Path: utzoo!hoptoad!well!dhawk
From: dhawk@well.UUCP (David Hawkins)
Newsgroups: alt.individualism
Subject: Re: KC; libertarians and abortion
Message-ID: <5552@well.UUCP>
Date: 28 Mar 88 15:13:06 GMT
References: <3386@dasys1.UUCP> <13350005@hpcuhb.HP.COM>
Reply-To: dhawk@well.UUCP (David Hawkins)
Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, Sausalito, CA
Lines: 65

In the referenced article, rb@hpcuhb.HP.COM (Robert Brooks) wrote:
>David Hawkins:
>
>>Rand starts defining ethics in _The Virtue of Selfishness" with:
>>"An organism's life is its standard of value: that which furthers 
>>its life is the good, that which threatens it is evil."  
>>So now she starts a series of substitutions without explaining them or
>>working through the process of why these are valid substitutions.  Her
>>final statement: "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."
>>So the result is that man has to survive as man -- as a reasoning
>>being.  So ethics now only applies to furthering the life of a
>>reasoning being.
>
>Care to give examples of the "substitutions" you think are invalid?
>Rand's argument makes a lot of sense to me.
>
The main substitution is 'survival _qua_ man' for just survival.  It's
invalid as far a philosophical or ethical statement because Rand
doesn't give a justification/proof for changing it.  If you are
starting with axioms and working upward (as Rand claims to do) then
you can't make changes from one level to another without a reasoned
explaination.

This is especially critical here since we're dealing with what 
is man's right to survival.  Rand starts off saying that surviving
as a human being is enough and then changes it to 'as a reasoning
being.'  It may 'look' like a valid substitution, but it lacks a
proof to back it up.  If Objectivism is a system then you should be
able to take its axioms and work outwards and get the same results
that Rand did.  

This is important because Rand uses a lot of definitions that are
practically identical to Marx's.  Since they ended up with different
results it would be nice to trace where they separated.  It's hard to
do because Rand isn't as systematic in thought and development as
Marx.  (I could put up a list of definitions about the nature of
reality and the use of reason from both and you'd have a hard time
knowing which was which.)  By the way, Marx believed that establishing
a libertarian state was essential.
>
> [Quotes omitted]
>Clearly, the situation here is not a civilized society, not a proper
>government.  Rather, the state has abdicated its responsibility to
>protect individual rights, and has instead become the aggressor.
>Individuals are justified in using retaliatory force only in the
>absence of a government to do it.  Dagny's lack of remorse in killing
>the agent of the corrupt state is not the justification for it, but
>merely her emotion in response to it.
>
That could be said at any time.  At present there aren't any proper
governments, ones that protect individual rights.

Plus, Rand didn't put any emphasis on the guard as agent of the
government.  The emphasis was on the guard as an unreasoning 
being.  She could have justified it on different grounds but didn't.
 
>--
>Robert Brooks


-- 
David Hawkins       {pacbell,hplabs,ucbvax}!well!dhawk
Faith is never identical with piety.   -- Karl Barth