Brainpolice : Objectivism, Ethics

Putting The NAP In Its Proper Context

Brainpolice — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 00:55:00 GMT

I contend that the non-aggression principle is not a contextless axoim and it requires a specific definition of the difference between genuine self-defense and the initiation of violence. There is a grave problem that thin libertarianism and plumb-line libertarianism runs into, which is that the non-aggression principle has to be properly specified and taken into its proper context relative to other more specific principles or values. Otherwise, one's conception of libertarianism may start to undermine itself by either assuming values that contradict the NAP or through vagueness in the definition of what constitutes the initiation of violence.

For example, I would contend that the value of revenge and the traditional concept of punishment inherently undermines and violates the NAP. I consider them to constitute justifications for ex-post-facto violence, which is a particular form of the initiation of violence. I would also contend that an absolutist view in favor of violence in defense of property rights undermines and violates the NAP because it justifies pre-emptive violence on the mere grounds that someone is on your property. So I think that genuine self-defense has to be clearly distinguished from pre-emptive and ex-post-facto violence, and the context for genuine self-defense is an actual threat to one's life.

The absolutist view, in contrast, is completely arbitrary because anyone at any time can just go "hey, you're on my property" and cap someone. But merely being on someone's property is an arbitrary reason to justify the initiation of force. You need more of a specific context than just "there is someone on my property". The "punishment" of being shot to death isn't even remotely proportional to the crime of trespassing or loitering. Compared to life vs. death, tresspassing and loitering is a fairly minor matter. It certainly does not merit arbitrarily shooting people unless the people truly do present an overt threat of force.

Furthermore, I reject the idea that being on someone else's property means you forfeit your right to life and liberty. It might mean that you have an incentive to generally cooperate, compromise and abstain from infringement, but not that you lose all of your rights all of a sudden. A theory of property rights that overtly undermines the right to life and liberty needs to be fixed, otherwise it is going to be hopelessly inconsistant, even sinking to the level of justifying what are clear cases of assault and murder. Clearly, a consistant theory of rights has to uphold all of the rights, not misdefine rights to the point where one's alleged defense of one right inherently violates another right in the overall network of rights-concepts.

While Objectivists may tend to have a more integrated social philosophy than thin libertarians, Objectivists also fail to put the NAP in it's proper context, since at least the Piekoff-influenced Objectivists openly justify pre-emptive violence on the largest scale possible in the form of the invasive military apparatus, and there is a degree to which Rand was wishy washy on questions of American imperialism and she definitely seemed to throw a bit of a bone to the political right on questions of foreign policy. The problem with this interpretation of the NAP is that it totally turns a blind eye to the mass-death of innocent bystanders in the crossfire of conflict between nation-states. Scruples over private military proposals aside, thin libertarians actually tend to be pretty good on these sort of questions.

Where thin libertarians tend to fail most, however, is in the realm of pre-emptive violence on a smaller scale, in the context of individual private property owners. It's at this point that thin libertarianism may carve a possible path towards vulgar libertarianism, with the baggage of advocacy of the alleged right of property owners to arbitrarily shoot alleged tresspassers and justifications for feudal or quasi-feudal landlordism. These kind of libertarians tend to treat property rights as axoimatic, and effectively they trump life and liberty in their framework. The tendency is to act as if property rights grants completely arbitrary or absolute decision-making power over other people who are on or make use of your property.

This is problematic because it creates tension with the more fundamental principles involved in individual sovereignty. The fact that I'm on someone's property or the fact that I may technically be capable of leaving someone's property does not mean that literally whatever they decide to do to me is inherently justified. The decision-making power that property rights grants a person should not be completely arbitrary, since it always must be put into the context of consistantly respecting other people's rights. Being on someone else's property should not imply that you are their defacto slave or no longer deserve to live, only that one probably has to compromise with the owner in order to make use of the property. Owning property should not logically grant someone completely absolute and unilaterial decision-making power over other people.

So if views on the NAP or the use of violence in general could be put on a spectrum or organized, I'd categorize it like this: (1) Pacifism - All violence is unjustified, including self-defense (2) Thick Libertarianism - The initiation of violence is unjustified, self-defense is justified when there is an actual threat to life (3) Thin Libertarianism - The initiation of violence is unjustified, except in defense of property rights, which is to be categorized as self-defense (4) Objectivism - The initiation of violence is unjustified, except when it is rational "retaliation" (I.E. ex-post-facto or pre-emptive violence is justified), which is to be categorized as self-defense. The problem with both elements of Objectivism and thin libertarianism is that they smuggle in initiations of force by miscategorizing them as self-defense. The thick libertarian option seems the most rational.

Is self-ownership a misnomer?

Brainpolice — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 15:47:00 GMT

If something is owned, then by definition there is something external to it that is doing the owning. Likewise, something that is owned is by definition something external to the agent that owns it. Taking this very basic point into account, does it really make that much sense to think in terms of "self-ownership"? For if the self is something that is owned, then it is being owned by something or someone else. So then what is this entity that owns us and yet is us at the same time? Surely if it owns us then it is not us, or if we own the thing in question then it is not us?

In short, we run into the problem of creating a metaphysical duality in which the self is split into an essential and unessential self or a dominant and passive self in which the body is merely something that is inhabited by a "soul" or "spirit". One way of trying to get out of this problem would be to sever this duality into two separate entities, although the problem of explaining the existance and nature of this immaterial "soul" or "spirit" would remain. Another way of getting out of this problem would be to disregaurd the "soul" or "spirit" as a floating abstraction and to consequentially recognize the actual self as a coherant whole, devoid of any dominating metaphysical entity.

