From: Chris.Holt@newcastle.ac.uk (Chris Holt)
Newsgroups: alt.philosophy.objectivism
Subject: Re: Letting Someone Drown
Date: 12 Jan 93 19:00:56 GMT
Organization: University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, NE1 7RU

cmk@athena.mit.edu (Charles M Kozierok) writes:
>ccmlh@buitc.bu.edu (Mark Hayes) writes:
>>>Personally, I would consider myself lucky if I was drowning and Mr. Roark was
>>>around rather than, say, a person who considers world as unreal.
>>
>>Oh come *ON*, now... many non-"objectivists" do you really know who go
>>around claiming "the world is unreal?" Talk about straw men!

>well, how many objectivists would not throw the life preserver?
>by your own admission, none. that was the point being made.

The point is that someone who doesn't necessarily accept objective
reality does behave as though it is there, and recognizes that the
reasons for doing so are not strictly rational (except in the sense
of covering one's bets, like Pascal's argument for believing in god).
This person accepts that s/he does irrational things, and also accepts
this as an important part of his/her nature; so s/he would say
"Okay, I threw the life preserver because I wanted to, through an
irrational impulse to save someone's life, because I am a social
animal."

The strict objectivist, acting purely out of rational self-interest,
has no such argument available.  Since there are very few such
people, most objectivists would accept that they have irrational
emotions that they sometimes act in accordance with.  However, the
desire to help others, with no reward other than knowing that one
has helped, is often termed altruism; and this is the demon that
objectivists claim to wish to exorcize from their beings.  So
why eliminate altruism but not love (for example)?

There are two further tacks one might take.  One has to do with
external coercion to be altruistic.  The response here is to look
at situations where voluntary charity is insufficient to solve the
problem, e.g. because of free riders.  The mere existence of free
riders reduces the amount of voluntary charity; people are often
quite willing to help if they think everyone else is helping as
well, but if they see other people riding freely they will wish
to do so also (a rational game theoretic strategy).  So the only
way to ensure that the problem is solved is to eliminate the
free riders.  If the solution is of enough benefit to everyone
as a whole, this is done, at the cost of coercion on unwilling
members of the group.

Another tack is to start looking for a rational basis for these
irrational emotions.  Humans are social animals because social
groups had greater chances of survival; altruistic attitudes
led to those gene pools dominating, thanks to a competitive
edge in an unfriendly environment, and the like.  However,
understandable causes don't carry any weight in determining
modern individual behaviour; we can understand how jealous
rages arose, but few advocate acting along those lines.

So the objectivist is left with the task of deciding which emotions
to embrace, knowing that they conflict with the supposedly primary
goal of rational self-interest.  One "rational" approach is to
accept a compromise, accepting that full-blooded objectivism needs
to be watered down to become a viable alternative; but I haven't
seen that suggested (yet).

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 Chris.Holt@newcastle.ac.uk      Computing Lab, U of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
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 Some ideas are frost giants: pouring cold water on them helps them to grow.