Life and Values

[Elizabeth 0]

This then seems to be your answer to the original question of this thread. I take your  answer as "no."

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This has been a good opportunity to think through my own methods of understanding concretes and values. It has also been a good reason for me to bring out my copy of Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand.

[Stephen Speicher 0]

This has been a good opportunity to think through my own methods of understanding concretes and values.  It has also been a good reason for me to bring out my copy of Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. 

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I think that is great. If for no other reason this thread then has served its purpose. Interesting, though, that we are far from any consensus in answering the question.

In fact, even though we already have almost 130 posts in this thread, I will add a poll to the thread which will also allow those who have not chosen to participate, to let their view be known in the poll.

[Erskine Fincher 0]

Yes, by how they serve our own life.  My thought process in my post was that "the chance of saving a hero" can generally serve the life of man more so than any actual value a pet can.  Am I wrong somewhere here?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I think you are right.

What is heroic in man? Rationality.

What is our most fundamental moral virtue? Rationality.

What is it about man that allows him to thrive in the world? Rationality.

What is the one value that we can get from a stranger that our pet will never be able to give us? Rationality.

As long as it is rational to expect rationality from a stranger, we have to chose him over an animal in a life or death situation.

[Arnold 0]

But psychology deals with the conscious and subconscious mind, and since we are born tabula rasa it is we who fill our mind with ideas, and the ideas that we hold are the basis for our values, and our emotions are a reflection of those values. So, yet again, we see your attempt to divorce empathy from values results in divorcing emotions from reason, since our values are based on our ideas through a process of reason.

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This whole thread comes down to values. I find myself out on a limb, hanging by one little finger, trying to make my rather challenging point in this regard.

Of course our emotional responses depend on our values, but not all we value is consciously derived from reason. I'm not speaking of the conceptual ideas written onto tabula rasa later in life, but of the hard wiring that makes a mother care for her young. Mothers were valuing their young long before reason awakened in their minds.

I see a reluctance to admit we are animals that have only recently (in the time frame of evolution) been able to take the reigns of our destiny. Do you think the drives of our make-up, which ensured our survival for millions of years, just fell by the wayside? I don't think so myself. What we are now able to do, is override our animal nature by the use of volition. We can choose to act against our desires, and even change some of those desires assuming they are not a part of our natural make up. For example, we may be able to reason ourselves out of perverted sex, but not out of desiring sex itself. (witness the priests)

Just as the desire to have sex is a value hardwired into us, so, I believe, is empathy inborn by natural selection. Sex is a value to me, but just what is the IDEA you claim that make sit so?

Objectivist ethics is built on the foundation of what man is. It can only address the volitional aspects of what we are - reasoning animals. It doesn't involve itself with the non-reasoning part of our make-up. I contend that there is no reasoning way to decide the right decision, because we don't have enough information. There is a way that is right because it is in accord with our evolved make-up. It is instinctual to save a life in an emergency like this example.

Convince me that everything I value is based on ideas I hold, and my little finger will lose it's grip.

[Stephen Speicher 0]

Convince me that everything  I value is based on ideas I hold, and my little finger will lose it's grip.

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I think you have that the wrong way around. If everything you value is not based on reason, then you already have lost your grip.

[Stephen Speicher 0]

As long as it is rational to expect rationality from a stranger, we have to chose him over an animal in a life or death situation.

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Just to be fair in your presentation, this is not just "an animal" in our scenario. This is a pet who you love very much. Which means that you value the pet highly; an actual value. So the issue is, once again, the choice between the potential value of a stranger, and the actual value of your pet. You have made abundantly clear that your choice is always the stranger, but it is not clear to me that you have ever explained why that potential value is always for you greater than an actual value you have. In a previous post you mentioned that "[a]ny competent rational human being ... is of greater value to us ... materially than a pet" Forgetting for a moment about the pet, can you explain in what way such a stranger in, say, Mongu, Zambia is of greater material value to you than, say, your toaster?

