What does it take to make a moral hero?

[Henrik Unné 0]

I know that most people here on the Forum are tired of the long discussions we have had on the subject of my view of the moral status of men. But I want to make one last stab at presenting my view in a comprehensive and systematic, but not too long-winded fashion. I have spent several hours in writing the essay below. My hope is that this essay will at least make my conception of morality intelligible to everyone here, even if you still do not agree with me. Otherwise, you will have to wait for the book which I am working on, and which I hope I will succeed at getting published.

And as I have said in another post, I think that if I have been in fault in some way during this debate, the fault is not that my conception of morality is wrong, but that I have not been good enough at the art of objective communication. The essay below is an attempt to rectify that.

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO MAKE A MORAL HERO?

What personal quality does it take, specifically, to make a person morally outstanding?

I think that it is the determination to practice any rational virtue, even when there is no obvious, pressing need to do so. Let me concretize.

Almost all men will be moral, when they know that they would get caught if they were not. No politician or con man, usually, will tell a really obvious lie. He knows that it would not be to his own perceived interest, since he would easily be exposed. But a moral hero will be honest, even when it seems that he would be able to get away with it if he were to be dishonest. For example, I once found a wallet lying on a bench in a subway station here in Stockholm. There was not a single person within sight of me, as far as I could tell. The subway platform was deserted. So it would have been “safe” for me to have kept that wallet, although it was not mine. But since I was an honest person, I took the wallet, and walked about 200 meters to the entrance of the subway station, and gave the wallet to the ticket seller there, with the information that I had found the wallet on a bench down on the subway platform. I would say that the fact that I did not steal that wallet, although I easily could have, and many other men probably would have done it, made me a more moral person than the average one. (I am not making this up. I did not keep the wallet, because I like to feel proud of myself, so I wanted to be a morally good person.)

Of course the best men are those who remain moral even in situations in which it seems very difficult, or even dangerous, to do so. So, for example, a man who hides a Jew in Nazi Germany, where he is risking his own life by doing so, would be a *real* hero in my book.

So a morally good person is one who practices the moral virtues *on principle*, and not just in a pragmatic way. He does not act morally, only when it is *obvious* that it is profitable to do so.

Now, I am of the opinion, that the essence of morality is the commitment to think, to perceive the world that one lives in. For it is the choice to think, which is directly in a person´s volitional control. Every person´s actions follow from his thinking. A person´s actions are volitional only in a derivative way.

So the most moral action which a person can commit, is the act of thinking, when there is *no obvious, pressing* need to do so. I think that what makes the difference between an Ayn Rand and me, for example, is that Ayn Rand decided that she would think about abstract issues, at a very early age, even though she probably did not then know exactly in what way she would profit from doing so. I did not decide to think about issues which were not obviously relevant to my then current interests *to the same degree* that Ayn Rand probably did. Ayn Rand decided at an early age, to think *on principle* about abstract subjects. I did not, to the same extent. So I did not become a genius, while Ayn Rand did. Volition made at least most of the difference.

The best men, in my opinion, are the ones who think *on principle*. They are on the premise that it is *always* a good policy to think about things. Now, most of the members of mankind follow an opposite policy, I believe. They will *only* put forth the effort to think, when there is a crisis. And even then, many of them will refuse to think. Most men will, for example, think in the field of their work. After all, they know that they need to eat. And they know that they need to perform some kind of work in order to earn the money they need to buy food. And most men are aware that they have to do some thinking in order to do such things as operate a lathe, drive a truck, run a store, write some advertising copy etc. So the thinking which is necessary for them to be able to carry out their work is important for their welfare in an *obvious* enough way, to motivate them to do it.

But notice how disinclined most men are to put forth the effort to think, and to acquire knowledge, when there is no *obvious*, *pressing* need to do so. Most men do not bother to investigate such questions as – What is the proper function of a government? What is the source of wealth? What kind of societies prosper? What is the value and cause of freedom? And so forth. Now, those kinds of questions are vitally important for every man´s interests, if he lives in a society. But few men bother to put forth the effort to read books about such subjects as political science, economics and philosophy – despite the objective importance of those subjects in relation to their own lives and welfare. Why? Because they do not see any *obvious*, *pressing* need to do so. They do not think *on principle*. Ayn Rand did. That is what made her great.

