Look at my articles. See how I make a point, explain it, defend it, rationalise it, support it by reference to reality, and show that any arguments against it will fail.

Now, what is your point? What are you trying to say? What position are you attempting to defend? What precisely do you disagree with about what I said, and why (provide a quote)?

Looking at your comments though, you don’t seem altogether in touch with reality, and if that offends you, that’s your fault. I didn’t ask you to come to my blog and call me arrogant because I don’t believe in your invisible friend. I didn’t ask you to give me a list of pointless questions that have no bearing on my article or anything else I’ve written.

Look at your questions:

“why is language evolving ,
why does life ends ,
why are there pairs amongst every creature you see,”

What does this have to do with anything? In what way are these three questions related to each other or any overriding theme? How does me answering these questions relate to whatever point or topic you wish to address? Do you even have a point?

You’re not talking to a typical internet atheist, and I don’t care about what you believe. I am not here to be converted or be preached to. If all you have is vacant mystical ramblings that you personally think somehow prove your “god” exists, then you’re wasting both our time.

you havent tried answering any single of my questions rather you have taken the grammatical flaws and the spelling mistakes , as if you are an examiner marking an assignment .

You do understand what i said , and you have no answers rather than to revert to a straight forward denial and finding flaws in my grammar .

If i say that nothing exists and do not use the prized word “nihilism” would i not mean the same ?

is this maturity ?

answer my straight forward questions ….

why is language evolving ,
why does life ends ,
why are there pairs amongst every creature you see ,
what is the mystery of male and female ,
why are your features distinct from every other person from your family ,
why is maturity and wisdom culminated in the humans rather than the animals who live with their instincts

how did the matter gain consciousness ?

“the life has no purpose but happiness … while happiness is only an intrinsic value that is rarely truly achieved …

Nowhere is any thought like this mentioned in any article of mine. The highest moral purpose man can pursue is indeed his own happiness, but “instrinsic values” are a contradiction in terms. No value is intrinsic. Values arise from life and are only valid in that context. A value for a man is what he identifies as objectively beneficial for his existence. There is no value to man external to his life.

“your understanding of nature is warped …. your learning process has just been reading and reading random man written books …. (you are beyond the point that i might suggest you read Bible or Quran) but try observing nature around you that you can empirically see , feel , hear , taste , smell …. “

Is this condemnation of my character taken from a detailed reading of all my articles, or years of knowing me, or through personal interaction with me? No. Just like the rest of your post, it’s pure trash.

“dont try reading a theory on sociology but observe the people and how they act along with each other

do people choose atheism just to be different and sound cooler ? is it the new fashion amongst the university going people ? like teen sex ?”

Do people think writing disjointed quasi-mystical sentences of drivel without correct punctuation or capital letters make them look cooler, or more spiritual, or more intelligent? Who knows.

the fallacy of atheism is thus listed :

1)matter gained consciousness by random acts of particles over billion of years??? just like pizza got made when i kept its ingredients in the kitchen for a hundred year

2)time is the ultimate reality .. outside this earth the time doesnt exist …

3)the life has no purpose but happiness … while happiness is only an intrinsic value that is rarely truly achieved …

4)that there is no GOD ….

now tell me , dont you worship anything ? man is created to worship something or the other … do you not worship your desires and act upon them exhuberantly ? dont you worship your happiness and value it more than any other thing ?

what originality do you have that you believe did not existed before you … what new ideas have you generated in the plethorra of words you have just written above ?

you believe yourself that atheism hasnt offered anything new and yet you stick to it

your understanding of nature is warped …. your learning process has just been reading and reading random man written books …. (you are beyond the point that i might suggest you read Bible or Quran) but try observing nature around you that you can empirically see , feel , hear , taste , smell ….

look at the nature of things with an unbiased mind and heart ….

dont try reading a theory on sociology but observe the people and how they act along with each other

dont just read a book on geography but observe the planet around you

dont just read a book on botany but observe the plants around you

do people choose atheism just to be different and sound cooler ? is it the new fashion amongst the university going people ? like teen sex ?

I really don’t think you actually know what a rational argument is. To you it is any assertion that you believe to be correct. Anyone who disagrees is automatically wrong. Reasoning badly is no great crime but be so ridiculously pompous and smug about it is sickening.

No, Chimp. Being pompous and smug:

1. attacking a position you don’t understand
2. making derogatory claims about a philosophy, then not having the guts to even be sure you are attacking the right philosophy
3. pretending to know what you’re talking about when engaging in a philosophical debate
4. not being able to recognise the absurdity of your own position after it has been clearly explained to you time and again
5. insulting someone who has spent more than you deserve trying to reason with you

“Speak for yourself. I can’t speak to the rational health of every person on the planet, and neither can you. But what you also can’t do is claim that we are primarily emotional beings, which IS what you are saying.”

I make the claim on the basis of the evidence. It is my opinion that people act in accordance with their emotional desires. How do you explain religion if you think they don’t?

I notice how you say “emotional desires”, instead of just desires. Didn’t you earlier say that desire is an emotion? So what you just said is like saying “emotional happiness” or “emotional sadness”; it makes no sense. But you must qualify the word “desire” with “emotional” because you realise (now) apparently that desires have sources. Desires from emotion can still have a rational source (they usually do), because reason can shape our emotions.

You originally claimed that desires are emotions, and that humans PRIMARILY act on emotion.

“This is necessarily FALSE, for the reasons explained above.”

oh my. You explained nothing. you just made statements.

No, you just didn’t understand.

“In other words, a human being that chooses to use reason over emotion is the exception not the rule, and we are still basically savages with the occasional flirt with reason.”

Have you watched world news lately? I wouldn’t go so far to say that mainly rational people are the exception but I would say they seem to be on the rarer side of things. I don’t think a purely rational person exists at all. I have never said and indeed would never say that people are primarily rational.

I am not going to get into an argument over your opinion of the human race.

I am not claiming that all people are rational in every aspect of their life.

Precisely because human beings, as a metaphysical rule, do not act on instinct and automatically possess knowledge to survive (like animals), we need reason to live. From the very basic act of forming a hunting weapon out of a branch, or building a mud hut to live in, or driving to work every day, we must use our minds to THINK in every task.

The fact that some people do not reason, or choose to switch off their reason in certain aspects (like theists), is granted, but does not negate this principle.

In fact, is this NOT the sort of argument you have made to theists yourself in the past?

And if you think the stories that are reported on the news are the natural everyday norm for human life, you have a very dire depressing cynical view of the universe. Again, that is not surprising; malevolent universe premise is another symptom of a subjectivist philosophy.

It is no wonder theists are happy to remain in their fantasy world, when the alternative offered by you New Age Atheists is so nihilistic. And again, another brilliant example of why I wrote this article.

I have found that people have a much higher tendency to be irrational emotive beings. You think religious people believe all the shit they do on the basis of the evidence or an emotional need? You tell me. It might be worth baring in mind that majority of the human race is religious. A majority by a huge margin.

I don’t deny this. The majority of the human race compartmentalises their rationality when it comes to religion. Just like you do when it comes to your irrational notions. Do you consider yourself more rational than a theist? I don’t think you are.

This doesn’t disprove the fact that they must use reason to survive. As I proved earlier, any claim to truth or knowledge PRESUPPOSES reason. A human being tacitly accepts that reason is necessary in order to make any statement.

A person who claims to know something purely on the basis of emotion has already conceded that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about; e.g.: theists.

I asked you logically why being alive is better than being dead. I don’t see a clear response to that and I think this is central to the core of this debate.

Your response:

“Now, why is alive better than being dead? Life makes value possible. Think of all the things you value and ask yourself if you are better with them than without them. Life is the context by which your values are evaluated. If life is no better than death, then inject heroin, kill your wife, rape your kids, drive your car off a cliff. In fact, you should immediately kill yourself.”

Let’s ignore the false dichotomy (yet again) (I don’t regard life as better than death so I should therefore rape my kids….maybe this makes sense to objectivists but I’m at a loss)

False dichotomy? What alternatives are there between life and death?!

The primary reason you don’t rape and kill people and take drugs is because it isn’t in YOUR best interest to do so. If you had no value for your life, you couldn’t have value for anyone else’s, because every other value you have is only a value in the context of your life; your wife is a value to YOU, your kids are a value to YOU. Your standing in society and freedom and mental health are values to YOU. Without valuing your own life, you would be worse than a psychotic.

Are you not understanding the question? LOGICALLY, why is life better than death.
To help you, as you are obviously struggling with this question, lets expand it a little. Logically, why would any value make me “better”? Better according to who or in what context. Why is it better to not kill than to kill or to live rather than die. I ask you to explain logically why one is better than the other. I am not asking you for the reason why values exist, I am asking to shown me how with the absence of our emotional attachment to it how life has value. In a purely logical sense, is it better to be alive than dead? The answer of course is that neither is ‘better’. Better is meaningless here. Only though emotional involvement does living become better than being dead. If you disagree I ask you to show me though unemotional reason that life is better than death.

You are stealing the concept, Chimp. This is a fallacy that Ayn Rand identifies when one attempts to use a concept out of context without regard to the antecedents that make it possible.

Why is life better than death? By using the word “better”, you are asking me to make a value judgement. But value is meaningless except in relation to life! By what standard are you asking me to judge life over non-life? It is only because life exists that you can even ask that question.

Now do you understand why I earlier said : “life simply is” ?

You are asking me to step outside of life and evaluate which is “better” between life and death by some external intrinsic standard; but there is no other standard for value external to life.

Now do you realise the absurdity of your question?

This is Philosophy 101, Chimp.

Life is NOT the value to which all other values are directed. If this were true suicide would be impossible.

“I can’t make any sense of that.”

A person who commits suicide obviously holds something other than life to be more valuable than life. Cessation of pain or something else. Obviously the action of killing yourself cannot be argued to be for the ultimate end of life.

Actually it can. To live as a human being is not to survive from one moment to the next like an animal, without purpose, without hope, without happiness. To maintain existence without truly living like a human being is not a celebration of life, but a celebration of death.

If for example a prisoner (who we will assume to be innocent) decides death is the only alternative to torture or spending the rest of his life chained up; is the only way out, he is fully justified morally in ending his life.

Objectivism is fully consistent with euthanasia and suicide, in the right context.

Convince me that life in and of itself is the ultimate value or a value at all for that matter. We can go from there.

“Are you for real? Don’t you criticise theists for irrationality, just because they believe in god? I’d get off that high horse of yours if I were you and look in the mirror: you sound like a theist, and even worse; desperately scratching around for a counter argument to maintain your faith.

