Objectivism

The philosophy of Ayn Rand has captured some interest.  Some people swear by her philosophy.  Some would prefer to swear at it.  I believe that its most controversial claims are in the field of ethics.  Her philosophy glorifies capitalism.  There is no way around that.  Opponents of capitalism will be motivated to attack her philosophy on those grounds alone.  I personally believe that her philosophy does not deserve either treatment.  It should neither be lionized nor demonized.  It isn't an evil philosophy, but I think it contains a few errors.

Her detractors misunderstand her philosophy as saying that it is okay to profit at the expense of others.  It says no such thing.  The title of her book, The Virtue of Selfishness contributes to this misunderstanding.  In fact what she says is that there is no conflict between the interests of rational individuals.  Whether you agree with this or not, when you properly understand this you will have to concede that this is not a statement that would encourage people to profit at the expense of others.  In fact it is a statement that it is impossible to do so.

Personally, I think her justification for this harmony of interests of all rational individuals fails.  The argument is supported by little more than inductive reasoning based on the examples of thieves and dictators.  I argue that it is impossible to test the claim that theft is always irrational.  The statement that being a dictator is always irrational depends on implausible assumptions about what kind of interests can be described as rational.

Let's take the case of theft first.  It is true that many thieves wind up in jail.  Ending up incarcerated is bad.  If a thief could be confident that he would end up in jail, then we could say that theft would be irrational.  However, we are unable to determine what proportion of thieves are caught.  This is because the most successful forms of theft are never detected.  Thus the sample of thefts that we have to evaluate will not be representative of the whole.  We are unable to obtain an unbiased sample of thefts in order to determine whether or not theft is compatible with an individual's rational self interest.

Now with the dictator, we can say that being a dictator can indeed be hazardous to your heath.  However, even the Objectivists concede that health and long life are not the sole ends of life.  It is held to be rational to take risks in order to obtain things that make life worth living.  One might die for ones friends, for example, if one valued the life of the friend enough.  The only assumption that would justify the belief that it is irrational to be a dictator would be that it is irrational to value political power.

Objectivists believe that our values come from evolution by means of natural selection.  It seems implausible to assume that evolution would not produce a tendency especially on the part of men to value political power.  This is because holding political power in the past has given men reproductive opportunities that they were not able to obtain in any other manner.  For this reason taking risks to obtain political power would be just as rational as taking risks to save the life of a friend or relative or to gain material wealth.  Some degree of material wealth or valuable friendships make up part of what makes life worth living.  Similarly one might find that obtaining political power makes life more worthwhile.

Next I want to examine the claims that objectivism makes about being the only philosophical system that can justify capitalism.  Ayn Rand states that capitalism and altruism are incompatible.  First we can examine whether this is the case.  Once we have done that we can see if her approach to philosophy is the only alternative to altruism.

Now, in order to do this we will have to define altruism.  I think we should take the standard Objectivist definition, which differs somewhat from common usage.  Altruism is the belief that one has a moral obligation to serve others.  I regard this as synonymous with the contention that failure to help others is worthy of blame.  Strictly speaking capitalism is compatible with this claim.  What capitalism is not compatible with is the contention that coercion can properly be used against individuals who fail to help others.

Now the claim that the Objectivists are making can be defended only if there is no reason to argue that failure to help others should be met with tolerant disapproval.  I suspect that they are right on this point.  If deterence should be used to prevent this sin of omission, then ostracism will be insufficient to protect us from this vice.  Simply driving people away will not motivate them to help others, since they will be able to continue to abstain from helping others even in the absence of contact with others.

Next, for the claim that the Objectivist approach is the only alternative to altruism, I offer a complete refutation.  This can be done simply by coming up with an alternative.

My approach to ethics doesn't depend on a harmony of interests of rational individuals in all of their behavior.  In only specifies that there is such a harmony with respect to the selection of a system of moral and ethical values.  Unlike the Objectivists I define a system of moral and ethical values as being a method of assigning credit and blame to actions.  Each individual will be motivated to select a set of values that others will be motivated to accept. They do this by accepting moral and ethical values that conform to universal and general principles.

Let's re-examine the case of the dictator.  We need not claim that being a dictator is irrational to say that it is wrong.  We only need to state that everyone will be motivated to support a system of moral and ethical values that sees it as being wrong.  Even the dictator would not support the contention that doing the things that are necessary in order to be a dictator are moral.  If these actions were done by any other person, it would lead to the dictator being replaced.  Similarly a thief would not want his own property to be stolen.

Under my approach we would not consider the failure to help others as just cause for casting blame.  I would maintain that in order for a course of action to be worthy of blame it must actually be harmful to others.  It is not sufficient that it fail to help them.  This approach is compatible with capitalism, contradicts altruism and is in closer conformity to common moral intuitions.  For this reason, I believe that I have found an improvement to the approach that the Objectivists have taken.