Study of similarities/differences in moral views of religious and non-religious people

[FireDragon76]

No problem. Im busy too. Probably too busy to give your very generous posts the attention they deserve. But I'll try to hit the highlights.


Ok. I'm into the win win. I agree its no good for people to just miserably give for nothing in return. If people want to give or even suffer to further some end they value, fine. And if "altruism" is the wrong word for that, I can find another.


Re the ants, Im responding to a few claims of yours:
1. Any living organism which consistently sacrificed it's values would die. Altruism means otherism. It means to live for others, to put others first as beneficiary of one's actions. This is incompatible with the facts of life.
2. The ant is totally dependent on the colony for its needs. Therefore anything that helps the colony ultimately redounds to the good of the ant.
3. all organisms must be the primary beneficiary of their actions.
Given the propensity of ants to die for the group cause (and your kin selection examples as well), you must be making the claim that the individual ant's interest IS the groups interest, to the point of individual extinction. The group is hyper-real for the ant. So I dont know why you'd consent to use that example as instructive in your particular argument about human morality


Seem like you simply want to define-away "collective". Of course any group is made of the individuals. But the particular set of individuals also is a group, a jury, a team, and army, a whatever. It does group things that no individual can accomplish. Groups are real things in the world. I cant "unsee" them


IYes, we should teach reason for sure. Objectivism is full of terrific reasoning. But I disagree with at least one basic premise, as I noted: the non-reality of human groups.


Excellent. I'm riding an All City Gorilla Monsoon as my all-round bike. Have done some real epic days on it.

Bees are another example of altruism in nature. A bee will die after it stings, yet bees will happily sting intruders to defend their colonies, despite the fact they will die. The bees own individual existence isn't so important in the equation.

There have been plenty of human cultures that have valued that sort of altruism, many far more ancient and long enduring than the strange egotism popular among some libertarians in western countries.

 

[The happy Objectivist]

Ok. I'm into the win win. I agree its no good for people to just miserably give for nothing in return. If people want to give or even suffer to further some end they value, fine. And if "altruism" is the wrong word for that, I can find another.

How about rational egoism. That's what I call it.

Re the ants, Im responding to a few claims of yours:
1. Any living organism which consistently sacrificed it's values would die. Altruism means otherism. It means to live for others, to put others first as beneficiary of one's actions. This is incompatible with the facts of life.
2. The ant is totally dependent on the colony for its needs. Therefore anything that helps the colony ultimately redounds to the good of the ant.
3. all organisms must be the primary beneficiary of their actions.
Given the propensity of ants to die for the group cause (and your kin selection examples as well), you must be making the claim that the individual ant's interest IS the groups interest, to the point of individual extinction. The group is hyper-real for the ant. So I dont know why you'd consent to use that example as instructive in your particular argument about human morality

Do you really want to use insects like ants or bees as a model for human society. It's been tried you know over and over again. It's called Communism. It's called collectivism. It doesn't work because it's incompatible with human nature. We are not ants. We are individuals who think with our own individual minds. We are the rational animal. We are conceptual beings. Do you think an ant has self-awareness? Do you think it cares whether it lives or dies? Do you think it must think and make choices to further its life or does it mindlessly go about the actions that are programmed into it? Does an ant need values like love, friendship, knowledge, honesty, beauty? In an ant colony or a bee collony, the individual ants' lives don't matter, except the queen. In a Bee colony, every bee has its job assigned to it. The drones fly out to gather the food. Some tend the hatching bees and the rest take care of the queen. Come to think of it, this sounds exactly like a communist society. Just replace the queen with Kim Jung Un. And, ants and bees don't consistently sacrifice their values. If they did the colony wouldn't exist because they'd all be dead.

Seem like you simply want to define-away "collective". Of course any group is made of the individuals. But the particular set of individuals also is a group, a jury, a team, and army, a whatever. It does group things that no individual can accomplish. Groups are real things in the world. I cant "unsee" them.

And Objectivism nowhere denies the existence of groups or that groups of individuals can cooperate to do things that the individual can not. Objectivism rejects the group as the standard of value. To do so makes the individual expendable. See the haters of man want you to think that human life requires sacrifice. They want you to think this because they want you divided into warring groups, seeking the favor of the king. They don't want you having thoughts of your own or self esteem. People who think for themselves and hold their own life as the supreme value are not controllable. They won't be told what to do and just Obey. Collectivism doesn't work for humans because we are not mindless drones. It crushes the human spirit. It crushes the mind. And unlike an ant, every human being is a potentioal Michaelangelo, Newton, or Tesla. How many people with that kind of potential spent their lives building the pyramids for some pretentious leader? How many Michael Faradays or Mozarts died in concentration camps. I for one want everyone to be free to think, to produce, to make life better for all of us.

IYes, we should teach reason for sure. Objectivism is full of terrific reasoning. But I disagree with at least one basic premise, as I noted: the non-reality of human groups.