Is your life not a value to you, Chimp? Well why are we even having this discussion? I expect to see your name in the obituaries tomorrow morning.”

A the good old false dichotomy. You commit this fallacy so often I’ve included a helpful link for you

http://mind.ucsd.edu/syllabi/98-99/logic/falsedichotomy.html

Chimp, if you are going to try and identify logical fallacies, you might want to check that someone actually committed a fallacy first, otherwise you end up looking silly.

There is only alternative to life: death. If life is not the ultimate value, then there must be something else to which all others values and goals are measured, but if all other values and goals are not directed towards life, what else are they directed to?? What other option is there?? Blank out.

Why must not holding life to be the ultimate value mean that I must not only find it of no value but MUST find it to be of negative value to the point of immediately killing myself?

Because every single action you take or don’t take is judged in relation to the betterment of your life. If you deny this, and you reject that life is your standard, you should cease and desist from ANY and ALL life-affirming action. In other words, die.

Strangely enough, it was remarked to me recently by a friend when I mentioned objectivism to him that he has always found objectivists to be theistic in their argumentation. He reckoned that they don’t really argue they just recite dogma. Judging by your complete lack of argument beyond your insistence that you are right, I am inclined to think he was spot on.

I don’t care what you or your friend think of Objectivism or me.

As for your rather long paragraph, I can address it all by picking out one statement:

My life is of value to me only as a means to an end.

What end? To what end external to your life is your life directed? Blank out. This claim is nonsensical. Did you read my article on Life Being the Ultimate Value? I’m guessing not.

Funnily enough, the idea that our lives are not ends in themselves but merely means to OTHER external ends is a tenet of theism. To the theist, God is the end to which our lives are directed. To the socialist, society is the end to which our lives are directed. To you, the “end” is doing whatever you feel like, judging by your examples below. What you ignore is that eating pleasant food, and engaging in sports, and travelling and sampling different exploits is LIFE AFFIRMING action. If one doesn’t value one’s life, these things become meaningless.

Taking risks with your life for pure adrenaline rushes is irrational. Taking risks by being a police officer or fire fighter isn’t. I’ll leave you to figure out the difference why.

I don’t enjoy my heart beating or my lungs exchanging oxygen and CO2. I don’t get a thrill from digesting my food. I enjoy eating it, which is why my meals tend to be chosen according to what I think tastes good rather than the foods which will fuel my body the best. I have a terrible diet, one I know will probably shorten my life. I’m ok with that though. To me enjoying my food is worth more than living to be 80 instead of 70. In fact, I engage in many activities and recreations that I know are harmful to my health. You will insist of course that these actions must be irrational. Anyone who doesn’t agree with you must be irrational; after all you start of with presumption that you are correct and go from there. Many people thought-out history have engaged in activities they knew were likely to end their lives. They obviously considered these things of a higher value than their lives. Even in the realm of pure entertainment people take huge risks with their lives, often this risk is part of the enjoyment. Around 15 people are killed every year base-jumping. Base-jumping is attractive to those who do it in part because it might be fatal. The element of risk increases their enjoyment. If you knew for a fact that you would never again enjoy anything, for the rest of your life, would your life have value to you anymore? Speaking for me I would say not. It is the pleasure of satisfying our emotional desires that motivate people. Take that away and there is no value in just being alive. Life, like any means to an end is only valuable so long as it can still perform the function of being a means to an end. You argue that life is the ultimate end, worse you argue that this should be obvious by injecting an utterly irrelevant hierarchy onto values. It is to say something like “This is required for that, therefore this is more important than that!” Why so?

See above.

Yes, but how can life exist without energy? Energy gives rise to life. By your reasoning, because energy facilitates life and life facilitates value then energy facilitates value and furthermore must be the ultimate value because it is higher up in the hierarchy. Also, because you feel the need to insist (without an argument) that life being the origin of other values must make it the ultimate value. Well, life cannot exist unless energy is present first. I’m hoping you don’t disagree with that. Life is required for values. Energy is required for life. Both are true and both are irrelevant to establishing our set of values. You have managed to misunderstand this point once already as you illustrate below

Energy gives rise to life. Energy is a physical component of existence; there are many things in existence that give rise to life. To say that energy gives rise to life is like saying that the universe gives rise to life. But our life is existence. Wow.

Life cannot exist without a great many things, but energy is part of the universe and the universe already exists, it is taken for granted, it is the metaphysically given. The universe exists, and life may or may not. But it is only life that gives rise to values. The concept value depends on the concept life.

If anything is a value, energy, heat, food, light, it is a value TO LIFE. Without life, energy is not a value to anyone or anything!

And you say that I have misunderstood! Hilarious.

“Exactly. We do not automatically know what is of value to us, and we do not automatically pursue our values (like animals do). I’m glad you realise this, because it contradicts a point you made earlier about us choosing values based on emotion.”

I’ll give the opportunity to re-read the above and find the problem in your response on your own first. I’ll give you the benefit of the considerable doubt and assume you can figure it out on your own, if you can’t let me know and I’ll explain it to you.

After this statement, you should refrain from making any slights on my supposed arrogance, Chimp. You are clueless and out of your depth here. You are only embarrassing yourself further.

We don’t instinctively know what is of value? So a hungry child reasons their way to wanting food. A child though a process of reason concludes that it doesn’t like the taste of broccoli. It is though reason and rationality that I discovered that I was heterosexual and that I desired sex?

No, a hungry child feels the biological need for food. Does it know the difference between food and poison? Does it know how to acquire its food?

Does a human being mindlessly fashion tools and build houses? Does a human being automatically collect food in the summer and hibernate in the winter? Does a human being defecate wherever and whenever it feels like? (Present company excluded).

“NO OTHER PROCESS IS ACCEPTABLE, because only reason can identify the nature of man, the nature of existence, and figure out how the two can harmonise for one’s life to be maintained and flourish.”

this is just flowery bullshit. Sounds almost…theistic doesn’t it?

I feel like I’m talking to a mindless yobbish little boy who thinks he is cleverer that what he is. I imagine all those blogs insulting theists makes you feel pretty big, Chimp. But when you talk to someone who knows that they’re talking about, and can expose your lack of intelligence and knowledge, you resort to swearing and emotionalism.

Again, the only person coming out of this debate with any credit is me.

I notice that you didn’t bother to address the point, but rather insulted me. Because of course, if you had to identify a process other than reason to live, you would fail.

Of course, Chimp will go back to his anti-theist blog and rant about how theists should be more rational and reasonable! Obviously Chimp will insist on anything just to avoid admitting he’s wrong.

“I take it this case is closed now: values should be rationally chosen, not emotionally. In fact, emotion is the physiological RESPONSE to our values. Your original error was to put the cart before the horse. “

Oh please! Once again a proclamation of victory. After the weak and baseless nonsense you excreted above this should be embarrassing to you.

Look at my statement. Now look at Chimp’s. Look how coherently and reasonably I talk and bring my premises to a conclusion. Now look at Chimp’s emotional desperate response. This says it all.

Life is valuable to me only because it facilitates the things that are truly valuable to me in their own right.

In what right? So you’re saying the things you value are values in and of themselves? That is probably one of the most absurd things you’ve said, which is saying something.

So you value your job. Why? Is it because you need it to sustain your home, your family, your life?? You value your wife. Are you saying she is a value, but NOT to you? You value food. Are you saying that food is a value, but that you consume it for some reason external to your life or pleasure in your life?

I shouldn’t need to spell this out anymore. Your persistence on this issue is shocking.

If I were offered the choice between being kept alive but never being able to do anything, not only would my life lose all its value to me, it would be a burden I would seek to get rid off.

Well, there you go then! All the things you enjoy are a value to your life. You don’t live in order to value, you value in order to live!

Happiness is the ultimate goal, but happiness is the joy that comes from realising the things you value.

The fact that such a pursuit requires you to be alive is incidental. I love scuba diving.

Excuse me for one second…

HAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHA!!!

Incidental?? As if being alive was just an after thought. It is life itself that gives rise to values. You wouldn’t be very good at scuba diving if you were dead, and you certainly couldn’t love it unless you were alive.

Scuba diving requires that I have a tank of compressed air. Without compressed are there can be no scuba diving. Therefore compressed air is what I am really pursuing when I go scuba diving?

This is poor, Chimp. Even for you, this is awful.

Because a value is defined as “that which one acts to keep and / or gain”

This is what Rand says a value is. The dictionary defines Value as:

7: something (as a principle or quality) intrinsically valuable or desirable <sought material values instead of human values — W. H. Jones

I think 7 speaks to our usage here.

If we take Rand’s definition to be accurate (and there is no reason we should) then the domination of other people is a value. Many humans have gone to extreme lengths to keep or gain it have they not? Often risking their lives to do so. Religious faith is a value too by this definition. How many martyrs have given their lives rather than renounce their faith?

The dictionary definition is actually partly wrong, philosophically. There is no such thing as intrinsic values; values exist in the context of life. There is no value external or intrinsic in the universe, except in regard to life.

As for why it is NOT a value for you to dominate other people, that is another discussion, one that I have no intention of getting into with you.

As I have already stated, many people believe there are concepts that are more worthy of pursuit than life. There are many things that people would accept death sooner than living with.

Yes, many people believe that. So what? I didn’t dispute that. People who pursue immoral irrational goals like slavery, religion, socialism, communism etc are not pursuing life.

Holy shit, you do admire yourself don’t you. This whole segment is cringeworthy. I should clarify something for you. I am not objecting in the slightest to you showing me a lack of respect. I honestly don’t mind if you don’t. I am objecting to your smug self-agrandising delusional claims to having won the argument.

More language. Did you type this drunk?

It is just plain irritating.

That’s because you won’t admit that you’re wrong.

You are obviously not that bright and I suspect not all that accustomed to philosophical debate.

My irony meter just exploded.

Chimp, as my blog shows, and as I have shown here, I know exactly what I’m talking about, and you are a foul-mouthed cretin. I have destroyed your “arguments” time and again, and justified every statement I have made from my objective philosophy.

I could compare the merits of my blog to yours, our writing style, my rationale, etc, but there is no need. I judge myself against excellence, not dire bilge.

Contrary to your belief, this is not the first philosophical debate I have engaged in, I don’t have a “comfort zone” that I am aware of.

And who do you usually argue with, Chimp? Your run of the mill Christian fundamentalist? Perhaps some new age post modernist who thinks he’s a philosophy expert because he asks “how do we know we can know anything?”.

You’re out of your depth. Seeing you attempt to argue with me is pathetic and embarrassing.