[Erskine Fincher 0]

Just to be fair in your presentation, this is not just "an animal" in our scenario. This is a pet who you love very much. Which means that you value the pet highly; an actual value. So the issue is, once again, the choice between the potential value of a stranger, and the actual value of your pet. You have made abundantly clear that your choice is always the stranger, but it is not clear to me that you have ever explained why that potential value is always for you greater than an actual value you have. In a previous post you mentioned that "[a]ny competent rational human being ... is of greater value to us ... materially than a pet" Forgetting for a moment about the pet, can you explain in what way such a stranger in, say, Mongu, Zambia is of greater material value to you than, say, your toaster?

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If I've made it abundantly clear that I would always choose the stranger, then there's something wrong with the English that I'm using. I thought that I had said in several posts that it is only in the context of a rational society that it makes sense to choose the stranger, only in the context where it is reasonable to expect that the stranger is a rational person.

I also said in an earlier post that what I'm saying applies to a particular society. I don't live in Mongu, Zambia, and I'm not talking about saving people in Mongu, Zambia. I'm talking about saving a person who lives in the same society in which I live.

Compared to a rational human, a pet is just any animal. This is my whole point. The value of raitonality is so large, that the value of any pet pales by comparison.

Eddie Willers shifted his glance down to the street, to a vegetable pushcart at the stoop of a brownstone house. He saw a pile of bright gold carrots and the fresh green of onions. He saw a clean white curtain blowing at an open window. He saw a bus turning a corner, expertly steered. He wondered why he felt reassured--and then why he felt the sudden inexplicable wish that these things were not left in the open, unprotected against the empty space above.

What is it that Eddie sees in the pushcart, the clean white curtain and the expertly steered bus? He sees evidence of human rationality. The people who caused those effects are a spiritual value to him, and a material value if he buys their vegetables or rides in the bus. He doesn't have to know them to value them. Doesn't anyone else see what a betrayal it would be to lose that in order to save an animal?

In the context of a rational society it should just be a given that the humans around you are more important to you than your pet. In the context of a society that is slowly crumbling into irrationality, there is some leeway. Some people are going to shrug sooner than others. Some are going to try to hold on longer. I wouldn't judge either one, because I don't know any way to judge at what exact point a society becomes a disvalue. Only when it becomes obvious that the society has completely collapsed into irrationality does it become an act of self-sacrifice to save the human and let the pet die.

[Stephen Speicher 0]

I also said in an earlier post that what I'm saying applies to a particular society. I don't live in Mongu, Zambia, and I'm not talking about saving people in Mongu, Zambia. I'm talking about saving a person who lives in the same society in which I live.

Okay. Sorry. Let's say you live Florida (which, quite coincidentally, seems to be the case ) and the "competent rational human being" is one of the 231 fine residents of Hebo, Oregon. I ask again: forgetting about pets, exactly how is this stranger of "greater value ... materially" to you than, say, your toaster?

[Thoyd Loki 0]

What is it that Eddie sees in the pushcart, the clean white curtain and the expertly steered bus? He sees evidence of human rationality. The people who caused those effects are a spiritual value to him, and a material value if he buys their vegetables or rides in the bus. He doesn't have to know them to value them. Doesn't anyone else see what a betrayal it would be to lose that in order to save an animal?

In the context of a rational society it should just be a given that the humans around you are more important to you than your pet. In the context of a society that is slowly crumbling into irrationality, there is some leeway. Some people are going to shrug sooner than others. Some are going to try to hold on longer. I wouldn't judge either one, because I don't know any way to judge at what exact point a society becomes a disvalue. Only when it becomes obvious that the society has completely collapsed into irrationality does it become an act of self-sacrifice to save the human and let the pet die.

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I will note here that you keep switching from the concept pet to the concept animal. A pet is an animal to be sure. It is also the product of man's rationality. Just in the same way that all the examples that Eddie saw in your quote above. We can't just forget all of the forms that the rationality takes and worship it Platonically. From vetinary medicine, to grooming, to breeding, to proper methods of obedience training and on and on, are all products of rationality. Even the first man way back when who had the idea, not of devouring it, but of making it his companion, at least in the case of dogs (or of guarding his herd of sheep or his hut which is more likely the case).