The idea of an external metaphysical entity that owns oneself renders the individual into nothing more than the slave of an abstraction, for their actual material being is placed into a submissive position in relation to this metaphysical entity or this particular manifestation of it. Individual autonomy and self-realization can actually be said to come under threat as a result of such a concept. In reality, this abstract metaphysical self functions as a false identity and implies some sort of internal struggle. Such an internal struggle can only be avoided by casting out or denying such a metaphysical duality to begin with, at which point the actual self can be meaningfully recognized and rights can be meaningfully derived.

None of this is being said to belittle the importance of individual sovereignty, but rather it is being said to save it from internal disintegration, while avoiding the problem of solipsism at the same time. This is a rather simple matter of recognizing the distinction between one's actual self and that which is either external to oneself or non-existant to begin with. If such a distinction is not made, then there will forevermore be a confusing haze with respect to discussions about rights and their derivation.

Judeo-Christian Morality vs. The Free Society

Brainpolice — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 02:21:00 GMT

I'd like to explain why I think that traditional judeo-christian morality does not synch up very well with the principles of liberty and does not provide a beneficial cultural framework for a free society. In many ways, I'm not going to be saying anything particularly new here, as this criticism has essentially already been made by both Friedrich Nietzsche and Ayn Rand in their own respectively unique ways, although of course I'm going to be putting this into my own words and expressing it from my own perspective which is both similar to that of Neitzche and Rand and altogether my own. Unfortunately, most people and most libertarians for that matter are not particularly familiar with the substance of this kind of criticism of judeo-christian morality or at least do not entirely grasp what the meat of the issue is.

The Devaluation of the Earthly

To start off, let's consider the implications of the general concept of an afterlife in judeo-christian tradition. According to this view, this life is only a test or a transitional stage. What ultimately matters is that which allegedly lies beyond. As a consequence, the life and time that we have on this earth in the now is devalued. The concept of the afterlife basically posits that the only real purpose of life in the here and now is to prepare for the afterlife. In the grand scheme of things, earthly matters are more or less characterized as meaningless or insignificant. The earthly may even be construed as immoral. Salvation is construed as lieing outside of material existance and consequentially material existance starts to lose its meaning and significance.

The picture gets even more gloomy when we introduce the concept of original sin, which is basically a sweeping declaration of ancestral guilt for all of mankind. Apparently everyone is guilty from birth and "the flesh" is somehow inherently bad. And the most fundamental feature that makes us human, I.E. free will, is characterized as the source of evil in the world. Yet while a free willing agent most certainly is capable of evil, free will is neutral to morality and could also lead to good. Furthermore, morality as such couldn't exist without free will, as without agency there is no responsibility for one's actions. Interestingly, the fatalistic implications of the notion of god as the first cause and watchmaker contradicts the concept of free will. The notion that god has a "divine plan" that will inevitably pan out throughout the course of history cannot be reconciled with the notion that human beings have some kind of free will.

Leaving the meaning and implications of free will aside (I'm leaning towards some kind of compatibalism on the general free will question at the moment), the implications of the concept of original sin and the afterlife are fairly silly. What's implied is that since we are all inherently sinners, we must spend our entire lives paying off this debt we have allegedly incurred. Hence, we have a whole slew of unchosen positive obligations. We are supposed to feel guilty for being "of the flesh" and for having biological drives and psychological motivations. Allegedly it is an imperative that we strive to deny or suppress much of the fundamental characteristics of what makes us human in this life as a path to a gauranteed ticket to the afterlife.

The Seven Deadly Sins

Consider the 7 deadly sins: pride, avarice, lust, anger, gluttony, envy and sloth. Before I go into an analysis of these individually, consider this: has there ever been a point in your life when you did not feel any of these emotions at all? No, these are all traits that pretty much describe some fundamental aspects of what it means to be a human. And that leads us to another realization: most of these are emotions or feelings, ones which all of us experience at some point or another, although of course they can be manifested in terms of agency. In either case, quite clearly the implication of this is that it is essentially impossible for us to exist as humans qua humans without "sinning". Furthermore, all of these "sins" have one thing in common: avoiding them constitutes self-denial or self-sacrifice. It's all meant to imply that that which has to do with the self is somehow evil.

Why is pride considered a sin? If anything, is self-esteem not a good thing? What is wrong with being proud of one's accomplishments? Putting forth pride as a sin is a rather sweeping declaration that ignores the positive side of pride, I.E. individual self-esteem based on one's actual merits. Pride as such is not necessarily the same thing as narcissism. The narcissist is not proud of their actual self or their actual merits and accomplishments. Rather, they have created a fantasy world in which they have merits and accomplishments that aren't really theirs. The narcissist does not hold themselves up, they push everyone else down. But should we therefore abandon pride altogether out of the fear of narcissism and essentially propose that all self-esteem and pride-driven self-improvement is evil?

What about avarice, which may be substituted with the term "greed"? We must first note once again that by itself it's just a motivation or emotion, I.E. the desire to have more of something or to keep the plentiful amount that one already has. As realized in agency, it would mean the pursuit of more or the pursuit of holding on to what one already has. It is easy to see how the more socialistic interpretations of christianity may draw from this. But once again it is far too sweeping to consider this inherently immoral. Why is wanting to keep what you have immoral? Why is pursueing more immoral? Does the actual means by which one does this irrelevant, or should distinctions be made between various ways of obtaining plenty or hoarding what one has? Is there no distinction between claiming that which is others and merely pursueing more for yourself in a voluntary or mutual way? And by what standard does one determine how much is too much? Once again, this sin reduces to the notion that the self and its gratification is somehow evil.

