Objectivism is not sound

Note: in the interest of conserving space, “Objectivism” will henceforth be called “O’ism” A1: A reason to live; purpose in happiness I. Quoting David Kelley: “A perennial question in O’ism is whether (1) life is a value because one chooses to live, or (2) one should choose to live because life is a value. When the question is posed in this form, (1) is the correct answer.” [1] If one is to live, then one must live according to O’ism. Rand never tried to answer why that initial choice to live should be made. She recognized that, in order to even consider philosophical issues, that choice must have already been made. The decision to live is pre-moral and pre-philosophical. As Galt said: “Life or death is man’s only fundamental alternative. To live is his basic act of choice. If he chooses to live, a rational ethics will tell him what principles of actions are required to implement his choice. If he does not choose to live, nature will take its course.” [2] O’ism is only necessary if one desires to live. If one does not, then a philosophy aimed at preserving life can be no more of a value than anything else. Valuing in general is not possible until the choice to live is made – ‘To speak of “value” as apart from “life” is worse than a contradiction in terms. “It is only the concept of ‘Life’ that makes the concept of ‘Value’ possible.”’ [3] Rand never begs the question. She never assumed that one should value life. All of philosophy is only relevant if one already value life, making the question of “why” you should value life unanswerable. It is still clear that the choice can be made, and Rand created her philosophy for those who had made the choice to live. There is no issue here. Pro says that O’ism fails because, since it does not offer a “reason to live”, depression and general existential angst are bound to plague anyone who follows it. This argument can be disregarded for two reasons: A.) Even if O’ism does cause these problems due to a lack of meaning, if there are no alternative philosophies that would give people this meaning in a rational way, O’ism would still be the only logical choice. If the rejection of O’ism would, as Rand would say, lead to the rejection of reality, and, by extension, the negation of life and of all values, you could never justify it, since it undercuts the basis for any such justification. Regardless of whether or not O’ism is “ideal” in its effects, if it is the only philosophy consistent with reality it is the only one that should even be considered, so, unless Pro can propose an alternative, O’ism should still be accepted. B.) You can only say that a lack of meaning is bad if you already presuppose that life should be valued. Pro’s argument completely fails for this reason – for it to be bad that a philosophy does not give life meaning, one must be able to consider “good” and “bad”, and, to do so, one must already assume that life should be held as a value. If a man does not choose to live, it doesn’t matter to him if he commits suicide. If a man does choose to live, he needs no more “meaning” than the fact that he made the choice (since you cannot value life before choosing it and setting it as the standard of value, the choice itself must be unquestionably valuable), so to criticize O’ism for not providing such “meaning” is senseless. II. Quoting Galt: “Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values.” [2] Again, Pro’s argument can only stand if the equivocation it rests on is left unchallenged. Rand’s conception of happiness, by definition, should be pursued, since values should be pursued, and happiness is the result of their achievement. The only way around this is to argue that values should not be pursued, which would be a contradiction in terms, as values are those things that one acts to gain and/or keep. Pro makes a rather strange argument – that valuing happiness is contradictory because actively pursuing happiness leads to a decrease in happiness. A decrease from what? A decrease implies that a higher level of happiness is possible. If this is so, then it is obvious that someone who values happiness would work to reach it, and, if this is achieved by means of the pursuit of “meaningfulness” (or whatever else), then pursuing meaningfulness is still pursuing happiness. If “pursuing happiness decreases happiness”, then it’s obvious that the person isn’t really pursuing happiness – if they were, they wouldn’t allow the pursuit to get in the way of the attainment of happiness. If happiness should be pursued (the BOP is on Pro to show otherwise, since O’ism is assumed), then Pro’s arguments fail. A2: Altruism as undesirable Pro’s argument rests on a fundamental misconception of what Rand is referring to when she talks about altruism. To Rand, altruism is not “helping other people”. In fact, the quote Pro supplies is directly preceded by these lines: “Do not confuse altruism with kindness, good will or respect for the rights of others. These are not primaries, but consequences, which, in fact, altruism makes impossible.