Give up on Rand, she is a philistine. Try David Gauthier (amazon link: http://tinyurl.com/moralsbyagreement http://tinyurl.com/moralsbyagreement ) if you want a

Give up on Rand, she is a philistine. Try David Gauthier (amazon link: http://tinyurl.com/moralsbyagreement http://tinyurl.com/moralsbyagreement ) if you want a serious theory that might speak to you, if she does. Plenty of game theory to amuse, on your way to serious reflection! I wonder about the plan of 'basing morality on reality'. In a way it can't be rejected of course, but it is a formula that is very easy to misread. There was a traditional distinction between 'practical' and 'theoretical' philosophy -- the origin of the familiar opposition practice/theory, but quite different. The associated epistemologies are very different. Consider, to take a trivial illustration that doesn't reach so high as the ethical: my (practical) knowledge the I am typing something to Hacker News, and your (theoretical) knowledge of the same thing, if you are watching. Is my knowledge an effect of the 'reality' that I am typing something to Hacker News. Is it so to speak 'reality based', as yours certainly is? Plenty of knowledge of reality, e.g. the layout of the keyboard, what has actually appeared on screen, etc. comes in, of course. But I am making this 'reality', I am making the thing that is cold external reality for you. The assymetry between your knowledge and mine in this case has parallels at the higher levels. Maybe Randism is true of Martians, for example. But even so that wouldn't be how the Martians know it. They wouldn't have 'reality based' knowledge of it. We would, if we could come to this knowledge by studying them. Similarly, justice and mutual recognition belong to human life but we don't know this the way Martians would. There needn't be anything mystical in this.