Bill,

I'll start at the bottom of your post above where you said:

I meant that if a person cannot obtain his survival needs through a process of voluntary trade, he has no other alternative than to try to survive by means of force.

It is true that a person can choose to intiate force. And it is true that their purpose at such a time can be their survival. And there could be circumstances where there are no other alternatives. But my point remains, which is that to do so, is to step outside of the realm of rights. A person can cannot obtain their survival needs through voluntary trade or any option available other the initiation of force, can choose that option rather than lose their life. True. But they cannot also claim that they are morally justified, or acting out of a right to survive, or the right to follow their self-interest, or any right at all. It sucks to be them at that point and have to make that choice, and in terribly rare occasions a person might find themselves in a terrible situation. But that doesn't alter the nature of individual rights in such a way that they suddenly, and magically can have a right to intiate force against an innocent person.
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But from your comments, I get the impression that you disagree with Rand's view that it would be okay to steal the medication from the pharmacy in order to save your own life, as long as you were willing to pay it back later. Do you disagree? -- because technically, you would be violating the rights of the pharmacy by breaking in and stealing the medication, even if you were willing to pay it back later.

I agree on a practical level with what she is trying to do. She is taking what technically, and actually, is breaking and entering and theft, and showing that the purpose and intent of the actions were to do business with the pharmacy which wants to do business with people that want to pay for the purchase of drugs. If the pharmacist grasps that fact when they are contacted later, and offered money to cover the cost and the trouble of the repair of the break-in, and a extra payment for a "purchase" made prior to the usual face to face interchange at the cash-register, then they have a voluntary trade, although made after the fact.  I guess I'd say that Rand's sick person acted outside of the realm of rights during the break in, and then sought the pharamacist out later to restructure - to get an after-the-fact voluntary agreement.

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The phrase you used in your question was "it would be okay to" violate a right.   No, it can never "be okay" in the sense of 'was it moral?' But how does it stand in relation to the pharmacist later (we assume he is okay as long as doesn't see this happening every week), so it is "made" okay for the victim. Clearly it is "okay" for the person who got his meds and worked efficiently to make up for the wrong he did with the break-in. If I were that person, I'd have framed it in my mind as a voluntary trade that the pharmacist just hasn't learned about yet, but will like when I explain, and offer a promise to never do it again, and give him a big profit. It is "okay" for society in the sense that the laws and the culture and structures that relate to providing an environment of choice but not coercion have not been changed.

We see something similar happen with business relations where the contract is fairly complex and an honest disagreement arises. Say you rent a car on Kuai, and in the contract it say that you can't take the care over such and such a road around the north end of the island, but you didn't read that. You try that road and you get stuck. The contract provides for towing, but the rental agent won't honor that part because you were on a road you had no right to be on. Say you tell the rental agent that you hadn't read that part of the contract, and if he'll overlook your improper use of the car, and take care of the towing, you'll use his agency for your next two trips.  If he says, "Yes" you have converted what was a violation of his legal rights, into a lawful exercise of mutual rights, post-contract. You acquired a meeting of the minds even though it was after the fact. Risky, no guarantees, but it shows the spirit of recognizing choice, not coercion (or theft) as the proper standard.
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Yes, you would be justified in resisting my attempt to coerce you [to donate a kidney to you], as would the surgeon [to do a surgery he doesn't want to do] or the bank [regarding robbery] in resisting my attempts to coerce either of them, but that's not the same as having a "right" to resist these attempts. Do you see the difference? An individual "right" to do X implies an obligation on the part of others to allow one to do X, and if I were justified in stealing your kidney, I would certainly have no obligation to "allow" you to resist my doing so. That truly would be a contradiction. In a genuine conflict of interest, rights take a back seat. Neither party has rights against the other, but either party is justified in resisting the other. Not that it would it actually be in my interest to try to steal your kidney, as I'd be unlikely to get away with it, and would also forfeit any chance to obtain a voluntary donation if such were to become available.  [Empasis mine]

Bill, this is where we disagree. In our imaginary situation where I have you attempting to steal my kidney because you will die without it, you admit I would be justifice in resisting attempts to coerce the donation of the kidney. But then you posit a right for yourself, a right to take my kidney because your survival requires it. Then you go another step and say that because you have a right to the kidney, I have no right to resist your efforts to take it.

You say, "An individual 'right' to do X implies an obligation on the part of others to allow one to do X, and if I were justified in stealing your kidney, I would certainly have no obligation to "allow" you to resist my doing so."

