A Philosophy Professor Discusses Ayn Rand in his Ethics Class

Dr. Gregory Sadler of Marist College recently discussed Ayn Rand's The Virtue of Selfishness in his Spring 2013 Ethics class and posted the video to YouTube:

Dr. Sadler is not an Objectivist, but he gives what is, in my view, a good introductory presentation on Rand's ethics. I encourage anyone interested in the broader study of Rand in academia, to watch this video (at least in part) and leave polite comments on the YouTube video page.

My main critiques of Dr. Sadler's presentation have already been voiced in the page comments. They are the following:

Overall, this is a very good presentation of Rand's ethics. Thank you, Dr. Sadler.

Just a few points: Contrary to 52:48, Rand wouldn't say the choice of friends is arbitrary, but ought to depend on their objective virtues/values. Vicious people harm one's own life when you're involved with them; virtuous people typically benefit one's own life.
Also worth emphasizing: Man *creates* wealth/values (material and spiritual) by acting on proper reasoning. There isn't a fixed "pie."

Also, Rand regards virtues as eminently practical. A breach of integrity has very real, self-destructive consequences in the long-term. There is no gap between morally principled action and practical action. (Practical for achieving long-term flourishing.)
Finally, "Ayn" rhymes with "mine." : )

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Related Posts:

The Nature of the Morality of Rational Egoism: Short Notes

Atlas Shrugged, Altruism and Egoism

Values Are Relational But Not Subjective

Values Are Relational But Not Subjective

There are many people in the world who will say that values are subjective. You may or may not be one of them. For many, the reasoning behind this stance is that they see that different people value different things, and they think that if values were objective, then everyone would value the same things. So they conclude that all values are the opposite of objective, which is subjective.

This article will give evidence and argument that this view is mistaken; that this reasoning is based on a confusion about what it means for values to be objective.

First, let's consider a simple physical situation: Two men are standing on opposite sides of a pole, as shown in Case 1 of the figure below. We are looking down on them, and they are both facing upward. For Person A, the pole is on the right. For Person B, the pole is on the left. Does this mean that the position of the pole is subjective? No. Both men can look objectively at the relationship of the pole to each one. If they specify whose relationship to the pole they are talking about, they can both agree on the fact of the relationship.

When Person A observes that the pole is on his right, Person B can observe that Person A is correct: relative to Person A, the pole is objectively on the right. They can also both agree that, relative to Person B, the pole is objectively on the left. The position of the pole is objective, but its physical relationship with Person A is different than with Person B.

Objective values also specify a kind of relationship. (1) A value is something that someone acts to gain and/or keep that sustains his own life in some way. For example, food--eaten at certain times and in certain amounts--is a value to the person eating it. Shelter is a value to the person who sleeps there. An enjoyable, productive career is a value to the person who undertakes it. Friends are a value to the person who enjoys their company and benefits in the long-term from their presence. All things that can be said to be objective values are values to someone, because they stand in a life-promoting relationship to that person. Proper values are things that are pursued because they are good for the pursuer. (This is, in fact, the ultimate rational basis for the term "good," both in economics and in morality, Plato's Forms and Kant's Categorical Imperative notwithstanding. The moral good is good for the person acting morally.)

Whether something stands in a life-promoting relationship to a particular person at a particular time is an objective matter of fact. When a man is starving, food is objectively life-promoting for him. A capsule of sodium cyanide is objectively not life-promoting for him. Having effective mental functioning is objectively good for any human being. Severe brain damage is objectively bad for any human being. Having self-esteem is objectively good for a person's life. Despising oneself is objectively bad for a person's life.

Because values are things with objective, factual relationships to a person's life, their statuses as values are discoverable by reasoning from observation. Two people, if they both have enough information and reason properly, will reach the same conclusion about whether something is or is not a value to a given person. (See Case 2 in the figure.) Different things may be values to each person, but there is an objectively correct answer as to whether something is a value with respect to each person. This is directly analogous to the case of the pole. Person A's wife is observably a strong value to him. Person A's wife may not be a strong value to Person B, but Person B can agree from his observation that Person A's wife is a strong value to Person A.

