A friend of mine pointed out a technical error in my last post about the concept of good. Hes right that life is the standard of value -- that is that which promotes the life of a living being is of value to it, and that is how we come up with the Objectivist life-centered concept of value. But a value is that which promotes the life of a living being, and this is good for that living being, so there is a connection between our concepts of value and good. But I think some people have difficulty with this, as another friend of mine pointed out, due to a religious upbringing that does not focus on the facts of reality, but rather starts off with some prior conception of Good -- like Plato did -- and then tries to deduce from there what is of value and what is not of value. Most of the major terms of Objectivism come about due to induction rather than deduction; that is, they are arrived at by looking at the facts of reality rationally and non-contradictory, and by observing reality we notice that some things are alive and have certain requirements -- a dog, for example, must have food of a certain type or it will perish -- while other things do not have this type of requirement to stay in existence -- a rock, for example has no need of food or anything to sustain itself and can continue to exist even if it doesnt get anything from the rest of reality. And it is only this type of observational differentiation between the living and the inanimate that makes concepts like value have any grounding in the facts. There are no values to a rock. If it falls off a cliff and breaks apart, its not going to go out of existence as a material thing. On the other hand, if a man falls off a cliff and sustains enough internal injuries, he will suffer and die, and so falling off a cliff is bad for a man -- bad because falling of a cliff is detrimental to his life. The point is that Objectivism doesnt try to define value or good apart from the fact that certain things exist conditionally, while others do not. The condition is that a living entity must do or get certain things from reality or it goes out of existence as that living thing. So, if one were to try to have some non-fact based standard for the concept of value or the concept of good, and if one applied that standard to that living entity, then one would find that those things which are detrimental to that living thing will result in the death of that living thing, and one will find oneself in a contradiction -- one would get death rather than life, and this contradicts the fact that the living entity is alive. Contradiction at root means to speak against and if one speaks against the facts of reality one is involved in a contradiction. So, to choose a standard of value or of the good that leads to the death of a living thing, means that one is contradicting what one knows about that living thing, namely that some things will benefit it while other things will harm it.
Posted on: Thu, 18 Sep 2014 01:16:24 +0000
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