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Thanks Lindsay. Means a lot coming from you.
Marcus, when I was in 5th grade, I was taught that all of our actions are "selfish" because we do them for some reason for ourselves, even if it's just to feel good about ourselves. It does miss the whole distinction.
Rodney, you're right about some philosophies being that inconsistent. I wonder if it's worth categorizing those as being argumentatively inconsistent vs. the behaviorally inconsistent that I'm talking about.
Jason, I'm not sure your osmosis argument is widely applicable. I'm sure in some cases it is, but I think of it more as not having an explicit understanding of why they're doing it. For instance, someone who knows nothing about ethics (except the typical altruistic bromides) may still act in ways they think will make them happy. They're not just mimicking behavior, they're figuring it out for themselves. They're just not identifying how they figure it out. By not explicitly identifying their process, they don't have to confront the contradiction with their supposed beliefs.
Thanks Shayne. I thought that was a particularly important point too.
Thanks Barbara. Your example sounds about right as far as inconsistency. Even those who don't want to acknowledge evil make exceptions when it's too obvious.
Alec, I'm not sure how common your depraved example appears, but you're right about the principle. If you're given a philosophical choice (usually in the form of a false dichotomy), people often plunge one way in order to avoid the other. I mentioned this in my Sacred Sex article. If your choice is between abstinence and hedonism, let's all jump on board the hedonist boat! "If that's morality, I don't want anything to do with it!".
As far as the mentality of criminals, I'm not an expert.
Jennifer, thanks for the comment. It's a shame that a crisis is exactly the time when you don't have time to screw around with working out philosophical issues, and yet that's when the problem becomes obvious.
Michael, thanks for the praise, and I'm glad you found it useful. Fortunately, I'm not really competing with myself to outdo my older articles, or I might get a little more nervous when writing them. But I still have a few ideas worth writing about.
Garin, glad you liked it. I think your right that altruists haven't identified their philosophy in an explicit form, at least in some respect. I think they do in the sense that they have a set of moral rules to follow, and they think of morality as being altruism. So when they're thinking about morality, that's what comes to mind. That means it's their explicit philosophical views, as opposed to whatever they actual practice and believe. But certainly they don't think about morality in terms of standard of value, it's relationship to life, the need for it, etc. Objectivists usually put more thought into what morality means.
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