1:33 am Simply: it is wrong to enslave a man because it is not in his nature (not in the nature of any person) to be property.
Anyway, I think I deserve a or a from somebody cuz I answered Pete's question...

If man has an intrinsic "nature" that requires him to be free, then this is a possible answer. In that case, to enslave someone is to violate the intrinsic purpose that person has. So we might be able to build such a case IF we could show that that is the precise nature a human being has. But it will have to be genuinely intrinsic to his nature, not merely something that men want, or even all men want. For we often do not get what we want. "I want," as every child quickly learns, is not a justification for "I have an intrinsic right to have..."

To leash a man is a violation of him because he belongs only to himself.

I've got doubts about this way of putting it, though. I don't know in what sense a man can "belong to himself," seeing as he is neither the source of his being, nor has any power over how long he will be alive, nor even has majority control of his circumstances. Since he neither "possesses" his origin, nor "possess" his end, and doesn't have full "possession" of his circumstances in the middle, it looks like pretty tenuous "possessing."

Who owns us? Well, in reality we have some limited say over our temporary situations, but not much more than that. I don't know where our "self-ownership" papers would be hidden. They're certainly not anywhere obvious.

Immanuel Can wrote:

thankew


If man has an intrinsic "nature" that requires him to be free,

As I reckon it: bein' one's own is at the core of a person.


I don't know in what sense a man can "belong to himself,"

Doesn't matter if man is an ensouled being (as you see him) or a composite of flesh and spirit (as I see him), or just animate matter (the way most here probably imagine him): in the here and now he's in himself, from top to bottom; he can't discard himself without ending himself. It doesn't seem right to say he's imprisoned in himself. It does however seem right to say he owns himself, not in a legal sense but in a fully possessing sense.


Who owns us?

Crom ain't around to claim me, and I don't believe in your guy, so it must be the bald guy in the mirror.

henry quirk wrote: ↑Thu Feb 20, 2020 8:05 pm if the criterion for the moral rightness or wrongness of an action is its consonance with a (supposed) feature of human nature, then selfish and violent actions are morally justifiable - if selfishness and violence are inherent to human nature. I assume you accept that conclusion from your argument.


if selfishness and violence are inherent to human nature


Self-interest, to wish to further one's self, seems to be a common feature of all men and is not synonymous with predation. A self-interested man doesn't steal or enslave, he self-relies, negotiates and transacts.

The selfish man is not immoral simply because he wants, but because his acts enact an price on the unwilling. He's wrong, and he's wrong for the same reason the slaver is wrong.


A man with violent tendencies is not immoral simply because he finds violence easy, nor is he immoral if he self-defends or defends others. His immorality arises he when offends against another. He's wrong, and he's wrong for the same reason the slaver is wrong.

Here's the thing: all men, by nature, self-own but not all men are selfish or violent. To be one's own is a feature of every man, it's his nature; to be greedy or overly aggressive is the burden of only some men.

I'm confused. You say all people, by nature, self-own, so it's morally wrong to enslave people. But some people are, by nature, selfish or violent. Now, suppose all people were selfish and violent. Would it be morally wrong to constrain or punish their selfishness and violence?

Or try this: because of our social evolution, all people are, by nature, tribal - so 'us-and-them' tribalism is morally justifiable. Do you want to rationalise away that 'fact' about universal human nature as well?

henry quirk wrote: ↑Fri Feb 21, 2020 1:33 am

henry quirk wrote: ↑Thu Feb 20, 2020 6:01 pm As I pointed out up-thread, some things are real unambiguously, like a stone; some things are real but only exist when certain conditions are in place, like fire; some things are real but only exist in a certain context, like my hunger.

I believe morality (the rightness or wrongness of an action) is real, not like the stone, but like fire and hunger.

Morality exists only in certain conditions, only in a certain context. The conditions are man's universal nature (his intrinsic desire to be his own, for example). The context is the individual (as he forms intent and acts).

Simply: it is wrong to enslave a man because it is not in his nature (not in the nature of any person) to be property.

To leash a man is a violation of him because he belongs only to himself.

Anyway, I think I deserve a or a from somebody cuz I answered Pete's question, what could make morality (the rightness or wrongness of human action) objective (independent of opinion)? Don't care if any one agrees with my minimalist libertarianism or its grounding, I just want my goddamned kudos.

Thanks, Henry. So your answer to my OP question is:

'It is wrong to enslave a man because it is not in his nature (not in the nature of any person) to be property.'

Are you happy to generalise that claim about the morality of slavery - to cover all moral values and judgements - so that what's morally right or wrong derives from human nature - perhaps in this way: 'morality is objective because it comes from facts about human nature' ?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Feb 20, 2020 10:22 pm

John Galt was the hero of Atlas Shrugged and was a design engineer. It was Howard Roark, the hero of The Fountainhead that was the architect.

I stand corrected. Culpa mea. They're not memorable characters.

That's alright. It's hard to remember what you are unable to understand and appreciate.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Feb 20, 2020 10:22 pm

Except for the last 300 years, there was very little human progress

Heh. The old "Dark Ages" myth, eh?

People sat around and did nothing, from the end of the Roman Empire until the Enlightenment? The Renaissance scholars would be so disappointed to know they were such slugs.