And I say that most men are mentally passive, on principle. Most men seem to like to coast, mentally. It is so easy. The pragmatist philosopher William James (unless I am mistaken about which pragmatist philosopher it was who said this) expressed this attitude when he said that men should strive for a mental state of “ease”. William James said that thinking is a state of “dis-ease”. And James thought that the state of “ease” was preferable. James´ philosophy was that men should get off their a-s and think only every now and then, when it was really necessary, in order to deal with a crisis, or an emergency. I put it to you that most men practice a lifestyle that resembles the one that the pragmatist philosopher William James advocated. Most men do not “make a stitch in time”. They do not bother to think before the need to do so has come to be obvious and pressing. And then it usually turns out to be too late.

Most men are apparently on the premise that they do not need to think, as long as it seems safe not to do so, in the sense that it seems that they can get away with it. It is as if the attitude of most men to thinking is the same as the attitude of the man who, unlike me, would keep a wallet that he found in a subway station, if there seemed to be *no* risk of getting caught. It is a pragmatic, concrete-bound way of looking at the question of the need to be moral, and of the need to think.

Now, is the essence of morality, the attitude a man has towards putting forth the necessary effort to think? Or is the essence of morality the way a man acts in physical reality? Well, in a certain context, the most major issue is the way a man acts in physical reality. It is only a man´s physical actions which in a material way impact other men´s welfare. So, when you practice the virtue of justice, in regard to how you *treat* other men, you should focus almost exclusively on how they act. Do they tell the truth or lie? Do they trade or steal? Do they persuade or assault you? Do they work or mooch? And so forth. That is what is relevant to you.

But, what are the causes of a man´s actions? I say that there are two causes. The man´s own choices in regard to thinking. And the ideas that he holds. And I think that we need to separate these two causes, by a process of abstraction, in our minds, for the purpose of analysis of the moral characters of men. Even though we cannot separate these two causes out there in physical reality. If you want to*explain* the motion of a satellite orbiting the Earth, you have to abstract the contribution to the satellite´s motion by the gravity of the Earth, and the other contribution to the same satellite´s motion by the speed away from the Earth imparted to it by the rocket that launched it. Well, when you judge the moral character of a man, you have to separate the factor of the individual man´s own choices, in regard to thinking. And the factor of the influence of the ideas that he holds.

But what is the cause of which particular ideas it is that a man holds? This cause is different for the first hander and the second hander. The first hander thinks, he therefore examines the ideas which other people present to him. So he himself plays an active, causal role in the matter of which ideas he comes to hold. But the second hander does not, to the extent that he is a second hander, think. So he does not examine the ideas which other people present to him critically. He just accepts whatever ideas, whether they are good or bad, which are fed to him. So the second hander does *not* himself play any significant, causal role in the matter of which ideas he comes to hold.

And the ideas which a man comes to hold, his premises, determine which actions he will take. Since the first hander is he himself causally responsible for which ideas he holds, he is a self-made man, morally. Whether or not he is morally good, in regard to the actions he takes, is his own doing. But the second hander is not, in a sense, causally responsible for which ideas he holds. So, in a sense, he is *not* a self-made man, in regard to the moral nature of the actions he takes in reality. He has been formed, like a piece of clay, by the thinkers, who determined which ideas he would be presented with. Because, he would accept whichever ideas, good or bad which he was presented with, since he did not examine ideas critically.

Now, it has been observed here that the typical American, is morally better, in action, than the typical Soviet Russian, or the typical resident of the Gaza Strip. But this is like observing that one man is wealthier than another. Is the wealthier man the morally better man, because of the fact that he is wealthier? That depends on whether or not he is a *self-made* wealthy man. If he is wealthier merely because he has *inherited* his wealth, then his wealth is irrelevant in regard to his moral status. On the other hand, if he is a *self-made* wealthy man, then his wealth is a manifestation of virtue, and his wealth demonstrates that he is morally good (leaving aside those ethical considerations that have nothing to do with his productivity).

Now, we observe that the typical American is better, in action, than the typical Soviet Russian, or the typical Palestinian. Does that mean that the former is morally better, in essence, than the latter? That depends on whether the American in question is a first hander, or a second hander. The first handed American is morally better, because he is *self-made* morally. He is himself responsible for holding the good ideas that he holds, because he has *judged* them to be true. He is like Bill Gates. But the second handed American is not, in essence, morally better, because he has merely “inherited” his good premises, by virtue of the fact that he happened to be born into a relatively healthy culture. He is no more a morally good person, in essence, than Paris Hilton is a productive person. The second handed American, merely *assumed* that the good ideas which he was presented with when young, and now therefore holds true, are true. He has not really *judged* them to be true.

You see, when I judge a man´s essential moral status, what I call his “meta-moral” status, I separate out the component of a man´s good actions which consists of his own choices, and the component which consists of his environment. In a first hander, his own choices are more important, because he does not just passively let his environment program him with the ideas it presents to him. But in a second hander, the environment is a more important factor in determining what kind of man he will be in action, because he *does* let the environment program him, for better or for worse.