Well, I agree that if there is an individual right to do X, it implies that no one has the right to forcefully interfer. But since I have a right to my kidney to start with, there is no way that you can aquire a right to (unless I grant you such a right volutarily, and for this example, we'll say thats not the case). So, you have no right to take my kidney, but then suddenly, you claim that your need generates a right. And now that you have this right, that I have no right to interfer with your exercise of it. Or, that you don't have to respect my attempts to keep my kidney.

You say, "In a genuine conflict of interest, rights take a back seat." I say that relationship is backwards. It is in a true conflict of interest, that rights settle the issue in favor of an environment where people can exercise choice over an environment where coercion is allowed. (A conflict of interest can always be understood from different perspectives - each perspective having a greater or lesser context. E.g., one perspective is between two people that frequently do business together and a mediator might point out that the ongoing process of doing business is a more important context than the specific transaction where they find a conflict of interest. They are being told that they have no real conflict of interest since they are both served by preserving their longstanding business relationship. All humans have no rational conflicts of interests on a moral level if they recognize that choice over coercion is a system that favors all but crooks, thugs, and other assorted undesirables.)
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Here is the bottom line as I see it. You hold up what you claim is a right. I ask where it comes from, and you say that a right to such and such action forms out of your need to take that act to survive in a context where you have no other option.  And you point out a conflict of interests (like me wanting to keep my kidney, and you wanting to have it to solve a survival need) and say that a conflict of interest overrides individual rights.

I say, "When I hold something up to measure if it is in fact a moral right, I don't use the need of a person, or their claim that it is in their self-interest, or that their survival requires it, or that there may or may  not be a conflict of interest." What I look for are all action that don't involve initiation of force, threats to initiate force, fraud or theft. If I haven't given up the right to my kidney voluntarily, and because there can be no right to violate a right, then there can be no right to take my kidney using coercion. Therefore I have a full set of rights to resist any coercive attempt to take my kidney.

The definition and understanding of moral rights arises from human nature, it is built around protecting the ability to choose, and to make immoral the use of coercion and theft.  It then it has to be applied universally, and it is that that ensures there are no conflicts of interest at that moral level.

If a person sees that they are about to die and the only way to avoid that is an act that violates someone else's right, they may choose to do that, but they can't claim to be within their rights - they have to step outside of the realm of rights to take such an action.

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ps., Bill, my apologies for having phrased some of theses examples as involving 'you' in hypotheticals that would never occur with a man of your character - I never intended to imply otherwise.  (My kidneys and I feel not threat from you :-)  I think in the future, I'll make a better effort to point my hypotheticals in an anonymous fashion to ensure no one gets the wrong idea.

Bill,

There is a difference between being justified in doing something and having a right to do it.  When I said I would be justified in initiating force in order to save my life, I was NOT saying that I had a right to initiate it.

I'll try to follow your distinction and address it.

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Here is what you said in post 76:

However, if my survival requires that I coerce you, then in that case, you have no right against my coercing you, for if you did, then I would be obligated to abstain from coercing you. And since in this case, I am not obligated to abstain from coercing you, it follows that you have no right against my coercing you.

"...you have no right against my coercing you..." That is saying that I have lost the right to an action as a result of your situation and/or action. So, that is a distinct link between what you are calling "justified" and a change in a moral right.

You claim to have an action that you can take without my permission, (which is a definition of a right - "Rights - that which you can exercise without permission").  Discussions of what a person can do without permission versus needing permission seems like a close tie to rights.

And you state that you are not obligated to abstain from coercion when taking that act.  The phrase "not obligated" would seem to be restricted by context to morally obigated, as opposed so socially obligated, or emotionally obligated, or practically obligated (e.g., "the weather was so harsh I was obligated to give up going on the picnic").  Moral obligations involving others, particularly where coercion is a consideration, are dealing with rights.

So, hopefully you can see that I have every reason to keep using the concept "rights" despite your use of the word "justified" - To me this has been quacking like duck in every instance.  So the first thing I'd say is that the word "justified" in that context is not a distinction over "by right" - not one of any substance I can see.

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There are different ways the word "justified" could be used:

If you are using the word "justified" just to mean that the person "feels" justified, that doesn't address rights or even come into the area of rights or justice or propriety.  It would just be psychology of the moment from one party and wouldn't fit the context of the discussion or your own thoughts.

If you are using the word "justified" to mean nothing more than "He thinks he has a reason for taking an action relative to a goal of his" and only meaning this is an action that will in practical terms satifisfy the goal, then you would also be totally sidestepping the issue of morality, rights, justice or propriety. It would just be a statement of planned physical results resulting in the achievement of the plan.  (E.g., "The building standing is justification of his plan to use a lighter skeleton.")