What about lust, which is usually meant to imply sexual desire? Why is it immoral to have sexual desire, and how can one possibly be a human being without experiencing this in some form or another, especially when one is young? Is sexual desire not a fundamental biological drive within us? It certainly seems far to sweeping to consider all sexual desire immoral. While rape may be immoral, voluntary sexual interactions between adults isn't. While promiscuous sexual interactions may be unhealthy for the individual in the long-term, it hardly makes any sense to proclaim it to be inherently evil. In either case, if everyone lived their lives as total prudes then the human race would slowly start to die off. There is, afterall, a connection between sex and the propogation of the species. On an interesting note, this sin contradicts the dictim "be fruitful and multiply", so obviously victorian prudism isn't the only possible interpretation.

Why is anger considered a sin? Perhaps anger can be misdirected or lead to immoral behaviors, but it need not be so. Anger is an emotion that everyone experiences in one form or another at some point in their life. And how can one possibly not be angry at injustice or immorality? There are times when anger can be a rather good thing, a way for one to release pent up energy or frustration without necessarily hurting anyone else. It would be absurd to expect people, especially people that are in rather dire situations, to go through life smiling and being slap-happy all the time. And sometimes anger goes along with honesty. Sometimes the alternative to expressing anger or frustration is to lie to people just to keep a facade going. I'd rather be both angry and brutally honest to someone then to perpetuate a false sense of comfort which merely enables what is actually a bad situation.

Why is gluttony considered a sin? I find this to be perhaps the most silly of the 7 deadly sins, since at face value it has to do with nothing but food, although of course it can be construed to imply that one shouldn't take recreational drugs (although I've always thought that food is a drug in a sense). As a motivation or desire, gluttony simply means to want another cookie from the cookie jar. While eating or drinking too much can obviously lead to obesity and some major health problems, it hardly makes any sense to make minimalism in eating and drinking habits a moral imperative. Are we really going to call fat people immoral? I'd rather live in a free and prosperous society full of fat slobs who munch on junk food all day than an unfree and unprosprous society where everyone is surprisingly physically fit.

The case of envy is a bit more complicated then the others. Envy may be characterized as the desire to have something that someone else has. It is often used interchangably with jealousy, but there is a bit of a distinction. Once again, taken simply as an emotion or desire to have something that someone else has, I don't necessarily see anything wrong with envy. I want an extremely talented group of musicians to play with and lots of studio equipment and I don't have it but Steve Vai does, therefore I suppose I envy the guitarist Steve Vai. That doesn't mean that I'm going to try to steal his band or his studio equipment. It's simply that he has something that I want and that I probably will never have. Should that stop me from pursueing my dreams and trying to obtain those things for myself? I think not.

What about sloth? Sloth may be another word for laziness or leisure. Of course I can easily see how this can be a bad thing in that a lazy person may be dependant on others and do little or nothing for themselves, hence showing a lack of responsibility and ability, but I would hardly consider it immoral. For one thing, some people are this way due to their nature, sometimes because of a very real mental or physical handicap. And even when a perfectly capable person chooses to be lazy, that is their perogative. I'm not going to consider someone immoral for wanting to take a long break from working and spend their time in leisure instead. Surely it would be absurd to consider it a moral imperative that people be working and productive at all times. We're human beings, not robots. I can envision a slave-master cracking a whip at a slave and calling them slothful for taking a break from the hard physical labor that they are forced to do.

All of these alleged sins can be and have been propogated in negative ways. Pride as a sin can be used to crush people's self-esteem. Avarice or greed as a sin can be used to keep people poor or to discourage economic mobility. Lust as a sin can be used to keep the women for oneself or as a method of population control. Anger as a sin can be used to perpetuate dishonesty and to enable bad relationships. Gluttony as a sin can be used to keep people hungry, to essentially starve people. Envy as a sin can be used to discourage people from pursueing their dreams. Sloth as a sin can be used to foster compulsory labor. When they are taken to their logical conclusion and consistantly applied, they amount to the total denial of self-interest, desire and personal well-being. Taken as absolutes, they would require people to be mindless automatons with no trace of humanity.

Altruism As Slave Morality

Let's take a look at the concept of altruism. Altruism is posited in one form or another by most organized religions. It essentially proposes that the individual has an unchosen positive obligation to serve others and that their fundamental purpose in life is to serve others. On the flip side, self-interest is essentially demonized as immoral. This is a very warped view when broken down rationally. Unfortunately, criticism of altruism is often misunderstood because in most people's minds altruism is the same thing as benevolence and empathy, but nothing could be further from the truth. Altruism as an ethic implies unchosen positive obligations. If an individual does not live up to this positive obligation they are viewed as immoral rights violators and they are supposed to be compulsed to live up to the obligation. Afterall, an ethical theory without imperatives wouldn't be functional. In either case, actually choosing to be kind or giving to other people is not fundamentally altruistic because it still involves agency and a genuine desire on the part of the person to benefit another. In true acts of kindness and giving, the emphasis is not on denying oneself but to benefiting another, and the benefit may even be mutual.

Altruism actually leads to nihilism, and the problem of nihilism is something that both Nietzsche and Rand were trying to avoid in their own unique ways (and while Nietzsche was in some ways an immoralist while Rand was quite clearly a moralist, Nietzsche nonetheless essentially proposes a form of egoism as his personal morality). The logical end of altruism is the total devaluation of the self to the point of absolute selflessness. Your life, your values and your property are deprived of value and meaning and you're expect to act as if they don't exist or don't matter. Of course, from my perspective selflessness is impossible both ontologically and psychologically. The self follows from one's very existance as an individual human being and a human beong's fundamental psychological motivations are inward and personal. However, the attempted implementation of altruism as an ethic does have very real effects.