Am I saying that the second hander is a robot, who is not responsible for his actions? No way! It is his own *choice* not to think! So it is his *own fault* that he is one of the men in “ballast of history” as Ayn Rand put it. I say that any man who “chooses not to think on principle” (see what I wrote above for an explanation of what I mean by that), renders himself into a drunken driver in life. He is out of control, by his own choice. And, just as a man who goes barreling down a highway in a Hummer, while under the influence, is bound to get into an accident sooner or later and hurt people, so the second hander who goes barreling down the highway of life, out of control like a drunk, is bound to get into a crash and hurt people. So I say that the second hander *is* responsible for his actions. His non-causal nature is his own *fault*. Fundamentally, he is just as causal as the first hander. He is non-causal, and out of control, only as long as he chooses to be so.

To sum up. A mentally active man who chooses to think, and accepts good ideas, is a really good man, morally. A mentally “active” man who chooses to evade, and accepts bad ideas, is a really evil man, morally. And a mentally passive man, who chooses to just coast, mentally, is in between, he is morally depraved. Because, he is out of control like a drunken driver and, therefore, he is dangerous, like a drunken driver, and he is in this state by virtue of his *own choices*.

[ewv 0]

All of your examples of moral actions are social. The essence of morality is personal, not social. You need a code of morality because you must make choices in how to live in everything you do, not just interactions with others, which is secondary.

No one "inherits" good premises by accident.

The difference between you and Ayn Rand is a lot more than at what age you started thinking about abstract issues.

As a minor issue, when you found the wallet you weren't thinking straight. Since you think that the people around you are morally depraved you 1) should not have bothered to accept an obligation to do anything with it at all, and 2) if you did, then you should have contacted the owner yourself, expecting the ticket seller to keep it himself since he could not be trusted. But you turned the wallet in to the nearest "official" as you are told to do in the customary manner. Does that make you a second-hander?

[Paul's Here 0]

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WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO MAKE A MORAL HERO?

What personal quality does it take, specifically, to make a person morally outstanding?

I think that it is the determination to practice any rational virtue, even when there is no obvious, pressing need to do so. Let me concretize.

----------------

I'm not sure what this means. When is there not a pressing need to be rational or not be virtuous? What is obvious? To whom? Virtue is not its own reward, and acting from duty, if that is part of your implication here, is certainly not part of morality. I act morally because it is necessary to achieve my values. Achieving my values requires me to always be virtuous, and that is "obvious" to me. How would I achieve values without acting virtuously and rationally? Whether it is obvious to anyone else, is irrelevant.

[Paul's Here 0]

----------------

Almost all men will be moral, when they know that they would get caught if they were not. No politician or con man, usually, will tell a really obvious lie. He knows that it would not be to his own perceived interest, since he would easily be exposed. But a moral hero will be honest, even when it seems that he would be able to get away with it if he were to be dishonest. For example, I once found a wallet lying on a bench in a subway station here in Stockholm. There was not a single person within sight of me, as far as I could tell. The subway platform was deserted. So it would have been “safe” for me to have kept that wallet, although it was not mine. But since I was an honest person, I took the wallet, and walked about 200 meters to the entrance of the subway station, and gave the wallet to the ticket seller there, with the information that I had found the wallet on a bench down on the subway platform. I would say that the fact that I did not steal that wallet, although I easily could have, and many other men probably would have done it, made me a more moral person than the average one. (I am not making this up. I did not keep the wallet, because I like to feel proud of myself, so I wanted to be a morally good person.)

----------------------

But what does this example have to do with morality? You were simply being polite by trying to return the wallet to the person it belonged to. Supposed it was just a $100 bill (or what ever the monetary unit is in Sweden) with no possible way of finding the owner. Would you have still turned it in? Waited for 5 hours to see if the person who lost it came back to find it? The moral issue is: what value do you place on your time compared to the effort of returning the wallet or money? The act of actually returning the lost money is morally neutral.

[Carlos 0]

I know that most people here on the Forum are tired of the long discussions we have had on the subject of my view of the moral status of men. But I want to make one last stab at presenting my view in a comprehensive and systematic, but not too long-winded fashion. I have spent several hours in writing the essay below. My hope is that this essay will at least make my conception of morality intelligible to everyone here, even if you still do not agree with me. Otherwise, you will have to wait for the book which I am working on, and which I hope I will succeed at getting published.

