Altruism vs. Egoism vs. Nihilism, Have at it!

I am still a proponent of egoism. I believe that evolution is somewhat the core of morality. That we act in accordance with our nature as a species, which for survival dictates that we must have self-interest. If life as a good in itself is the standard by which we judge morality, I don't see how anyone can be anything else, in terms of morality.

I myself used to be an egoist of the Randian sort, however for reasons I'll explain, I came to disagree with that position.

I first became disillusioned with Rand when I realized that her argument for rights did not follow from her egoism. Her arguments may well establish that rights are good for me, but not necessarily that I ought to respect any one else's rights. In fact, why should I? if my ethical obligation is to satisfy my own self-interest. Rand I believe argued somewhere that my recognition of someone's else's rights follows if I am logically consistent. But I don't think anyone is making a contradiction if he says I have rights but you don't. Unless Rand wants to argue that we are all equal in some respect (perhaps in a Kantian way that we are all of equal moral worth). But then this requires someone to recognize that other rational beings have a moral worth that cannot be overridden even if it is in your self-interest to do so. This is what has traditionally been meant by altruism, not that a man has no right to exist for his own sake. (I don't know of many moral philosophers who ever argued that). I eventually came to the conclusion either rights or egoism had to go, and decided egoism lost.

However perhaps egoism is right and rights are wrong. Well let's look at Rand's arguments for egoism. Rand argues egoism follows from the fact that life is the ultimate value. For the sake of argument I'll concede that. Now why should someone value life? I believe Rand argues this is because life is the source of all values. But why should I value what gives me values? Robert Nozick points out that i could not have the value of getting rid of my cancer if I didn't have cancer first. Would Rand then argue that cancer is a value?

Now if, as you argue, egoism follows from the fact that we act in accordance with our nature, this is only a decriptive claim. At most it would prove that we are egoists. This does not prove we ought to be egoists. And if being egoists follows from our nature, how could we help not being egoists? That makes the claim we ought to be egoists somewhat absurd. It would be like someone telling me I ought to be Pete. When we say someone ought to do such and such a thing it implies there is an alternative. (I think this a problem with natural law ethics in general).

I want to reply now, but I have to get to bed and this requires a detailed response. Within the next day, I'll definitely post back.
Good Night Pete

Okay I think I know from this paragraph where we disagree, and I think it has to do with epistemology. Rand doesn't, or rather, I don't believe that rights exist in nature per se. They aren't tangible, they aren't composed of matter, they aren't even like real natural laws like gravity, where they cannot be broken (i mean literally impossible to break). Rights are a sort of observation/acknowledgement/awareness that necessarily must stem from morality. As humans there is a certain nature about us that dictates what we need to survive, and to what extent do we survive (poverty, wealth, quality of life). And if life and the benefit of that life is the moral good, then we can observe what is in our interest (note-this is the abstract part). Now when I say self-interest I am not speaking of some concrete example where killing a man will get me some money, I am speaking of the abstract observation of the nature of man. Basically, if you were alone on this earth what do you need to survive: you need to be free to think, judge and act to produce the means of sustaining your life. And since this is what the nature of man requires, then we can apply this requirement to all men.

Now that we've introduced other men into the equation, we need to observe the nature of groups of men and what is necessary for their survival. Since a group is nothing more than a number of individuals, the same requirements we established before apply and a new criteria must be made for what happens when people have conflicting wants. As it turns out the only criteria needed is to establish that men don't use coercive force on another. And this is the recognition of rights through a selfish morality.

Now you may think this resembles contractuarian rights, however I argue that this is objective while contractuarian rights are arbitrarily defined, while this is defined by a standard that is what the nature of man requires for survival.

Perhaps Rand has established what is required for our survival. But that's rather like science, not ethics. She hasn't provided a reason why we ought to survive and I would argue she has not provided any argument for why I ought to care about someone else's survival.

That last reply was from PeteyRimple. (I forgot to log in, haha).

Morality is a concept that gains its meaning and is literally derived from life. Without life-- morality, which is how should you live your life, would have no meaning. Rand's argument is that the purpose of morality is survival. If the purpose of morality were anything else and you made morality non-life oriented, when you died as a result of your actions, the morality you had would mean nothing. That's why I think first and foremost, the purpose of morality has to be to maintain life.

Anyway, this is what I am saying about epistemology. Because of the way the concepts exist, you cannot evaluate morality without life, and life will not exist for long without morality. Life is the fundamental concept and morality is the derivative concept. Basically to answer your question, the idea that I ought to survive is presupposed as soon as you mention morality. Any other look at morality is you trying to determine why life should live with respect to all the non-living things in the universe. And I dont think life needs to prove its worthiness to anything other than itself.

And to the last part of your question, I don't think you should care about others survival. If a starving child dies in Cambodia, it is sad, but I don't require that you throw his funeral, or mourn or anything like that. However, I did explain above why you ought respect someone else's survival.