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Steve, I am making several related points. The first is that if a proper system of ethics for an entity has to be consistent with that entity's nature, then what that entity's nature is has to be discovered empirically, not in an a priori, Kantian way. Taking the example of the two types of salmon (and there are also other examples of different morphological types, like overwintering insects versus ephemerals) I am arguing that it is possible that there are different types of humans who, by their natures, vary more or less significantly from the "standard" human form in an ethically relevant way.
Second, I am not trying, a priori to prove that there is, for example, a sociopath type. But I am saying that Rand greatly overgeneralized from herself and from her own theories of herself to demonstrate what is normal and rational in humans. (This is apparent in some of her aesthetic writing, in her theory of femininity and masculinity, and in the testimony of her biographers.) Rand had a bizarrely rationalistic and abiological theory of "premises" as biological and psychological causes. (Again, look to her biographers, her notion that Nathaniel's lack of sexual attraction and Frank's mental decline derived from mistaken premises, her supposed reaction to the news that she had cancer with the objection that she only had good premises.) She is perfectly correct that, say, as an adult, one will react with anger to news that an injustice such as the acquittal of O. J. Simpson has been perpetrated, and that this is based on one's moral premises. But developmentally it is absurd to say that the reason a baby cries when you take something out of his hands is because of his philosophical approval of property rights.
A proper, biologically sound theory of values would have to take into account the genetically and environmentally influenced differences between individuals and also look at humans as the products of development. One cannot form a proper theory of value by taking adults and their desires as givens. Look again at Rand's comments on homosexuality. She doesn't look at the fact that sexuality is hormonally mediated. She doesn't look at homosexuality historically, or in the context of our relatives the bonobos. She starts with the a priori notion that our desires result from our premises. She notes that homosexual desires are foreign to her, that she is the paragon of rationality, and that homosexual desires must therefore be irrational, and therefore based on false premises, and therefore, "frankly, immoral." (Rand can of course be personally forgiven for largely taking the view of her times as given.)
Rand is being rationalistic here. She is starting with a notion of human nature, divorced from certain concrete individuals. She realizes that humans have to be divided into two classes, man and woman, or else she cannot derive her theory of Romantic love. So she splits man into man and man-worshiper. And then she stops. The only further distinction she makes is between heroes and bums, and between man-worshipers and sluts. Rand makes no room for observation of individual variation. Her version of femininity is universal femininity. Is it possible that some people, perhaps genetically, are predisposed to find the smell of one sex or the other or both as attractive? (Indeed, we know that even one's impression of the taste of broccoli is biochemically motivated, not determined by one's premises.) Is it possible that biology will provide us with certain urges no matter what our premises are? Dozens if not hundreds of homosexuals sought therapy under Branden and others to fix the "premises" which made them unable to live according to what Objectivism held to be proper to masculine nature.
 Was the theory wrong, or were the people "broken"? Rand's thoughts on matters of human variation were at best confused. Told that the ballet dancer Rudolph Nureyev was homosexual, she objected "But he's so well endowed!"
Kant's ethical theory held that in order for an act to be properly moral it should be such that if it were described abstractly you could make that abstraction into a universal moral law. For instance, one might say that it is wrong in a certain instance to steal because one could universalize that description to the injunction that no one should never steal. The problem is that there are an infinite number of ways to describe any particular act abstractly. What if technically one has to trespass on someone's land in order to avoid being hit by a runaway bus. Is the relevant maxim that one should never trespass except in case of immanent vehicle collision? The results are absurd. Kant is trying to derive morality from floating abstractions.
Rand's system, in order to avoid floating abstractions, has to view the notion of man as a volitionally rational being and the virtues derived therefrom as an ethical superstructure which in an adult serves as the integrating cap stone to the edifice which is his system of values. The individual structure itself is built from the bottom up as a person develops from infancy through childhood to adolescence and maturity. (Parental guidance is the scaffolding that holds up a child's value system.) The baby, for instance, will, without instruction or prior belief, seek out the physical comfort of a hug. (Perhaps Ed will call the baby an implicit hedonist, but I can assure you the infant will not have read Aristippus of Cyrene.*) The adolescent will discover sexual pleasures. If he integrates those with attraction to women he will build one type of structure, perhaps, to continue the metaphor a round tower, while if with men, perhaps a square tower. If he fails to integrate his desires as he matures he will build an unstable structure, a tower neither round nor square, like some congressman advocating "family values" and fornicating in public toliets. His life will come crumbling down because as he built it upward he never developed a coherent structural plan.
The type of structure one builds may be determined by the biological foundation one has and the early choices one makes long before one ever realizes that one has to place a capstone on the roof or it will fail. Perhaps certain types of people will build different types of structures, round and square towers, without the ability once the work has begun, to switch from one to the other. A system of ethics should not be a school of architecture that says one can only build round towers, and that those who, occassionaly, build square towers are evil. Ethics is anterior to the individual, not prior.
*This, Ed, is mockery.
(Edited by Ted Keer on 11/19, 5:42pm)
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