I don't see why all the humans in a rational society should take a higher level of importance than my pet. Some may, some may not. If they trump the pet, any and all of men in a rational society, why not my other values as well? Why not my books, my guitar, my computer, my paintings, why not some of my money too? If they are all strangers, but also all members of a rational society, where is the stopping point of my values and their need? There is always need out there, you can see it everyday if you look for it.

And, by your premise, how rational is that society? Any and all men have a value priority over one of my personal, high values. Well, if they have a value priority over my pet, then they should have a value over almost everything else as well.

If I buy a new dog and spend say, $1500 on it, but the need of a complete stranger automatically trumps the pet (and therefore any money, i.e. time I have spent on it) that means the needs of any random stranger trumps my money, and my time; meaning any random stranger trumps the value of my own life.

What kind of society is that?

[Erskine Fincher 0]

Okay. Sorry. Let's say you live Florida (which, quite coincidentally, seems to be the case  ) and the "competent rational human being" is one of the 231 fine residents of Hebo, Oregon. I ask again: forgetting about pets, exactly how is this stranger of "greater value ... materially" to you than, say, your toaster?

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Well, it just so happens that this is the very guy who designed the manufacturing systems at the plant where my toaster was built. He retired to Hebo because his family had a cabin up on Mt. Hebo when he was a boy, and he used to go fishing on Lake Hebo. He still likes to fish, and that's what he was doing here in Florida on Otter Lake when his boat capsized. I was trying to save my dog, Sara, from being eaten by an alligator at the time, but I had to drop everything to pull the guy out of the lake. I was pretty sad about my dog. After I pulled the guy out of the lake, though, we got to talking and I mentioned how this very question had come up on the Ayn Rand Forum. That's when I found out that he is also a fan of Ayn Rand and heard her speak back in the sixties. He mentioned that he is writing a book about his years in the manufacturing industry, and I can't wait to read it. He's invited us all up to Hebo some time to stay in the cabin that he bought and is fixing up.

Boy, am I glad I didn't let him drown!

I'm taking the kids down to the pet store tomorrow to pick out a new beagle. They're all pretty broke up, but they'll get over it.

[Thoyd Loki 0]

The optionality is what is in question. If you can demonstrate that valuing a pet over a human life is optional, then I will concede the argument.

Are you really arguing that it is optional, though? You emphasize the point that this is an absolute stranger vs. a loved pet, which suggests that choosing the stranger is a sacrifice of an important value for something one can't possibly value. Then you go on to suggest that, feeling this way, I should not own pets. You seem to be saying that someone who really loves their pet ought to choose the pet over the human.

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I'm saying that I wouldn't morally condemn one for either choice, not in that "emergency" type scenario. I also wouldn't condemn someone who saved neither up to a certain level of risk.

Well, how do you value a stranger? What is the feeling? I don't love the abstraction rationality or hero (relating to whether that stranger is or represents either) or any abstraction for that matter. But only the concrete forms that exist. He's a potential value? A potential is not an actual, therefore I can only potentially value him. Which is the same thing as saying that I do not.

The choice is either between a loved pet vs. a complete stranger who has zero place in our values, or between a loved pet vs. individual human life as an abstract principle.

I'd feel much more inspired about the second way you framed this if we were talking about rights or state oppression, but we are here talking about man vs. accident in nature.

Let's say there is a man named Jake Runner, he lives in a tiny town in Ohio. You read in the paper that he died in a freak accident with a lawnmower. He's a complete stranger to you. Now, what did your abstract principle of individual human life make you feel about this man's calamity?

That's a good question. The standard has to be life, my life in particular. The thing I haven't been able to do yet is draw a clear and convincing line from valuing my life to valuing individual human life as a principle.

I don't even know what that means.

Imagine that you're on your way to the vet because your pet has a life-threatening injury. As you're driving down the street, you see someone being kidnapped, forced into a van by men wearing hoods. If you call the cops and follow the van, you can help free this person but your pet will probably die. Shouldn't your moral obligation to defend freedom outweigh your devotion to your pet?