To you that sounds arrogant. To other people reading, it’s just true. I’m sure you’ve provided some comedy value to my intelligent readers but after a point it just gets tiresome. You clearly have no interest in honest debate, but in desperately trying to avoid admitting you’re wrong. If I had the desire to further your nonsense on my blog, I’d see what further mental contortions you’d go to get out of the knots I’ve tied you up in again here, but I don’t.

Also, your laughable remarks and foul language drag down the quality of my blog, and make it appear that I will give the time of day to any old Joe Atheist who fancies himself an intellectual. Your comments are now blocked.

Speak for yourself. I can’t speak to the rational health of every person on the planet, and neither can you. But what you also can’t do is claim that we are primarily emotional beings, which IS what you are saying.

I make the claim on the basis of the evidence. It is my opinion that people act in accordance with their emotional desires. How do you explain religion if you think they don’t?

This is necessarily FALSE, for the reasons explained above.

oh my. You explained nothing. you just made statements.

In other words, a human being that chooses to use reason over emotion is the exception not the rule, and we are still basically savages with the occasional flirt with reason.

Have you watched world news lately? I wouldn’t go so far to say that mainly rational people are the exception but I would say they seem to be on the rarer side of things. I don’t think a purely rational exists at all. I have never said and indeed would never say that people are primarily rational. I have found that people have a much higher tendency to be irrational emotive beings. You think religious people believe all the shit they do on the basis of the evidence or an emotional need? You tell me. It might be worth baring in mind that majority of the human race is religious. A majority by a huge margin.

I asked you logically why being alive is better than being dead. I don’t see a clear response to that and I think this is central to the core of this debate.

Your response:
Now, why is alive better than being dead? Life makes value possible. Think of all the things you value and ask yourself if you are better with them than without them. Life is the context by which your values are evaluated. If life is no better than death, then inject heroin, kill your wife, rape your kids, drive your car off a cliff. In fact, you should immediately kill yourself.

Let’s ignore the false dichotomy (yet again) (I don’t regard life as better than death so I should therefore rape my kids….maybe this makes sense to objectivists but I’m at a loss)

Are you not understanding the question? LOGICALLY, why is life better than death.
To help you, as you are obviously struggling with this question, lets expand it a little. Logically, why would any value make me “better”? Better according to who or in what context. Why is it better to not kill than to kill or to live rather than die. I ask you to explain logically why one is better than the other. I am not asking you for the reason why values exist, I am asking to shown me how with the absence of our emotional attachment to it how life has value. In a purely logical sense, is it better to be alive than dead? The answer of course is that neither is ‘better’. Better is meaningless here. Only though emotional involvement does living become better than being dead. If you disagree I ask you to show me though unemotional reason that life is better than death.

Life is NOT the value to which all other values are directed. If this were true suicide would be impossible.

I can’t make any sense of that.

A person who commits suicide obviously holds something other than life to be more valuable than life. Cessation of pain or something else. Obviously the action of killing yourself cannot be argued to be for the ultimate end of life.

Convince me that life in and of itself is the ultimate value or a value at all for that matter. We can go from there.

Is your life not a value to you, Chimp? Well why are we even having this discussion? I expect to see your name in the obituaries tomorrow morning.

A the good old false dichotomy. You commit this fallacy so often I’ve included a helpful link for you
http://mind.ucsd.edu/syllabi/98-99/logic/falsedichotomy.html

Why must not holding life to be the ultimate value mean that I must not only find it of no value but MUST find it to be of negative value to the point of immediately killing myself?

Strangely enough, it was remarked to me recently by a friend when I mentioned objectivism to him that he has always found objectivists to be theistic in their argumentation. He reckoned that they don’t really argue they just recite dogma. Judging by your complete lack of argument beyond your insistence that you are right, I am inclined to think he was spot on.

My life is of value to me only as a means to an end. I don’t enjoy my heart beating or my lungs exchanging oxygen and CO2. I don’t get a thrill from digesting my food. I enjoy eating it, which is why my meals tend to be chosen according to what I think tastes good rather than the foods which will fuel my body the best. I have a terrible diet, one I know will probably shorten my life. I’m ok with that though. To me enjoying my food is worth more than living to be 80 instead of 70. In fact, I engage in many activities and recreations that I know are harmful to my health. You will insist of course that these actions must be irrational. Anyone who doesn’t agree with you must be irrational; after all you start of with presumption that you are correct and go from there. Many people thought-out history have engaged in activities they knew were likely to end their lives. They obviously considered these things of a higher value than their lives. Even in the realm of pure entertainment people take huge risks with their lives, often this risk is part of the enjoyment. Around 15 people are killed every year base-jumping. Base-jumping is attractive to those who do it in part because it might be fatal. The element of risk increases their enjoyment. If you knew for a fact that you would never again enjoy anything, for the rest of your life, would your life have value to you anymore? Speaking for me I would say not. It is the pleasure of satisfying our emotional desires that motivate people. Take that away and there is no value in just being alive. Life, like any means to an end is only valuable so long as it can still perform the function of being a means to an end. You argue that life is the ultimate end, worse you argue that this should be obvious by injecting an utterly irrelevant hierarchy onto values. It is to say something like “This is required for that, therefore this is more important than that!” Why so?

Energy makes all life possible. Energy must be the ultimate form of life then and the ultimate value??????

The term value is meaningless except in relation to life. Life gives rise to the concept ‘value’.

Yes, but how can life exist without energy? Energy gives rise to life. By your reasoning, because energy facilitates life and life facilitates value then energy facilitates value and furthermore must be the ultimate value because it is higher up in the hierarchy. Also, because you feel the need to insist (without an argument) that life being the origin of other values must make it the ultimate value. Well, life cannot exist unless energy is present first. I’m hoping you don’t disagree with that. Life is required for values. Energy is required for life. Both are true and both are irrelevant to establishing our set of values. You have managed to misunderstand this point once already as you illustrate below

“Life simply is!…..so?” A vacuous statement and largely irrelevant. So we are alive. That says exactly nothing about what is valuable to us.

Exactly. We do not automatically know what is of value to us, and we do not automatically pursue our values (like animals do). I’m glad you realise this, because it contradicts a point you made earlier about us choosing values based on emotion.

I’ll give the opportunity to re-read the above and find the problem in your response on your own first. I’ll give you the benefit of the considerable doubt and assume you can figure it out on your own, if you can’t let me know and I’ll explain it to you.

It is precisely because we don’t instinctively know what is of value to us or not, that we must identify these values through a process of reason.
We don’t instinctively know what is of value? So a hungry child reasons their way to wanting food. A child though a process of reason concludes that it doesn’t like the taste of broccoli. It is though reason and rationality that I discovered that I was heterosexual and that I desired sex?

NO OTHER PROCESS IS ACCEPTABLE, because only reason can identify the nature of man, the nature of existence, and figure out how the two can harmonise for one’s life to be maintained and flourish.

this is just flowery bullshit. Sounds almost…theistic doesn’t it?

I take it this case is closed now: values should be rationally chosen, not emotionally. In fact, emotion is the physiological RESPONSE to our values. Your original error was to put the cart before the horse.

Oh please! Once again a proclamation of victory. After the weak and baseless nonsense you excreted above this should be embarrassing to you

Life is valuable to me only because it facilitates the things that are truly valuable to me in their own right. If I were offered the choice between being kept alive but never being able to do anything, not only would my life lose all its value to me, it would be a burden I would seek to get rid off. Life just facilitates my engaging my wants (emotions) It might be offered that the pursuit of happiness is the ultimate value(goal). The fact that such a pursuit requires you to be alive is incidental. I love scuba diving. Scuba diving requires that I have a tank of compressed air. Without compressed are there can be no scuba diving. Therefore compressed air is what I am really pursuing when I go scuba diving?

Because a value is defined as “that which one acts to keep and / or gain”

This is what Rand says a value is. The dictionary defines Value as:

Main Entry: 1val·ue
Pronunciation: \ˈval-(ˌ)yü\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, worth, high quality, from Anglo-French, from Vulgar Latin *valuta, from feminine of *valutus, past participle of Latin valēre to be of worth, be strong — more at wield
Date: 14th century
1: a fair return or equivalent in goods, services, or money for something exchanged
2: the monetary worth of something : market price
3: relative worth, utility, or importance
4: a numerical quantity that is assigned or is determined by calculation or measurement
5: the relative duration of a musical note
6 a: relative lightness or darkness of a color : luminosity b: the relation of one part in a picture to another with respect to lightness and darkness
7: something (as a principle or quality) intrinsically valuable or desirable <sought material values instead of human values — W. H. Jones

I think 7 speaks to our usage here.

If we take Rand’s definition to be accurate (and there is no reason we should) then the domination of other people is a value. Many humans have gone to extreme lengths to keep or gain it have they not? Often risking their lives to do so. Religious faith is a value too by this definition. How many martyrs have given their lives rather than renounce their faith?

do you act to keep and or gain your life? Yes. Is there anything higher you can pursue? No. Therefore it’s the ultimate.

As I have already stated, many people believe there are concepts that are more worthy of pursuit than life. There are many things that people would accept death sooner than living with.

By the way, you realise that if I define all the terms in a statement to suit me, I will always be right. The statement might have no bearing on reality at all but I’ll still be right by my terms. Not that even this definition makes Rand other assertions correct.

Well, I am right. I expect a certain level of intellectual honesty from those I debate with. Just as I will, and have, admitted my errors many times in the past when shown why I am wrong, I expect the same from others. I don’t expect to have to couch my words in affectionate language just to win you over, or feign respect for you without it being earned. If you’re honest, you’ll see that I’m right, regardless of what you think of how I phrase things. Remember it was YOUR arrogant snubbing of objectivism that set you off on the wrong foot, and you’ve given me no reason to readdress my opinion of you so far.
I think if you read back some of the stuff you’ve written so far, you would cringe with embarrassment. Life not a value? Value from emotion? Like I said before, this is your philosophical nihilism showing through, a common trait of New Age Atheists. It’s EASY to ridicule religion and shoot down “god” isn’t it? But try to step outside your comfort zone and have a philosophical debate and the ice cracks doesn’t it? That’s not necessarily your fault; it’s a result of today’s society’s bad philosophy. What is your fault is how you react to rational argument.