The notion of unchosen positive obligations, whether it be to a deity, a family or an entire society, is inherently incompatible with negative rights and individual sovereignty. Every positive obligation, to the extent that it is not chosen or not a genuine debt, implies a negative rights violation as soon as it is enforced. The result is that people are coerced to associate with other people and to provide goods and services for other people. The individual is forced to sacrifice their own values, their life and their property, regaurdless of their circumstances and regaurdless of their consent. Altruism is at the heart of both communitarianism and dictatorship. In communitarianism, the individual's life and values and property is sacrificed to "the community" or "the majority". In dictatorship, the individual's life and values and property is sacrificed to the dictator and more people can potentially be effected. In either case, in all cases altruism is the morality obligatory upon what amounts to slaves, sometimes subtley and sometimes quite blatantly.

It's important to note that all of this self-sacrificing, self-denying morality has historically been encouraged by people in political and religious power to get the masses to be complacent or obedient. The masses are discouraged from pursueing their own values and bettering their own lives. What largely goes unnoticed is that this is used to benefit the values and lives of various groups of elites. The masses are encouraged to follow a morality of servitude, and when there are servants there are masters. This is what Nietzsche meant when he drew a distinction between "slave morality" and "master morality". Slave morality functions as an ideology that masters or rulers can propagate on to get the masses to accept their enslavement to them as a moral imperative. The masters or rulers, of course, don't actually follow slave morality. They are its beneficiaries. It is just a convenient mentality to propogate to the masses, an apologetic device meant to make it so that servitude seems like a moral imperative. In practise, the masses engage in self-denial to the benefit of a small group of rulers and associated elites. Hence, it's a parasitic relationship.

If the principle of altruism were universally applied to all human beings, and of course it never is and it would be impossible to do consistantly enforce it in the real world, the implication is that everyone is eachother's slave. Since this cannot be realized in practise, since it defies fundamental facts about human existance, motivation and behavior, what one ends up with is at least two distinct classes of people: the masters and the slaves. Quite likely, the attempt to implement altruism will lead to more of a plural latticework of master-slave relationships while still not reaching the consistant extreme of enslaving everyone to eachother. But usually the slaves outnumber the masters by far or a select elite of people function as masters to a much greater degree than anyone else does, and therefore altruism most often leads to some kind of oligarchy, even if it is a mildly democratic oligarchy. Altruism has historically been an apologetic and enabler of both religious and political tyranny.

Master morality, as I interpret it, amounts to hedonism and "might makes right". Master morality should not be construed as the proper alternative to slave morality, nor is it necessarily the polar opposite of slave morality in a certain context. While master morality is not altruistic, master morality is most certainly not any kind of rational egoism. It is anomie or lawlessness, since the masters are not subject to their own rules. Master morality entails an outwardly oriented sense of self that justifies imposing oneself onto others, sometimes using altruism as a ruse or a mask to hide behind. Rational egoism involves an inwardly oriented sense of self that merely justifies being free from the imposition of others, being at liberty to voluntarily pursue one's self-interest and values without restraint. The rational egoist proclaims that noone else may rule over them, but simultaneously they do not claim to rule over anyone else. Rulers don't believe this or function in this way. They claim the right to rule over others while superficially and hypocritically trying to demand that noone else rule over them.

Judeo-Christian morality essentially proposes slave morality as a solution to master morality. In its zeal to oppose hedonism and anomie, it provides a false alternative that only enables the hedonism and anomie of certain people while devalueing everyone else. A society that is dominantly filled with people who accept slave morality will not have the necessary mindset or attitude to resist the yoke of tyranny. It provides the perfect atmosphere for rulers to arise and dominate the naive masses. The cultural framework of a free society must contain the personal sense of value and purpose necessary for people to actively free themselves, otherwise their lack of confidence and their lack of any genuine sense of self-worth and personal value will enable tyranny. It's time to reject both slave morality and master morality to persue some meaningful alternatives.

Morality, Rationality, Survival and the Law

Brainpolice — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 00:27:00 GMT

I was having a bit of a debate with an Objectivist and we got into some questions about morality and rationality. It related to the question of suicide, and I maintained that suicide is irrational but not immoral and that the individual has the liberty to commit such an irrational act. The Objectivist asserted that irrationality is immorality. This doesn't make any sense to me. I'd say that what is moral is inherently rational, but not that what is rational is inherently moral. Likewise, I'd say that what is immoral is inherently irrational, but not that what is irrational is inherently immoral. This is not a paradox when one makes a proper distinction between a vice and a crime or between that which is unethical and that which is merely incorrect or counterproductive. A meaningful distinction between ethics and aesthetics also helps clear up any confusion in this regaurd.

Consider the implications of combining the two premises that (1) that which is irrational is inherently immoral and (2) the law should reflect morality. I can think of endless things that are irrational and harmless to others in and of themselves that should consequentially be viewed as "immoral" and be outlawed under this logic: suicide, not taking a shower, not brushing your teeth, discrimating based solely or primarily on the basis of race, to continue to associate with people who hurt or manipulate you, to smoke cigarettes and do hard drugs, to pray, to go to church, to stay up for 3 days, to starve yourself, to bite your nails, to have promiscous sex with strangers, to have a high time preference, to not take care of one's own property, to not defend oneself and to be boistrous and loud.

