Ayn Rand And The Sociopathic Society

It disproves nothing.

I made the claim that no liberal could ever find fault with anyone on their side. The fact that you find fault with someone on your side does nothing but prove that you are not a true liberal.

My point remains intact.

 

Exactly. B/c uninformed childish selfishness is really a philosophy of significance called "objectivism."

Rand is deranged. But you unrecognized, downtrodden heroes of capitalism are quite real. What a quandary,

 

Your summary statement is quite insane, you realize that, right?

 

It is also quite accurate.

Liberalism has a definition, just like conservatism has a definition. When a person matches that definition they can be called whatever that word is.

That is the process.

You cannot call yourself something then change the definition to fit you. You either are the definition of something or you are not.

Now, you could call a truck a boat if you want but is it really a boat? Of course not, unless you change the definition. Perhaps we could say that a truck has no wheels and floats on the water, well then a truck would be a boat, but not according to the original terminology of it.

 

proof of what claim?

and by all means, remain unsusceptible to 'such tactics'. because a life of organic whole food, plenty of exercise, and a curtailing of our worst impulses (consumerism) can't possibly good for us anyway - even if the earth never warms.

 

I'm well aware of the arguments presented by the thinkers you've mentioned, but your regergitation of these concepts does not change the facts:
A) you are making an appeal to motive fallacy
B) you are saying that acts that please the self while being detrimental to external parties are morally equivalent to acts that please the self while affecting no external party, and that these are also the moral equivalent of acts that pleases the self by benefiting external parties.
C) at no point have you made any assertion contradicting the fact that republican policies are entirely self-serving, with no benefit to the greater society. Given that the role of politicians is to provide for the will of their constituents (ie: external parties), the fact that republican policies fail to do this seems self evident. The state (both definitions) of Kansas exemplifies this.

 

I see, so you define liberal as "someone who does not disagree with liberals" and then whine about a group that may or may not exist... Interesting.
This reeks of "moving the goalposts", and is clearly a logical fallacy.

 

By your own freaking words, "It disproves nothing.

I made the claim that no liberal could ever find fault with anyone on their side. The fact that you find fault with someone on your side does nothing but prove that you are not a true liberal.

My point remains intact. "

Your criterion was satisfied and you still object.

Can you see why not only liberals but all rational humans laugh at you?

 

I see a good deal of ignorance WRT the philosophy of Ms. Rand ITT.

Selfishness is relative to what a 'self' is. Borrowing from Aristotle, Ms. Rand defined man as the 'rational animal', a being who functions primarily by using Reason. Being selfish means that you act in your self-interest as a rational animal. As such, initiating violence against others is irrational. Fraud is irrational. Working, producing, earning an honest living are selfish and therefore rational.

A violent savage like a Hitler was unselfish. He required victims, other selves, for his barbaric dreams. A selfish man deals only by trade, trading value for value. Death camps ain't in there.

 

Fair enough, I will answer your questions.

A) Yes and no but certainly not for the point of Ad hominem circumstantial. While it is true that I am using the appeal to motive fallacy, that motive's intention is not to rely on that alone but to explain that the motive is the key component of the argument. One you can determine that then you realize that the rest of the results whether they are based on the existence of the motive or the benefits derived from the motive are still ultimately based on that motive.

Now you are contending that whether or not selfishness is the cause of the motive has no determination on the merits of an act.

That is certainly a point of view one could take and would be consistent with a majority of societal beliefs.

I would respond that the cause of the motive makes anything else a moot point. They are entirely separate entities and not connected to each other. If you do want to connect them then I would indeed be correct that the motive and the benefits derived are irrelevant because if we are basing that motive on selfishness then the man who hands out blankets to the poor on a cold night is no more morally just than the man who murders 6 prostitutes in a major city. Both men are acting on their motive of selfishness and they are both being true to themselves, what the outcomes of those actions are is irrelevant. The only way one of them would be wrong is if one of them was not being true to himself and not acting out of selfishness.

Let me give you a good example by Kant and I will be paraphrasing here since it has been awhile.

Kant was extremely religious and was absolutely adamant about not lying. He could not tolerate anyone that lied and would never lie himself so he offered this example of what is moral or as he put it, righteousness.

"Kant is at a good friends house and his friend explains that he has done something to wrong a man on their street and that the man is looking for him to kill him. There is a knock at the door and the friend peeks out the window and sees the man who wants to kill him standing there. The man tells Kant to open the door while he hides and tell the man that he is not there.

What should Kant do to be righteous?

He could open the door and lie to the man and say that he has not seen his friend but that would be denying what Kant is and performing an action to please someone else instead of himself. That would be morally wrong.