Holy shit, you do admire yourself don’t you. This whole segment is cringeworthy. I should clarify something for you. I am not objecting in the slightest to you showing me a lack of respect. I honestly don’t mind if you don’t. I am objecting to your smug self-agrandising delusional claims to having won the argument. It is just plain irritating. You are obviously not that bright and I suspect not all that accustomed to philosophical debate. I offer thought experiments, you whine about them not being true to life examples. I ask you to prove that life has value and is the ‘ultimate’ value, in other words I was asking you to show your work and you leap to the conclusion I am a philosophical nihilist. Contrary to your belief, this is not the first philosophical debate I have engaged in, I don’t have a “comfort zone” that I am aware of. I am glad to say though that my opponents have been more skilled and less up their own asses than you. If you have a brain and I’m not just debating with a Rand quoting machine, I invite you to use it. Having looked at how you responded to others on this topic though, I don’t expect much. You seem to believe that if you repeat yourself often enough you will become right.

Given the length of the response, if I were to respond to each point, my response would be even longer and so on until we would have written a fairly impressive book. I think we are trying to have to many arguments at once, each of us drawing from our conclusions leading to massive entries where neither side is properly addressing individual issues

I disagree with the last part. I am properly addressing all issues.

Lets start with this:

You are so incredibly wrong I must highlight this to readers: THIS is the result of bad philosophy. This is the result of non-objective emotionalism, and PRECISELY the reason I wrote this article, because atheists are no better than theists in this regard. Actually, at least the theist pretends to have a moral objective consistent worldview. This atheist just gives up on the idea altogether. To the theist, we’re slaves to god. To Chimp, we’re animalistic slaves to emotion.

Life simply is. Life is your ultimate value; it is the value that makes all other values possible, and the value towards which all other values are directed. Life is the value which provides the standard for which all other values (or non-values) are measured.

So here you have thrown a hissy-fit about how immeasurably wrong I am. Ok fair enough. I was thinking to myself reading that “This guy must have some really good reasons and evidence to be handing out that spanking, this should be good!!”
and what did I get. I got a Randian pronouncement. An opinion. I feel very unsatisfied.

Your conclusion from what I wrote above apparently is that I said we are slaves to emotion. That of course is not at all what I said. Why is it that everything is an all or nothing proposition with you? I suggested (I thought fairly clearly) that emotion is our prime motivator. That does not mean we cannot exercise choice, make decisions or overrule our emotions. In fairness though, we usually don’t.

Speak for yourself. I can’t speak to the rational health of every person on the planet, and neither can you. But what you also can’t do is claim that we are primarily emotional beings, which IS what you are saying. This is necessarily FALSE, for the reasons explained above.

We have the ability to act against our emotional drives. That doesn’t mean they are not our main motivators. I could be a whine on about strawmen but being a normal person I expect some things to be misunderstood from time to time. Should I also claim here that you are deliberately twisting what I am saying so it something you can attack?

If you think I’ve misrepresented you, by all means point this out. If we are claiming that we are primarily emotional beings, then reason must come secondary to this. In other words, a human being that chooses to use reason over emotion is the exception not the rule, and we are still basically savages with the occasional flirt with reason.

On the point of desire being a want. I agree, I think the two are essentially the same thing. WANTING is an emotional state. You can’t logically want anything. You are always motivated by an emotional desire. You claim to have addressed my points. I asked you logically why being alive is better than being dead. I don’t see a clear response to that and I think this is central to the core of this debate.

And again, you are simply wrong. Although one tends to feel an emotion whilst wanting something, it is not the case that the source of that want is the emotion itself. Emotion is the end-result, the EFFECT of wanting something. But as WHY one wants, or desires, the source is, or should be: reason.

I don’t deny that some people desire based purely on emotion. I do claim that those people are irrational.

Now, why is alive better than being dead? Life makes value possible. Think of all the things you value and ask yourself if you are better with them than without them. Life is the context by which your values are evaluated. If life is no better than death, then inject heroin, kill your wife, rape your kids, drive your car off a cliff. In fact, you should immediately kill yourself.

“Life simply is!…..so?” A vacuous statement and largely irrelevant. So we are alive. That says exactly nothing about what is valuable to us.

Exactly. We do not automatically know what is of value to us, and we do not automatically pursue our values (like animals do). I’m glad you realise this, because it contradicts a point you made earlier about us choosing values based on emotion.

It is precisely because we don’t instinctively know what is of value to us or not, that we must identify these values through a process of reason. NO OTHER PROCESS IS ACCEPTABLE, because only reason can identify the nature of man, the nature of existence, and figure out how the two can harmonise for one’s life to be maintained and flourish.

Doing “whatever you feel like” will not work.

I take it this case is closed now: values should be rationally chosen, not emotionally. In fact, emotion is the physiological RESPONSE to our values. Your original error was to put the cart before the horse.

“Life is your ultimate value”; – Why? Is the following meant to be an explaination of that great big assertion:

http://ellis14.wordpress.com/2008/05/20/life-as-the-ultimate-value/

First off, as you say yourself: Life simply is and makes other values possibble (why does that make it a value)

Because a value is defined as “that which one acts to keep and / or gain” – do you act to keep and or gain your life? Yes. Is there anything higher you can pursue? No. Therefore it’s the ultimate. See the link above.

Energy makes all life possible. Energy must be the ultimate form of life then and the ultimate value??????

What kind of rubbish is this?

The term value is meaningless except in relation to life. Life gives rise to the concept ‘value’.

Life is NOT the value to which all other values are directed. If this were true suicide would be impossible.

I can’t make any sense of that.

“Life provides the standard for which all other vlaues are measured. (oh even non-values)”

What does that even mean? We judge values by the amount they enhance life or reduce it or what? What kind of life are we talking about, human life, plant life?

In answer to your second question: yes.

In answer to your third: for this discussion: human life. Only human beings have volition over their values. Animals and plants don’t.

I really hope this is not you superior thinking at work.
Lets see some reasoning here!

Your attempt as sarcasm is embarrassing considering you are so painfully wrong.

Convince me that life in and of itself is the ultimate value or a value at all for that matter. We can go from there.

Are you for real? Don’t you criticise theists for irrationality, just because they believe in god? I’d get off that high horse of yours if I were you and look in the mirror: you sound like a theist, and even worse; desperately scratching around for a counter argument to maintain your faith.

Is your life not a value to you, Chimp? Well why are we even having this discussion? I expect to see your name in the obituaries tomorrow morning.

If on the other hand you DO value your life and wish to maintain it at least a few more hours, see the link to my article above.

“For the sake of argument I’ll not respond in kind to the sickening display of you fellating yourself at the end of your response except to say this.
You seem to think that you saying you are right and you being right are the same thing.

Well, I am right. I expect a certain level of intellectual honesty from those I debate with. Just as I will, and have, admitted my errors many times in the past when shown why I am wrong, I expect the same from others. I don’t expect to have to couch my words in affectionate language just to win you over, or feign respect for you without it being earned. If you’re honest, you’ll see that I’m right, regardless of what you think of how I phrase things. Remember it was YOUR arrogant snubbing of objectivism that set you off on the wrong foot, and you’ve given me no reason to readdress my opinion of you so far.

I think if you read back some of the stuff you’ve written so far, you would cringe with embarrassment. Life not a value? Value from emotion? Like I said before, this is your philosophical nihilism showing through, a common trait of New Age Atheists. It’s EASY to ridicule religion and shoot down “god” isn’t it? But try to step outside your comfort zone and have a philosophical debate and the ice cracks doesn’t it? That’s not necessarily your fault; it’s a result of today’s society’s bad philosophy. What is your fault is how you react to rational argument.

Lets start with this:

You are so incredibly wrong I must highlight this to readers: THIS is the result of bad philosophy. This is the result of non-objective emotionalism, and PRECISELY the reason I wrote this article, because atheists are no better than theists in this regard. Actually, at least the theist pretends to have a moral objective consistent worldview. This atheist just gives up on the idea altogether. To the theist, we’re slaves to god. To Chimp, we’re animalistic slaves to emotion.

Life simply is. Life is your ultimate value; it is the value that makes all other values possible, and the value towards which all other values are directed. Life is the value which provides the standard for which all other values (or non-values) are measured.

So here you have thrown a hissy-fit about how immeasurably wrong I am. Ok fair enough. I was thinking to myself reading that “This guy must have some really good reasons and evidence to be handing out that spanking, this should be good!!”
and what did I get. I got a Randian pronouncement. An opinion. I feel very unsatisfied.

Your conclusion from what I wrote above apparently is that I said we are slaves to emotion. That of course is not at all what I said. Why is it that everything is an all or nothing proposition with you? I suggested (I thought fairly clearly) that emotion is our prime motivator. That does not mean we cannot exercise choice, make decisions or overrule our emotions. In fairness though, we usually don’t. We have the ability to act against our emotional drives. That doesn’t mean they are not our main motivators. I could be a whine on about strawmen but being a normal person I expect some things to be misunderstood from time to time. Should I also claim here that you are deliberately twisting what I am saying so it something you can attack?

On the point of desire being a want. I agree, I think the two are essentially the same thing. WANTING is an emotional state. You can’t logically want anything. You are always motivated by an emotional desire. You claim to have addressed my points. I asked you logically why being alive is better than being dead. I don’t see a clear response to that and I think this is central to the core of this debate.

Life simply is!…..so? A vacuous statement and largely irrelevant. So we are alive. That says exactly nothing about what is valuable to us.

Life is your ultimate value; – Why? Is the following meant to be an explaination of that great big assertion:

it is the value that makes all other values possible, and the value towards which all other values are directed. Life is the value which provides the standard for which all other values (or non-values) are measured.

First off, as you say yourself: Life simply is and makes other values possibble (why does that make it a value)
Energy makes all life possible. Energy must be the ultimate form of life then and the ultimate value??????

Life is NOT the value? to which all other values are directed. If this were true suicide would be impossible.
Life provides the standard for which all other vlaues are measured. (oh even non-values)
What does that even mean? We judge values by the amount they enhance life or reduce it or what? What kind of life are we talking about, human life, plant life?

That whole paragraph is at best confused and definitely not backed up in any way.
I really hope this is not you superior thinking at work.
Lets see some reasoning here!

Convince me that life in and of itself is the ultimate value or a value at all for that matter. We can go from there.

For the sake of argument I’ll not respond in kind to the sickening display of you fellating yourself at the end of your response except to say this.
You seem to think that you saying you are right and you being right are the same thing.

”But you DO need to know something about Objectivism to attempt to criticise it.”

Reading comprehension is not your strong suit is it?

Rational thought clearly isn’t yours.

I have already conceded in my original post that I may be misrepresenting objectivism. Fair Enough. What I was saying above is that your reasoning is completely independent of objectivism and can be criticised for what it is. Bad reasoning is bad reasoning no matter the subject. Let me try to illustrate where I see a problem with your logic/reasoning.