And Objectivism nowhere denies the reality of groups and that is not a basic premise of Objectivism.

Excellent. I'm riding an All City Gorilla Monsoon as my all-round bike. Have done some real epic days on it.

I've heard a lot about those bikes and the breadwinner. Maybe some day. Do you have the 650b wheels? Around where I live the 650b is the way to go with 2 inch knobby tires. Miles and miles of dirt to ride. I've also got a Surly Wednesday with 3.8 inch tires. That's my trail bike and omni-terra bike. Great for exploring desert washes.[/QUOTE]

 

[FireDragon76]

Do you really want to use insects like ants or bees as a model for human society.

It's not a perfect analogy of course as there are distinct differences, but it's not as absurd as saying humanity is merely a collection of individuals divorced from social relationships.

It's been tried you know over and over again. It's called Communism. It's called collectivism.

Meaningless jargon and swear-words. For the majority of human history, societies have been "collectivist". It's the novel idea that they shouldn't be that is the extraordinary claim that requires justification.

It doesn't work because it's incompatible with human nature. We are not ants. We are individuals who think with our own individual minds. We are the rational animal. We are conceptual beings.

Everything I said to the previous comment applies here. That's a very limited way of understanding human nature.

Do you think an ant has self-awareness? Do you think it cares whether it lives or dies? Do you think it must think and make choices to further its life or does it mindlessly go about the actions that are programmed into it?

There's plenty of human beings that seemingly mindlessly go about their lives as well. I know Objectivists would be tempted to say they aren't really human, but I think that's unwarranted and extreme, to say the least.

Does an ant need values like love, friendship, knowledge, honesty, beauty?

From a materialist metaphysics (which Objectivism seems to be), those things don't matter anyways.

In an ant colony or a bee collony, the individual ants' lives don't matter, except the queen.

The ants value is relational, as is the queens. The colony functions as a society.

And Objectivism nowhere denies the existence of groups or that groups of individuals can cooperate to do things that the individual can not. Objectivism rejects the group as the standard of value.

Except for some extreme authoritarian regimes perhaps, no human society functions in that way. Societies typically appeal to some sense of transcendence that is greater than the group itself. God, Allah, Heaven, Brahman, Tao, Dharma, etc.

To do so makes the individual expendable.

But humans are expendable. Just looking at history proves that easily enough.

See the haters of man want you to think that human life requires sacrifice. They won't be told what to do and just Obey. Collectivism doesn't work for humans because we are not mindless drones.

Human beings are capable of imagination and insight but that doesn't negate the social aspect of our existence.

And unlike an ant, every human being is a potentioal Michaelangelo, Newton, or Tesla.

Who determines the value of a bunch of dead white European males, anyways? Oh that's right, societies do.

How many people with that kind of potential spent their lives building the pyramids for some pretentious leader?

Plenty, actually. In the real history, not the romanticized version thereof.

 

[The happy Objectivist]

It's not a perfect analogy of course as there are distinct differences, but it's not as absurd as saying "humanity is merely a collection of individuals divorced from social relationships.

And who is saying that humanity is merely a collection of individuals divorced from social relationships"? Not me.

Meaningless jargon and swear-words. For the majority of human history, societies have been "collectivist". It's the novel idea that they shouldn't be that is the extraordinary claim that requires justification.

Given the horror that collectivism has wrought for the majority of human history, I'd say it's collectivism that needs to be justified. When people keep trying the same system again and again even though it always ends in ruin, you can be sure that they have some other reason that they want to keep hidden.

Everything I said to the previous comment applies here. That's a very limited way of understanding human nature.

Limited does not mean wrong.

There's plenty of human beings that seemingly mindlessly go about their lives as well. I know Objectivists would be tempted to say they aren't really human, but I think that's unwarranted and extreme, to say the least.

You know this, do you?

From a materialist metaphysics (which Objectivism seems to be), those things don't matter anyways.

Do your homework. Objectivism does not hold to a materialist metaphysics.

The ants value is relational, as is the queens. The colony functions as a society.

Another person wants to look to ants as a model for human society. Stalin would love it.

Except for some extreme authoritarian regimes perhaps, no human society functions in that way. Societies typically appeal to some sense of transcendence that is greater than the group itself. God, Allah, Heaven, Brahman, Tao, Dharma, etc.

But avove you said that "For the majority of human history, societies have been "collectivist"". Which is it?

But humans are expendable. Just looking at history proves that easily enough.

Thank you for making your position crystal clear.

Human beings are capable of imagination and insight but that doesn't negate the social aspect of our existence.

And who is saying that it does "negate the social aspect of our existence"?

Who determines the value of a bunch of dead white European males, anyways? Oh that's right, societies do.

Are you some kind of racist or something? Actually, it's individuals that judge. There is no collective thoughts or brains.

Plenty, actually. In the real history, not the romanticized version thereof.

Finally, something I can agree with you on.

 

[FireDragon76]

Given the horror that collectivism has wrought for the majority of human history, I'd say it's collectivism that needs to be justified.

