some responses

by e_dog

Posted to What Are You Reading? on 2004-06-10 10:34:00

Parent message is 660287
we’re fightin like cats and dogs here, this is great!
as you will see i am going to give out credit where credit may or may not be due.

1)as far as the existence of the external world goes, i am aware that it’s been a theme in western phil for centuries. the fact is that no one has ever gotten anywhere on this problem through logical reasoning, they have always ended up begging the question and making right fools of themselves for thinking there is a rational solution. ayn rand is no exception here (which is not such a terrible indictment b/c that puts her with the likes of descartes and kant, etc.). to do what you say she does, that is, “Simple as it sounds, for someone to stand up and boldly assert that reality exists cuts through a lot of sophistry.” is about the only thing a philosopher can do; but that’s not what she does (or, at any rate that’s not what she did in the essay on this of hers that i read where she tries to give a rational demonstration). G.E. Moore does what you say and that is why he was a freakin sly genius. the better approach though is that of the “first-graders” you mention, that is, not to raise the problem to begin with.

2) John Rawls distinguishes b/t two understandings of self-interest : a) the interests OF a self and b) interest IN oneself, more generally a) the values that a self has and b) valuing oneself (above other people for example). your argument seems to confuse these. obviously, it is trivially true that if i value someone else’s life it is my value. but, if i value their life more than my own (or am willing to risk my life to save them) then that is altruism. such a thing exists and it is the basis for true heroism. that doesn’t mean that i value the others’ life BECAUSE it is my value; only a philosopher would think that. the real altruist doesn’t give a thought to her “values” which are at any rate just a theoretical construct. the egoist on the other hand either would let the other die b/c he just doesn’t care OR would save the other person because of some external reward (not merely the abstract fact that a “value” has been fulfilled) but rather that they want a material reward or social status or something like that. thus, i assert that altruism is a potential and sometimes real phenomenon and its a good thing to. that is of course a reflection of my values but that’s not the same as self-interest.


3) i never said “capitalism is evil.” i do think that capitalist ideology has pernicious effects in the world and that it forms the basis for or seeks to justify a lot of immoral conduct. i stand by that claim. no, i don’t think that everypone who refuses to give to streetpeople are ipso facto immoral but some are, or at least some are ignorant and insensitive to the difficulties these people have encountered; a lot of people are self-satisfied and believe that their personal success has been created by their own talent and effort but realy they have just been fortunate to receive the privileges of social life either through chance or more often social connections i.e. from their parents.

4) the problem is not that we have “mixed economy” if by the “mix” you mean government intervention. the problem is that we do not have “pure” capitalism because we have monopolistic and oligopolistic giant corporation which function as the equivalent of totalitarian institutions rather than real market forces. but, on the other hand, a “pure” capitalism is an impossibility, the only forms possible are “mixed” ones, the key is how does the system operate and i believe the system operates unjustly, excluding too many people from the benefits of the economy, concentrating power into a very few hands. so i’d say we need more of welfare state, better funding of education, meaningful universal healthcare (by which i mean the entire globe), and less corporate power.





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