All of these things are irrational and many of them are unconductive to either the quality of one's life or its continued existance, but I consider none of them to be immoral and think that all of them should be permissible and legal. It's not conductive to certain ends for me to buy certain products or patronize certain service providers over other ones. It's not conductive to my long-term economic security to borrow and spend lots of money and not save. It's not conductive to my long-term health to eat a certain way. But am I "immoral" for making a mistake in judgement or for merely being stupid or for having aesthetic tastes? That's absurd. It's not "immoral" for me to make bad financial decisions or have bad eating habits. The expression of aesthetic tastes in general could be viewed as irrational. There is no rational way to justify the notion that someone has an obligation to make a certain aesthetic choice because it happens to be the most efficient towards survival or happiness or prosperity, and in the case of happiness there is no way to determine what will make someone else happy. The logical end of this kind of thinking would seem to lead to the legislation of economic preferances in the name of utility.

One might object to this reductio as absurdum by trying to make a distinction between the law and morality, by positing that the law doesn't have to reflect or be in accordance with morality, but one can only do so by opening up a pandora's box of inconsistancy and accepting the evils of legal positivism. This view holds the law to be above morality and consequentially functions as a way to make moral inconsistancies and acceptions. The inevitable consequence of taking this view is that the law is quite blatantly turned into a instrument of immorality. Using such an approach to politics, things that are immoral can be legitimized by merely appealing to its legality. Natural law, in contrast, holds the currently existing and positive law up to an independant standard of justice, derived from reason. Notice that rationality does play a role, but the natural law follows from morality. It's not the case that everything that is rational is moral and everything that is irrational is immoral. Rationality in this context is only an instrumental tool that is used to figure out what is moral and immoral. But it does not follow that everything that is a product of rationality is moral or that all irrational actions are immoral actions.

Rationality can point one to the most efficient means at achieving a desired end and it can point one to the most moral means to a desired end (and the two aren't necessarily always the same thing), but not all questions of persueing desired ends are moral questions. That's the problem. Rationality can suggest that engaging in cooperative industrial production is more efficient to my survival and general well-being to being a hunter-gatherer, but it does not follow that I have a moral obligation to choose the more efficient means. I would assert that one has the liberty to go live as a hunter-gatherer, even if it is self-destructive or nowhere near as beneficial as the alternatives, and hence there is no real moral obligation to choose to engage in industrial production. The question of whether to live as a hunter-gatherer or as an industrial worker or producer is morally irrelevant in and of itself. From my perspective, regaurdless of the utility towards life and prosperity of the choices in question, the individual essentially has free reign to choose whichever alternative they want so long as they aren't violating any ethical or metaethical principles in the process, so long as they don't force anyone else to pursue or not pursue a particular option. These become questions of personal preferance, regaurdless of any objective concerns about their utility.

It seems to me that Objectivists rely too much on the concept of survival in their ethics, which makes it take a sort of utilitarian turn. They use survival, or more broadly the achievement of desires necessary to fullfil the necessities of life, as the primarily justification for actions. That is, Objectivists essentially conclude that because liberty is necessary for survival and the achievement of certain virtues or benefits (such as happiness, prosperity and healthiness), liberty is justified because it leads to those things. However, there are some problems with this view. While liberty is a necessary condition for survival and flourishing, it does not gaurantee it. Someone could theoretically be perfectly free and not violate anyone else's rights yet be unhappy, unhealthy, uneducated and have trouble surviving. So it seems far too demanding on people to proclaim that people have an obligation to do that which is necessary to survive and benefit themselves. People have the liberty to persue their survival and happiness, and it is in their rational self-interest to do so, but they have no such obligation to do so or to choose the most efficient means to doing so.

Yes, it is irrational to not persue the continuance of one's life and improvements upon its quality. But to consider people "immoral" for not doing so or not adequately doing so seems ridiculous. It also seems to me that Objectivists extend ethics way beyond interpersonal relations and into the realm of purely personal decisions. But for me, ethics is interpersonal and thus purely personal decisions are aesthetic at best. Such purely personal decisions can be objectively evaluated as being "good for you" or "bad for you", but there is no way to genuinely make them obligatory or enforcable and an unobligatory and unenforcable ethics seems like no ethics at all. It makes no sense to proclaim that one has a moral obligation to pursue and fulfill their rational self-interest while simultaneously say that they are free to not fulfil the moral obligation. Since I think that people are free to harm themselves or to make bad personal decisions, I have no choice but to consider such actions morally neutral at best. Otherwise, the implication would be that people should be legally required to eat healthy, raise their children in a right way, read the right books and conform to an endless sea of requirements in their personal preferances.

One might object that if what I'm implying is the case, then ethics wouldn't apply to a lone man stranded on an island. My answer is: yes, ethics indeed doesn't apply to a lone man stranded on an island, because ethics has no meaning in such a scenario. There's no one else to steal from, murder, lie to, cheat, and so on. There's noone else to violate the rights of. One could do all sorts of things to further one's own survival and happiness, but morality wouldn't really come into the picture until you start introducing interpersonal relations. The choice of a man stranded on an island "to hunt or not to hunt" or "what materials should I make my home with?" has no moral significance. Such decisions are not moral decisions but purely practical ones. Morality would only come into place with such questions in terms of how it affects the rational self-interest of other people, in terms of whether or not the means one pursues in the persuit of such things violate the life, liberty and property of others.

Another problem with this erroneous conflation of rationality and morality is that it essentially implies that holding irrational thoughts is immoral in and of itself. Thought crimes! It is of course true and important to realize that ideas determine the course of history. But nonetheless it is ultimately the realization of those ideas, or at least the attempt to do so, and the means by which those ideas are implemented that is immoral. Merely believing in false or irrational ideas does not make someone immoral, and neither would they be immoral for pursueing, spreading and enacting those ideas so long as it is on a voluntary basis. Stupidity and ignorance is not immorality. Being misinformed or just flat out wrong is not immoral in and of itself. Believing in communism or the flying spagetti monster is a vice, not an immorality. Forcing communism or the church of the flying spagetti monster onto people is what would be an immorality.