I could easily say that given the horror that capitalism has wrought in human history, including slavery, genocide, and fascism, it's capitalism that needs to be justified.

Do your homework. Objectivism does not hold to a materialist metaphysics.

Ayn Rand rejected the value of belief in God, religion, and faith, and failed to ground her values in anything transcendent. That tends to be associated with metaphysical materialism in western culture. In addition her focus on egotism and personal pleasure is in keeping with metaphysical naturalism and materialism.

Another person wants to look to ants as a model for human society. Stalin would love it.

I never said ants should be a model for human society. However, ants do prove that there's nothing unnatural about such a society.

But avove you said that "For the majority of human history, societies have been "collectivist"". Which is it?

I'm challenging the false dichotomy you present: either a society is committed to extreme individualism, or it's "collectivist".

Are you some kind of racist or something? Actually, it's individuals that judge. There is no collective thoughts or brains.

Look up mirror neurons and how they function some time. The scientific evidence is more complicated than you suggest.

 

[The happy Objectivist]

I could easily say that given the horror that capitalism has wrought in human history, including slavery, genocide, and fascism, it's capitalism that needs to be justified.

Capitalism rests on the premise that man is the owner of his own life and that he has a right to exist for his own sake, which means to pursue his values in his own way so long as he does not violate the rights of others. And that the fruits of his labor are his to keep and dispose of. All of the evils that you want to attribute to capitalism rest on the opposite premise, that man's life does not belong to him, that he has no right to live for his own sake but is owned by the state or the tribe or someone other than himself. And, that the fruits of his labor are not his but belong to the "collective", which really means the government, and can be disposed of without his consent.

No one alive today has ever seen a full, uncompromising, laissez-faire capitalism. So fail.

Ayn Rand rejected the value of belief in God, religion, and faith, and failed to ground her values in anything transcendent. That tends to be associated with metaphysical materialism in western culture. In addition her focus on egotism and personal pleasure is in keeping with metaphysical naturalism and materialism.

Of course, she did not ground her values on belief in God, religion, and faith. She grounded her values in reality and in the primacy of existence principle. Belief in God, religion, and faith all have their basis in the primacy of consciousness, which is a false view of reality. Honesty is the recognition that the unreal is not real and can have no value for man. But I disagree that she did not ground her values in something transcendent. The axioms and the primacy of existence are principles and as such they are conceptual in nature. Concepts are transcendent of time and space owing to the fact that measurement omission is a key part of concept formation. Time and place are measurements omitted in the process of forming concepts.

For example the concept man transcends time because it includes all men who have ever lived, live now, and will ever live. The concept man transcends place because it includes all men anywhere in all places. But if by transcend you mean supernatural, the notion of the supernatural is self-refuting and therefore, not real. The supernatural is supposed to be outside of nature, which means that it is outside the laws of nature, which means it's outside the law of identity, which means it has no specific identity, is nothing in particular, i.e., it does not exist. By its supposed nature it exists outside of nature and that's a direct contradiction.

Objectivism is not materialism. Objectivism holds that existents exist, in whatever form they exist. "Existence" is an open ended concept incuding all things that exist, their attributes, their actions and their relationships. You will not find any claims in Objectivist wrighting that say that existence only consists of material things.

Materialists deny the axiom of consciousness, Objectivism holds it as a founding principle. So let's not hear any more talk of Objectivism being materialistic. Again, do your homework.

I never said ants should be a model for human society. However, ants do prove that there's nothing unnatural about such a society.

But you are saying that. You are using it to justify collectivism in human society.

I never said it was unnatural. Everything that exists is natural. I said it is incompatible with human nature. It's perfectly compatible with the nature of ants and bees. Poison mushrooms, flesh eating bacteria and ionizing radiation exist too, but they are not good for us. Neither is collectivism because it denies individual rights. Rights are conditions of existence required by man's nature for his proper survival in a social situation.

Not all insects live in this way either. When I was a lad, I and my friends would catch an ant lion and put it into another ant lion's hole and watch them duke it out to the death. Same for doodlebugs and many other insects. There are all kinds of modes of survival and each is determined by an organisms nature. What's right for ants and bees and ant lions and fish, walruses and starfish are not right for man.

I'm challenging the false dichotomy you present: either a society is committed to extreme individualism, or it's "collectivist".

There is no false dichotomy if you read what I said. I said the two systems are based on two antithetical premises. Man either has a right to live for his own sake or he doesn't. That's a proper dichotomy. I also said that every society is a mixed case, but that the contradiction will always lead to destruction. That society can exist for a time as a mixture is not in question. But the mix always moves towards collectivism until that society ends in blood.

Look up mirror neurons and how they function some time. The scientific evidence is more complicated than you suggest.

I'm familiar with them. It does not follow from their existence that mankind thinks with one brain. This should be self-evident to you given that we disagree on practically everything.