Now, a consequence of this objectivity of values is that a person can be wrong about what is actually a value to him. A man may think that a glass of milk is a value to him, but if it has been laced with arsenic, then that milk is actually a disvalue to him and he is wrong. This is the situation in Case 3 of the figure. Person A believes, based on his emotions, that his sadistic mistress is a value to him. He wants her. But Person B can reason from observation that Person A is wrong; his mistress is not a value to Person A, and Person A's desire for her is unhealthy. (2)

Values are relative to a valuer, but there is one correct conclusion (given enough information) about the value of a particular thing to a particular individual.

Universal-Conditional Values

Many values can be a value to one person while never being a value to another, such as a piano to a musician, versus a non-playing bricklayer.  But certain values are universally required for all human beings to thrive, at certain times. These I will term "universal-conditional" values. A prominent example of this type of value is food. Food is required by all human beings to live, but not all the time. Eating when one is already very full is painful and anti-life. Other examples of this type of value are water, mental and physical exercise, sleep, and sexual relationships/activities.

At any given time, these may be proper values to Person A and not Person B, or vice versa. But in the long term, they are objectively required for everyone. It is not a matter of anyone's opinion whether he needs to eat to live.

Universal-Unconditional Values

In The Virtue of Selfishness, Ayn Rand identifies three values that she calls "cardinal." (p. 27) These are reason, purpose and self-esteem. These are values to all human beings in every moment of consciousness. Thus, I term these examples of "universal-unconditional" values. (3)

These broad values always have the same life-promoting relationship to every conscious human being. It is a fact for both Person A and Person B that these values are life-promoting for each of them, regardless of their individual circumstances.

What if Someone Chooses Something Other than His Own Life as His Ultimate Value? Isn't that Choice Subjective, Thus Making all Values Subjective?

The fullest answer to this is beyond the intended scope of this article, but I want to address it relatively briefly.

First, I think that most people who would say that their ultimate value is something other than their own life are confused and at least partially mistaken. For example, there are many who think that they have a value higher than their own life because they would die to save their wife or their child. Thus, they would say that their loved one is a higher value than their own life, and so all values are arbitrary and subjective according to what they choose as their ultimate purpose.

But if it were really the case that there is an arbitrary choice of an ultimate value, one must ask: Why is your loved one, and not a collection of skulls, your "ultimate value?" There are billions of choices available to pursue as an ultimate goal. The preservation of a ripe banana; the evacuation of glass bottles; the pulling of every fire alarm in the world--why not these as an ultimate goal? If the choice is subjective, then every choice is as good as every other. So why don't we see more people exhausting themselves and suffering for the sake of bananas? Why would anyone have a problem killing every human and animal he sees to harvest its skull?

What these people don't realize is that it is precisely because the wife or child has a strong relationship with their own lives that they might consider dying to save them. The valuing of the loved one is properly based on his or her contribution to one's own life (especially, one's own psychological well-being.) Thus, it is possible under certain circumstances, that a person can protect his own life by dying to save someone else. He can protect his life from the torturous, terminal ravages of a horrendous loss by shortening his life.

It is nonetheless true that every adult human being has the power to choose an ultimate purpose other than his own life. But this choice does not change the fact that life is the standard of value of living beings. A flourishing (happy) life takes a constant, comprehensive process of life-directed action to establish and maintain it. Actions not taken under the principle of building one's life fall under the principle of letting it decay or actively destroying it. As a living being, a man has no choice about the facts of his nature qua living being. Thus, he has no choice about the fact that his only choice is to pursue his own life as his ultimate value, or to suffer, decay and progress toward death (mentally, if not at first physically.)

So, the basic answer is that one's own flourishing life is the only ultimate goal based on the facts of one's own nature. Any choice of another ultimate goal is the arbitrary choice of pointless suffering and (likely) early death.

For a more thorough discussion of life as the moral standard of value, I recommend Viable Values: A Study of Life as the Root and Reward of Morality by Tara Smith.

