wex@ittvax.UUCP (Alan Wexelblat) (08/08/83)
First, let me note that Tom Craver seems to have misunderstood me on several points, I will attempt to clear these ambiguities as I go. From Tom: Response to Alan Wexelblat on my note on altruism in Christianity: I deliberately stated that I agreed with you on your criticisms of Christianity. What I want to discuss is your notions of objectivism. You ask how I 'assign the quality "good" to one or the other' of altruism or selfishness. They are opposite moral principles for action, and so declare various motives or purposes for action good or bad. My apologies for not making myself clearer: I intended to state that I agree with Paul Torek's contention that the two are not NECESSARILY opposed. There can be a middle ground where both agree, or both are irrelevant. I agree with you that they MAY BE opposed, but you need to present a stronger case for necessity to be established. When I say "human nature", I mean exactly those qualities that humans have in common, and which they cannot really change. The important aspects of human nature are summed up in the description "rational animal". As I said before: Under many philosophies, this is a null statement. You need to show why this is not so. One aspect of the human mind is that it is independently conscious - humans do not have a "hive mind", as has been proposed for alien species in SF. Null statement. The definition of Nirvana includes the loss (or submergence) of the individual consciousness. Many eastern masters claim to have reached this state. I myself claim to have come close. I wrote the note on Ayn Rand's stories in response to a comment - I do not see how your comment "leaving aside your slavish devotion to Rand..." is relevant. Nor is it true - I do not agree with Rand at all points, and I certainly dont accept her work on a "mental slavery" basis. I do respect her work greatly, however. I apologize. That statement should never have appeared. I did not lump "mystic" and "altruistic" together - rather, I lumped them in individually with "irrational". Now \you/ were being unclear. You implied that A and B and C were the same, not that A was a C and also B was a C. Our differences here stem from the fact that you do not accept any middle ground between selfishness and altruism. I think that I can find examples where neither one is relevant. There are also cases where they lead to the same conclusion (although for different reasons). Soviet Russia's version of altruism is "serve the state, *because* it serves all people" - in effect, surrogate altruism. What the Russians are doing is not altruism by any definition, even their own. But, since this is net.philosophy, and not net.politics, I'd like to leave off that point. That is the principle, but of course, in practice, altruism is not practical, and so the Russian people are not well served by the state. "of course" nothing! You take a bad result, hypothesize back to an imaginary motive, and then call the motive bad. Even if altruism were the intention of the Russians, it is still possible for them to be bad altruists (and therefore produce bad results). That still in no way affects the innate goodness or badness of altruism. See my FORTRAN example in the last article. (Note that you appear to be making an implicit assumption "the Soviets are bad, so how could they be considered altruistic (IE good)". Perhaps you had something else in mind?) I do not think that I made any assumptions about the Soviets, implied or otherwise. I simply argue that a bad result may issue from a good philosophy (via a bad execution). You ask that I give and example of the "all" other modern philosophies that are "anti-mind/anti-life". I admit that I made an unwarranted statement - on hearsay. I will retract the statement, conditional upon your presentation of another modern philosophy that is not anti-mind/ anti-life I already did: existentialism. Q.E.D. Briefly, the most fundamental right is the right to one's *own* *human* life, at no one's expense but one's self. Derived from this right, and from the nature of the human mind (which is required to support that right), is the right to freedom - physical and mental. Similarly, because humans need material things to survive, one has a right to property. Another confusion: Do you mean that "the nature of the human mind is required to support the right to one's own life"? Or do you mean that "the nature of the human mind is necessary to support the right to freedom"? Either way, I claim you are making a null statement (see above). There is no such thing as "the nature of the human mind." There is only the nature of each individual's mind. You claim that it is an unfounded conclusion that "there is no area of human life that one's mind cannot consider". That is a quote that I did not make. What I said was "How does objectivism help me when I contemplate the weeds in my garden or a symphony?" I said nothing about the inability of one's mind to contemplate anything. Please be more careful when quoting me in the future. Now, what is the answer to my question? To rank a nation as to altruism, determine the fundamental degree of altruism of its political system ... What does this mean? What is the "fundamental degree" of \anything/? How can you quantify the amount of altruism in something? Also, beware! theory is not practice. See above. I did not say that bad results made a system bad - but that bad results do indicate a bad system. Consistently bad results are almost certain evidence of a bad system. I'm sorry, but that's simply a false statement. Instead of repeating yourself over and over, why not try defending the position? How can you assert that example X is a good execution of philosophy Y? I can point to literally dozens of cases where the Soviets (to pick your example) blatantly violate the principles of altruism. If one believes a system is good, anyway, "how could the system be good, and still have these bad results?" is exactly the question that it is important to answer. One must answer it ONLY after determining that the system in question is, in fact, the one being used. If you read my original article, I vehemently denied that the Russians practice altruism. On the other hand, you did not comment on my statement that capitalism requires respecting others rights to life, freedom, property, and the pursuit of happiness. Within the context of assuming you accepted that, I will address your examples. The boys joining ROTC seems to have nothing to do with capitalism - rather, it sounds like nationalism or patriotism. One does not enjoy those rights under capitalism unless one is willing to defend them. The boys merely demonstrated their willingness to defend those rights. And even so, why do you assume that the boys are responsible for their father? I didn't. YOU did. Look at your next few sentences. You did not mention any agreement between them. If you think that it takes an explicit agreement between father and sons in order for them to care about each other, then I consider you a morally reprehensible person. The only conclusion I can draw is that the father did not provide adequately for his future - EG with life insurance (on the boys perhaps?). The father provided for his future as best he could. Is he to be a vulture, feeding off the corpses of his sons? Even leaving off the truth that no insurance company will pay in case of death by war (pardon me: police action), I must charitably assume that you were not thinking clearly when you wrote this. If you were, then I would think you a ghoul, in the truest sense of the word. My comment about Objectivism asserting the value of man was not addressed to you or your philosophy. It was addressed specifically to Christianity. I believe I made the stated point, with regard to Christianity. I would be willing to consider your equivalent statement, for the philosophy you believe exceeds Objectivism's claim on respect for man, given that you would care to make the statement. I agree: objectivism is better than Christianity. I agree: getting kicked in the shin is better than getting kicked in the kidneys. However, there are any number of things better than being kicked in the shins. Just as an off-the-top-of-my-head example, let's take existentialism. There are, however, a few outstanding questions (from my first article) which you haven't answered: 1) Can you provide an example of a "rationally selfish" non-modern person? 2) How do you come to the conclusion that "self-interest ... is the proper purpose" for action? 3) How does objectivism benefit me (as reiterated above)? 4) How is the father in my example NOT a victim of capitalism? --Alan Wexelblat decvax!ittvax!wex