Moral obligation to defend freedom? I'm a cook, not a cop. Am I to equate some poor sap getting kidnapped with, say, the reinstitution of the draft, or the stripping of property rights? I could easily call and give the cops the license number (of course maybe they will start shooting at me, there is even a risk in that), but follow them? And if I follow them, and they stop on the side of the road, put the person on their knees and are about to pump a bullet into their head, does my obligation to defend freedom require me to stop them?

It sounds like I'd be a very, very busy person in your land of moral obligations and imperitives.

Woe betide the person who tells me he couldn't be bothered to save one of my children because he was too busy saving his pet.

Now I'm obliged to your children as well? Do I get a break, and can I please have some superpowers!? Woe betide me? Sorry, I got rights, and please, watch your own kids. (I'd probably try to save the kid, but please your road is getting littered with these poor victims you keep tossing me!)

No, I'm employing a reasoning process to try to understand my emotional response. Emotions are not irrelevant. They tell us what our values are. The fact that I would feel guilty after the fact tells me that there might be a problem with the action. Alternatively, maybe I'm just not selfish enough to place something I value above another person's values. I've considered that, but I don't think it's the case. I can imagine some values that I wouldn't give up to save the person, but they are up on a higher level than beloved pets. They are up on a level where I don't think pets belong.

I am entirely that selfish. All of my values come before all men (discluding those that are in concrete objective fact part of my value hierarchy) as my first and only obligation.

Also don't forget, we are not even obligated to help this stranger in the first place!

I don't see how it could be right to let people die while saving a pet.

I would agree, from an altruistic premise.

[Thoyd Loki 0]

I was pretty sad about my dog. After I pulled the guy out of the lake, though, we got to talking and I mentioned how this very question had come up on the Ayn Rand Forum.

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I think I'll take this as my cue that we are never going to end this debate. Pretty sad about dog, but before the first piece of her made it to the gator's stomach, I was talking to this guy. I have a bigger response when I drop a cigarette in something wet!

Good sparring with you though, I enjoyed that.

[Erskine Fincher 0]

I will note here that you keep switching from the concept pet to the concept animal. A pet is an animal to be sure. It is also the product of man's rationality. Just in the same way that all the examples that Eddie saw in your quote above.

Just so, but I didn't say I would save the pushcart, the carrots or the white curtain over another human being. They are the effect. Human rationality is the cause. It is the cause that I value.

We can't just forget all of the forms that the rationality takes and worship it Platonically.

I'm not worshipping anything Platonically, and I am most definitely not worshipping the "forms" which rationality takes. I am worshipping the source of rationality: Man. It is for the sake of Man the ideal that I would rescue a man. Not to rescue the man would mean that I had given up on the possibility that men can achieve that ideal. It would mean that I had given up on the possibility that they can even approximate it, because even a man who tries but falls short of the ideal is of greater value than a pet. It might be rational in some contexts to give up hope of finding such men, but I'll be damned before I ever turn my back on that value while there is some reason to hope.

I don't see why all the humans in a rational society should take a higher level of importance than my pet. Some may, some may not.

I didn't say that all of them should. I said that in a rational society, it very likely that the person is of a much higher value and I would not risk losing that value for a pet.

Just for fun, what would you have to know about the stranger in order to value him more than the pet? What virtues would he have to possess? Isn't rationality sufficient?

If they trump the pet, any and all of men in a rational society, why not my other values as well? Why not my books, my guitar, my computer, my paintings, why not some of my money too? If they are all strangers, but also all members of a rational society,  where is the stopping point of my values and their need? There is always need out there, you can see it everyday if you look for it.

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I'll answer that with a quote from one of my earlier posts:

Yeah, it's interesting that one seems to get a different answer comparing the chronic situation to the emergency situation. In the chronic situation of the starving children in Africa, homeless people, etc, if you allow that to take precedence over any of your values, then you have established a principle that will eat you alive over time. Can't feed a cat until you've fed the world? Then you can't have anything except maybe the clothes on your back, the meagerest roof over your head, and a bow full of rice, because the world is a bottomless pit of needs. If it can trump your desire for a pet companion, it can trump any other "non-essential."