It seems to me that the moral of the story is that the fetishizing of the mind and survival leads to some absurd implications and conclusions if consistantly followed through.

The Decline of Morality in the West

Brainpolice — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 00:51:00 GMT

I believe in objective secular morality, founded on reason and universalism. I think a common mistake is the idea that if we ditch religion, we must fall back on moral relativity. Then the religious people feed on this and get to accuse secular people of being nihilists or hedonists. But I think that an objective secular morality can easily be formulated without relying on an appeal to authority, wether that be an appeal to a deity or an appeal to government. In some ways, I share a lot in common with the philosophy of the Objectivists (Ayn Rand's philosophy), although I think they make some wrong turns and draw some erroneous political conclusions.

I think that morality has declined in the west because we have abandoned reason for secular forms of faith (often political ones). We are not taught to value ourselves. Rather, we are taught to value an endless array of group-identities. Thus, instead of identifying ourselves as individuals we think of ourselves as a part of imaginary collective constructs, such as political groups, races, nations, economic classes, and so on. Out of the crises of meaning brought on by the relative fall of medievalist religion, we have sought meaning in the wrong places. And the persuit of science has unfortunately lead us down a path that leads people to erroneously accept determinism, thus denying free will. We need a new enlightenment.

The philosophy of self-sacrifice (altruism) has been widely accepted in varying forms. But this philosophy is erroneous and destructive at its root. What are the logical implications of universally applying the philosophy that the primary reason for living is to sacrifice oneself for the sake of others? The logical implication is mutual self-destruction. If the purpose of life is to sacrifice it, then in effect life has no real value. So this altruism ends up leading us in a nihilistic direction in practice, to deny the existance of truth and the genuine "self". In place of our genuine identities as individuals, we have identified with archetypes.

The solution, then, lies in the rediscovery of reason and the self. This requires the purging of false collectivist constructs, which obscure who we really are as individuals. While the enlightenment may have lead to the decline of religious absolutism, this does not suffice to solve the problem. Tearing down one false god and replacing it with another is hardly an improvement. In the abscence of hardcore belief in a diety, people have turned to governments to provide the exact same function. The false gods of government and nation-hood must be questioned altogether. Only then will needless conflict and moral deprivation start to subside.

A Defense of Rational Egoism

Brainpolice — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 07:05:00 GMT

Defining Rational Egoism

Wikipedia defines rational egoism as follows:

"Rational egoism is the pursuit of one's own, accurately perceived, self-interest. The term may refer either to the philosophical view that it is always in accordance with reason to pursue self-interest (a view closely related to ethical egoism) or to the behavioral postulate that people actually act in accord with their own, accurately perceived, self-interest (a particular version of psychological egoism)."

It goes on to more specifically define Ayn Rand's take on rational egoism:

"Ayn Rand's philosophy, Objectivism, links its rational values directly to egoism. Her book The Virtue of Selfishness explains in depth the concept of egoism. The version of rational egoism defined by Rand consists of the principle that pursuing personal interest is rational, and not seeking personal interest is irrational.

In Rand's view, there is no greater moral goal than achieving happiness. Rational egoism, however, is not an excuse to act on every whim or emotional impulse, because it is irrational to desire what one has not earned. Happiness requires objective principles, like moral integrity and a respect for the rights of others."

The Problem with Altruism

There is much trouble with the idea that one has a positive moral obligation to serve others, while doing things to benefit yourself is somehow an "evil" (this overlooks the fact that one engages in mutually beneficial relations with others and acts of benevolence precisely out of their self-interest; mutual self-interest). If I have a positive obligation to serve others, then those others are effectively my master, and I am their slave. If acting for the interest of my self-preservation and happiness is a sin, then I am effectively commanded to abstain from happiness and sacrifice my life. But the rational egoist does not proclaim that everyone should live in total social isolationism or do whatever they want, all they are saying is that everyone should engage eachother in a mutually beneficial manner out of mutual self-interest.

If altruism was consistantly applied, there would be no human beings left, since everyone would sacrifice themselves to eachother and do nothing for themselves. Altruism as a philosophy cannot be universally applied to all human beings, let alone one human being, unless we consider it a philosophy of mutual self-destruction. A selfless person is one that does not exist. So at the end of the day, while the logical implications of consistantly following altruism are horrid, perhaps the more important point is that there is no such thing as an altruist, since everyone possesses self-awareness (no matter how low-intensity this self-awareness may be) and inherently must act to benefit themselves. I do not know of any single human being in the past or present who acts in a purely self-sacrificing manner to serve others. And I do not know of a single act of genuine kindness or benevolence that is not done out of self-interest on a fundamental level.

The rational egoist does not oppose individuals giving to and helping eachother, what is opposed is the use of force to make people do so against their will and self-interest. What is opposed is parasitism, where one individual or group is forcefully coerced to sacrfice to the benefit of another individual or group. This is the exact opposite of social cooperation: it is the method of theft and phony philanthropy. The rational egoist clearly sees that the best way to benefit people is for them to work together voluntarily in their self-interest so that all parties gain. True philanthropy results from cooperation. If the methods to one's well-intended ends are not cooperative, if they are coercive, then this is not true charity, but rather a destructive act that disintegrates the social order.