You suggest that punishing a criminal is not coercion? Really. If you kill a criminal are they not really dead either. It is coercion. They are only a criminal because society has branded them one. There may not even be a tangible moral dimension to any given case.

This is true only if one assumes that a political and judicial system is independent of morality.

However, a judicial system is based on the most fundamental moral principle in social settings: a man has a Right to his own life.

A judicial system should exist to protect men’s Rights. If you violate these Rights, you are a criminal. Otherwise you are not.

A person who J-walks is technically a “criminal” as they have violated the law.

If roads were privately owned, then the violation of another’s property is a crime, no matter how innocuous you believe the action.

Even if I were to grant you that it is not coercion to punish a criminal per se, it is still coercion. The message is clear. Follow the rules or you will be branded a criminal and treated badly.

Yes. Obey the law and don’t violate other peoples’ Rights. Otherwise you’re a criminal. If you are, you have initiated force against other people and must be punished. You are not being coerced, because coercion implies that you are being forced to do something you do not wish, BUT, as a criminal, you no longer have the Right to claim this freedom. So the term “coercion” is inapplicable.

Coerce (verb)

1. To restrain by force, especially by law or authority; to repress; to curb.
2. (transitive) to use force, threat, fraud, or intimidation in attempt to compel one to act against his will.

Do I need to point out AGAIN that coercion is not limited to physical force. A legal contract is a form of coercion.

That is blatantly false. Check the dictionary definition of coercion. If you freely sign a legal contract, you were not coerced; rather, you voluntarily agreed to the terms and conditions within.

See the definition of coercion above. We will assume for this argument that the law properly respects individual Rights and doesn’t violate them, therefore the second definition is the one I will use.

Coercion is also employed to make sure people don’t become criminals by acting in pure self-interest. Let me put it this way. If I have negotiated a contract with you. I have agreed to build you a state of the art hotel in exchange for 100 million dollars. I require you to make an upfront payment of 10 million. What is my motivation for not just taking the 10 million and running off. It would be much easier than building the hotel? My motivation is that I won’t get away with it without consequences. Those consequences are implicit in the legal contract. That is a form of coercion. The legal contract is a statement of what must be done by each party with the implication that violation of the contract could lead to legal penalties. The ultimate possible end point for violation of any form of legal contract is jail in a free society.

Yes, and so it should be. What is your point? That is exactly why Rights exist, to protect us in society, and prevent criminal action. If you feel “coerced” not to run off with other peoples’ money because of the law, then you have a very warped notion of freedom.

Incidentally, you are also very wrong with your suggestion that “running off” with my $10m is “easier”. You’re also wrong that claiming that laws PREVENT us from acting in pure self-interest.

Once again, your thought experiments are divorced from reality because you drop the context of your settings. How did you manage to convince ANYBODY that YOU could build them a state of the art hotel and get them to advance $10m to you in the first place?! Did you turn up in a suit and just say “oh I can build you that nice hotel. Sign here please.”

Do you have any clue about the business world?

You would have to have a vast established business with a reputation for quality and delivering on your promises. You would have to have financial references and no criminal record. If you were this massive and successful in business to be able to build a hotel, you simply could not run off with $10m. You would lose everything, including your business, and end up making no money in prison, instead of continuing to be a wealthy millionaire with a successful construction operation.

As a human being you have Rights. To violate another’s Rights is to deny that you have any. It is NEVER in your interest to deny your own Rights, therefore it is never in your self-interest to violate others’.

Are you suggesting that the threat of having your freedom taken away is not coercion?

Yes. Because UNTIL you do become a criminal you are totally free to do whatever you want. And after that point you cannot claim freedom from coercion.

Laws are inherently coercive. If they were not they would not be laws, they would be optional suggestions.

Laws do not force you TO DO anything (in a free society, which isn’t necessarily what we live. They keep you FROM being a criminal.

Rights (and therefore laws) apply a negative obligation on you only: DO NOT violate my rights. Laws should not FORCE you to act in a certain way and therefore violate your freedom. A law that forces you to pay for other people is wrong. A law that prevents other people stealing your money is moral, and not coercion.

You are forced to drive on a particular side of the road or not exceed a particular speed in a particular area. These things are forced on you regardless of you want. You will obey these laws or face consequences.

But you are FREE not to drive! Freedom is not a primary and your Right to do whatever you want doesn’t trump the Right of the road-owner who can set the terms and conditions of its use. If you don’t like the rules for road using, don’t drive. That’s your tough luck, as you have no Right to other peoples’ property.

Note: this is in a free society, where Roads are privately owned. A government enforced “side of the road” and “national speed limit” are not proper uses of government force. That is another discussion.

All free societies are built on coercion. The citizens of that country are not asked if they agree to the laws in place. They are subject to them regardless of their personal feelings on the matter. Not even being unaware of a particular law is deemed a worthy defence.

You are using a completely wrong and improper definition of coercion, and I will not argue this further as if you have a point. It is embarrassing to see you try to stretch the definition of coercion to breaking point, where it means whatever you want it to me mean, regardless of context.

“Consider for a moment a society without any laws.”

“Irrelevant. A free society would still have laws. That you fail to realise this is your ignorance showing through once again. This isn’t my problem to defend as it’s a strawman.”

This was not supposed to be a suggestion that objectivism desires a lawless society. It was meant to illustrate the point about how people tend to behave without constraining laws. I thought that was obvious on context.

I disagree that human beings “tend” to violate each other’s Rights. My view of myself and other people is not so cynical. Unfortunately, there is a criminal minority that exploits free people, and they must be prevented from doing so.

“Notice how you equate desire with emotion as if they are one and the same? They aren’t. Emotions are the instantaneous psychological reactions to our values being realised or frustrated. They are the RESULT of our experiences, not the guide to them. Humans, to be rational beings, must primarily act through reason and logic, and therefore attain happiness. It doesn’t work the other way around.”

Chimp, if you think humans are “first and foremost emotive beings”, I would like you to PROVE this statement. That should be easy enough, huh? Hang on, you can’t PROVE anything without establishing a rational chain of argument based on logic and a process of reason. Therefore, in order to make ANY statement, you must presuppose that you have the capability of reason and rational thought, which means rationality is a prerequisite to any statement of knowledge. So to say that humans are primary emotive beings is blatantly false, and self-contradictory.

I notice very well how I equate desire with emotion. Desire is an emotion. By your horrible reasoning above a baby that is crying for food is acting through a process of reason and logic to attain happiness.

Desire not an emotion. Desire is quite simply WANTING something. There could be many reasons why. I desire food when I’m hungry. Is hunger an emotion?

Very often there is an emotional source to desire, and ONLY an emotional source: “I did it, because I felt like it.” But most of the time the source of desire is reason: “I will not steal that money, even though I need it, because it’s wrong.”

The paragraph about “prove that humans are first and foremost emotive beings” is a really good example of the terrible process of blinkered logic you employ. You are reasoning your way to the conclusion you want rather than letting your reasoning determine the conclusion.

Ok. I take that as an inability to provide the proof I requested.

“You can’t prove anything without establishing a rational chain or argument based on logic and a process of reason.”

A true sceptic would suggest you can’t prove anything but I am willing to agree with this with one caveat:

And I would say to the “true sceptic”: how can you prove that you can’t prove anything? Blank out. Scepticism is self-refuting.

Logic and reason are presuppositions on you part, or can you prove to me that logic is coherent without using logic? You and I just sort of know it makes sense. We can’t PROVE it but that is ok.

Logic and reason can’t be proven; proof requires them. Logic and reason are the conscious acknowledgement of the most fundamental metaphysical axiom: existence exists.

Logic is the law of identity, and reason is the mental faculty that integrates sensory data into knowledge via logic.

Objectivism is necessarily right on this, because any denial of these axioms must involve their use.

We don’t “sort of know” this – as if this knowledge is mystically in us (a claim that theists tend to make). We don’t “feel” that we’re right. We ARE necessarily Right, because existence exists, A = A, logic is logic, fact is fact, truth is truth.

We have to make some presupposition or we’ll wind up like Descartes. We know logic works so we don’t question it.

Actually, we know BECAUSE logic works. If logic didn’t exist, it is IMPOSSIBLE to know anything.

You LEAP from that to in order to make ANY statement, you must presuppose that you have the capability of reason and rational thought, which means rationality is a prerequisite to any statement of knowledge. For that statement to be true these ones must also be true:
“A non-rational and unreasoning entity cannot make any statements.”
“Every human who ever made or ever will make any statement was/is/will be rational and reasonable”
“All statements are rational and reasonable”
The Statement “I believe is God” is rational and reasonable.
The Statement “I do not believe in God” is rational and reasonable.

This is absolute nonsense. You have missed the point so clearly it is staggering. I am not sure why I should carry on if my reasoning is so depressingly missed by you.

You seem to think that the truth of “any statement or claim of fact presupposes that one is capable of reason and rational thought”, means that ANY statement ever made is factual and rational!! Oh dear.

What I meant was: even if you are WRONG, the very act of you making a statement that you believe to be true, PRESUPPSOSES that you are trying to use reason and logic.

If you are implying a completely trivial meaning of “rational” and “reasonable” as in meaning something like “can cognate” or something similarly basic then animals and indeed sophisticated artificial neural networks might be said to be reasonable and rational. It is based on that logic that you deem it blatantly false and self-contradictory to say that humans are first and foremost emotive beings. I am seriously unconvinced.

Well, given your poor reasoning thus far, I am not really concerned about convincing you; this debate is for the benefit of readers.

You cannot deny this: “any statement or claim of fact presupposes that one is capable of reason and rational thought”. Since I have asked you to prove your statement that we first and foremost emotive beings, you must presuppose your rational and logical capacity FIRST, to make this flawed statement.

If desires were the result of logic and reason, that would necessarily entail that any desire you felt is one you decided to feel so when you next see a beautiful woman and feel a sudden and intense desire for her congratulate yourself on some speedy and efficient decision making. When an alcoholic whose liver is all but clapped out decides to go on a drinking binge despite the fact that it might very well kill him, he is never the less acting on a rational and reasonable thought process. He rationalised and reasoned that it would be better to break his promise to his loved ones, endanger his life and possibly loose his job than forego those drinks he doesn’t yet desire. In response to this, he then desires a drink or ten. What kind of bizarre reasoning must the homosexual be employing. He had concluded that it is somehow in his best interests to suffer prejudice, possibly be ostracised and in all likelihood ensure they he have no children and then he develops the desire for other men?