The emergency situation is different because it is limited to one single event, and it concerns immediate life and death. Also, the chronic situation has causes that will continue regardless of how much aid is given, because the people involved will continue their self-destructive behaviors and defeat any ameliorating effect your assistance might provide. If I knew that the drowning person was just going to jump back into the lake every time he was pulled out, I would rescue the cat and let him drown.

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And I'll just add that a rational person doesn't look for that kind of chronic assistance, and the whole reason I would save the person is on the expectation that he is rational.

[Free Capitalist 0]

I would like to add some more to this discussion. It seems to me that Erskine keeps constantly switching context, and these are all the different contexts which he attempts to sequentially switch into - we live in a rational society, rationality is the singular most top virtue for everyone, a dog is just an animal whom people value for his obedience or some such thing, etc. Let's stop trying to endlessly switch up contexts and stay with the one Stephen proposed - we have no idea about the rationality of this stranger, and can gather no information about the possibility of him being so. We just don't know.

Furthermore, Erskine wrote this:

What is heroic in man? Rationality.

What is our most fundamental moral virtue? Rationality.

What is it about man that allows him to thrive in the world? Rationality.

What is the one value that we can get from a stranger that our pet will never be able to give us? Rationality.

As long as it is rational to expect rationality from a stranger, we have to chose him over an animal in a life or death situation.

I'd just like to say that regardless of the validity of Erskine's views on the original subject of the thread, this approach above is highly ominous, in more ways than I can formulate into words at the moment. It all seems like a list of platitudes and stock phrases which are meaningless in any personal sense; in fact, some are even wrong. Rationality alone is not 'the heroic' in man, you will need a whole lot more to be a hero than your capacity to form a syllogism. Even the tidbit about rationality being our most fundamental moral virtue is, in the context of this discussion, a wholly inappropriate approach. Firstly, Rationality is but one of three top virtues, according to Ayn Rand's hierarchy, but as Dr. Peikoff has showed we can validly differ about which virtues we consider important. But even if I concede the point that rationality is the top virtue, that makes no difference to the discussion at hand because just because it is the top virtue does not mean it is the top value.

This brings me to the second point, something posters like Thoyd Loki have raised so well - many posts here approach this discussion in an almost entirely Platonic way: Rationality is the top virtue, therefore we cannot value anything higher than it at any point in time; the nature of man is to be rational, while the nature of animal is not, hence the man is more valuable, etc. I find approaches like this very dangerous because, among other things, they completely invert Ayn Rand's inductive approach to philosophy and questions of values.

If nothing else, even if mine and Thoyd's answers in this thread were wrong, at least it can be said that we approached the question inductively an with an eye toward our own personal values. With all due respect, I don't think the same can be said for the other side, by a long shot.

[Erskine Fincher 0]

I think I'll take this as my cue that we are never going to end this debate.

I came to the same conclusion when I read this in your previous post:

I don't love the abstraction rationality or hero (relating to whether that stranger is or represents either) or any abstraction for that matter.

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If you can't see beyond the concrete, you'll never understand my point.

Good sparring with you though, I enjoyed that.

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I wasn't sparring. I was trying to figure out the right answer to this question.

[Stephen Speicher 0]

I ask again: forgetting about pets, exactly how is this stranger of "greater value ... materially" to you than, say, your toaster?

Well, it just so happens that this is the very guy who ...

Erskine, with all due respect, I do not think you are getting my point. I have been trying to have you focus on the difference between a potential and an actual value. You earlier said, in reference to a stranger:

"Any competent rational human being embodies human values in a way that a pet never can. Such a person is of greater value to us spiritually, and materially than a pet."

I take value "materially" to mean a tangible value, a value that you actually have. The main issue was comparing the potential value of a stranger to the actual value of a loved pet, but the entire story you manufactured is not that of a stranger about whom you know absolutely nothing. In your story you created an actual person and you brought him into your personal life, thereby imbuing him with personal value that, materially, you do not in fact have with the stranger in our example.

Do you not see this?

[B. Royce 0]

Yesterday, after getting off work, I passed the scene of a horrific accident. The driver's side of one car was smashed all the way in to the passenger side, the other car was lying upside-down. The ambulance(?) had already departed. I thought "What a horrible thing to happen; perhaps the drivers had one split helpless second to know that their lives were about to end.