He could tell the man that his friend is hiding in the back room and let the man in. That would be the morally right thing to do according to Kant's beliefs but is it the righteous thing to do because his friend will die.

Ultimately Kant explains that the only righteous thing to do is to let the man in and tell him his friend is there. For him to do otherwise would be to violate the principles of morality to oneself and as Kant explains over many, many pages (he is very long winded) a man cannot be righteous if he behaves unrighteous to himself. So even though Kant's friend is dead, it was the morally just thing to do because it was not Kant's fault that his friend wronged this man, nor was it Kant's responsibility to fix his friends problem at the expense of his own moral justification.

To compare this example to the OP we can see, and my point was, that a man handing out blankets to the homeless is no more doing the right thing then the man who kills six prostitutes. They are both being true to themselves and they are both being righteous. Now of course we as a society will punish the man who murders but he would only morally be wrong if he did not do what pleases him.

Now that is not to say that this theory (and that is what it is) does not have flaws involved in it. For instance, should we encourage men who find selfish pleasure in molesting little children to continue to do what they do even if they are acting righteously?

Well of course not, so how do we adapt situations like that to the philosophy of selfishness?

This is how Kant describes it and what I generally agree with.

1. Morality is only achieved if a persons actions are done for the sake of morality alone and with no ulterior motive. To apply this to the OP we could say that conservatives are morally just if they are acting strictly on their beliefs.

2. Second, the moral quality of an action is judged not according to the action's consequences, but according to the motive that produced it. So it does not matter what happens after the conservatives make a decision as long as that decision was made based upon the morals they hold.

3. Actions are moral if and only if they are undertaken out of respect for the moral law (as opposed to some other motivation such as a need or desire). A man who is acting on selfishness and wants to abuse children is not actually acting on morality, he is acting on desire which is not righteous. For an action to be moral it must be done simply for the sake of morality, not for any preferred outcome or some perceived need. This is why Kants example of his friend is so relevant, had he lied to the man then he would have been acting out of a desire for his friend to not be harmed and that would have been an immoral thing to do. For conservatives to act against their beliefs simply so some people may gain would be an immoral thing to do just as a liberal agreeing to give an oil company a subsidy because of some benefit they may get would be an immoral thing to do.

So no, my response was not an appeal to motive fallacy.

B and C) I believe my above response covers these also.

 

Even Jesus Christ was motivated by self interest. That's not the issue. This is: "I owe nothing to my brothers, nor do I gather debts from them. I ask none to live for me, nor do I live for any others. I covet no man's soul, nor is my soul theirs to covet."

In our world, he ain't heavy, he's my brother.

 

I'm right there with you on this one, word for word.. I have stumbled across Rush's show on WSB in Atlanta (I think that's the station?) .. anyway, it took me all of a couple of minutes to change it.. Rush panders to the most uneducated base of the Republican party. Some lib commentators do the same thing, this is nothing new.

 

No.

It is like looking at an object and trying to determine if it is an egg.

What would we do.

We would look to see if it has an oval shape and check to see if it is white, or one of the other colors eggs come in. We may crack it open to see if there is a yolk inside. We would look at all the characteristics that an egg has and apply them to this object. If the object has those characteristics then we can determine that the object is indeed an egg.

Now look at this picture. It appears to have most of the characteristics of an egg, it is oval, it appears to have a yolk ,it is hollow and can break and it is a brown color as some eggs are. However, it is made of chocolate so would we consider it still an egg because it has most of the characteristics of an egg or would we call it something else? We would not call it an egg we would identify it as a piece of candy.



Same thing with a liberal. We would match up the characteristics of a liberal with an individual and see if they match. Now you cannot just kind of match and be a liberal, you need to have a complete match or we define you as something else like a blue dog democrat or social conservative but not as a liberal.

 

That's an interesting perspective. Let's take a look at the definition of the term "sociopath":
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sociopath

So, what do we mean by "antisocial"?

In this context (ie: behavior on a societal level), I believe it is clear that the Kantian ethics you describe are detrimental to social order.
Pretending it is immoral (or at least morally neutral) to help others, simply because you may enjoy helping others, while pretending it is morally acceptable to take advantage of others in order to improve your own position, is simply antisocial to the point of sociopathy.

 

As interesting as your thesis is, it is irrelevant to the fact that you are choosing to define "liberal" in terms that affirm the consequent.
Let's not forget your assertion that my criticism of Diane Feinstein demonstrated my willingness to "find fault with someone on your side...". This means you believe me to be on the same "side" as Diane Feinstein, who is clearly a liberal.

I'm not sure what convinces you that you are the best person to dictate what characteristics are required to qualify someone as a "liberal".

 

Actually he would be one of the few exceptions.

In order to act out of selfishness you must be presented a choice. Jesus had no choice in what he was to do.