And as I have said in another post, I think that if I have been in fault in some way during this debate, the fault is not that my conception of morality is wrong, but that I have not been good enough at the art of objective communication. The essay below is an attempt to rectify that.

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO MAKE A MORAL HERO?

...

What is the purpose of these long essays that attempt to "re-discover" or "reinterpret" Objectivism? What you describe at unnecessary length is not the Objectivist theory of morality http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/morality.html

Really, at this point what is your purpose? No one here is interested in whatever bizarre theory of morality you are trying to rationalize in a vacuum, otherwise we'd be studying "Henrikism" and not "Objectivism".

[ewv 0]

------------------

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO MAKE A MORAL HERO?

What personal quality does it take, specifically, to make a person morally outstanding?

I think that it is the determination to practice any rational virtue, even when there is no obvious, pressing need to do so. Let me concretize.

----------------

I'm not sure what this means. When is there not a pressing need to be rational or not be virtuous? What is obvious? To whom? Virtue is not its own reward, and acting from duty, if that is part of your implication here, is certainly not part of morality. I act morally because it is necessary to achieve my values. Achieving my values requires me to always be virtuous, and that is "obvious" to me. How would I achieve values without acting virtuously and rationally? Whether it is obvious to anyone else, is irrelevant.

Consistently and routinely acting in accordance with your professed values is the virtue of integrity in particular, among many other primary virtues, the most fundamental of which is rationality (which includes objectivity and which is not rationalism). Acting in accordance with your values when a specific need to isn't jumping out at you and "obviously pressing" you is simply acting on principle. This is not following social duty when no one is watching you as the alleged "personal quality" that somehow makes someone "morally outstanding".

[ewv 0]

I know that most people here on the Forum are tired of the long discussions we have had on the subject of my view of the moral status of men. But I want to make one last stab at presenting my view in a comprehensive and systematic, but not too long-winded fashion. I have spent several hours in writing the essay below. My hope is that this essay will at least make my conception of morality intelligible to everyone here, even if you still do not agree with me. Otherwise, you will have to wait for the book which I am working on, and which I hope I will succeed at getting published.

And as I have said in another post, I think that if I have been in fault in some way during this debate, the fault is not that my conception of morality is wrong, but that I have not been good enough at the art of objective communication. The essay below is an attempt to rectify that.

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO MAKE A MORAL HERO?

...

What is the purpose of these long essays that attempt to "re-discover" or "reinterpret" Objectivism? What you describe at unnecessary length is not the Objectivist theory of morality http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/morality.html

Really, at this point what is your purpose? No one here is interested in whatever bizarre theory of morality you are trying to rationalize in a vacuum, otherwise we'd be studying "Henrikism" and not "Objectivism".

in other words, the problem is "the conception" and not inadequate "communication". A book length expansion won't help and no one is waiting for that.

[Paul's Here 0]

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Of course the best men are those who remain moral even in situations in which it seems very difficult, or even dangerous, to do so. So, for example, a man who hides a Jew in Nazi Germany, where he is risking his own life by doing so, would be a *real* hero in my book.

There is a difference between being a hero is such a situation and being a moral hero. Morality involves the normal, constant situations that men live with every day. Extenuating, emergency situations should be judged as just that: admirable but not likely to apply to one's normal life.

So a morally good person is one who practices the moral virtues *on principle*, and not just in a pragmatic way. He does not act morally, only when it is *obvious* that it is profitable to do so.

Now, I am of the opinion, that the essence of morality is the commitment to think, to perceive the world that one lives in. For it is the choice to think, which is directly in a person´s volitional control. Every person´s actions follow from his thinking. A person´s actions are volitional only in a derivative way.

----------------------------

Yes, but the question for you is, "What are the moral principles?" And "What are you perceiving about the world one lives in?" Your examples certainly do not demonstrate your ideas. The essence of morality is to achieve one's values. A rational morality identifies how to achieve rational values. A commitment to think is for the purpose of achieving one's values and living a rational life.

[Paul's Here 0]

------------------

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO MAKE A MORAL HERO?

What personal quality does it take, specifically, to make a person morally outstanding?

I think that it is the determination to practice any rational virtue, even when there is no obvious, pressing need to do so. Let me concretize.

----------------

I'm not sure what this means. When is there not a pressing need to be rational or not be virtuous? What is obvious? To whom? Virtue is not its own reward, and acting from duty, if that is part of your implication here, is certainly not part of morality. I act morally because it is necessary to achieve my values. Achieving my values requires me to always be virtuous, and that is "obvious" to me. How would I achieve values without acting virtuously and rationally? Whether it is obvious to anyone else, is irrelevant.