 

[FireDragon76]

Capitalism rests on the premise that man is the owner of his own life and that he has a right to exist for his own sake,

Not really. That's Ayn Rand's rhetoric. Capitalists could give a fig less about respect for human dignity and human freedom. If they genuinely valued that, they certainly wouldn't pour billions into advertising to children.

which means to pursue his values in his own way so long as he does not violate the rights of others.

That's more like liberalism, not capitalism.

No one alive today has ever seen a full, uncompromising, laissez-faire capitalism.

Sure they have. The Gilded Age was full of them.

Of course, she did not ground her values on belief in God, religion, and faith. She grounded her values in reality and in the primacy of existence principle.

Too many totalitarians claim to have exclusive insights into "reality".

Why Not an Objectivist

Belief in God, religion, and faith all have their basis in the primacy of consciousness, which is a false view of reality.

I doubt you can prove that. It's just an assertion. Certainly we are capable of observing that we are conscious. Cogito ergo sum, and all that.

Honesty is the recognition that the unreal is not real and can have no value for man.

That's just a meaningless tautology.

For example the concept man transcends time because it includes all men who have ever lived, live now, and will ever live.

Wow.. a collective. So how can this "man" live only for himself, if he's already part of a group in his human nature?

"Existence" is an open ended concept incuding all things that exist, their attributes, their actions and their relationships. You will not find any claims in Objectivist wrighting that say that existence only consists of material things.

Then how do Objectivists know that concepts like God are unreal?

But you are saying that. You are using it to justify collectivism in human society.

I don't have to justify "collectivism" in human society. Human society is by its nature social, involving other people. When we are born, we are thrown into the world as a social animal. There's nothing for me to defend there, it's just the way it is.

 

[The happy Objectivist]

Not really. That's Ayn Rand's rhetoric. Capitalists could give a fig less about respect for human dignity and human freedom. If they genuinely valued that, they certainly wouldn't pour billions into advertising to children.

I'm a capitalist and I care about these things. It's unclear why a company advertising it's products and services to potential customers constitutes disresptect for human dignity and freedom. You'll have to explain and it is not self evident to me.

That's more like liberalism, not capitalism.

If by liberalism you mean classical liberalism then yes, this is a precondition of capitalism. Laissez-faire capitalism requires that men be left free to think, produce, and trade. If force is involved it isn't laissez-faire, and if it is not laissez-faire then it's some mixture of freedom and control, i.e., the initiation of force.

Sure they have. The Gilded Age was full of them.

Yeah, you allow men to be free to produce and trade and you get the guilded age. You try to control men and initiate force against them and confiscate their production and you get North Korea or the old Soviet Union and famine and misery. That's why people tried to escape communism and risked death because they were so happy and fulfilled under communism. And they were eager to come to America so that they could be free to work and to have their rights protected, which is the proper function of government.

Too many totalitarians claim to have exclusive insights into "reality".

Why Not an Objectivist

Is it your claim, Firedragon, that Objectivism is a species of totalitarianism?

I doubt you can prove that. It's just an assertion. Certainly we are capable of observing that we are conscious. Cogito ergo sum, and all that.

Prove what? that belief in "God", religion and faith have their basis in the primacy of consciousness? This is not an inference to begin with it's something we discover by listening to the claims of theists. Or do you mean to prove that the primacy of consciousness is false? Its falsehood is self-evident, not the product of an inference. This is something we discover by looking at reality. As you say we are capable of observing that we are conscious. We can also observe the things we are conscious of while thinking about them. That the objects of consciousness do not conform to consciousness, that they are what they are independent of consciousness is available directly through perceptions, no arguments needed. But if you'd like proof, do you think that wishing makes things so?

And the notion of Cogito ergo sum is guilty of the fallacy of the stolen concept since it begins with consciousness and seeks to prove the existence of the objects of consciousness. But consciousness is the consciousness of something. You would never say that you are conscious but you are not conscious of anything, you're just conscious, would you. It also assumes that consciousness is not a faculty of perception, that consciousness creates its objects apart from any external objects. Thus it is an expression of the primacy of consciousness.

All conscious activity requires two things, a subject (the conscious knower) and an object (the thing one is aware of). Thus, a necessary relationship obtains. The primacy of existence identifies the relationship between subject and object. That the objects of consciousness have primacy, that consciousness is dependent on existence and not the other way around, is self-evident. The primacy of consciousness view of reality represents a reversal and a denial of the subject object relationship.

That's just a meaningless tautology.

Is it true or isn't it? Is it your position that the unreal is real?

Wow.. a collective. So how can this "man" live only for himself, if he's already part of a group in his human nature?

It's not a collective, it's a concept. To answer your question he can live for himself by persuing his values, the ones determined by his nature and not by arbitrary whim. Those values include things like relationships with others, love, friendship, honesty, knowledge, productive acheivment, art, music, beauty, etc. as well as the basic values of food, shelter, clothing, clean water, and the like.

Then how do Objectivists know that concepts like God are unreal?