So, since I never saw the people involved, they were really strangers. I asked myself why I described the accident as "horrific"? My answer was that I hold the principle that a man is innocent until proven otherwise; and the implication of him being innocent is that he has at least some degree of a rational purpose in life (or, if a youngster, dreams of one). And that mean he is of more value to me than any animal, pet or otherwise, could ever be.

So, if I had to choose between saving my cat or saving a stranger, I would save the stranger. To do otherwise would be a sacrifice. Or, to do otherwise would be to abdicate my conviction that all men are innocent until proven guilty, and that would be to accept the idea that men are guilty by nature.

If the situation was that the dog(or cat)-catcher (a stranger to me) had my cat in his truck, and it was that truck which was lying upside-down after the head-on collision, I wouldn't be thinking, "What a terrible way for my cat to go".

However, if the choice were between saving a stranger or "saving" a bundle of all my poems and songs, too bad for the stranger, for my work is the result of my rational purpose.

[HaloNoble6 0]

I find approaches like this very dangerous because, among other things, they completely invert Ayn Rand's inductive approach to philosophy and questions of values.

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Let me defend my own reasoning, if the above is referring to it. I understand your point that questions of values can and should be answered through an inductive approach, that is as Stephen said, by asking "of what value is X to me," which is answered with respect to one's own hierarchy of values.

However, can we make any deductive statements about value hierarchies as such?

In essential terms, Stephen's question is: can one make a general statement about whether or not the "actual value a pet can bring you" can ever be placed above the "potential value of a stranger" in one's value hierarchy? So this question boils down to what, if any, general statements can we make about the value hierarchy of man? If there are only a few limited ones we can make, then the answer might be, as you say, always contextual. However if we can make broad, general ones, the answer can be arrived at by deduction. If so, we should like to ask, does rationality have anything to do with the process by which one constructs a value hierarchy? I say "yes" and "yes" to the above two questions, and can't see placing "value pet" above "value stranger" as consistent with a rationally constructed value hierarchy. Below is my reasoning.

What is the process by which one constructs a value hierarchy? By answering the question "of what value is X to me with respect to my standard of the good, which is my life." If one's life is the standard of the good, and one consistently uses this standard to build one's value hierarchy, can the actual value of a pet ever be greater than the potential value of a stranger?

Without a way to ascertain anything significant about this stranger, one can't know the likelihood of him bringing great value to you. So all one can say is "there's a chance, whatever that might be, that this stranger can bring me great value." Knowing that the stranger has potential value X (which is arrived at by analyzing the nature of man and relating it to your standard of the good, your life) and knowing that your pet has actual value Y (which is arrived at by answering, based on the standard of my life, of what use has this dog, whom is of a specific nature (namely, non-volitional), been to me?) and relating it to your standard of the good, your life), one is faced with weighing X vs. Y. And so, what is the moral thing to do? Can you ever reasonably say that the actual value a pet can bring you is higher than the potential value a stranger can bring you? I say it is to act for value X.

Yes, everyone's value hierarchy is unique, but the standard by which all value hierarchies are built is one's life (which one can ascertain without the use of induction), and a pet can't ever bring you more value (based on one's life as the standard of the good) than the potential value a stranger, who stands the chance of being a hero, might bring you.

If I'm going wrong anywhere, please politely point to my error. My thought process is: 1.) identify deductively what statements, if any, can be made about man's value hierarchy and 2.) based on these statements, identify relative positions of particular values X and Y.

[Erskine Fincher 0]

I would like to add some more to this discussion. It seems to me that Erskine keeps constantly switching context, and these are all the different contexts which he attempts to sequentially switch into - we live in a rational society, rationality is the singular most top virtue for everyone, a dog is just an animal whom people value for his obedience or some such thing, etc.

I honestly can't make this out. You call these three "contexts" but only the first one looks remotely like what I would call a context. In its case, all I've said is that the answer to the question has to depend on the context of the society in which one lives. I'm not trying to switch the context, I'm just saying that my answer depends on that context.