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(1) Note that Ayn Rand defined a "value" as "that which one acts to gain and/or keep." This was her original, ethically neutral definition. It subsumes all those things which anyone--egoist or altruist, rational or irrational--may act to obtain. An irrational value can be subjective, and need bear no actual relationship to any ultimate goal. But with an analysis of the source of values, and the proper, rational basis of ethics, Rand produced a second definition of "value", which also specifies that something stands in a certain relationship to an individual's life, (a beneficial relationship.) You will often see Rand and other Objectivists use the term "value" with this second definition. Here, I'm discussing "value" in this second, fully rational, fully objective sense. (For discussion of the basis of doubly defined concepts in philosophy, see Dr. Peikoff's lecture course, "Unity in Epistemology and Ethics".)

(2) There is a distinction to be observed here between errors made in the course of rational evaluation and "errors" that result from the irrational practice of relying on raw emotion. These are both examples of being wrong, but under normal circumstances, the overall import of the two types of wrongness for a person's future prospects in life is vastly different.

(3) The only "condition" being consciousness, which is necessary for the characteristically human pursuit of all values. (Sleep is valued when unconscious only in a vegetative biological sense, not in a purposeful, human sense.)

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Related Posts:

The Nature of the Morality of Rational Egoism: Short Notes

Atlas Shrugged, Altruism and Egoism

On Fairness and Justice: Their Meanings, Scopes, and How They Are Not the Same

QuickPoint 2: Altruism Supports Coercion

...or "A Problem With Libertarianism"

Under altruism, (the morality of self-sacrifice,) an act of self-sacrifice can be good, even if the person sacrificing doesn't choose to do it.

If someone's interests are sacrificed by government force, the person committing an unwilling sacrifice doesn't get moral credit for the act, because it was unchosen. But the act itself can still be considered "good", apart from the choices of the "self" being sacrificed. A sacrifice is a sacrifice, regardless of whether it was freely chosen or imposed by a legal authority. Thus, under altruism, any sacrifice can be good, so long as it "benefits those in need."

In practice, the forced imposition of sacrifice is justified on dual grounds: it will benefit those in need, while simultaneously punishing those who violate morality by being selfish. Since everyone, according to the altruist morality, really should be self-sacrificial anyway, who can object to the overall project of forced charity? We can quibble about the practical details, say the altruists, but if we want a moral society, how can we leave the needy at the mercy of other individuals' choices?

Under the morality of altruism, the advocates of government coercion are right: A moral society requires forced charity, because without it, those who don't sacrifice for the welfare of others will be rewarded and encouraged, and those "noble altruists" who are in need will be "left at the mercy of the selfish."

The only way to fight this thinking is to fight for the morality of rational egoism, as established and advocated by Ayn Rand. For rational egoism, an act can only be good if it is freely chosen by the acting individual.

I highly recommend this book on how to fight for a free market: Free Market Revolution: How Ayn Rand's Ideas Can End Big Government.

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Related Posts:

Atlas Shrugged, Altruism and Egoism

 The Morality of Rational Egoism: Short Notes

Link Highlight: Introduction to Objectivism Playlist

Bernie Madoff: Not Rationally Selfish, But Self-Destructive

Bernie Madoff is sometimes held up by critics of Ayn Rand's ethics as a poster boy for the evil of self-interest. But far from being an example of Ayn Rand's ethics, Madoff is a type of person that Ayn Rand explicitly condemned, because he undertook an irrational--and therefore self-destructive--scheme.

Self-interest, for Ayn Rand, does not equate to simple monetary gain, or the pleasures of any given moment. Self-interest is defined by achievement of a deeply happy life over as many years as possible. Ayn Rand recognized that it is impossible to build long-term happiness by theft or fraud. One's long-term happiness can only be based on the production of life-sustaining/enhancing values, along with honest dealings with oneself and others.

Do you think Bernie Madoff is happy now, in prison? What about while he was running his scheme? This interview should give you a sense of how much he enjoyed himself while defrauding other people:

Does this sound like a man determined to pursue his own happiness and live his life to the fullest? What must it mean for Madoff to be happier in prison, when he has no freedom and no control over his own life, than during his con? His primary emotion while in the middle of the con scheme was fear, which indicates that he sensed his life was out of control. His lies were constantly threatening to catch up with him, and it was just a matter of time before something slipped and he was caught.