By means of reason, that's how. By applying the primacy of existence principle to the notion of "God".

I don't have to justify "collectivism" in human society. Human society is by its nature social, involving other people. When we are born, we are thrown into the world as a social animal. There's nothing for me to defend there, it's just the way it is.

And individualists can not be social? Where are you getting this from? Not from Objectivism.

 

[FireDragon76]

I'm a capitalist and I care about these things. It's unclear why a company advertising it's products and services to potential customers constitutes disresptect for human dignity and freedom. You'll have to explain and it is not self evident to me.

Children are vulnerable to manipulation and have difficulty thinking critically. And lots of companies do attempt to manipulate that fact to harm children with dangerous products.

If by liberalism you mean classical liberalism then yes, this is a precondition of capitalism. Laissez-faire capitalism requires that men be left free to think, produce, and trade. If force is involved it isn't laissez-faire, and if it is not laissez-faire then it's some mixture of freedom and control, i.e., the initiation of force.

Force was always involved in capitalism. Just go look at what happened to Africans, Native Americans, or the Chinese and Japanese subject to unequal treaties.

Yeah, you allow men to be free to produce and trade and you get the guilded age. You try to control men and initiate force against them and confiscate their production and you get North Korea or the old Soviet Union and famine and misery.

China has lower absolute poverty than the United States as a percentage of its population, yet the sort of neoliberal economics you favor are more popular in the US than China.

Is it your claim, Firedragon, that Objectivism is a species of totalitarianism?

It's a totalizing worldview that dismissing anyone that disagrees with it as "irrational". It's a cult, and it's founder was a gaslighting sexual abuser in that cult.

 

[The happy Objectivist]

Children are vulnerable to manipulation and have difficulty thinking critically. And lots of companies do attempt to manipulate that fact to harm children with dangerous products.

Then don't let them watch it if you're worried about it. Or better yet, teach them Objectivism so that they are intellectually and philosophically armed against these manipulations. Of course, the best way to succeed under capitalism is to harm your customers with dangerous products, right? Under a true laissez faire Capitalism, such tactics would be punished severely and quickly. But when this happens under our mixed economy, usually nothing happens to the perpetrator because businesses are in cahoots with the government. Sometimes they do but sometimes they don't depending on who they know. That is not capitalism, that's cronyism. So you are building straw men here.

Force was always involved in capitalism. Just go look at what happened to Africans, Native Americans, or the Chinese and Japanese subject to unequal treaties.

Then it's not capitalism. It's Hobbesian economics. It's the right of some people to take the goods or services of another. That's not free trade and respect for individual rights and protection of property rights that Capitalism needs as a prerequisite. Capitalism is free, voluntary trade to mutual benefit. It's not exploitation. It's not theft. And if the Chinese or the Japanese don't like the terms of a treaty (contract) they are free not to sign it.

"When I say “capitalism,” I mean a full, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism—with a separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church." Ayn Rand,
“What Is Capitalism?”
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, 19.

Does this sound like what you are describing.

China has lower absolute poverty than the United States as a percentage of its population, yet the sort of neoliberal economics you favor are more popular in the US than China.

Wrong. If that's true about China having lower poverty, then it only drives my point home. They achieved this by freeing their people, at least in the economic sector. They unchained their citizens from regulation and control, just a little bit, and look at the economic boom that occurred over the last 30 years. Yaron Brook likes to point out the fact that over 30,000,000 people have risen out of poverty in Asia over the last 30 years. They did it by allowing a little capitalism. Not full laissez faire capitalism by any stretch. I shudder to think about what the Chinese people would do if they had laissez faire capitalism. I've read that it is now easier to start a business in China than it is in the US. And here in the U.S., we are rapidly moving away from freedom and towards more and more government control and look at the results. We now brag about 2.1 percent economic growth and tell ourselves that that is a booming economy. If you add in the real inflation rate, we have been stagnant for the last 12 years.

It's a totalizing worldview that dismissing anyone that disagrees with it as "irrational". It's a cult, and its founder was a gaslighting sexual abuser in that cult.

Totalizing means treating disparate things as having one character, principle, or application.

Isn't that exactly what philosophy is supposed to do, turn a vast amount of seemingly disparate data into a handful of easily understood principles. To find the "one in the many" as the Greeks would say. That's exactly what a concept does is turn a whole bunch of units ( similar things which vary in their specific measurements) into a single unit (a concept) by means of measurement omission and uniting all these units with an objective definition? Sounds like you're against conceptual integration which means you're against reason. I would like you to provide a quote from Objectivist sources that claim that anyone that disagrees with Objectivism is "irrational". You won't find it. But what would you call someone who rejects the fact that existence exists, that consciousness is the consciousness of something, that things are what they are, the law of identity and rejects the notion that wishing makes things so? The only alternative to Objectivism is some form of subjectivism. I just wish that those who want to criticize Objectivism would do a little research into what they are attempting to criticize, but alas, wishing doesn't make things so, which is a foundational principle of Objectivism. And, if Objectivism is a cult, it's a cult that demands from its cult members, the absolute injunction to think and validate things for themselves and to never take anything on faith but to use reason exclusively. The author in the article you linked to had as his first objection that Objectivism calls for reason as an absolute. Apparently, he wants to use reason when he feels like it and unreason when it suits him.