Consistently and routinely acting in accordance with your professed values is the virtue of integrity in particular, among many other primary virtues, the most fundamental of which is rationality (which includes objectivity and which is not rationalism). Acting in accordance with your values when a specific need to isn't jumping out at you and "obviously pressing" you is simply acting on principle. This is not following social duty when no one is watching you as the alleged "personal quality" that somehow makes someone "morally outstanding".

Do you get that from what Henrik said?

[ewv 0]

----------------

Almost all men will be moral, when they know that they would get caught if they were not. No politician or con man, usually, will tell a really obvious lie. He knows that it would not be to his own perceived interest, since he would easily be exposed. But a moral hero will be honest, even when it seems that he would be able to get away with it if he were to be dishonest. For example, I once found a wallet lying on a bench in a subway station here in Stockholm. There was not a single person within sight of me, as far as I could tell. The subway platform was deserted. So it would have been “safe” for me to have kept that wallet, although it was not mine. But since I was an honest person, I took the wallet, and walked about 200 meters to the entrance of the subway station, and gave the wallet to the ticket seller there, with the information that I had found the wallet on a bench down on the subway platform. I would say that the fact that I did not steal that wallet, although I easily could have, and many other men probably would have done it, made me a more moral person than the average one. (I am not making this up. I did not keep the wallet, because I like to feel proud of myself, so I wanted to be a morally good person.)

----------------------

But what does this example have to do with morality? You were simply being polite by trying to return the wallet to the person it belonged to. Supposed it was just a $100 bill (or what ever the monetary unit is in Sweden) with no possible way of finding the owner. Would you have still turned it in? Waited for 5 hours to see if the person who lost it came back to find it? The moral issue is: what value do you place on your time compared to the effort of returning the wallet or money? The act of actually returning the lost money is morally neutral.

It would be improper to take the money but there is no basic requirement to go out of your way to return it. You do it out of benevolence in living in a civilized society. It's not clear if that applies to Sweden. But the last thing to do is to give it to whatever is the nearest uniformed official in a socialist state and then claim moral superiority for being virtuous as an end in itself because no one was watching.

[ewv 0]

I'm not sure what this means. When is there not a pressing need to be rational or not be virtuous? What is obvious? To whom? Virtue is not its own reward, and acting from duty, if that is part of your implication here, is certainly not part of morality. I act morally because it is necessary to achieve my values. Achieving my values requires me to always be virtuous, and that is "obvious" to me. How would I achieve values without acting virtuously and rationally? Whether it is obvious to anyone else, is irrelevant.

Consistently and routinely acting in accordance with your professed values is the virtue of integrity in particular, among many other primary virtues, the most fundamental of which is rationality (which includes objectivity and which is not rationalism). Acting in accordance with your values when a specific need to isn't jumping out at you and "obviously pressing" you is simply acting on principle. This is not following social duty when no one is watching you as the alleged "personal quality" that somehow makes someone "morally outstanding".

Do you get that from what Henrik said?

I get the fallacy in the last sentence from what he said. The first part came from Ayn Rand and was not, to say the least, in or implied by his essay.

[Paul's Here 0]

----------------

Almost all men will be moral, when they know that they would get caught if they were not. No politician or con man, usually, will tell a really obvious lie. He knows that it would not be to his own perceived interest, since he would easily be exposed. But a moral hero will be honest, even when it seems that he would be able to get away with it if he were to be dishonest. For example, I once found a wallet lying on a bench in a subway station here in Stockholm. There was not a single person within sight of me, as far as I could tell. The subway platform was deserted. So it would have been “safe” for me to have kept that wallet, although it was not mine. But since I was an honest person, I took the wallet, and walked about 200 meters to the entrance of the subway station, and gave the wallet to the ticket seller there, with the information that I had found the wallet on a bench down on the subway platform. I would say that the fact that I did not steal that wallet, although I easily could have, and many other men probably would have done it, made me a more moral person than the average one. (I am not making this up. I did not keep the wallet, because I like to feel proud of myself, so I wanted to be a morally good person.)

----------------------

But what does this example have to do with morality? You were simply being polite by trying to return the wallet to the person it belonged to. Supposed it was just a $100 bill (or what ever the monetary unit is in Sweden) with no possible way of finding the owner. Would you have still turned it in? Waited for 5 hours to see if the person who lost it came back to find it? The moral issue is: what value do you place on your time compared to the effort of returning the wallet or money? The act of actually returning the lost money is morally neutral.