Even under the best case scenario he could have hoped for, where he had escaped to a foreign country that would not extradite him, he still would not have been happy. Everyone would find out about his fraud, and he would never be able to come back to the US. He would be despised by good, honest people everywhere, so if he wanted to have relationships with such people, he would have to manufacture more lies to keep his identity secret. No one could be allowed to know who he was; no one could be allowed to get to know him intimately. If people didn't find out who he was, he would be isolated and lonely, living a lie. If they did find out, he would be isolated from honest people by their contempt for him and fear of his dishonest schemes. Either way, he would end up lonely, or surrounded by scum.

Under this scenario, he would still live with the fear of being identified, or, if he lived openly, with the fear that the country in which he lived would change its extradition policy or make an exception in his case.

A country that would not extradite a fraudster to the US is not friendly to the US, and so is probably not going to be a very free or prosperous country. Also, no honest employer would want to hire him, and the whole alleged point of his scheme was to be able to live without honest work. He wouldn't be able to travel freely and enjoy seeing the world, since every time he traveled, he would have a very well-founded fear of being caught by agents of the US or its allies. So, under this scenario, Madoff would likely be trapped in a poor, statist, corrupt country--far from an ideal place to live--with no ambition, no freedom of travel, no intimate friends, no challenging, satisfying, productive job, and a constant, nagging fear. He would end up a lonely, drunken wastrel, escaping his pain and fear by spending the ill-gotten money on booze. Any sex would be meaningless sex with sluts/prostitutes, or fraudulent sex with some woman he duped (for a while).

Again, I stress: This was the (allegedly) best scenario he could have hoped for; i.e. the scenario where he "got away with it" and wasn't caught.

As Ayn Rand recognized, any man who wages war with reality will lose. Attempting to live without a productive pursuit and without respect for the truth is irrational, and will result in long-term pain, fear and despair, because such an attempt contradicts facts about fundamental human nature. By attempting to perpetrate fraud, someone like Madoff puts himself in conflict with his own basic nature and needs as a human being, and with the rational self-interest of every human being on the planet who comes into contact with him. 

To quote Ayn Rand, "There is a fundamental moral difference between a man who sees his self-interest in production and a man who sees it in robbery [or fraud]. The evil of a robber does not lie in the fact that he pursues his own interests, but in what he regards as to his own interest; not in the fact that he pursues his values, but in what he chose to value; not in the fact that he wants to live, but in the fact that he wants to live on a subhuman level."

To live long, fulfilled, happy lives, human beings need to live by their minds, pursuing rational values by means of the virtues of independence, honesty, productiveness, integrity, justice and pride. They also need to respect the individual rights of other people. Without adherence to these principles, any "self-interested" action is a blind, futile flailing in the dark that will lead to self-destructive consequences of one sort or another.

This is why the heroes of Ayn Rand's novels are ruthlessly honest, relentlessly productive, and concerned with earning their own way through life. Unlike Bernie Madoff, they know what is really in their long-term self-interest.

Here is a link to "selfishness" in the Ayn Rand Lexicon: "Selfishness."

For those who don't have backgrounds in philosophy, but want to learn more about Ayn Rand's moral code, I recommend reading The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand and Loving Life: The Morality of Self-Interest and the Facts that Support It by Craig Biddle. For those who are more philosophically oriented, I also recommend Viable Values and Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist by Dr. Tara Smith.

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 Related Posts:

 The Morality of Rational Egoism: Short Notes Atlas Shrugged, Altruism and Egoism

 What Caused the Financial Crisis: It Wasn't Capitalism or Deregulation

 Related Links:

 "The Unselfish Bernie Madoff" (Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights)

Atlas Shrugged, Altruism and Egoism

After a brief introduction to Atlas Shrugged, this essay provides a very good overview of the alternative between altruism and egoism. While not a work of technical philosophy, it is substantial: it quotes philosophers and textbooks that explain the meaning of altruism and clearly differentiates what rational egoism means for one's life, versus what altruism means. It also generally outlines Ayn Rand's argument for life as the standard of value and for rational egoism.