If you are not suggesting that this is how it works I would like you to clearly state the mechanism you are proposing.

I guess I will have to clearly state it for you, since relying on your reasoning so far was a mistake on my part:

Can you point out where I said that ALL desires are the result of logic and reason? Can you point out where I said that ALL desires are the result of emotion?

No. You can’t, because you are seeing words I never wrote, and attacking claims I have never made. This is because your “argument” is so fundamentally wrong and you haven’t got a leg to stand on, you are twisting my words into something you think you can attack.

Let me be even more clear: desire could be based on emotion, or it could be based on rational thought.

Now, if we are truly rational, our emotions are trained by our rational process. A truly rational person never acts on emotion ALONE. He trains his emotions (his responses) to also be rational. He enjoys his emotions, but he does not let them rule him.

I suggest humans operate as follows. Our desires are the mechanism by which we attribute value to things.

I don’t deny that some people who act irrationally pretend to pick their values based on what they feel. However, that is not where values come from.

Suppose you “feel like” drinking a drink, but it’s poisoned. Whether you know it’s poisoned or not doesn’t matter. Is the drink a value to you?

I assume you answer: no. Correct. But why? Because value is not based on emotion. Poison is not a value to you whether you want to have it or not.

A Value is that which one acts to keep or gain.

This presupposes the following: of value to whom? And why?

When you first put you hand out to a fire you have no rational or emotional bias about it one way or the other. When you burn your hand you feel pain. You don’t like pain. This is not a rational response. It is an emotional one.

You seem to want to equate any biological impulse with emotion. This is like saying your heart has a desire to beat, or you have an emotion about breathing.

Instantaneous subconscious reactions can still be rational, because you can programme your subconscious to react. For example: suppose you had the inability to feel pain in your hand. Would you STILL put your hand in the fire? Of course not! You don’t want to damage your skin and nerves and impair your movement and perhaps lose your hand altogether.

In a purely rational and logical realm, nothing would have greater or lesser value than anything else. For instance, is being alive better than being dead? Explain to me in purely logical and rational terms why you think it is.

You are so incredibly wrong I must highlight this to readers: THIS is the result of bad philosophy. This is the result of non-objective emotionalism, and PRECISELY the reason I wrote this article, because atheists are no better than theists in this regard. Actually, at least the theist pretends to have a moral objective consistent worldview. This atheist just gives up on the idea altogether. To the theist, we’re slaves to god. To Chimp, we’re animalistic slaves to emotion.

Life simply is. Life is your ultimate value; it is the value that makes all other values possible, and the value towards which all other values are directed. Life is the value which provides the standard for which all other values (or non-values) are measured.

Because human beings are beings of a certain nature in a certain world, there are things that are objectively beneficial or detrimental to us, as rational beings. This is true whether you WANT it to be or not. Poison is not a value to you. Food is. Your enemy is not a value to you. Your lover is. Stealing is not a value to you. Honesty is.

As rational beings, we must IDENTIFY those values that are objective in life, and pursue them. We can do this by observing reality, observing ourselves, and acting consistently.

In fact, without reason, value would be meaningless, because “value” would be replaced by “whim”. Chimp thinks value is whatever you feel like going after. Is your rape victim a value to you? Sure, why not. Is your neighbour’s car, or that stranger’s wallet a value to you? Absolutely, says Chimp.

What Chimp does is divorce the concept ‘value’ from its antecedent: life; a contradiction.
It is impossible to act to gain or keep anything without reason. It is impossible to identify value without reason. How else could you know what is objectively of value to your life? According to Chimp: emotion. In other words: whim, guesswork, blind chance, luck. Chimp sees humans as animals, scratching around in the dark hoping to stumble across something of value to us.

“In real life “what if” terms, for the utilitarians out there, imagine you are aroused and want to have sex. An emotive man rapes the first girl he sees. A rational man doesn’t. Why? Which one are you?

QED.”

Firstly, you are assuming in this example that an emotive man is necessarily not rational. This is another logical leap. How did you arrive at the conclusion that an emotive man cannot be rational? He desires sex but he has many motivations not to commit rape. I am both emotional and rational. I want to have sex. This is the emotional predicate. The rational part of my brain is then engaged.
“I want to have sex”. “Ok, how can I get sex?”
It is worth noting too that some men (quite a few actually) do commit rape. They are acting rationally?

Again, you totally miss the point. You said that men are “FIRST AND FOREMOST” emotive beings. Your words! The rational man might have many rational motivations for NOT raping, but that doesn’t matter! He WANTS to have sex, and he is first and foremost an emotive being, so he acts on his emotion, which according to you is the same as desire.

You next suggest that my hypothetical example was so removed from reality that it was both dishonest and hardly worthy of a response. I wonder then if you have ever come across the term Monopoly. That is was I was describing. Monopolies have existed. They are not fictional ideas. A monopolist usually maximises profits by restricting supply. Being in total control of the supply, the monopolist can control the price.

Wrong. A monopolist maximises profit by outdoing his competitors in quality and price. Consider Microsoft, a company that SHOULD be a monopoly: are they trying to restrict their product, or do they try and make it as widely used as possible??

Also, a monopolist might be in total control of the supply, or he might not. He cannot stop other people competing with him, if they are good enough. What he is NOT in control of is the DEMAND. Which means consumers are free to boycott his products or choose something else, or demand a lower price.

He cannot “control” prices in a vacuum – price is determined by supply and demand.

Yes there are boundaries but these are well beyond what most people would consider a fair price. Consider John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Trust. It had a monopoly or near monopoly. This was despite legislation designed to stop monopolisation being already present in law. Ultimately, the Supreme Court was forced to break up Standard Oil as it was deemed illegal. This kind of legislation is designed to ensure that market forces set the price not price determining the market.

Again, this is simply not true. Price does NOT determine the market in a free market! The market determines the price! Nobody is forced to use a product. And a company that over-charges will be undercut. A company that under-charges will eventually go out of business. Again, prices don’t exist in a vacuum.

The only way to violate the law of supply and demand is by force, in other words, government involvement in the market, which artificially fixes prices, encourages stagnation, punishes success, rewards the uncreative, and is the source of inflation.

Consider it this way. If I own most or all of something. It is in my best interested to charge as high a price as some people are willing to pay, thereby ensuring that the commodity I am in possession of remains scarce and therefore in high demand and that I retain most of the commodity I wish to control. Monopolies are not some kind of fantasy construct divorced from reality. Even Microsoft was taken to court on charges or monopoly in fairly recent history. These are monopolies that existed even with the restrictions. You seem to believe for some reason they would not or could not exist with less restriction.

I would like to see your definition of monopoly.

You are right about one thing though: it is in your interest to charge as high a price as people are willing to pay. And so you should. Why should you be stopped from doing this? It’s YOUR product, YOUR property. People don’t have a right to it, so if they want it, they should pay whatever you deem is appropriate.

Let’s say you are so good at what you do, and you keep your prices high but low enough so that other people can’t beat you, eventually 95% of the market uses your product. Is that a monopoly? Yes. It is coercive? No. You haven’t got there by force or blackmail. You have got there by being the best! Tell me, why should you be punished for that.

As soon as people choose another product or another company comes along to compete with you (if it can), competition ensues and prices drop. Supply and demand.

All restrictions on business should be removed. Having most or all of a market because you have earned it should not be punished. Only the altruist/collectivist would consider this “damages” – and therein lies the problem.

A free market has NEVER existed. I guess way back when people were bartering their home made wares there was a regulatory body in place to oversee it? We started with a truly free market. As trade developed, the people of the day realised that a completely free market was not the best idea. The largest suppliers of certain goods could simply withhold them until the demand rose to a point they liked, or more often, a group of suppliers band together to control supply (oligopoly). While this was beneficial to the individuals involved in the oligopoly, it was disastrous for the economy in general. Other goods that required the commodity being controlled would also rise in price. Inflation could easily run out of control if the commodities being controlled were essentials. Governments (whatever their form) realised that competition was vital to market health and stability.

I’m not going to labour this point any longer. Inflation is caused by government, no one else. Read my latest articles for more on this.

Competition does not mean the right to have a place reserved for you in business, at the expense of successful companies that have earned their right to be there. Competition does not mean government force to stop you growing and expanding.

If people are free, they can compete. The only way competition can be truly eradicated is by government force. Example: healthcare, water, power.

“More nonsense. Market prices are dictated by the law of supply and demand “

The sentence above was supposed to read “What the market will bear…”
I assume you guessed. As should be obvious from above, supply can be controlled in a monopoly. That is how a monopolist exerts control over price. The point was that the market forces are not setting the price, the monopolist is.

Yes, and the supplier WANTS people to use his product! The more he sells, the more money he makes. He might control his own supply, but he cannot control demand! And it takes BOTH to set a price.

<“Perhaps you’re referring to the markets in this world that ARE still (for the time being) left free, like: mobile phones, private healthcare, shoes, laser vision surgery, computers, clothes, etc etc… all markets that cater for EVERY user from scrimper to big spender, at every level, with open competition. What do we see in EVERY one of these markets? Standards rise, quality increases, availability soars, and prices DROP. Now compare this to socialised markets, and spot the difference.”

These markets are not free, or are you suggesting we currently have a free market right now? They operate within the limits that ALL markets are subject to. Anti-trust legislation etc.

They are more FREE than any others, such as healthcare etc which, in the UK, is mostly socialised. And in Canada it is totally socialised.

As I proved here, the fewer government restrictions, the greater the benefits for everyone, supplier and consumer.

Again, compare the freer healthcare around the world to the more socialised ones. Consider the awful service and standard in the NHS and Canada etc, to the more free healthcare in America. Of course, American has become more and more socialised, and what is the result: massive debt, waiting lists increase, service declines etc etc.

One last thing, America is the greatest nation on Earth? Really? Is that because Americans think it is? The greatest economically, militaristically, socially, morally?
I think it is statements like that, that are the major reason why most Europeans dislike Americans. The arrogance of it.

Funnily enough Chimp, I an English. I don’t speak as an American, but I can admire their principles and their history. Far better than I can admire the deplorable socialistic government of England, and a history of Imperialism, slavery, and bloodshed.

America was founded on a truly great principle: the freedom of man. It’s a shame it has lost its way.

“Oh for fuck sake you have got to be kidding me!…..

Waste your time or don’t but I’d be very careful about demanding improvement.

I do apologise though for the length of this response. There was a lot to cover. I also apologise for the many spelling and grammar error that the above most likely contains!”