And what are you talking about sexual abuse for. Whom did she sexually abuse? I see that you are giving up on criticizing Objectivism and are now resorting to personal smears against its creator. That's known as the genetic fallacy. But if it were true, it would not invalidate any of Objectivism's ideas. Just as if we found out that Einstein was a child abuser it would not invalidate his theories. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.

 

[FireDragon76]

Then don't let them watch it if you're worried about it. Or better yet, teach them Objectivism so that they are intellectually and philosophically armed against these manipulations. Of course, the best way to succeed under capitalism is to harm your customers with dangerous products, right? Under a true laissez faire Capitalism, such tactics would be punished severely and quickly. But when this happens under our mixed economy, usually nothing happens to the perpetrator because businesses are in cahoots with the government. Sometimes they do but sometimes they don't depending on who they know. That is not capitalism, that's cronyism. So you are building straw men here.

All markets are a creation of legal frameworks to enforce the terms of trade. And that means the use of force, if necessary.

Then it's not capitalism. It's Hobbesian economics. It's the right of some people to take the goods or services of another. That's not free trade and respect for individual rights and protection of property rights that Capitalism needs as a prerequisite. Capitalism is free, voluntary trade to mutual benefit. It's not exploitation. It's not theft. And if the Chinese or the Japanese don't like the terms of a treaty (contract) they are free not to sign it.

It's sort of hard to refuse the terms of a treaty when America or Britain had a whole fleet of warships with guns levelled at you.

Force has always been part and parcel of how capitalism has operated. The first multinational corporation, the Dutch East India Company, was essentially a private army.

 

[The happy Objectivist]

All markets are a creation of legal frameworks to enforce the terms of trade. And that means the use of force, if necessary.

Yes, the retaliatory use of force, against those who initiate its use. According to Objectivism, this is the proper role of government, to protect the citizens from the initiation of force or fraud.

"Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned.

The recognition of individual rights entails the banishment of physical force from human relationships: basically, rights can be violated only by means of force. In a capitalist society, no man or group may initiate the use of physical force against others. The only function of the government, in such a society, is the task of protecting man’s rights, i.e., the task of protecting him from physical force; the government acts as the agent of man’s right of self-defense, and may use force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use; thus the government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of force under objective control." Ayn Rand, “What Is Capitalism?”
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, 19

—Ayn Rand Lexicon

It's sort of hard to refuse the terms of a treaty when America or Britain had a whole fleet of warships with guns levelled at you.

Well, that's different. Japan initiated force against us and we retaliated and won. That gives us the right to dictate terms.

Force has always been part and parcel of how capitalism has operated. The first multinational corporation, the Dutch East India Company, was essentially a private army.

But that's not capitalism as Objectivism defines it. It's the job of any philosophy to define its terms and Objectivism does this. And there's no problem with this provided one makes his definitions clear and uses them consistently. Objectivism agrees with you that all these things like slavery and false advertising and all the other evils that you want to attribute to Capitalisms are in fact evil. So what's the fuss? See the definition above which I provided and stand by.

 

[The happy Objectivist]

Firedragon76,

I asked you a question and so far you've not answered it. I'd like an answer now. Do you recognize that the unreal is not real? Yes or no.

 

[durangodawood]

...Do you really want to use insects like ants or bees as a model for human society. It's been tried you know over and over again. It's called Communism. It's called collectivism. It doesn't work because it's incompatible with human nature. We are not ants. We are individuals who think with our own individual minds. We are the rational animal. We are conceptual beings. Do you think an ant has self-awareness? Do you think it cares whether it lives or dies? Do you think it must think and make choices to further its life or does it mindlessly go about the actions that are programmed into it? Does an ant need values like love, friendship, knowledge, honesty, beauty? In an ant colony or a bee collony, the individual ants' lives don't matter, except the queen. In a Bee colony, every bee has its job assigned to it. The drones fly out to gather the food. Some tend the hatching bees and the rest take care of the queen. Come to think of it, this sounds exactly like a communist society. Just replace the queen with Kim Jung Un. And, ants and bees don't consistently sacrifice their values. If they did the colony wouldn't exist because they'd all be dead.

Ok that makes sense. Mainly I was reacting to your claim that Any living organism which consistently sacrificed it's values would die. But for certain animals death IS the outcome when they fulfill their values. Im definitely not proposing ant colonies as a model for human society. Generally I find justifications of human morality by referring to other species to be distracting at best.

And Objectivism nowhere denies the existence of groups or that groups of individuals can cooperate to do things that the individual can not.....