As far as the other two are concerned, I'm not claiming that they are contexts, I'm claiming that they are facts. Or rather, change the second one to "rationality is man's fundamental virtue," and I'm claiming that they are facts. Rationality is the virtue on which all other virtues depend. If one is irrational, any other virtues are accidental and cannot be consistently practiced. Our rationality is what makes virtue both possible and necessary. There are contexts in which we can morally tell a lie. There are contexts in which we can morally stop being productive. There is absolutely no context in which it is moral to be irrational.

Rationality alone is not 'the heroic' in man, you will need a whole lot more to be a hero than your capacity to form a syllogism.

That is an odd notion of what it means to be rational.

List the other virtues and tell me which ones a man can achieve without being rational. Tell me which of them your pet has achieved.

I find approaches like this very dangerous because, among other things, they completely invert Ayn Rand's inductive approach to philosophy and questions of values.

Ayn Rand used an inductive approach to discover the principles of morality. Once we've followed the inductive argument, and determined its validity, we have to apply those principles to determine what values are important to our life qua rational human being. To say that we cannot value rationality as an abstract principle is ludicrous. How can we say that we value a rational man if we do not value rationality itself? What is it that we value about him?

If I said that I valued the abstraction more than the concrete instance of it, that would be Platonism. I am saying the exact opposite: I value the abstraction because the concrete instances of it benefit my life. That rational men are a value to me is evident everywhere I look. I am surrounded by values that were created by men using their reason: my computer, my books, my house, my cars, every material value I own, including, as Thoyd pointed out, my pets, who would not be tame if it had not been for the actions of some rational man in the distant past. Then there are things like freedom, justice and the rule of law that were discovered by other rational men. At the apex are the life-supporting philosophies of Aristotle, John Locke and Ayn Rand. I didn't create all of these values. I earned them, but I didn't create them. What's more, I couldn't create them all by myself. I need other rational men in the world in order to live the way I want to live. I can live that way without my pets, but I can't without rational men.

Someone might reply: "yes, you need rational men in general, but you don't need any particular rational man. You are only losing one in that hypothetical scenario." My answer is, first, I don't give a damn about the hypothetical scenario, because my concern is with the broader question of where do other rational men belong in my hierarchy of values.

Second, that is a concrete-bound way of looking at the issue. If rational men are crucial to my life, then, on principle, I won't give up a single one of them for anything that is not crucial to my life. Pets are not crucial to human life. I would be sad if my pet died, but without all the rational men of the past and today, I would be digging roots up out of the ground with a stick in order to survive.

And last, when I think of that stranger, I do not think of the worst that he might be, I think of the best. I think of Ayn Rand, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Alexander Graham Bell, Bill Gates, Thomas Jefferson, Leonard Peikoff, Harry Binswanger, John Ridpath--and I think of all the Objectivist friends I have who were once strangers to me, and I think of my wife who was once a stranger. I can get another pet, but not one of those people is replaceable, and they represent only the merest fraction of the names I could have come up with. The world contains many more such people like those, and their value is so great that the possibility of letting one die to save a pet is unthinkable.

If nothing else, even if mine and Thoyd's answers in this thread were wrong, at least it can be said that we approached the question inductively an with an eye toward our own personal values. With all due respect, I don't think the same can be said for the other side, by a long shot.

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With all due respect, you are dead wrong. You have confused inductive with concrete-bound. In your arguments, you have employed only one principle, and you adhere to it without ever considering where you got it: Never sacrifice a higher value for a lower value. Beyond that, you are merely looking at concrete things, and neglecting principles. "I value the pet. I don't know the person. I can't value a thing if I don't know anything about it. Therefore, I let the person drown."

That's not induction. It's not thinking in principles. It's not an objectively reached conclusion. If you were focused on reality, you might have noticed that you do know something about the person, you know that he is human. You might have asked yourself what it means to be human. You might have asked yourself if humans have any value to you by virtue of being human. You might have asked yourself what value people derive from pets, and how that compares to the value they derive from other humans. You didn't do any of that. You've stayed nailed down to the concrete, and now the only thing either of you can think of to do is accuse me of rationalism and Platonism. I am guilty of neither.