“ [4] As such, the “positive effects of altruism” that Pro cites are irrelevant, as she is using the term “altruism” much differently than Rand does. Pro goes on to talk about how “altruistic behavior” can be beneficial to securing survival, and how, if Rand valued survival, she should have valued altruism. There are two objections to this argument: A.) When Rand talked about survival, she did not mean survival by any means or as any kind of thing. She specifically said that man’s life was of value and that the good is that which furthers man’s survival qua man. If the Objectivist theory of value is correct (that it is an individual’s life lived in accordance with his nature that is the highest value), it doesn’t matter if altruism furthers unmodified “survival” – altruism would only be valued if it furthered survival qua man, which, if altruism places others above the self, and living qua man is to live with the self at the forefront, is impossible. Pro has to refute the value O’ism gives to the self for altruism, by definition, to be a value. B.) If these “altruistic behaviors” do further man’s life qua man, and if this is only possible if they respect the self over all else, then they’re mislabeled. Again, to Rand, altruism is the sacrifice of higher values for the sake of lesser values. If the kind of survival advanced by the actions Pro cites is a higher value than the effort involved in carrying them out, choosing those actions is not a sacrifice and is not altruistic. Either the behaviors cited do not further life qua man, in which case they could never be moral, or they do, in which case choosing them could never be altruistic. Given these refutations, Pro’s arguments are completely nullified. A3: Rand’s conception of Man I. Every concept has its basis in the perception of reality. When one forms the concept of a “triangle”, one sees existents, finds a quality that can serve to delineate those existents from all others, and makes that quality the essential characteristic of all triangles – if an existent has it, it is a triangle. If not, it is not. There is no room for error here – no matter how much of language is “rooted in metaphor”, a four-sided shape can never be a triangle by definition of a triangle. A is A – a thing is itself. If a thing does not have the necessary qualities to be subsumed under a concept, this is directly necessitated by the fundamental nature of reality. It isn’t an “arbitrary whim” that causes the letter “O” to be a circle (or oval – either one, the details are irrelevant) – it has the absolute qualities of a circle (these qualities being obvious merely by looking at the letter) as conceptualized by the individual, so it is objectively a circle to that individual. In much the same way, the concept of “man” is formed by looking at various concretes, singling out one quality (rationality) present in at least one, and building a concept around that essence. If an entity has rationality, it is a man. There is no room for error here if the conceptual process is carried out correctly (and this can be verified just by going through the steps and making sure that there are no contradictions, such as the essence of a concept being “square circleness” or something equally silly). My challenge to Pro is to show exactly how Rand’s concepts can be “wrong” or “not in relation to reality” if everything they describe are possible and non-contradictory. Pro’s fatal flaw is that she conflates language with concepts themselves. Language is a tool used to refer to concepts – it does not replace them. Concepts themselves are, by their nature, merely abstractions of existents, real existents, with specific and definite qualities. Since A is A, concepts are not as fuzzy as Pro makes them out to be. Pro’s argument is, in essence, that since language is not guaranteed to be perfect, it must always be imperfect. The easiest response is likely also the most impactful – is “A is A” ever anything but true? Is there any fallibility in that proposition? If not, then it has been established that tautologies are not subject to error. I don’t quite understand Pro’s emphasis on metaphor – if metaphors are used in language to effectively denote concepts, how are they any different than, well, single words? What makes a description of a table that uses metaphor any distinct from just saying “table”? Language is obviously already abstract… words are just as abstract as metaphors. I don’t see how this is relevant at all, given that Rand never rejected the nature of language as abstract. Rand did, however, place an emphasis on the relationship between concepts and reality, which is not attacked by attacking language. Sources: 1.) http://www.atlassociety.org... 2.) Atlas Shrugged (Galt’s Speech) 3.) http://aynrandlexicon.com... 4.) “Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World,”