| | Christopher, you wrote, Thanks for your responses. You're welcome! I want to say however that I thought that the standard by which one was supposed to reach happiness in Objectivism was the requirements of man's survival, given his nature. Right, that is the standard. The problem I've presented seems to me personally to be the only one that I can think of that presents a problem with the Objectivist ethics because it indicates that there is an actual reason to do something other than just to survive. So, you're saying that one could, theoretically, survive without achieving happiness; therefore, how can survival be sufficient for achieving happiness? Am I correct that that is your argument? If so, then Rand isn't saying that mere physical survival, such as adding a few extra days to your life if you have terminal cancer, will give you happiness or is worth doing. The reason is that you're already in the process of dying from the cancer, so there is no way you can sustain your life in its normal state without curing the cancer. If you can't cure the cancer, then adding a few extra days to your life isn't worth it. Yes, pleasure and/or happiness is an end in itself, but it can only be achieved by living in a healthy, pro-life manner. In order to achieve happiness, you must sustain your life (in its normal, healthy state); otherwise, you'll suffer illness or injury, resulting in the diminution of your happiness. Or am I mistaken because mere survival is not enough according to Rand? We have to be careful here as to what we mean by the term "mere survival." Rand didn't mean "mere" survival in the sense that one survives a few extra days by enduring a painful and terminal illness. She meant a healthy, viable survival. If one pursues that kind of survival, it will lead to happiness. You mentioned idiopathic pain as being worth eliminating, even if it bore no connection to one's survival. But in fact pain is always in one way or another a reflection of damage or injury to the organism. Idiopathic pain is pain with no discernible cause, not pain with no actual cause; and the cause, whatever its nature, undoubtedly reflects some biological disutility that has life impairing consequences, if only because it is the biological function of pain to signal an injury to the organism. I was under the impression that for her what was good for survival reasons was good precisely FOR those reasons, and not BECAUSE that is how one reaches pleasure. Well, it's good for both reasons. It's good for survival reasons, because survival is intimately linked with happiness -- which means that survival and happiness are not too separate issues -- and it's good for eudaimonistic reasons -- because pro-life actions lead to happiness. Also, how is it that you are defining happiness? Clearly, if happiness includes the absense of pain then happiness must be more than simply an emotion. How easy is it to feel an emotion of happiness if you're in physical pain? Optimal happiness would imply an absence of pain, wouldn't it? Am I off the mark somewhere here. Please help me out if you can, because I really want to be able to believe in a philosophy and am afraid that I have found it impossible for me to construct my own ethical system. Well, you seem to be doing pretty well here with your questions, which reflect a perceptive and independent mind. Let's say that you were correct that happiness rather than life is the standard of value. Wouldn't that make you a hedonist of sorts -- someone who believes that happiness instead of life, is the ultimate value? And wouldn't you then have your own ethics? :-)
- Bill
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