As any reader of this (very long) response can see, I have addressed every point you have made and refuted all of them totally. Your arguments are incoherent and contradictory, and you argue from an undefined subjective philosophical basis (again, like most internet atheists).

Your attacking of strawmen and consistent evasion of my arguments is clear. And I think you show a profound misunderstanding of philosophy, law, morality, and politics.

Without wanting to sound arrogant, I think I have done you a favour by taking the time to explain as much as I have done to you in such detail, and I think you would benefit by really reading what I’ve written in detail and trying to understand what I have said and why, instead of just desperately trying to disagree with everything I’ve said without even understanding it, just to avoid having to admit you’re wrong.

Reading comprehension is not your strong suit is it? I have already conceded in my original post that I may be misrepresenting objectivism. Fair Enough. What I was saying above is that your reasoning is completely independent of objectivism and can be criticised for what it is. Bad reasoning is bad reasoning no matter the subject. Let me try to illustrate where I see a problem with your logic/reasoning.

You suggest that punishing a criminal is not coercion? Really. If you kill a criminal are they not really dead either. It is coercion. They are only a criminal because society has branded them one. There may not even be a tangible moral dimension to any given case. A person who J-walks is technically a “criminal” as they have violated the law. Even if I were to grant you that it is not coercion to punish a criminal per se, it is still coercion. The message is clear. Follow the rules or you will be branded a criminal and treated badly. Do I need to point out AGAIN that coercion is not limited to physical force. A legal contract is a form of coercion. Coercion is also employed to make sure people don’t become criminals by acting in pure self-interest. Let me put it this way. If I have negotiated a contract with you. I have agreed to build you a state of the art hotel in exchange for 100 million dollars. I require you to make an upfront payment of 10 million. What is my motivation for not just taking the 10 million and running off. It would be much easier than building the hotel? My motivation is that I won’t get away with it without consequences. Those consequences are implicit in the legal contract. That is a form of coercion. The legal contract is a statement of what must be done by each party with the implication that violation of the contract could lead to legal penalties. The ultimate possible end point for violation of any form of legal contract is jail in a free society. Are you suggesting that the threat of having your freedom taken away is not coercion? Laws are inherently coercive. If they were not they would not be laws, they would be optional suggestions. You are forced to drive on a particular side of the road or not exceed a particular speed in a particular area. These things are forced on you regardless of you want. You will obey these laws or face consequences. All free societies are built on coercion. The citizens of that country are not asked if they agree to the laws in place. They are subject to them regardless of their personal feelings on the matter. Not even being unaware of a particular law is deemed a worthy defence.

Consider for a moment a society without any laws.

Irrelevant. A free society would still have laws. That you fail to realise this is your ignorance showing through once again. This isn’t my problem to defend as it’s a strawman.

This was not supposed to be a suggestion that objectivism desires a lawless society. It was meant to illustrate the point about how people tend to behave without constraining laws. I thought that was obvious on context.

Notice how you equate desire with emotion as if they are one and the same? They aren’t. Emotions are the instantaneous psychological reactions to our values being realised or frustrated. They are the RESULT of our experiences, not the guide to them. Humans, to be rational beings, must primarily act through reason and logic, and therefore attain happiness. It doesn’t work the other way around.

Chimp, if you think humans are “first and foremost emotive beings”, I would like you to PROVE this statement. That should be easy enough, huh? Hang on, you can’t PROVE anything without establishing a rational chain of argument based on logic and a process of reason. Therefore, in order to make ANY statement, you must presuppose that you have the capability of reason and rational thought, which means rationality is a prerequisite to any statement of knowledge. So to say that humans are primary emotive beings is blatantly false, and self-contradictory.

I notice very well how I equate desire with emotion. Desire is an emotion. By your horrible reasoning above a baby that is crying for food is acting through a process of reason and logic to attain happiness.

The paragraph about “prove that humans are first and foremost emotive beings” is a really good example of the terrible process of blinkered logic you employ. You are reasoning your way to the conclusion you want rather than letting your reasoning determine the conclusion. You can’t prove anything without establishing a rational chain or argument based on logic and a process of reason. A true sceptic would suggest you can’t prove anything but I am willing to agree with this with one caveat: Logic and reason are presuppositions on you part, or can you prove to me that logic is coherent without using logic? You and I just sort of know it makes sense. We can’t PROVE it but that is ok. We have to make some presupposition or we’ll wind up like Descartes. We know logic works so we don’t question it. You LEAP from that to in order to make ANY statement, you must presuppose that you have the capability of reason and rational thought, which means rationality is a prerequisite to any statement of knowledge. For that statement to be true these ones must also be true:
“A non-rational and unreasoning entity cannot make any statements.”
“Every human who ever made or ever will make any statement was/is/will be rational and reasonable”
“All statements are rational and reasonable”
The Statement “I believe is God” is rational and reasonable.
The Statement “I do not believe in God” is rational and reasonable.

If you are implying a completely trivial meaning of “rational” and “reasonable” as in meaning something like “can cognate” or something similarly basic then animals and indeed sophisticated artificial neural networks might be said to be reasonable and rational. It is based on that logic that you deem it blatantly false and self-contradictory to say that humans are first and foremost emotive beings. I am seriously unconvinced.

If desires were the result of logic and reason, that would necessarily entail that any desire you felt is one you decided to feel so when you next see a beautiful woman and feel a sudden and intense desire for her congratulate yourself on some speedy and efficient decision making. When an alcoholic whose liver is all but clapped out decides to go on a drinking binge despite the fact that it might very well kill him, he is never the less acting on a rational and reasonable thought process. He rationalised and reasoned that it would be better to break his promise to his loved ones, endanger his life and possibly loose his job than forego those drinks he doesn’t yet desire. In response to this, he then desires a drink or ten. What kind of bizarre reasoning must the homosexual be employing. He had concluded that it is somehow in his best interests to suffer prejudice, possibly be ostracised and in all likelihood ensure they he have no children and then he develops the desire for other men?

If you are not suggesting that this is how it works I would like you to clearly state the mechanism you are proposing.

I suggest humans operate as follows. Our desires are the mechanism by which we attribute value to things. When you first put you hand out to a fire you have no rational or emotional bias about it one way or the other. When you burn your hand you feel pain. You don’t like pain. This is not a rational response. It is an emotional one. In a purely rational and logical realm, nothing would have greater or lesser value than anything else. For instance, is being alive better than being dead? Explain to me in purely logical and rational terms why you think it is. Ultimately you must return to an emotive starting point. It is how you feel about being alive that makes life valuable. We employ our reason and logic to attain our desires.

In real life “what if” terms, for the utilitarians out there, imagine you are aroused and want to have sex. An emotive man rapes the first girl he sees. A rational man doesn’t. Why? Which one are you?

QED.

Firstly, you are assuming in this example that an emotive man is necessarily not rational. This is another logical leap. How did you arrive at the conclusion that an emotive man cannot be rational? He desires sex but he has many motivations not to commit rape. I am both emotional and rational. I want to have sex. This is the emotional predicate. The rational part of my brain is then engaged.
“I want to have sex”. “Ok, how can I get sex?”
It is worth noting too that some men (quite a few actually) do commit rape. They are acting rationally?

QED? Again I am unconvinced.

You next suggest that my hypothetical example was so removed from reality that it was both dishonest and hardly worthy of a response. I wonder then if you have ever come across the term Monopoly. That is was I was describing. Monopolies have existed. They are not fictional ideas. A monopolist usually maximises profits by restricting supply. Being in total control of the supply, the monopolist can control the price. Yes there are boundaries but these are well beyond what most people would consider a fair price. Consider John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Trust. It had a monopoly or near monopoly. This was despite legislation designed to stop monopolisation being already present in law. Ultimately, the Supreme Court was forced to break up Standard Oil as it was deemed illegal. This kind of legislation is designed to ensure that market forces set the price not price determining the market. Consider it this way. If I own most or all of something. It is in my best interested to charge as high a price as some people are willing to pay, thereby ensuring that the commodity I am in possession of remains scarce and therefore in high demand and that I retain most of the commodity I wish to control. Monopolies are not some kind of fantasy construct divorced from reality. Even Microsoft was taken to court on charges or monopoly in fairly recent history. These are monopolies that existed even with the restrictions. You seem to believe for some reason they would not or could not exist with less restriction.

A free market has NEVER existed. I guess way back when people were bartering their home made wares there was a regulatory body in place to oversee it? We started with a truly free market. As trade developed, the people of the day realised that a completely free market was not the best idea. The largest suppliers of certain goods could simply withhold them until the demand rose to a point they liked, or more often, a group of suppliers band together to control supply (oligopoly). While this was beneficial to the individuals involved in the oligopoly, it was disastrous for the economy in general. Other goods that required the commodity being controlled would also rise in price. Inflation could easily run out of control if the commodities being controlled were essentials. Governments (whatever their form) realised that competition was vital to market health and stability. The very first regulations would work their way into the system. A lesson learned. The reason there are no completely free markets around now is that no-one is dumb enough to think it would actually work. There is plenty of historical evidence that it leads to monopoly, duopoly or oligopoly and a lack of competition. Microsoft, IBM, AT&T are all recent examples or monopolies or near monopolies. These are companies working with restrictions. Do you think they would operate more ethically and fairly without the restrictions? Even where competing products are available for very low prices or even free, the market can still be forced to buy the overpriced products from the monopoly. All legally too. An example is the Linux operating system. If you were starting up a company, would you use Linux or Microsoft? Why? One is free the other costs money? There is nothing stopping you or me from entering the market with Microsoft. Even if we could make a much better operating system and charge less for it we would still not stand a chance. I am going to credit you with enough sense to see why that is.

When the market will bear will rise sharply when the market is running out of food and provisions

More nonsense. Market prices are dictated by the law of supply and demand

The sentence above was supposed to read “What the market will bear…”
I assume you guessed. As should be obvious from above, supply can be controlled in a monopoly. That is how a monopolist exerts control over price. The point was that the market forces are not setting the price, the monopolist is.

Perhaps you’re referring to the markets in this world that ARE still (for the time being) left free, like: mobile phones, private healthcare, shoes, laser vision surgery, computers, clothes, etc etc… all markets that cater for EVERY user from scrimper to big spender, at every level, with open competition. What do we see in EVERY one of these markets? Standards rise, quality increases, availability soars, and prices DROP. Now compare this to socialised markets, and spot the difference.
These markets are not free, or are you suggesting we currently have a free market right now? They operate within the limits that ALL markets are subject to. Anti-trust legislation etc.