Tricky to discuss because what I said about groups was a response to this from you:

The group has no claim on the individual because the group is simply an abstraction. It doesn't exist. What exists is a collection of individuals, all of the same basic nature. Other individuals do have a claim on you. You grant them this claim when you make the choice to live. That claim is the same claim you have on yourself. It is to act rationally and never seek to obtain any value by means of the initiation of force. That is the claim that others have on you. It is a chosen obligation.

When you say the group doesnt exist, well right off the bat I can plainly see thats wrong.

Objectivism rejects the group as the standard of value. To do so makes the individual expendable. See the haters of man want you to think that human life requires sacrifice. They want you to think this because they want you divided into warring groups, seeking the favor of the king. They don't want you having thoughts of your own or self esteem. People who think for themselves and hold their own life as the supreme value are not controllable. They won't be told what to do and just Obey. Collectivism doesn't work for humans because we are not mindless drones. It crushes the human spirit. It crushes the mind. And unlike an ant, every human being is a potentioal Michaelangelo, Newton, or Tesla. How many people with that kind of potential spent their lives building the pyramids for some pretentious leader? How many Michael Faradays or Mozarts died in concentration camps. I for one want everyone to be free to think, to produce, to make life better for all of us.

How many Faradays around the world never saw any scientific opportunities at all because their group left education entirely up to individual parents who themselves had no resources?

I've heard a lot about those bikes and the breadwinner. Maybe some day. Do you have the 650b wheels? Around where I live the 650b is the way to go with 2 inch knobby tires. Miles and miles of dirt to ride. I've also got a Surly Wednesday with 3.8 inch tires. That's my trail bike and omni-terra bike. Great for exploring desert washes.

Yeah 650b. I have a 2.0 tire wheelset and a 2.4 for when it gets rougher. Ive done some massive rides on the GM..... For mtb I have a Surly Krampus, which is fun as heck. The Journeyman looks like a great bike.

 

[FireDragon76]

Yes, the retaliatory use of force, against those who initiate its use. According to Objectivism, this is the proper role of government, to protect the citizens from the initiation of force or fraud.

"Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned.

The recognition of individual rights entails the banishment of physical force from human relationships: basically, rights can be violated only by means of force. In a capitalist society, no man or group may initiate the use of physical force against others. The only function of the government, in such a society, is the task of protecting man’s rights, i.e., the task of protecting him from physical force; the government acts as the agent of man’s right of self-defense, and may use force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use; thus the government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of force under objective control." Ayn Rand, “What Is Capitalism?”
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, 19

—Ayn Rand Lexicon




Well, that's different. Japan initiated force against us and we retaliated and won. That gives us the right to dictate terms.

You're wrong about the history. I was referring to the Convention of Kanagawa of 1854. Commodore Perry told the Japanese to open their country to trade or be prepared for war. And that's how capitalism actually worked in American history, not according to Ayn Rand's fantasy ideal.

And that was repeated over and over, whether it was against Asian countries, liberated slave colonies (Haiti), or Americans organizing for collective bargaining. There's plenty of real violence behind capitalism.

Objectivism agrees with you that all these things like slavery and false advertising and all the other evils that you want to attribute to Capitalisms are in fact evil. So what's the fuss? See the definition above which I provided and stand by.

What you define as "Capitalism" has never existed.

 

[Whyayeman]

Now if I came upon Hitler dying in the desert or Pol Pot or Mao I wouldn't help them.

That poses a very real moral dilemma for Religious and non-religious people alike.

For a Christian I think there would be an obligation to help. I am confident there will be scriptural support for this somewhere in the New Testament. Even without scripture I think Christians and other religious groups would feel that obligation. It might simply be the obligation not to commit murder; or the concept of brotherly love.

As a non-religious person I think there would be the same obligation but I might struggle to identify it. At any rate I would feel it. Perhaps it would be the same brotherly love.

 

[Strathos]

That poses a very real moral dilemma for Religious and non-religious people alike.

For a Christian I think there would be an obligation to help. I am confident there will be scriptural support for this somewhere in the New Testament. Even without scripture I think Christians and other religious groups would feel that obligation. It might simply be the obligation not to commit murder; or the concept of brotherly love.

As a non-religious person I think there would be the same obligation but I might struggle to identify it. At any rate I would feel it. Perhaps it would be the same brotherly love.

I'd help them, then take them to the proper authorities to be dealt with.

 

[The happy Objectivist]

That poses a very real moral dilemma for Religious and non-religious people alike.

For a Christian I think there would be an obligation to help. I am confident there will be scriptural support for this somewhere in the New Testament. Even without scripture I think Christians and other religious groups would feel that obligation. It might simply be the obligation not to commit murder; or the concept of brotherly love.

As a non-religious person I think there would be the same obligation but I might struggle to identify it. At any rate I would feel it. Perhaps it would be the same brotherly love.

I think you are right that both religious and non-religious alike would see it as an obligation because most atheists I've met are very conventional when it comes to morality. They may have rejected the notion of God but they kept the religious moral code. Oh, they try to justify it by other means. Richard Dawkings comes to mind as an example.

