Merlin:

Rand wrote (VoS, Introduction): '"Altruism declares that any action taken for the benefit of others is good, and any action taken for one's own benefit is evil. Thus the beneficiary of an action is the only criterion of moral value—and so long as that beneficiary is anybody other than oneself, anything goes."  

I think this bars 'secondary or tertiary motivating values not related to others', i.e. values of the actor. 

While I think this bars 'secondary or tertiary motivating values not related to the others', ie, values of the actor ... only inside of the Church of Altruism.     I'm not a member of that Church, and so, did not fully mean to restrict myself to its tenets when I claimed the second half of :  "I could be wrong, but I always interpreted Rand's definition of 'altruism' to mean, absolutely, having what others value as the primary motivating value in an action, with the key word being primary. Implying that there might be secondary or tertiary motivating values that were not related to others."

A more correct phrasing of what I was thinking was " Implying that, outside of the Church of Altruism,  there might be secondary or tertiary motivating values that were not related to others."

You are correct; Rand's definition(correctly, I think) of Altruism does not include recognition of those other motivating values not related to others.    That is what she meant when she clearly defined her use of the word 'altruism' -- no regard for self at all, complete immolation to the service and values of any other interest but your own.   The appearance of any 'self-interest' at all in any action or undertaking immediately undercuts(inside of the Church of Altruism) the ethical basis of the action.

This explains, to me, the animosity of the Acolytes of that Church towards even 'win-win' interactions, like trade and commerce.    For True Believers of that Religion, interactions must be "lose-win" or they are not ethical actions.  In that Church, we are not peers living in freedom; we are servants to anyone -- a nameless 'state' jarringly spoken for by nameable others--  who makes a demand or whim, and when resisting such arbitrary demands is seen as a 'selfish' act, then the making a demand/whim business, if nothing else, is booming.  The new serfdom, based on a flawed idea.   Chains on the self, literally self-administered.   In that church, we are peers only in our servitude to those who whisper in the name of others as they watch the rest of us service their worldview.  The ultimate Emperors.

And THAT is the horrible abomination running loose, destroying the world, that Rand was targeting to shatter with her defense of Self campaign.   Not just Self but sanity.

I agree with your observation that Rand's (special) use of the word 'selfish' in the context of a world already long over-run by the other religion has been a kind of hurdle, an impediment.    But I think it is a necessary impediment.   It is in fact key.   It is not an impediment for impediment's sake, to be deliberately controversial as part of some advertising campaign to sell books;   it is an impediment because the Church of Altruism has turned man inside out against himself, in reality.    That impediment is not imagined or fabricated, that impediment is real, 

Look at this thread; folks who basically -agree- with each other, turned inside out over definition of the word 'altruism' ... and as bad, what motivations are and are not permitted by others.

Screw altruism.   With a chainsaw.   It is evil.

But then again, screw all non symmetric, non peer based instances of association other than free association.

regards,

Fred

Merlin writes:

I have said very little about tying an "action as related to this or that moral code", like Steve insists that I must do so, else I "sever" motives from actions and even from morality.

That's right.  By focusing on beneficiaries of actions, but without the necessity of addressing motives or beliefs, you severed action from motives and moral beliefs, but then you attach them to a moral code - making an assignement of "altruistic" or "egoistic" to a category of action.

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Fred wrote:

Torture and the administration of pain means one thing when it is forced upon us, and another thing when we seek it.

Absolutely true.  And it is a statement that incorporates the moral, political and motivational nature of human action.  It has within it the issue of motivation for an action.  If we saw a photo or drawing of a person tied up and being whipped, there might not be enough clues to tell us if this was desired by the person being whipped or if it is a crime in progress.  

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I completely agree with Fred that free association (and individual rights) give anyone the freedom to be an altruist, or a masochist (they kind of fit together don't they?).  But that is about the political dimension and not about whether we can derive the moral nature of an action by looking at "beneficiaries" without knowing motives.  It is clear from Fred's colorful example that we can't even sort out benificiaries without knowing a bit about the motives.

Consider the following actions:

- Those of women suffragists such as Susan B. Anthony to give women the right to vote.

- Those of Martin Luther King to give blacks the right to vote.

Each was an attempt by the actor to benefit himself/herself and others. They were not wholly egoistic or wholly altruistic. The top Venn diagram here referenced by my article is woefully inadequate to classify them. However, said actions with no violating of rights comfortably fit the middle area of the bottom diagram.

Consider:

- John Galt trying to persuade other producers to go on strike. Was Galt acting for purely his own self-interest? I think not. Not only did he have others' interest in mind, he depended on them for the strike to succeed. So trying to classify Galt's action using the top Venn diagram is problematic. But it fits well in the middle area of the bottom diagram.

- Consider Ayn Rand's advocacy of egoism. Classifying this in the top Venn diagram is problematic. Her advocacy was on behalf of the interests of all producers. However, it fits well in the middle area of the bottom diagram.

These actions and other examples I gave earlier here or in JARS differ in more than one way. The goals pursued by these actions are social and could benefit many, many other people in addition to the actor. Also, their (others and actor) goals are the same. In trade the goals, at least concretely, are typically very different.

(Edited by Merlin Jetton on 6/23, 7:46am)

Steve, I disagree with a lot of what you say in post 105, but I am not going to waste any more of my time responding to it.

Draw your own Venn diagram, which is based solely on motivations with actions irrelevant. I have a shredder ready.

When I wrote 'An Analysis of Egoism and Altruism' I was not aware of Henry Hazlitt's The Foundations of Morality (link #1, link #2). 

He writes about mutualism in Chapter 13.

A society in which everybody act on purely egoistic motives, or one in which everybody acts on purely altruistic motives (if either is really imaginable) would not be workable. A society in which each works exclusively for his own interest, narrowly conceived, would be a society of constant collisions and conflicts. A society in which each works exclusively for the good of others would be an absurdity. The most successful society seems to be one in which each worked primarily for his own good while always considering the good of others whenever he suspected any incompatibility between the two.

“In fact, egoism and altruism are neither mutually exclusive nor do they exhaust the possible motives of human conduct. There is a twilight zone between them. Or rather, there is an attitude and motivation that is not quite either (especially if we define them as necessarily excluding each other), but deserves a name by itself.

       I would like to suggest two possible names that we might give this attitude. One is an arbitrary coinage—egaltruism, which we may define to mean consideration both of self and others in any action or rule of action.A less artificially contrived word, however, is mutualism” (102).

I wrote a blog entry about part of Hazlitt's book here.