I began considering the question by examining my gut emotional reaction. That told me where my values lay, but it did not tell me why. I have had to explore that question and probe deeper and deeper to get at the fundamental principles involved. I have learned a great deal from that process, and for pressing me with your questions and forcing me to go down to the next level, I thank you. Unfortunately, I cannot say that I got anything else at all from the arguments you have made.

[Stephen Speicher 0]

So, if I had to choose between saving my cat or saving a stranger, I would save the stranger.  To do otherwise would be a sacrifice.  Or, to do otherwise would be to abdicate my conviction that all men are innocent until proven guilty, and that would be to accept the idea that men are guilty by nature....

However, if the choice were between saving a stranger or "saving" a bundle of all my poems and songs, too bad for the stranger, for my work is the result of my rational purpose.

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And if someone would not give up the life of their loved pet for your poems and songs, what does that make them? If someone values his pet more than you value your poems, and you value your poems more than the stranger, then why shouldn't that someone value his pet more than the stranger?

[Stephen Speicher 0]

If I'm going wrong anywhere, please politely point to my error.

Basically, you are assuming what you want to prove in your premises. Regardless, I think you are missing the main point about values and life. As stated in Galt's speech,

Man's life is the standard of morality, but your own life is its purpose.

Your values serve the purpose of your own life, your happiness. How can sacrificing a high value for a stranger about whom you know nothing, serve the purpose of your life? Underline that: your values, your life.

[HaloNoble6 0]

Alright, thank you, I understand now. So then to generalize this problem, it is never moral to act to gain/keep "a potential value" instead of an actual high one, regardless of whether or not this "potential value" could be of more use to your life? Just like in a romantic relationship, one never loves a potential or what could be but an actual, what is? Thank you for this excellent thought exercise.

[Stephen Speicher 0]

So then to generalize this problem, it is never moral to act to gain/keep "a potential value" instead of an actual high one, regardless of whether or not this "potential value" could be of more use to your life?

No, I would not put it as a rule like that. I might give up one job for a lesser one because of the potential of the new job. But, in doing so, it is my purpose in life that is guiding me; how that new job will actually serve my life, my happiness. Not as an abstract notion floating around in a diaphanous ether, but as an actual value that serves my happiness.

[B. Royce 0]

And if someone would not give up the life of their loved pet for your poems and songs, what does that make them? If someone values his pet more than you value your poems, and you value your poems more than the stranger, then why shouldn't that someone value his pet more than the stranger?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

If someone values their pet more than my poems, I would expect them to save their pet.

As to your second question, I see, in reading your next post to HaloNoble6, that yes, why shouldn't someone value his pet more than the stranger. It's logical. My (now past) difficulty was thinking in terms of "high rational value" and not "high personal value". Thanks for underlining "...your values...your life.."

[Thoyd Loki 0]

I came to the same conclusion when I read this in your previous post:

"I don't love the abstraction rationality or hero (relating to whether that stranger is or represents either) or any abstraction for that matter."

If you can't see beyond the concrete, you'll never understand my point.

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This is exactly what I meant when I said these arguments were Platonic. Only concretes exist. There is no univeral "rationality" apart from the specific instances of it. That is why I say that I do not love the universal of rationality or hero, but Aristotle's logic or Howard Roark, and numerous other examples.

Which is why the next sentence that I wrote (and you omitted, thus perverting my context) was: "But only the concrete forms that exist."

This has to happen in an argument like this if you are trying to talk men into performing actions outside of their values. Do I value man? Yes. But only in the concrete actual instances where I see them as expressions of being man-proper. This stranger has this, potentially. You keep trying the rip the integrity out of Patrick Henry, the heroism out of George Washington, and the rationality out of John Galt, form a Comte-ish like brotherhood of floating virtues and shove it into this man to get him out of the water.

I wasn't sparring. I was trying to figure out the right answer to this question.

I meant that as no concession on either side. But if you want to split meaningless hairs... If you were looking for the right answer to this question, how did it happen that you walked into the discussion with an answer? I would have come in with a question.