Atlas Shrugged and Ayn Rand's Morality of Egoism by Craig Biddle

 The book-length version can be found here: Loving Life: The Morality of Self-Interest and the Facts that Support It by Craig Biddle

Recommended technical works are here: Viable Values: A Study of Life as the Root and Reward of Morality and Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist by Tara Smith

The Nature of the Morality of Rational Egoism: Short Notes

Some short points about the Objectivist ethics of rational egoism (1):

1. If human beings wish to live, they need morality because only certain types of actions will lead to successful life as a human being, while others will necessarily lead to suffering and toward death; yet human beings do not automatically choose life-promoting actions, and they do not automatically know what is life-promoting for them, especially in the long term.
2. A certain fundamental happiness is the marker of a flourishing life, and the fullest, long-term happiness is an individual's proper purpose in adhering to moral principles. What serves this long-term happiness is what defines an individual's self-interest, (i.e. his proper values.) Interactions with others are part of morality, but are not the central concern; the central concern is the reality of the individual's condition with respect to the attainment of life-sustaining/enriching values.
3. Rationality is the fundamental virtue that subsumes all other virtues. Its being the fundamental virtue means that reason is the means by which an individual discovers what is in his self-interest, and that action based on reason is the only means by which he can achieve his proper values, (thus building happiness.)
4. The six subsidiary virtues that Ayn Rand identified are aspects of rationality. They are: honesty, independence, productiveness, integrity, justice, and pride. Pride is not boastfulness or foolhardiness, but a dedication to excellence and moral self-improvement.
5. Attempting to sacrifice the rational interests of others as a means to one's own happiness, whether done through force or deception, is doomed to fail. One's own happiness cannot be built on the robbery or enslavement of others, because human life depends on the production of values that sustain it. Those on whom the parasite feeds are worn down or destroyed, and find it in their rational interest to sabotage and get rid of the parasite. By using force or deception, the parasite is working to sabotage the victims' motivation and rational judgment, and it is their motivation and rational judgment in the production of values on which he is depending for his livelihood.
6. The rational interests of individuals in everyday life in society do not conflict, because life-sustaining values are not a static quantity to be fought over, but are created by effort based on reasoning, and are thus variable and potentially unlimited.
7. Human beings are a combination of the physical and mental, and an individual's self-interest includes psychological values. Self-interest is not to be reduced to only the physical, such as money. Other people can be of tremendous psychological value (i.e. friends, lovers, children.) That an individual's ultimate standard of value is his own flourishing life does not mean that he disregards others, or that he simply uses them for material gain. He can gain major psychological benefits from contact with other people of good character who reflect his values.
8. Objectivist moral principles allow for a vast range of optional values within their practice. They allow for different career choices, (including full-time parenthood,) different tastes in art (literature, movies, music) and different amounts and types of social contact. One's own emotions about different options are typically among the relevant factors to consider in deciding which optional values to pursue.
9. A basic (non-self-sacrificial) benevolence toward others is in one's own interest in an essentially free society. This typically includes being courteous and respectful to strangers, and considerate to friends. This is due to the fact that others are potential values to oneself, whether as trading partners, friends, lovers, or simply as general innovators whose ideas can improve one's own life. In a free, rights-respecting society, strangers are much more likely to be allies than enemies, in fundamental terms, and it's not in one's interest to push such people away without good reason. (Business competitors are not enemies; see Atlas Shrugged.)
10. Just like principles of physics and free-market economics, principles of morality are contextual absolutes. This means that they are not like Biblical commandments that are supposed to always apply, no matter the situation. Proper moral principles apply only within certain circumstances, but when they do apply, they are absolute, and cannot be violated with impunity. For example, the principle that "the initiation of physical force is immoral/evil (destructive to human life)" does not apply in the face of an immediate physical threat to someone's life. Initiating force to push one's unsuspecting friend out of the path of a bullet is a good act. In ordinary circumstances, when human life depends on the free exercise of each individual's mind, the initiation of force is evil because it destroys and/or paralyzes the minds of victims and subverts the mental functioning of the perpetrator, to the extent it is initiated.

For those who don't have backgrounds in philosophy, but want to learn more about this moral code, I recommend reading The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand and Loving Life: The Morality of Self-Interest and the Facts that Support It by Craig Biddle. For those who are more philosophically oriented, I also recommend Viable Values and Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist by Dr. Tara Smith.

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(1) Dictionary definition of: egoism - 1. the habit of valuing everything only in reference to one's personal interest; selfishness (opposed to altruism). ... 3. Ethics. the view that each person should regard his own welfare as the supreme end of his actions [Random House Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged, 1973]