4 ms·
Well you might as well be arguing that the entire notion of "good" and "bad" is useless, which would make all of moral philosophy useless. That's a valid claim
by grandalf 16y ago
Well you might as well be arguing that the entire notion of "good" and "bad" is useless, which would make all of moral philosophy useless. That's a valid claim, but it's sort of tangential to a critique of Rand b/c most people who critique her simply prefer some other type of moral philosophy.
Any notion of good and bad must start with something... Rand tries to back-fill rationality being good based on what is essentially an evolutionary argument. Not the strongest argument, but probably stronger than the premises used by most moral philosophers.
- ThomPete 16y agoBut even from an evolutionary point of view this doesn't follow. Even from an evolutionary point of view there isn't any "should" or "must". The theory of evolution does not consider itself with morals or ethics. There are no prescriptive moral in evolution. It's a model to explain, retrospectively, how things evolve not how it should or must evolve.
- grandalf 16y agoYou're not responding to the argument Rand makes. I am not attempting to make that argument, merely mentioning how she gets there. It's an interesting argument, but you have to buy the premise in order to find it remotely persuasive. I find it more persuasive than any argument invoking God (as most other moral philosophers do) but not completely persuasive.
- ThomPete 16y agoSure. And it's her premise I don't buy. Being an atheist I don't buy the God argument either, but Rands is in my mind simply taking the opposite extreme in her attempt to get out of meta land and by doing so becomes religious herself.
- grandalf 16y agoDo you generally consider yourself a moral relativist then? Nothing wrong with it if you do.
- ThomPete 16y agoWell yes and no. I don't believe it's possible to talk about one moral being more correct than another. (i.e. there is in my opinion no rational argument for a correct moral as everything is context dependent) For instance if just some of the things that the transhumanists believe come true (such as close to eternal life) then obviously it's going to change the context of morals. But I do believe some morals in a certain context are better than others. That doesn't mean I believe they are more correct simply that I accept them as a better model for co-existence than others.