It would be improper to take the money but there is no basic requirement to go out of your way to return it. You do it out of benevolence in living in a civilized society. It's not clear if that applies to Sweden. But the last thing to do is to give it to whatever is the nearest uniformed official in a socialist state and then claim moral superiority for being virtuous as an end in itself because no one was watching.

Whether its proper or not depends upon many factors which are entirely a function of one's own values. The benevolence is an expression of one's values. What are you suggesting: if there is no requirement to return it should one just throw it away? Suppose the wallet belongs to someone who lives in Indonesia? I may or may not try to contact the Indonesian consulate, if I have time or interest. Suppose I call and they tell me I have to come in personally and wait 6 hours on line in order to talk to some bureaucrat and talk with the police who have to verify that I did not steal the money? Sorry, but I'm keeping the money.

[Paul's Here 0]

I'm not sure what this means. When is there not a pressing need to be rational or not be virtuous? What is obvious? To whom? Virtue is not its own reward, and acting from duty, if that is part of your implication here, is certainly not part of morality. I act morally because it is necessary to achieve my values. Achieving my values requires me to always be virtuous, and that is "obvious" to me. How would I achieve values without acting virtuously and rationally? Whether it is obvious to anyone else, is irrelevant.

Consistently and routinely acting in accordance with your professed values is the virtue of integrity in particular, among many other primary virtues, the most fundamental of which is rationality (which includes objectivity and which is not rationalism). Acting in accordance with your values when a specific need to isn't jumping out at you and "obviously pressing" you is simply acting on principle. This is not following social duty when no one is watching you as the alleged "personal quality" that somehow makes someone "morally outstanding".

Do you get that from what Henrik said?

I get the fallacy in the last sentence from what he said. The first part came from Ayn Rand and was not, to say the least, in or implied by his essay.

Precisely. Which is why I asked the questions of Henrik. If your answers were addressed at me, they were misplaced. I hope they helped Henrik.

[Henrik Unné 0]

All of your examples of moral actions are social. The essence of morality is personal, not social. You need a code of morality because you must make choices in how to live in everything you do, not just interactions with others, which is secondary.

No one "inherits" good premises by accident.

The difference between you and Ayn Rand is a lot more than at what age you started thinking about abstract issues.

As a minor issue, when you found the wallet you weren't thinking straight. Since you think that the people around you are morally depraved you 1) should not have bothered to accept an obligation to do anything with it at all, and 2) if you did, then you should have contacted the owner yourself, expecting the ticket seller to keep it himself since he could not be trusted. But you turned the wallet in to the nearest "official" as you are told to do in the customary manner. Does that make you a second-hander?

That just goes to show that you have no understanding whatever of what I mean by "morally depraved". And I did explain it in my essay above. The man who is out of control, because he cannot be bothered to think about relevant subjects, when these are abstract, and therefore not easy, is morally depraved in my book. But the mere fact that a man is morally depraved in *this* sense does not imply that he will, if he is a ticket seller in a subway, steal a wallet.

[Henrik Unné 0]

Whether its proper or not depends upon many factors which are entirely a function of one's own values. The benevolence is an expression of one's values. What are you suggesting: if there is no requirement to return it should one just throw it away? Suppose the wallet belongs to someone who lives in Indonesia? I may or may not try to contact the Indonesian consulate, if I have time or interest. Suppose I call and they tell me I have to come in personally and wait 6 hours on line in order to talk to some bureaucrat and talk with the police who have to verify that I did not steal the money? Sorry, but I'm keeping the money.

I was of course assuming a normal context, when I gave the example. And the normal context is that items which get found in the Stockholm subway, and are handed in to the personal, are 1) normally *not* stolen by the personel and 2) most often the owner is not abroad, and there is a good chance that the owner will contact the subway´s lost and found division 3) there was a very good chance that there was an ID card in the wallet, so that the owner could be identified (I did not look in the wallet to check if there was an ID card there, but most Swedes carryID cards in their wallets.

Just in case anybody here has got a wrong idea, I did not at all mean to imply that I was some kind of moral *hero* merely because I refrained from stealing the wallet (as I see it I would have been stealing, if I kept a wallet which was not mine). I was merely being morally decent, when I could have gotten away with being immoral, if I had wanted to.

Perhaps a better example fo what I intended to illustrate would be the fact that I never download music from the net, without paying, unlike a great many people nowadays, despite the fact that the risk of getting caught and punished is very small.

[ewv 0]

I'm not sure what this means. When is there not a pressing need to be rational or not be virtuous? What is obvious? To whom? Virtue is not its own reward, and acting from duty, if that is part of your implication here, is certainly not part of morality. I act morally because it is necessary to achieve my values. Achieving my values requires me to always be virtuous, and that is "obvious" to me. How would I achieve values without acting virtuously and rationally? Whether it is obvious to anyone else, is irrelevant.