The Universalism of Rational Egoism: Harmony of Interests

In short, it is impossible to separate voluntary social interaction or "social cooperation" from self-interest. "Social cooperation" stems directly from self-interest and could not exist without it. One may try to counter the arguements for rational egoism by claiming that people may act in their self-interest in a way that harms or unjustly controls others, but this would not actually be an action in one's self-interest. William Graham Sumner said it best: "If I want to be free from any other man's dictation, I must understand that I can have no other man under my control." Herbert Spencer also understood this when he stated that people respect the rights of others in direct proportion to their respect for their own rights. If one wishes no harm to be done to themselves, as a prerequisite, they must not harm others. This is simply the defacto result of universally applying the principles.

There in fact is no conflict between people's rational self-interest and remaining ethical. In a self-interested sense, I don't harm other people because I realize that it establishes a precedent that will return to haunt me. And my empathy for others stems from my regaurd for myself, so there is nothing contradictary between self-interest and charitable acts either. In either case, if the principle of individual sovereignty holds true, then it must be universally applied to all human beings. And if it is universally applied to all human beings, then each individual must effectively be shielded from invasion/aggression by the other. The non-aggression principle represents this quite well. For the non-aggression principle leaves each individual free to persue their self-interest without infringing on the liberty of anyone else.

Rational egoism and the non-initiation of aggression go hand in hand. The rational egoist does not steal from others because they wouldn't like to be stolen form. A parasite eventually destroys its host, which destroys itself. And the rational egoist is concious of the fact that they can actually benefit more in the long-run through voluntary trade. The rational egoist has no compeling reason to go around assaulting and murdering others who have not threatened their lives or property. They realize that they would be destroying the very social order that benefits them, which will diminish their utility in the long-run. Of course, if people are sovereign self-owners, then in order to be logically consistant the criteria once again applies universally. While the rational egoist refuses to recognize any positive obligations to others, they do not demand such obligations from others either. While they refuse to be enslaved by others, they also do not enslave others.

Rational Egoism Applied: The Ethics of Being a Solider

I reject the idea that soldiers are virtuous altruists who sacrifices themselves for the sake of my freedom. Put in plain, albiet uneasy to swallow terms, a non-drafted solider is someone who is willing to murder for the state. I do not respect this, nor do I find it virtuous in any way. This fact is often obscured with the idea that a non-drafted soldier is someone who is willing to sacrifice their lives for the state (which I find irrational to begin with), but it is never aknowledged that they are people who are willing to take the lives of others for the state as well. Let me make it plain and clear: you have no altruistic duty to sacrifice for me, and I do not want your sacrifice. Nor will I bow down and worshop you.

I empathize with soldiers only to the extent that they are forced into such a position against their will. This is especially true in the case of a draft, which is involuntary servitude and thus unethical at the root. But to the extent that soldiers may willingly choose to murder for the state, I do not empathize at all. This being said, I can relate to the idea that soldiers could be viewed as pawns for the higher-ups, since it is the generals and politicians who ultimately send them off to foreign lands and centrally plan such endeavors. But the old "I was just following orders" precedent will not fly with me. You could very well not follow immoral orders if you have the courage to. That's what takes true courage. There is nothing rational about sacrificing oneself to benefit rulers.

Conclusion

The consistant application of rational egoism may lead to some controversial yet absolutely logical implications. Rational egoism is a commonly misunderstood philosophical position in that it is often miscontrued as sanctioning hedonism and unbridled narcissism, but this is not the case if one actually understands what it means and implies. It should not be confused with the style of near-nihilistic egoism espoused by the likes of Max Stirner. It is not "might makes right". Properly understood, it is a philosophical basis for a voluntary ethic in human interaction. For there is ultimately nothing more rational and more beneficial to the individual then universally applied liberty.

Minarchism: Ethically Self-contradictary

Brainpolice — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 23:20:00 GMT

The basic idea of minarchism is that the government should be expressly small and limited to the defense of person and property of those within the territorial dominion of the government. This generally implies that the government's services be limited to the provision of police, courts and defense. Most minarchists accept, or at least claim to accept, the principle of the non-initiation of aggression. They seek to attain a government that functions only for defensive purposes, while completely abstaining from initiating aggression. But if the minarchist sincerely does favor the principle of the non-initiation of aggression, they are contradicting their own ethical premise in supporting the existance of a government in the first place. For how are even these limited defensive services to be payed for? Most minarchists favor some limited form of taxation.

The statement that taxation is theft may be shocking to many people, even libertarian minarchists. But it is undeniable. Would the act of me giving my wallet to a robber be a voluntary act of charity? Clearly not. The only reason the robber's victim hands them the wallet is because they are threatened with force in some way. The robber may have a gun to your head or a knife to your throat. It is an action done under the threat of force, and is therefore coerced. An important point that this brings out is that, while the initiation of force is wrong, the threat of the initiation of force is equally a problem. Taxation works no differently than our robbery scenario. While it is true that members of the government do not initially come to one's home to directly take their money, the money is given under the threat that this will happen if they do not pay up. And if one does not pay up, eventually this very scenario will play out. You will be tracked down and the legal authorities will eventually come to your home expecting payment. And if you continues to resist, down the line you will be shot. So let's not be fooled by the idea that the state merely theatens you with force without actually using it. Force will be used against you at some point down the line if you do not comply.