But, I'll assume you are using "justified" in a moral context.  That you are saying that a person can be morally justified in taking an action even if it is one they have no moral right to take.  Am I getting that right?

Bill,

The point I am making is that if I am morally justified in initiating force against you, then you would have no right against my doing so...

But that is begging the question.  The whole point I've been making is that you don't have any moral justification to initiate violence against me. What you're saying would be like me saying: "If you don't have any moral justification to initiate violence against me, then I would have every right to resist your efforts."  (which is true, and I've said it, but it's the issue we are debating.)

You are right that our fundamental disagreement is over whether anyone would be morally justified in initiating force under any circumstance. I say no. I agree wth Rand that this is about the separation of choice from force, and relegating the moral use of force only to self-defense and retaliation.

Your argument, that moral justification arises out of your need to survive, is without clear boundaries. If survival self-interest can morally justify the intiation of force, then so can the expansion of immediate biological survival into stealing money during the summer to rent a shelter since a snow storm in the coming winter and it would kill a person to not have a shelter - all a person would have to show is that a lack of free market mechanisms wouldn't let them do that without stealing.
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Well, I would say that they can be morally justified in taking an action that they have no individual right to take, in order to distinguish "individual right" from "moral right" which could simply mean "moral justification." They would have a moral justification (or moral right) to take it, but not an individual right. I hope that's clear.

No, not clear to me. There are moral principles. Some apply to an individual alone on a desert island, others only apply in a social context. Some moral principles are more fundamental than others. But there can't be such a thing as an acceptable contradiction - such as where one moral principle says you cannot initiate force and another that says that you can. Yet that is what you are arguing for.
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You see, my argument is one that is based on the virtue of selfishness, which holds that it is always wrong -- always immoral -- to sacrifice one's life (and happiness) for any reason whatsoever -- even out of respect for the non-aggression principle. If you want to refute me, you will have to challenge that premise. You will have to challenge the ethics of egoism itself.

The Virtue of Selfishness is a great book title, I love the author and her philosophy and I believe I'm in agreement with all of her major principles - and my argument is that you are the one not on the right side of the ethics of egoism as Rand put forth.

I'd guess that she'd reply that it is not a sacrifice to refrain from the intiation of violence since what that would gain for you wasn't yours to begin with.

That to initiate violence against another for some gain of your own, is to embrace the sacrifice of others.

If you want to have a form of egoism more like Nietzsche, where the heart of the self-interest ethics is about a will to power, about a morality that is about justifying success only by its survival, then the sacrificing others to succeed fits in. In your system it is under a specified set of circumstances - one's self-interest is at stake, and there aren't adequate free market mechanisms that will give a person what they want. That isn't Rand's ethical Egoism - she was opposed to the sacrifice of self, AND to the sacrifice of others to the self.

Bill,

...[Rand] relegates the moral use of force only to self-defense and retaliation under normal circumstances. However, as we have seen, she does make an exception in the case of emergencies.

I reread The Ethics of Emergencies in The Virtue of Selfishness (it has been many decades since the first reading).  She is very explicit in defining emergency situations and repeatedly excludes illness from what constitutes an emergency. Her description of an emergency situation involves a person, but it also involves a very different metaphysical context. She says, "By 'normal conditions', I mean metaphysically normal, normal in the nature of things and appropriate to human existence." [Emphasis hers]  And she gives the example of a non-normal metaphysical situation as the inability of man to live inside of a raging fire.

She states, "Poverty, ignorance, illness and other problems of that kind are not metaphysical emergencies. By the metaphysical nature of man and of existence, man has to maintain his life by his own effort; the values he needs - such as wealth or knowledge - are not given to him automatically, as a gift of nature, but have to be discovered and achieved by his own thinking and work. One's sole obligation to others, in this respect, is to maintain a social system that leaves men free to achieve, to gain and to keep their values." [Emphasis hers]

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You were right to point out that my example of the person who starts stealing in the summer, inorder to have shelter from the coming winter's cold shouldn't amount to a real emergency, since it wasn't imminent, but more importantly having a shelter is a normal need, and as Rand points out, it would fail to meet the criteria of a metaphysical emergency.