Consistently and routinely acting in accordance with your professed values is the virtue of integrity in particular, among many other primary virtues, the most fundamental of which is rationality (which includes objectivity and which is not rationalism). Acting in accordance with your values when a specific need to isn't jumping out at you and "obviously pressing" you is simply acting on principle. This is not following social duty when no one is watching you as the alleged "personal quality" that somehow makes someone "morally outstanding".

Do you get that from what Henrik said?

I get the fallacy in the last sentence from what he said. The first part came from Ayn Rand and was not, to say the least, in or implied by his essay.

Precisely. Which is why I asked the questions of Henrik. If your answers were addressed at me, they were misplaced.

No, they were added to yours, not addressed to you.

I hope they helped Henrik.

It doesn't look like it.

[ewv 0]

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Almost all men will be moral, when they know that they would get caught if they were not. No politician or con man, usually, will tell a really obvious lie. He knows that it would not be to his own perceived interest, since he would easily be exposed. But a moral hero will be honest, even when it seems that he would be able to get away with it if he were to be dishonest. For example, I once found a wallet lying on a bench in a subway station here in Stockholm. There was not a single person within sight of me, as far as I could tell. The subway platform was deserted. So it would have been “safe” for me to have kept that wallet, although it was not mine. But since I was an honest person, I took the wallet, and walked about 200 meters to the entrance of the subway station, and gave the wallet to the ticket seller there, with the information that I had found the wallet on a bench down on the subway platform. I would say that the fact that I did not steal that wallet, although I easily could have, and many other men probably would have done it, made me a more moral person than the average one. (I am not making this up. I did not keep the wallet, because I like to feel proud of myself, so I wanted to be a morally good person.)

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But what does this example have to do with morality? You were simply being polite by trying to return the wallet to the person it belonged to. Supposed it was just a $100 bill (or what ever the monetary unit is in Sweden) with no possible way of finding the owner. Would you have still turned it in? Waited for 5 hours to see if the person who lost it came back to find it? The moral issue is: what value do you place on your time compared to the effort of returning the wallet or money? The act of actually returning the lost money is morally neutral.

It would be improper to take the money but there is no basic requirement to go out of your way to return it. You do it out of benevolence in living in a civilized society. It's not clear if that applies to Sweden. But the last thing to do is to give it to whatever is the nearest uniformed official in a socialist state and then claim moral superiority for being virtuous as an end in itself because no one was watching.

Whether its proper or not depends upon many factors which are entirely a function of one's own values. The benevolence is an expression of one's values. What are you suggesting: if there is no requirement to return it should one just throw it away?

Leave it where it is and ignore it.

Suppose the wallet belongs to someone who lives in Indonesia? I may or may not try to contact the Indonesian consulate, if I have time or interest. Suppose I call and they tell me I have to come in personally and wait 6 hours on line in order to talk to some bureaucrat and talk with the police who have to verify that I did not steal the money? Sorry, but I'm keeping the money.

You don't have to do any of that. If you think there will be bureaucratic entanglement then avoid the whole thing like the plague. It follows the principles of helping someone in an emergency through benevolence as a mutual value. You do what you can but don't sacrifice yourself. But taking the wallet is stealing; it still belongs to someone and you know he will be looking for it. There are three main options, not two: Try to return it, leave it alone, or take it. If you think someone else will take it anyway, then if you want to do anything you might try to return it anonymously in your own convenience rather than become embroiled in a mess with some authorities. But in any event it's not yours. Finding a wallet with an ID is not like picking up cash someone dropped on the street and isn't obviously coming back to.

[ewv 0]

All of your examples of moral actions are social. The essence of morality is personal, not social. You need a code of morality because you must make choices in how to live in everything you do, not just interactions with others, which is secondary.

No one "inherits" good premises by accident.

The difference between you and Ayn Rand is a lot more than at what age you started thinking about abstract issues.

As a minor issue, when you found the wallet you weren't thinking straight. Since you think that the people around you are morally depraved you 1) should not have bothered to accept an obligation to do anything with it at all, and 2) if you did, then you should have contacted the owner yourself, expecting the ticket seller to keep it himself since he could not be trusted. But you turned the wallet in to the nearest "official" as you are told to do in the customary manner. Does that make you a second-hander?