Therefore, taxation inherently violates the non-aggression principle. It would be nonsensical to claim that a high degree of taxation is bad, but a low degree of taxation is good or necessary. If the initiation of aggression and the threat thereof is ethically unjustifiable, then no level of taxation can be rationally defended. A common objection is that one could simply move. But if I truly have property rights, then I should be able to keep my property and still not pay and not recieve the services. Otherwise, you must initiate force against me, or at least threaten to do so, in order to make me pay the taxes. If I wish to stop patronizing McDonalds, I am not forced to move. I can just stop going there and still keep my home. The fact that my only alternative to paying my taxes is to move merely underscores that the state is claiming control over my home or land property. This shows the state to be a coercive territorial monopoly, which we will address later. In either case, this line of arguement, what may be called the "love it or leave it" arguement in favor of the state, assumes precisely what it is trying to prove: namely, that the state legitimately controls the territory.

Some minarchists may try to get around the ethical problems inherent in taxation by advocating a government funded entirely through tarrifs, but a tarrif is really a form of taxation in itself, only it shifts the tax burden onto foreign people. Yet the non-aggression principle must apply to all people. It has no "American only" caviat. It is not a nationalist principle. If it is wrong to tax people within the territory, it is also wrong to tax people outside of the territory. The initiation of force against people in general is the problem, not what specific group of people that are being aggressed against. Any attempt to forcibly externalize the costs of the state onto people outside of the territorial dominion still presents us with a problem.

Another arguement that some minarchists may make is that the real problem is income taxation and that a sales tax is truly voluntary because you can always abstain from buying those products. But this is fallicious and is similar to the "love it or leave it" arguement. For as soon as you do decide to buy the product, you are made to pay a surplus on top of the actual price that the product is being sold for. In short, a 3rd party, the state, is claiming a chunk of transactions that one takes part in. One should be able to buy the product at the actual market price - which is the price without the tax. In either case, if one wants to survive at all in the world, one is going to have to buy some products at some point. Sales taxation presents a false choice between not buying things and paying a tax on top of the price that those things initially are being sold for. You are still ultimately bound by law under the threat of force to pay the sales tax, lest you be hauled off to jail. One most certainly cannot haggle with the store owner to deduct the tax from the price. The store owners in themselves are likewise coerced under the threat of force to add the tax on top of their initial price.

Objectivists advocate something a bit different than what most libertarian minarchists support. They oppose taxation and advocate what may be called "subscribed government" or voluntary donations to the government. But if this is the case it ceases to be a state can may as well be called a "private protection agency". For if it is truly patronized just like a buisiness, then it has market prices, and instead of saying "donations" we may as well call it "investment". However, if this institution still maintains a coercive monopoly by initiating force or threatening to do so in order to stop people from forming or patronizing any other protection agency within the territory, then it is not truly voluntary either and it still is a state. So even if taxation were abolished, states would still be involuntary if they still tried to maintain a coercive territorial monopoly. This is the underlying problem in the ideal of the Objectivist state (despite the fact that they eliminate taxation from the picture).

Another more pragmatic point is that in the abscence of competition, there is no genuine market prices due to the calculation problem. There really would be no rational indicators as to wether the service is efficient or not. In short, the economic problems involved in a monopoly apply to states in general. A further point is that if they were logically consistant in their opposition to competition in these fields, Objectivists would have to advocate a one world government, for if their ideals apply to all human beings, then all human beings must be subjected to the same territorial dominion. The mere existance of multiple jurisdictions with laws that vary in their content, wether that be multiple county governments or multiple national governments, defies the Objectivist's desire for legal uniformity. Of course, no Objectivist to my knowledge has ever advocated a single unified global government. But this is indeed the logical implication of their own political doctrine.

In a sense, all Objectivists have to do is remove the territorial monopoly aspect of their ideal form of government and they would be free market anarchists. But they refuse to do this. Yet they are contradicting their own ethical principles in supporting a state in the first place. No Objectivist to my knowledge has ever been able to explain how their Objectivist government obtains its territorial monopoly in the first place without initiating force against competition within the given territory, and further continually initiating force in order to maintain that monopoly. Supposing that an Objectivist government already is in place, what if I wish to start up my own private protection agency or dispute resolution organization within the territory? Or what if I wish to patronize such an agency instead of the Objectivist government? The Objectivist government has only two options: initiate force against me or cease to be a government in any rational sense of the word.

It would be wise for minarchists to take heed of the methods by which states have historically gained and maintained their territorial dominions. For the state ultimately hinges on its exercise of control over land, both directly and indirectly. In the most obvious and direct sense, the government buildings rely on control over the land that it resides on by the state. But the state inherently also claims and indirectly excersises control over the entire territory that makes up its so-called "borders". How do these dominions come about? The most obvious answer is plain old land theft, which has been watered down in legal terms to be known as "imminent domain". The most cursory glance at history shows land theft to be at the heart of the formation and expansion of states. But even in cases where the state "bought" land from willing sellers, the funds that they bought it with initially came from some form of taxation. Surely a robber is not justified in their theft because they went on to buy things from willing sellers with the stolen money. The state would still be peddling stolen funds in order to achieve land in this way. No good can follow from an initially evil act.

In summary, it should be quite obvious that advocating a minimal state of any kind while simultaneously claiming that the initiation of force and the threat thereof is wrong is self-contradictary. The minarchist's own logic works against them. If it is wrong for the government to steal people's money to provide for healthcare or retirement money or scools, then why would it be any better for these very same means to be used towards any other ends such as the provision of police, courts and a military? And even in the abscence of mechanisms such as taxation, if it is wrong to initiate force, then how can the state legitimately stop people who have not initiated force themselves from forming and patronizing alternative defensive and dispute resolving organizations? The minarchist, in order to remain consistant with their own stated ethical axoims, should become a market anarchist. Anarchy is the logical result of their own principles. They should not be scared to ditch their cognitive dissonance and embrace anarchy.