Of course they didn't sit around doing nothing. They were very busy burying plague victims, and those who died in the almost continuous famines and diseases that since the 18th century have been cured or eradicated. The feudal system, from the 9th to the 15th century was a lovely time, if you weren't interested in sanitation or indoor plumbing, loved dirt floors and very unlikely had no changes of clothing. I you were lucky enough you might live to a ripe old age of 35. If you had twelve children, four might live to adulthood.

What great contributions to human well being, exactly, did those 15th and 16th century Renaissance scholars provide. I'll grant you that one 15th century development was a true contribution to the improvement of human life, but it didn't come from any scholar, it came from a goldsmith, Johannes Gutenberg, and his invention of the printing press was not very welcome to the, "scholarly," monks and the Catholic church and its sycophants.

You and the leftists

Heh. Nobody's ever accused me of being Leftist before. I'm amused.[/quote]
You still haven't been accused of it. If I were accusing you of being a leftist I would have said, "you leftists," but I didn't include you as a leftist, which is why I said, "you and leftists." I'm only accusing you of spouting the same nonsense as the leftists.[/quote]

Quite frankly, I can see little difference between the leftists' view that the purpose of individual human beings is to serve society and your view that the purpose of individual human beings is to serve God. At least leftists' superstition is identifiable. Both views are inexcusable intellectual attacks one the life of individuals.

Now, suppose all people were selfish and violent. Would it be morally wrong to constrain or punish their selfishness and violence?

If we lived on War World (and that's what it would be) would morality ever come up? A world where everyone is a monster would never entertain morality or language or science. It would be a world of cannibal apes. But, assumin' such creatures found their way to morality (and assumin' persons are just animate matter and not sumthin' more), I'm thinkin' the immoral acts would include mercy, respect, not eatin' the enemies heart, etc.


Or try this: because of our social evolution, all people are, by nature, tribal - so 'us-and-them' tribalism is morally justifiable. Do you want to rationalise away that 'fact' about universal human nature as well?

We're not tribal, we're social. And there is no uniformity in that socialness. And that cooperative instinct is balanced against a competitive one.

And: I'm not rationalizin' anything.

-----

morality is objective because it comes from facts about human nature' ?

Yeah, that works. Humans are real, human nature is intrinsic to humans, human morality extends out of human nature.

*More accurately: persons are real, being one's own is intrinsic to persons, morality extends out of the recognition each person is his or her own.









*this overlaps with my deism which no one but me gives a shit about, so dismiss it if you like

RCSaunders wrote: ↑Fri Feb 21, 2020 4:05 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Feb 20, 2020 10:22 pm I stand corrected. Culpa mea. They're not memorable characters.

That's alright. It's hard to remember what you are unable to understand and appreciate.

Now, now, RC...play nice.

I fully understand Rand. I just don't agree with her...well, and don't think her characters are very well-drawn. But I'm far from alone in that opinion, and you aren't obligated to share it.

We can agree to disagree on that, with no harm done.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Feb 20, 2020 10:22 pm

Except for the last 300 years, there was very little human progress

Heh. The old "Dark Ages" myth, eh?

People sat around and did nothing, from the end of the Roman Empire until the Enlightenment? The Renaissance scholars would be so disappointed to know they were such slugs.

Of course they didn't sit around doing nothing.

Did you watch the little video?

It's worth your time, RC; and it's only five minutes or so.

You and the leftists...I'm only accusing you of spouting the same nonsense as the leftists.

I'm not "spouting the same" as the Leftists, RC...I'm just doing the smart thing, and, so to speak "giving the Devil his due."

I still think Collectivism is "the Devil."

What I''m doing is just good debating practice. A very conventional debating strategy is to acknowledge the strengths or the attractions of one's opponents arguments, and then explaining why you still don't agree with them. If you can do that, you've effectively disarmed them of their best weapons...those small elements of truth they use to power the big lies.

The alternative, pretending they have no point at all to make, runs the risk of making your own view unconvincing.

The problem with advocating a kind of pure individualism, or the point of view that geniuses appear ex nihilo, is that it has to refuse to acknowledge any contributory role for society in what the individual achieves. The problem, then, becomes that impartial observers can readily see that that is just not accurate, and they begin to suspect you're being less than forthcoming in your efforts to bolster the case for individual greatness. They become drawn toward the Collectivist Left by way of the evident partiality of the position being advocated to them. And neither or us wants that.

But I'm sure that if you've done debating, this is all common sense to you. Recognize what the other side's got, but turn the tables with reasons.

Quite frankly, I can see little difference between the leftists' view that the purpose of individual human beings is to serve society and your view that the purpose of individual human beings is to serve God.

Oh, there are abundant differences, of course, and right down to the basic level. I'm surprised you can't think of any. (Is this perhaps a further indicator that the "ex nihilo genius" position is blind to all contrary facts? I think it could be...)

"Society" has no privileged moral and ontological position relative to the individual, I'm sure you'd agree. So "society" is not something that can ground a claim to own the individual. But neither can the individual ground a claim to own himself, so that's a problem for both sides.

henry quirk wrote: ↑Fri Feb 21, 2020 4:15 pm Now, suppose all people were selfish and violent. Would it be morally wrong to constrain or punish their selfishness and violence?

This raises a further question, Henry. Why would anybody be "selfish or violent" -- indeed, why would any human "selfishness or violence" exist, if human beings were intrinsically all light and jelly beans?