That just goes to show that you have no understanding whatever of what I mean by "morally depraved". And I did explain it in my essay above. The man who is out of control, because he cannot be bothered to think about relevant subjects, when these are abstract, and therefore not easy, is morally depraved in my book. But the mere fact that a man is morally depraved in *this* sense does not imply that he will, if he is a ticket seller in a subway, steal a wallet.

You have claimed that not seeking to think in higher abstractions makes a person morally depraved. That is false, but it still does not establish an equivalence restricting the meaning of "moral depravity" to that. Someone who is actually morally depraved is likely to do almost anything. Those who think in principles realize that, rationalistic word substitutions equating a concept with its definition are different way of mentally operating that does not work and is also contrary to Objectivism. See Introduction to Objective Epistemology.

[ewv 0]

Whether its proper or not depends upon many factors which are entirely a function of one's own values. The benevolence is an expression of one's values. What are you suggesting: if there is no requirement to return it should one just throw it away? Suppose the wallet belongs to someone who lives in Indonesia? I may or may not try to contact the Indonesian consulate, if I have time or interest. Suppose I call and they tell me I have to come in personally and wait 6 hours on line in order to talk to some bureaucrat and talk with the police who have to verify that I did not steal the money? Sorry, but I'm keeping the money.

I was of course assuming a normal context, when I gave the example. And the normal context is that items which get found in the Stockholm subway, and are handed in to the personal, are 1) normally *not* stolen by the personel and 2) most often the owner is not abroad, and there is a good chance that the owner will contact the subway´s lost and found division 3) there was a very good chance that there was an ID card in the wallet, so that the owner could be identified (I did not look in the wallet to check if there was an ID card there, but most Swedes carryID cards in their wallets.

Just in case anybody here has got a wrong idea, I did not at all mean to imply that I was some kind of moral *hero* merely because I refrained from stealing the wallet (as I see it I would have been stealing, if I kept a wallet which was not mine). I was merely being morally decent, when I could have gotten away with being immoral, if I had wanted to.

The essay described it as the first example of being a "moral hero".

Perhaps a better example fo what I intended to illustrate would be the fact that I never download music from the net, without paying, unlike a great many people nowadays, despite the fact that the risk of getting caught and punished is very small.

Punishment is very severe, plus the strong possibility of downloading viruses and spyware, but not stealing music is a long way from being a "moral hero". Moral action is positive and personal, not abstinence in accordance with social mores when "no one is looking".

[ewv 0]

I'm not sure what this means. When is there not a pressing need to be rational or not be virtuous? What is obvious? To whom? Virtue is not its own reward, and acting from duty, if that is part of your implication here, is certainly not part of morality. I act morally because it is necessary to achieve my values. Achieving my values requires me to always be virtuous, and that is "obvious" to me. How would I achieve values without acting virtuously and rationally? Whether it is obvious to anyone else, is irrelevant.

Consistently and routinely acting in accordance with your professed values is the virtue of integrity in particular, among many other primary virtues, the most fundamental of which is rationality (which includes objectivity and which is not rationalism). Acting in accordance with your values when a specific need to isn't jumping out at you and "obviously pressing" you is simply acting on principle. This is not following social duty when no one is watching you as the alleged "personal quality" that somehow makes someone "morally outstanding".

Do you get that from what Henrik said?

I get the fallacy in the last sentence from what he said. The first part came from Ayn Rand and was not, to say the least, in or implied by his essay.

He did say at one point, "So a morally good person is one who practices the moral virtues *on principle*, and not just in a pragmatic way", but that isn't consistent with the more conventional meaning elsewhere.

[Betsy Speicher 0]

You remember that Ayn Rand once remarked that she could not be as indifferent about philosophy as most of the Conservatives were, because she *saw so clearly the consequences of bad philosophy*, which the conservatives didn´t?

Cite please. I recall where Ayn Rand said something similar, but it was in an entirely different context.

Well, I cannot be indifferent about the massive default on thinking which so many men commit, because I see so clearly the consequences of that default. The reason that I see the consequences of the default so clearly which, apparently, many others here do not,

This is an unjustified criticism of other FORUM members. A more likely explanation for a lack of agreement is that you are making assertions that are just not true.

Nowadays, I sometimes think to myself that perhaps there is some young person out there, who is going through the same kind of hell, for the same kind of reasons, that I did, when I was a kid. And that thought does "bother" me, even though I know that random strangers´ lives are not my responsibility. So I feel strongly, for personal reasons, about the fact that so many people default massively on the responsibility of thinking. I cannot help it, so to speak.

Yes you can! Instead of getting "bothered" and condemning the majority of men, why don't you try to find and help those young people and give them the knowledge they need and the moral support they deserve? That's what I do -- for very selfish reasons.