This is exemplified by his death when he begs God to "take this cup from him" clearly indicating he did not want to be crucified (and who could blame him) yet he was forced to endure it anyways. This was not a selfish act, a selfish act would have been running away.

It was also not selfless as we can see that he did not want to do it either. He neither wanted to be crucified nor did he want to run away so the example of Jesus is kind of unique.

 

If you were not on her side then one would have to wonder what prompted you to respond to my post as it was merely meant for those who consider themselves liberals.

And I do not define liberals, society does that and often, the meaning changes quite frequently with the definition today resembling absolutely nothing that existed at the creation of that word.

 

So Jesus's temptations in the wilderness was just BS?

I am my brother's keeper. Rand would have a meltdown over that piece of ethics. I do not and would not.

 

I believe that a sociopath would be precluded from any sort of classification due to ethical determinism. One can hardly expect a person with no choice to make the proper choice now can we?

To the rest of your post I would refer you to the third point in the Kantian metaphysical definition of morality which states that any action taken for a derived benefit based on a need or desire, and not based on the motive itself, is inherently wrong. So taking advantage of others to improve your own position is just as wrong as partaking in action for the strict purpose of helping someone.

Any action is immoral if it is done for some reason other than the motivation itself and that motivation is usually selfishness. This is my argument coming full circle and let me use you as an example.

You sound like a very decent, intelligent man/woman and I have no doubt that you believe that every person should be treated equally and are afforded the same rights. Regardless of their race, gender, sexual orientation, all people are inherently equal.

And that is good.

Now what do you base that on? You do not base that on something that displease you or makes you angry. You do not look at a black man dating a white woman and tell your friends it is great while you seethe with hatred inside, no, you believe it because it pleases you to know that you have the intelligence and maturity to realize that human beings are human beings and that you can recognize that.

Even if you did not see an interracial couple you would still believe that people are equal because it is your moral point of view, it is not based on any specific desire to see an interracial succeed, in fact that is irrelevant to you. You believe people are equal just because they are. Now if you were a congressman in 1859 and had to vote on a slavery issue and you knew that casting a vote against a particular piece of slavery legislation would lead to a civil war and many, many deaths would it be wrong for you to vote for it based on your inherent belief that people are equal?

Suppose that you knew slavery was going to be outlawed in ten years anyways and if you vote for this slavery bill it will avoid a civil war? Is your vote, against your morals, equal to the saving of 620,000 lives that were lost, the environmental destruction of the nation, and everything else that came with it?

I can tell you that you would be unequivocally wrong if you voted for that slavery bill. Why?

Because you have a need to fulfill a selfish desire within yourself.

This is the same way that Kant would not lie or the conservative would not perform an action just because it may help someone.

 

The entire issue of Jesus is filled with divine inspiration and intervention so it is not really applicable to regular humans. For instance, did Jesus really ever have a choice in anything since God is omnipotent and knows everything it is assumed that he created Jesus to act exactly how he wanted him to. Did Jesus actually have freewill?

Well if he is actually God, which he is if you follow the Holy Trinity, then God is not going to give himself freewill to decide against something he already decided for.

It is just way too complicated so therefore we can stick it in the exception column. We could also put people with mental illness in that column or people with severe personality traits.

 

So, considering myself a liberal makes me a liberal. What happened to the cadbury cream egg analogy?

In other words, you villify a group of people for which there is no clear definition.... Classy.
That reeks of flame bait.

 

If "be yourself and work hard" is your definition of sociopathic, you might be a liberal. #JeffFoxworthy

 

Not sure how you got that from my post but I said exactly the opposite. Considering yourself a liberal does not make you a liberal unless you fit the definition of what a liberal is.

I could say that I am a member of the freemasons but since I have never been to a meeting or been initiated I probably am not one no matter how many times I claim to be.

Fair enough, I am guilty of tossing around the word "liberal" to openly insult someone but hey, we all do it. I certainly would not do that if I was writing a paper that was to be graded but we are on a chat forum.

 

Either there is free will or there is not. If there is not, Jesus ceases to be heroic and laudable. Just chalk it up to 'god's will.' There are scads of papers and black letter historical commentaries that would side on the free will argument.

Suffice it to say, we are all in this together and we are our brother's keepers. The Randians of the world are the Devil's helpers by fragmenting our brotherhood in the name of excessive egotism.

 

Oh, gag. So....attempting to publicly "shame" people is OK with you as long as it's in line with your own beliefs and agenda, but it is to be horribly condemned when others with different views would attempt such a thing. Since "how one should live and what values one should hold" are all a subjective matter of opinion, I find it very telling that you wish to impose your personal views on others in such a way that you would advocate public shaming of those who don't get with YOUR program.