It would not be murder. Hitler, through his actions, forfeited any rights he had. I think that rights are inalienable but they can be forfeited, by violating the rights of others, you abandon the whole concept of rights. You can not violate individual rights like Hitler and then turn around and claim any individual rights.

One thing is for sure, Hitler would never kill another person or order them to be killed if he was dead. It is not a moral dilemma for me at all. I would not kill him directly nor would I stay and watch his misery but I would not help him. Of course, Hitler was a symptom, not the disease. The disease was and is the morality of sacrifice. So long as this heinous moral idea is dominant, Hitlers will keep rising to power. Hitler and his ilk do not operate on the morality of life, they operate on the morality of death, which is altruism so I would just be giving them what they really want. And by that I mean altruism in its true meaning, the meaning that its originator Auguste Compte instilled it with, not this watered down vague notion of kindness that most people understand it to mean today.

 

[The happy Objectivist]

Ok that makes sense. Mainly I was reacting to your claim that Any living organism which consistently sacrificed it's values would die. But for certain animals death IS the outcome when they fulfill their values. Im definitely not proposing ant colonies as a model for human society. Generally I find justifications of human morality by referring to other species to be distracting at best.

Yeah, consider a Mayfly. It spends about 3 years as a nymph under the water. All that time it is eating, growing, using oxygen, swimming to the best location for its survival, avoiding predators, and generally living. It then emerges out of the water and sheds its exoskeleton and becomes a dun, then after a day or two, it sheds again and becomes an Imago. At this stage, it doesn't even have the parts to eat. Then it mates, falls to the water and dies, and is snapped up by a trout. Obviously, if it spent those three years sacrificing its values consistently it would never reach the stage where it can pass on its genes and that is just about all there is to a Mayfly's life. Be born, eat, survive, mate, die.

Tricky to discuss because what I said about groups was a response to this from you:

When you say the group doesnt exist, well right off the bat I can plainly see thats wrong.

Yes, that was sloppy of me. What I should have written is that the group does not exist as an entity in its own right. No additional rights are gained by joining a group. I'm talking about natural, inalienable rights, not vested rights. Just as the Universe is an abstraction and does not exist as an entity in its own right. It is the sum total of all entities, their attributes, their actions, and their relationships. When we look out, we don't see the universe, we see objects like stars, clouds, rainbows, the moon, the milky way if we're lucky to live out in the sticks as I do. We see that there is a multitude of objects for us to perceive. We form the concept "universe" because it serves a very important cognitive function. It's the granddaddy of all concepts, our concept for existence as a whole. It comes from the Latin uni meaning one and versus meaning turning, universus, turning into one or whole.

How many Faradays around the world never saw any scientific opportunities at all because their group left education entirely up to individual parents who themselves had no resources?

Probably a lot but in the old days people got together, hired a teacher, built a little schoolhouse, and their kids got educated and probably a lot better than kids today. Go read the letters of the teenagers who fought in the civil war. Man, those kids could write and so beautifully. Obviously, they were able to do it and it wasn't prohibitively expensive. But now that the government is involved, it's way more expensive. People care about their kid's education and they don't need the government to get involved. Back then they didn't have to pay half their income to the government in taxes so they could afford it. I have learned far more on my own since leaving school than I ever learned in it. I remember taking a philosophy course in college. It was philosophy 101. No mention of the axioms, the issue of metaphysical primacy or causality as should be in a 101 class. Instead it was a course on the various fallacies, and the teacher was bored and so was I because he never showed how it was related to my life. It was concrete bound, anti-conceptual learning, just rote memorization and I remembered it just long enough to take the test. But I'm sure it was the approved method of teaching philosophy according to some committee somewhere.

I'd say far more died in concentration camps or wars started by statists whose worldview sanctioned the initiation of force.

Yeah 650b. I have a 2.0 tire wheelset and a 2.4 for when it gets rougher. I've done some massive rides on the GM..... For mtb I have a Surly Krampus, which is fun as heck. The Journeyman looks like a great bike.

It is a great bike but I wish it was steel. Still, for the price, it's excellent. Wish it had through axels though like my Wednesday. 650b makes the most sense for a guy like me who is only 5 ft. 8 inches tall. The Krampus is a rigid bike, right? We live a few miles east of the tour divide route, so I see a lot of them when I'm out cavorting about in the wilds. Mostly Salsa Fargos or Surly Krampus or ECRs with a few Ogres thrown in.

 

[FireDragon76]

Ayn Rand's objectivism can be dismissed as a seriously thought out worldview just by this wikipedia article alone:

Objectivism's rejection of the primitive - Wikipedia

This is just bigotry substituting for a just and fair treatment of native peoples.

She also had a very childish view of environmental concerns, placing the issue in stark, and false, dichotomies (between supposedly misanthropic tree huggers vs. her rapacious anarcho-capitalism, ignoring all the other possible alternatives).