What Rand has done is to draw upon man's nature and the nature of existence to form the baseline for the conditions of ethics. I think that is very different from your approach with draws upon an individual finding themselves at risk, and in effect, declaring an emergency. Yet they are humans (share in the same nature as others) and are not in a metaphysically different existence, so they should not get an option of picking up a different ethical system. They may choose to sacrifice another to better their position, but only by behaving immorally.

I think Rand was contradicting herself in that answer she gave to Mr. Goodman that you quoted, but it is always risky to take Q&A responses as a person's last and best word on a subject, even someone as precise as Rand usually is.  She states "...you would have the right to break in and eat the food you need...", but she also says that the owner of the house had property rights, and she (as well as logic) says that there can be no such thing as a right to violate a right. She states that you would have to report yourself to the police, repay what you took, and that what you took was "not as of right." She said you "may save your life" but the word "may" doesn't speak to any moral status at all. It isn't saying "justified." So, she argued both sides of this and I don't think it is a good example of an emergency situation from her perspective.

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You asked, "In fact, if your point is valid that the initiation of force -- in this case, breaking and entering and stealing the person's food -- is never justified even in an emergency, then why wouldn't the moral choice simply be to starve to death rather than violate the person's property rights?"

Here you are focused on the person starving. But an individual might find themselves starving because they failed to exercise adequeate foresight for the circumstances involved. A person attempts to sail a small boat over a long distance with a friend. He miscalculated the food required. Does his failed plan justify his killing and eating his friend?  No.  The moral choice would be to starve to death (while trying everything short of killing an innocent person to stay alive long enough to reach shore or be rescued.)  I'm not saying that a person might not resort to a law of the jungle kind of "ethics" but they aren't observing Objectivist ethics - they aren't being moral. Rand is right in insisting that morality arises out of the metaphysics (both human nature and the nature of the universe).

So I'm in an airplane and it crashes in a country that does nottttt recognize individual rights, like North Korea.  I think under Bill's theory one would be justified to initiate force in order to survive and book it the hell out of there.  Obviously the main strategy would be to escape without detection, but where anyone you come into contact with could give away your position it may be regrettable but necessary to leave no witnesses to ones presence if you could not avoid them.

In post 47 I wrote:
Rand wrote: "Since all values have to be gained and/or kept by men's actions, any breach between actor and beneficiary necessitates an injustice: the sacrifice of some men to others, of the actors to the nonactors, of the moral to the immoral. Nothing could ever justify such a breach, and no one ever has. ... The Objectivist ethics holds that the actor must always be the beneficiary of his action[.]"

Note the last sentence. It says "the beneficiary". It does not say "primary beneficiary", "a beneficiary" or "one of the beneficiaries." She implied one and only one beneficiary -- one's self. No secondary or tertiary beneficiaries. Also note that any breach implies an injustice, and that egoism (or rational selfishness) and any benefit to anyone else are mutually exclusive, i.e. a dichotomy. Also, it is a dichotomy about actions -- not moral ideals -- with never an overlap between benefit to self and benefit to any other person.

Rand did write elsewhere in VoS: "Concern for the welfare of those one loves is a rational part of one's selfish interests. If a man who is passionately in love with his wife spends a fortune to cure her of a dangerous illness, it would be absurd to claim that he does it as a "sacrifice" for her sake, not his own, and that it makes no difference to him, personally and selfishly, whether she lives or dies. Any action that a man undertakes for the benefit of those he loves is not a sacrifice if, in the hierarchy of his values, in the total context of the choices open to him, it achieves that which is of greatest personal (and rational) importance to him." - Ethics of Emergencies.

This approves an actor benefitting somebody else as well as himself/herself, but its scope is very limited. First, the context is emergencies, which is not the case for the Introduction, whence came the first quote above. Second, it is only about a person the actor loves. It does not extend to non-emergencies. It does not extend to persons the actor only likes or respects. Regarding the man and his wife example, I don't think it would be absurd to claim that he spends a fortune for her sake.

A more nuanced Introduction could have presented quite a different view of everyday (non-emergency) ethics. I can only guess why she wrote what she did. My first guess is the selfish/self-sacrifice dichotomy.

You quote Rand's explanation of why helping the person you love is not a sacrifice. but then you go on to say, "This approves an actor benefitting somebody else as well as himself/herself,"  You just don't get it.  That man who helped his wife did it because she was HIS greatest value - he was helping himself.  That's not a sacrifice.

Several weeks ago I didn't know you could be so obtuse. Nowhere did I say or even suggest that it is or was a sacrifice. You just don't get it. Benefitting somebody else does not entail self-sacrifice in my view, even if it does in your package-deal.

