/lit/ - Literature

>>19776080
Her meta-ethics is correct but flawed and causes confusion. The formulation of life being the standard of value is incorrect because the conceptualization of 'life' is too broad in including non-sapient life and sapient life (humans). She, unfortunately, utilized a rationalism by providing a definition of life and working from there. In A Companion to Ayn Rand, there is an annotation somewhere about her definition of life and it says that she told Harry Biswagner that her definition wasn't meant to be an official one. It leads objectivists to argue on behalf of all life that it exists to survive, that the purpose of morality is to merely extend one's survival. She doesn't argue this as her morality promotes adhering and coexisting with reality through productivity but her meta-ethics leads there. Life doesn't exist to survive but to spread its genes, and a good example is a male praying mantis being eaten alive. Having sex to die isn't furthering its survival. Talking about praying mantises is dumb but this is the failure of using 'life' as the standard of value. It also leads to another mistake which is the immortal robot. She argues that you need a dichotomy of life and death for values to exist, and she gives an analogy of an indestructible robot. She then outright claims that such a robot could value just because. This is objectively wrong because you *can* imagine it. So what's the error? It's that sapience is the standard of value for sapient life and that life is what creates values. An immortal robot can find value by acting like Roark, making architecture or any other creative endeavour.

The praying matis problem and the immortal robot are fundamental flaws of her meta-ethics and changing sapience as the standard of value and that sapience (a word she mysteriously never uses in her entire body of work, I checked) is what allows rationality. Ayn Rand also failed to properly formulate that there are states of survival and states of living when one's cannot conceptualize because they have no liberty. She argues this at points with morality ending at the barrel of a gun and Nathaniel Branden has an essay on Emergencies but it's never formulated and it's a crucial point because it details why liberty is important in relation to choice and happiness. She tried to argue that you only survive by being rational and that's the mistake. You *can* survive but only in the short term. By being rational, you don't survive but live. It's why people think she argues a survival morality when she didn't intend to but it can be read that way. She also makes a rationalism by saying the brain is our tool for survival when we can also throw tools and run for long distances which doesn't require rationality. The point is that not thinking helps one's survival short term while thinking adheres to reality to live in the long term.

In all respect, while her morality was correct, her meta-ethics was well-intentioned but badly formulated.