One last thing, America is the greatest nation on Earth? Really? Is that because Americans think it is? The greatest economically, militaristically, socially, morally?
I think it is statements like that, that are the major reason why most Europeans dislike Americans. The arrogance of it.

Going back to something you said earlier: you can now consider your arse well and truly handed to you.

I’m just not feeling it….

You don’t know what you’re talking about. If you endeavour to reply to this, I expect a vast improvement, otherwise don’t waste my time or yours.

Oh for fuck sake you have got to be kidding me!…..

Waste your time or don’t but I’d be very careful about demanding improvement.

I do apologise though for the length of this response. There was a lot to cover. I also apologise for the many spelling and grammar error that the above most likely contains!

First off, I need to know absolutely NOTHING about objectivism to recognise terrible reasoning.

But you DO need to know something about Objectivism to attempt to criticise it.

Your poor thinking is most obviously evident with you critisism of my suggestion that everything in human society is a matter of coercion. How you can manage not to see that is beyond me. You even bang on about legal contracts in your laissez-faire system. What do you think a legal contract is? What happens if you break it? Punishment? Human societies are based on laws. Laws are inherently coersive. Coersion by the way need not be physical violence. Consider for a moment a society without any laws.

This paragraph belies a complete lack of understanding of freedom and the use of physical force. If you PUNISH someone for violating someone else’s rights, i.e.: a criminal, you are NOT using coercion. The use of physical force is BANNED in a free society, and the only ones who can expect to have it used against them are criminals. Therefore, in a free society, coercion is not the basis of it, trade is.

Consider for a moment a society without any laws.

Irrelevant. A free society would still have laws. That you fail to realise this is your ignorance showing through once again. This isn’t my problem to defend as it’s a strawman.

That is hilarious. Human are first and foremost emotive beings. Almost everything a person does is to satisfy a desire of somekind. Desire is an emotional motivation.

Notice how you equate desire with emotion as if they are one and the same? They aren’t. Emotions are the instantaneous psychological reactions to our values being realised or frustrated. They are the RESULT of our experiences, not the guide to them. Humans, to be rational beings, must primarily act through reason and logic, and therefore attain happiness. It doesn’t work the other way around.

Chimp, if you think humans are “first and foremost emotive beings”, I would like you to PROVE this statement. That should be easy enough, huh? Hang on, you can’t PROVE anything without establishing a rational chain of argument based on logic and a process of reason. Therefore, in order to make ANY statement, you must presuppose that you have the capability of reason and rational thought, which means rationality is a prerequisite to any statement of knowledge. So to say that humans are primary emotive beings is blatantly false, and self-contradictory.

In real life “what if” terms, for the utilitarians out there, imagine you are aroused and want to have sex. An emotive man rapes the first girl he sees. A rational man doesn’t. Why? Which one are you?

QED.

I noticed that you sidestepped my example of the wealthy person buying up all the routes into a major city and then charging whatever he felt like for their use. This is not a breach of any contract. Just good ole laissez-faire capitalism. Charge what the market will bare. When the market will bear will rise sharply when the market is running out of food and provisions

Wow, you actually didn’t bother to read my reply at all did you? As I plainly and clearly stated, your example is totally divorced to the context of reality. Expecting someone to answer a question that has no relation to reality is a sign of dishonest tactics.

You ask me to grant that somebody somewhere, magically, has the money and business and power and influence to buy, what, every road around a city? How? Where? Why? Who agrees to sell it to him? How does he make his money if people REFUSE to use it? What stops competitors building other roads? How did he get to be such a business genius with an irrational senseless mentality as this? In the REAL world, this would never happen. And the free market would find a way around it, as it has every other commercial “problem” it has faced.

When the market will bear will rise sharply when the market is running out of food and provisions

More nonsense. Market prices are dictated by the law of supply and demand; a customer can’t pay less than a seller needs to make a profit, and a seller can’t charge more than what a competitor is prepared to offer, or what the buyer is prepared to pay, prices are not arbitrary floating whims, unlike your morality. (See my latest article on Socialism for more info. (But given that you have barely read this one, I don’t think that is likely.))

You seem to want the best of all worlds without considering why we have the systems today that we do have. Lessons learned perhaps?

Now this is hilarious. A free market has NEVER fully existed, so what lessons do you propose we have learned? The millions of people who were systematically starved to death in Soviet Russia? Oh wait, that was socialism/communism, not capitalism. Mass inflation and credit crunches in the Great Depression, post WWI Germany, the modern day Western World…oh hang on, they are mixed socialised/mixed economies caused by government spending and mass production of worthless paper money…

Perhaps you’re referring to 19th century America, that was a close as we’ve come to a free market…where the trade, wealth, power, freedom, happiness, and invention of the USA exploded, and it became (and still is) the greatest nation on earth? Perhaps you’re referring to the markets in this world that ARE still (for the time being) left free, like: mobile phones, private healthcare, shoes, laser vision surgery, computers, clothes, etc etc… all markets that cater for EVERY user from scrimper to big spender, at every level, with open competition. What do we see in EVERY one of these markets? Standards rise, quality increases, availability soars, and prices DROP. Now compare this to socialised markets, and spot the difference.

Going back to something you said earlier: you can now consider your arse well and truly handed to you. You don’t know what you’re talking about. If you endeavour to reply to this, I expect a vast improvement, otherwise don’t waste my time or yours.

First off, I need to know absolutely NOTHING about objectivism to recognise terrible reasoning. You and Ergo indulge in baseless assertion so much it is bording on offensive that you consider your thinking logical and rational. You have in the above piece made countless assertions which expect the reader to simply agree are facts.

Your poor thinking is most obviously evident with you critisism of my suggestion that everything in human society is a matter of coercion. How you can manage not to see that is beyond me. You even bang on about legal contracts in your laissez-faire system. What do you think a legal contract is? What happens if you break it? Punishment? Human societies are based on laws. Laws are inherently coersive. Coersion by the way need not be physical violence. Consider for a moment a society without any laws.

It is nice that you decided to have a go at a collectivist, but labelling me something and having a crack at it is not the same as telling what I am getting wrong about objectivism.

“Doing something because you feel like it is irrational”

That is hilarious. Human are first and foremost emotive beings. Almost everything a person does is to satisfy a desire of somekind. Desire is an emotional motivation.

I noticed that you sidestepped my example of the wealthy person buying up all the routes into a major city and then charging whatever he felt like for their use. This is not a breach of any contract. Just good ole laissez-faire capitalism. Charge what the market will bare. When the market will bear will rise sharply when the market is running out of food and provisions

You seem to want the best of all worlds without considering why we have the systems today that we do have. Lessons learned perhaps?

Then he admits to not knowing much about it and admits the likelihood that he has misunderstood it. This is a prime example of hit and run tactics. It is poor debating strategy and sets oneself up for an embarassing fall.

Here is an insight into the mind of a collectivist:

Everything in human society is ultimately a matter of coercion.

We’re all exploiters, looking to get one over on each other if we can, and we’re all feeding off each other in order to survive.

In other words, men ultimately must always resort to physical force to accomplish anything. This is the mentality of a barbarian, of a Hitler, of a Ghengis Khan.

Rational men realise that their life in a free society depends on their recognition of Rights, which entails that they do the same to others. This excludes physical force, and means that men can only interact as TRADERS, as EQUALS, voluntarily.

Since this concept is alien to the collectivist, he foresees only one alternative: force. Whether it be us “forcing” the doctor to see us, or the government forcing us to support the lives of others, or forcing private companies to charge specific prices, or forcing people to restrain their freedom of speech in case others might be offended etc etc.

The idea that men can deal with each other in a rational and non-sacrificial manner doesnt occur to the collectivist, since individuals are irrelevant to him, only one thing matters: the greater “good”; as long as someone is being sacrificed to someone else, then it’s ok.

Lastly, I have a challenge for anyone who denies that animals have no rational capacity: show an animal that does and not only will you have proven me wrong, you will be world famous and rich beyond your dreams.

Most of the things that make up modern life simply would not function in a laissez faire system. Suppose I am a doctor. I have agreed to perform surgery on you as you are dying of a soon to be fatal condition.

I assume by “agreed to perform” you mean that we have entered into a legally binding contract and money has been exchanged.

At the last moment I decide I am not going to perform the surgery any more because I don’t feel like it.

Making anything decision because you “feel like it” is irrational, but let’s continue the scenario…

You will die. Or maybe I decide I won’t perform the surgery unless your wife agrees to have sex with me or unless you give me your house. It is not like you have legal recourse. I have not threatened you with harm; I am just renegotiating my price.

Attempting to change the terms of an agreement AFTER the agreement has become legally binding is an act of fraud. This is against the law now, and would be so under a laissez-faire system. Fraud is actually a form of force.

Take it or leave it. Suppose I perform the surgery but I am lazy and incompetent and leave you with lasting health problems. Tough luck. I guess you should have found someone better. Oh well, next patient please…..

What is the difference between the consequences for this doctor under our current political setup and why do you imagine it would be any different under laissez-faire capitalism? You are aware that capitalism is not libertarianism are you not? In a free society, people are still legally bound by contract, and force and fraud are still objective grounds to criminalise you in the eyes of the law.

Freedom in the sense of everyone acting only in accordance with what they want is utterly simplistic nonsense. I think most children know enough about the world to know better. What democracy tries to do is provide the most amount freedom to the largest amount of people and maintain a functioning society. If objectivists had there way, anarchy would reign so fast it would make your head spin. Objectivists espouse the virtue of selfishness and hold it up as the great universal regulator. They seem to miss the rather obvious fact that people generally do act selfishly in almost all things. We make laws to stop that selfishness from harming others and to maintain a semblance of order in society.

This paragraph belies a complete misunderstanding of Objectivism.

I find it curious that you wrote so much denouncing Objectivism and then virtually take it all back in your last paragraph by admitting that you might have misrepresented the philosophy and invite me to “hand your ass to you”. That’s not how it works. Do you know what you’re talking about or don’t you? This is like me accusing evolutionists of believing that fish turn into monkeys and inviting them to prove me wrong.

And, like many utilitarian subjectivists, you propose hypothetical extreme scenarios with no context in reality. Take the road example: how did you get the road in the first place? How much can you realistically charge? How much you expect to be paid if no one can pay? How do you propose to prevent other people building roads to compete with yours? How do you expect to get people to stop using the other road in favour of yours? Do you lower your price to compete, for example? Do you offer better service? Etc etc. That is why these fantastic drastic dilemmas are not worth the effort to rebut: they bear no relation to reality because the questioner always drops the context.

You are attacking a position that bears no resemblance to Objectivism, and therefore you’ve left me with nothing to defend.