Objectivism is not sound

Affirmative Case A1: A reason to live; purpose in happiness I. When it comes to purpose in life, Objectivism begs the question. Nowhere in Objectivism will you find an explanation of why you should consider the purpose of life to be Rand’s. So, this begs the question: why live? Why should anyone follow Objectivism? Why should Man follow a “philosophy for living on Earth” when there is no reason to live? Is that not illogical? Syllogistically, it appears as such: 1) Man should live life 2) Since Man should live life, he should live it his way (this is where Rand begins) 3) Etc… To give impact to following a philosophy that offers no reason to live, a Spanish university showed that certain people with a lower feeling of “meaning in life” were found to have a “serious level of depression and suicide risk, and a moderate level of hopelessness” [4]. In fact, so important was “meaning in life” that it was a significant predictor in determining the variance in depression and suicide. So, the impact here is that with a lack of reason to live due to lack of purpose, depression, suicide and hopelessness become much, much more likely. Since Rand intended her philosophy to help people live on Earth, the impacts shown here contradict that end goal of Rand's. II. A second rejection of Objectivist philosophy comes in the form of advocating happiness in moral virtue. In a 1959 interview, Rand explained that Objectivism has “[Man’s] highest moral purpose is the achievement of his own happiness” [1]. According to a collaborative study by R. Baumeister et al (of which three independent Universities were involved), lives which aimed to “cultivate happiness” were ones which there were overall downsides [2]. The study also showed that pursuing happiness, much like Rand does, is highly correlated to leading to a decrease in happiness. Rather, the recommendation for life-living was to focus energy on “understanding meaningfulness”, which is precisely what Rand *does not* argue for. These findings, that pursuit of happiness is of detriment, were also found within the work of Gruber, Mauss and Tamir (2011) [3]. Moreover, the collaborative study found that “the more people pursued happiness, the less they seem[ed] to be able to obtain it”. So, the impact shown here is that Rand’s purpose to living life (happiness) leads to the opposite (unhappiness), therefore it contradictory and not logically sound. A2: Altruism as undesirable The Objectivist’s view on altruism is that it is: “is self-sacrifice—which means; self-immolation, self-abnegation, self-denial, self-destruction—which means: the self as a standard of evil, the selfless as a standard of the good” [5]. However, altruism is not at all these things, as I can show you. According to Seelig and Dobelle (2001), people who volunteered to help research study were rewarded with “an enhanced sense of self-esteem” [6]. Another positive to be extracted from this study was that altruism can turn liabilities into positives. The injured volunteers helped research into areas which required injured persons, thus without the volunteers, the research would not necessarily be able to occur. Thus, the impacts of altruism in this example are: (1) improved self-esteem for participants, and (2) the completion of useful research that may not be otherwise completed. Altruism is actually a survival tool, despite Rand rejecting altruism and proposing that survival is important in determining morality: “The standard of value of the Objectivist ethics—the standard by which one judges what is good or evil—is man’s life, or: that which is required for man’s survival qua man” [8]. According to Charnov (1977) cited in Gardner (2001), there is a phenomenon known as ‘Hamilton’s rule’ wherein altruistic behaviour can be favoured by natural selection if certain conditions are met in an equation [7]. Basically, without delving heavily into psychology jargon, the equation determines the cost to the altruist, the benefit to the recipient and the genetic relation, of which calculates whether altruism is a viable strategy in certain scenarios (this calculation causes an increase in frequency in production of altruistic genes). So, the impact against Objectivism here is twofold: (1) altruism can help keep people alive, (2) Rand espousing survival as the basis of morality, and altruism being shown as a survival tool, are a contradiction in Objectivist philosophy, thus not logically sound. A3: Rand’s conception of Man I. A third, independent objection to Objectivist philosophy is that a conception of reality is arguably not capable of being described, due to the limitations of language. Rand terms the ideal human being as Man, wherein she describes the ideal characteristics of what is essentially the best person. Furthermore, as she outlines in the forward of Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, Rand writes that: “concepts are abstractions or universals, and everything man perceives in particular, concrete” [cited from novel]. There are issues with this that I would like to show you. How is it possible that Rand derives the true nature of man? How can we check to see that Rand’s conception does indeed reflect reality with such concrete terms? The language used in coming to this conception is not necessarily capable of describing the exact nature of Man. This is due to the inductive nature of language, wherein humans process information and then use language to describe the processed information. Meaning must be filtered through the subjective fallibility of the human mind. In order words, language itself is not something created (however its origins came about) with objectivity, thus depictions of Man are not necessarily without inaccuracy. This phenomenon has been well-documented in philosophy. According to philosopher George Santayana (1932), language is very much metaphorical, “any degree of inadequacy and originality is tolerable in discourse, or even requisite” [9]. Examples like “she picked him from the crowd” or “he got wrecked in that debate”, both showcase how language is not always this strict, definite, exact calculation, but rather metaphorical estimations. The great philosopher continues, “a sensation or a theory, no matter how arbitrary its terms, will be true of the object, if it expresses some true relation in which that object stands to the self, so that these terms are not misleading as signs, however poetical they may be as sounds or as pictures” [11]. Verily, he argues, concepts, words, idea etc. only become misleading when you demand that they are only valid when precise. This phenomenon has been well-documented in scientific community, too. A collaborative paper by Gerard Steen explores the idea of metaphor use in knowledge and language. Prima facie, “knowledge and its foundations in information and data can be conceptualised via metaphor in various ways” [10]. The importance of this sentence is it affirms the idea that knowledge can be derived from non-precise metaphors. The research continues to explain that, “the findings from our data suggest that this type of metaphor [used for rhetorical purpose] use is fairly exceptional in comparison with the regular, conventional use of metaphor typical of all abstract topics, including knowledge and its management” [quoting Steen, 2008, found in source number 10]. Here, we see that conventional use of metaphors plays a role in abstract knowledge, abstract knowledge like the conception of the essence in Man. The impact of this phenomenon is that Rand’s conceptualisation of Man is not nearly as accurate as she purports it to be, but is rather a concept filtered through her subjective experience and metaphorical knowledge. Furthermore, in attempting to make it precise, she undermines its precision due to the limitations of language. In other words, concepts do *not* necessarily correspond with reality. This takes the objectivity out of the Objectivist’s conception of Man. References [1] [2] . http://faculty-gsb.stanford.edu... [3] . http://gruberpeplab.com... [4] . http://www.researchgate.net... [5] . http://aynrandlexicon.com... [6] . http://www.bethseeligmd.com... [7] . http://www.zoo.ox.ac.uk... [8] . http://aynrandlexicon.com... [9] . https://books.google.com.au... [10] . http://www.academia.edu... [11] . http://tinyurl.com...