Posted by Q on February 13, 19101 at 05:26:19:
In Reply to: Re: Ethical Egoism revisited posted by Daniel on February 13, 19101 at 03:30:39:
: What's with the murder?
I think you're missing the point, Daniel. The idea is that when someone commits a hideous violent crime, like murder, Objectivism says that it's only wrong because someone, the murderer, failed to realize what was in her self-interest. The witnesses to the homocide, if there are any witnesses, are only disturbed by the fact that this murder was not in their self-interest.
That "Objectivism" does not permit murder under ordinary cirstances is a different topic entirely. Rand invokes a particular psychology of man without any empircal evidence whatsoever. It's just a way for her to rationalize objectivism. As an example consider her (in)famous playboy interview concerning a woman President. Rand said there shouldn't be legal structures in place preventing a woman president, but, that's it in no woman's rational self-interest to become President. Why? Well, according to guru Rand's arm-chair psychology, women are supposed to look up to men and worship them.
Rand's claims about the nature of man are nothing but ertions. Sure, you could commit murder, but you'll feel all kinds of emotional distress afterwards.
So counter-examples arise. What about the mentally ill, specifically psychopaths who do not care about others' feelings? These people could committ crimes, hurt others and so on, because there will be no guilt feelings afterward.
Or take a more famous example, Vampires. Vampires feed on humans to survive. An Objectivist vampire would have ethics appropriate to its own rational survival. Yes, vampires are rational beings, apparently, because they're almost identical to humans in mental capacities. This is where the agent relativism gets tricky and becomes difficult to support, in my opinion.
You haven't addressed the core argument: Does B accurately portray the ethical egoists' position? The only thing Hitler did wrong was fail to act in his own interests. And building from that, we find that different people have different moral objections to the same crimes.
Person X attacks person Y under ordinary cirstanes. Persons B, D, P, and Q all observe this attack. The attack itself is not intrinsically immoral, according to objectivism. For X, the attack is immoral because it was not in X's self interest. For person B, the attack was immoral because it was not in B's rational self-interest and so on.
See my post below called "rational self-interest" for slightly more clarification.