January, 2010

Bravo Neera

by Douglas B. Rasmussen
The Conversation
January 29th, 2010

I think Neera is correct to say in response to Michael that there are “a whole lot of other premises.”  This is why it is important to take Rand as making insightful suggestions, but not as offering a finished product.  But if you think any and every version of naturalism in ethics must fail, then [...]

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This and That

by Douglas B. Rasmussen
The Conversation
January 29th, 2010

Rod: Doug thinks that the natural harmony of interests that the eudaimonist tradition largely embraces requires an agent-neutral conception of the good. Neera: Doug is right that the omission of the virtue of practical wisdom from Rand’s discussion is an important one. But I don’t find it surprising: she was not a systematic philosopher, and [...]

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Yes, We Can Get Along — and We Can Even Agree Quite a Bit!

by Neera K. Badhwar
The Conversation
January 29th, 2010

Thanks to Doug, Roderick, and Mike for further food for thought. Starting with the most recent: Mike is right that you can’t go from “Living things face an alternative of existence or non-existence” to ethical egoism. But of course Rand introduces a whole lot of other premises to get there: all living things, including the human [...]

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Clarifying What Hardly Anyone Would Find Plausible

by Michael Huemer
The Conversation
January 29th, 2010

I can’t dispute with Neera about what she finds initially plausible. But I want to clarify what I thought hardly anyone would find plausible. I didn’t mean neo-Aristotelian egoism per se. I meant the argument in “The Objectivist Ethics” that, as I think, starts from “Living things face an alternative of existence or non-existence,” and [...]

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Can We All Get Along?

by Roderick Long
The Conversation
January 29th, 2010

I’m in considerable agreement with what all three of my fellow symposiasts have said.  For example, we all seem to agree in finding both an instrumentalist strand and a constitutive, Aristotelian strand in Rand’s ethics, and we likewise agree in finding the latter more attractive and defensible than the former. My chief disagreement with Mike, [...]

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Omitting Practical Wisdom

by Neera K. Badhwar
The Conversation
January 28th, 2010

Doug is right that the omission of the virtue of practical wisdom from Rand’s discussion is an important one. But I don’t find it surprising: she was not a systematic philosopher, and she omitted to discuss a whole lot of important things, such as generosity, kindness, forgiveness, and charity. Of course, there are philosophical reasons [...]

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Survival, Flourishing, and Intuition

by Michael Huemer
The Conversation
January 28th, 2010

I guess I will comment on the “survival vs. flourishing” debate. This is, briefly, how it seems to me. 1.There probably is no answer to the question, which is correct as an interpretation of Rand. Rand probably did not have a settled position herself, and thought different things at different times. 2. The important question, [...]

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Rand’s Philosophic Thought: A Response to Professors Long, Huemer, and Badhwar

by Douglas B. Rasmussen
The Conversation
January 27th, 2010

Towards the end of my lead essay I state: If there is any single reason for why Rand’s views should be worthy of the attention they are currently receiving, it is this: philosophical principles matter, and persons and cultures that ignore them do so at their peril.  This is the basis for the continued appeal [...]

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