This is an excellent example of why you should abandon that poor theoretical construct of beneficiaries and reattach altruism to "sacrifice" (sacrifice where a greater value is lost to a lower value or no value at all).

You should abandon your nonsense. Self-sacrifice is "attached" to altruism in my construct. 'Sacrifice self' is a subset of 'altruistic action' in my overlapping Venn diagram. Use your eyes. "Remember that the perceptual level of awareness is the base of man's conceptual development" (ITOE, 65).

There is no need to start lecturing me about what Rand said about "sacrifice." I am well aware of it.

In summary, you drop sacrifice as a defining characteristic of altruism, and then you in effect redefine the moral codes by the actions which are characterized by who benefits, or by who is the primary beneficiary, and you appear to discount a personal selfish pleasure as a benefit, and end up having severed not just sacrifice from altruism as a required characteristic, but motivation and beliefs from actions.

You are being obtuse again. My overlapping diagram is not an attempt to redefine a moral code normative-wise, i.e. making claims about what is good or bad and what a person should do. As I said earlier, my overlapping diagram is metaethical rather than normative.

What you says "appears" is due to your misreading. Area #2 is for actions that have only selfish benefits. Areas #3 and #4 are for actions where somebody else benefits also. If I fix a meal for only myself, that action belongs in area #2. If I fix a meal for myself and my wife, that action belongs in area #3. Both of us have the pleasure (I hope) of eating the food I prepare. If I buy her some new clothes as a gift, she is the main beneficiary. So that action belongs to area 4. I hope she gets far more pleasure from the new clothes than I do.

There is your 'severing sacrifice from altruism' nonsense again, despite the fact I have proven it is nonsense twice. It's clear that you can't handle the term altruistic with two different meanings for two different contexts. So I suggest the following. Wherever I have used "altruistic action", you substitute "otherish action". "Otherish" is in only one dictionary here, which typically shows definitions from 25 or more dictionaries, and that is as slang. So I am coining it now just for you. Interpret it as a contrast to selfish, but not as selfless. Maybe you can handle that and be much less confused. (It also eliminates the target of your nonsense.)

(Edited by Merlin Jetton on 10/16, 6:20am)

A side note:

When I studied psychology one of the areas I really loved was where we compared the different theoretical frameworks... and there were about 400 of them.  I mention this, because psychology is a lense through which I often find myself seeing things, and when I read the article about Merlin's venn diagram that matched actions to moral codes, it immediately reminded me of Behaviorism.

The idea behind Behaviorism was to formulate a more scientific approach to psychology by reducing the subject matter to what could be objectively studied and measured.  And by this they meant that things like emotions, motives, beliefs, states of awareness, volition... all of this kind of thing should be treated as if they didn't exist, and instead only examine actions.  We can see and measure actions. Actions that impinged upon the subject and the actions of the subject and any statistically valid inference of the bald relationship between those two.

I recognized that this may have been well-intended attempt to take subjectivity out of psychology, but it was nonsense (some of the proponents of Behaviorism actually went to the extreme of saying, not just that these elements were being ignored in an attempt to achieve objectivity, but that they actually didn't really exist!)

The fact that the subject matter of psychology is non-material and difficult to observe doesn't mean it is an improvement to ignore it. Think of a scientist who decided to work on the science of nutrition but refused to examine anything that went on inside of the body, any of the biochemistry or digestive physiology, and instead would only examine the input (food) and the output (feces and urine).

So, when I read Merlin's article one of the things that jumped out at me was the focus on the actions, with no reference to what caused them - too much like poking about in feces as if we could divine the nutritional principles by counting the turds.

Merlin's last post doesn't offer much that's worth a reply. He  characterizes me as the soup nazi, a fabricator, acting out of desparation, disgraceful, lacking character and my posts are just ridiculous and nonsense.  Argument that are just personal attacks and not honest attempts to discuss the ideas don't encourage replies (at least not civil ones).

I did liken his approach to elements of behavioralism and people can read what I wrote and see if they agree or not.  As to playing with feces, maybe I let my sense of humor carry me away, but on the other hand, a medical or biological perspective doesn't view the waste products of the digestive system as disgraceful or foul, but as natural phenomena to be studied where appropriate.  My point was that you can't study them while ignoring what happens inside the body if you want to understand the digestive process. And you can't look at an action, ignoring motives and the moral beliefs that generated the motives, and then tag that action as related to this or that moral code.  That's a simple point and hard to evade, but that's what Merlin does in the midst of frantic outbursts consisting mostly of personal attacks.