Forum Post: Craig Biddle: Ayn Rand's Theory of Rights
Posted 12 years ago on Jan. 12, 2012, 6:48 a.m. EST by darrenlobo
(204)
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Wednesday, January 18, 2012 Time 8:00pm until 9:00pm
Where
On your computer!
Speaker: Craig Biddle Register Here: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/236822994
Wednesday, January 18, 8PM-9PM Eastern/Standard Time
Topic: Ayn Rand's Theory of Rights What are rights—where do they come from—how do we know it? In this webinar, Craig Biddle will present the essentials of Ayn Rand's theory of rights, showing how its principles are derived from perceptual reality; differentiating it from traditional theories, including "God-given" rights, "government-granted" rights, and "natural" rights; and explaining why advocates of liberty must embrace Rand's theory if they wish to succeed in establishing and maintaining freedom
Where? On your Computer
Craig Biddle is the editor of The Objective Standard and the author of Loving Life: The Morality of Self-Interest and the Facts that Support It, a highly concretized, systematic introduction to Ayn Rand's ethics. He is currently writing a book on the principles of rational thinking and the fallacies that are violations of those principles. In addition to writing, he lectures and teaches seminars on ethical and epistemological issues from an Objectivist perspective. Mr. Biddle has spoken at universities across the country, including Stanford, Duke, Tufts, UVA, UCLA, UM–Wisconsin, and NYU. He regularly lectures at Objectivist conferences as well. His website is www.CraigBiddle.com.
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The superwoman collected SS after all of her BS enough said...
Yawn:
"...Rand had commented that people who are forced to fund government programs are NOT immoral for taking the benefits for which they paid. For instance, it is not wrong for people to attend government schools, which are funded with their tax monies, whether they like it or not. They have to start with a false premise: that Rand said receiving Social Security, that one is forced to pay for, was wrong. Without that false claim they have no charge of hypocrisy. They pretend she took a position she never took and then accuse her of violating the position she didn't take.
"In 1966 Rand's Objectivist Newsletter said that not collecting from programs that one is forced to finance would be wrong. It said:
http://freestudents.blogspot.com/2011/10/lying-about-ayn-rand-and-social.html
Nice try but no guitar.
Like I said she took the money....under her husband's name to boot. Enough with a selfish women who praises serial killers. Humans are social animals, Ayn Rand has no clue about human nature. Grow up and help your fellow man.
Your idea of helping your fellow man is to steal from them & force them to do things they see as against their best interest. I'll pass on your dictatorship, thank you.
Remember, humans are social animals not pawns on a chessboard. They need to be able to freely relate to each other. Look how all the regulations & taxes have gotten us into the mess we're in.
Stealing??? Give me a break....
I'm surprised there is no comments on her sexual tendencies
Me too, but aren't they irrelevant?
Actually I think they are. What I like and what you like and what she liked is her business. Its totally personal.
Ayn Rand is a pathetic excuse for a philosopher.
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And is that just because you don't agree with her?
It's because she spent her entire life pissed off because had there not been a revolution she would have been set. Her entire outlook is based on justifying the bourgeois element leading up to the revolution which she believed to be her rightful place.
And what does that have to do with being a poor philosopher?
That is her philosophy.
Actually you've completely messed that up but its hard to argue the logic of, "I don't agree with her so she must be wrong and a complete idiot"
Which is why it's 99.9% of the responses here.
Yes? Its not a great argument.
It's not a great argument. It's completely illogical. But that is why it's "hard to argue" -which is why they use it.
Yeah you're totally right. Its like arguing religion.
Your just fucking stupid. Sit down and shut the fuck up. You and your dumb ass spouse. You are both moronic pieces of shift.
Kings, I liked Ayn Rand at one time. I was really into her because she was the only female philosopher. Read her stuff and read about her and then read about the revolution. You will see it.
Psychopathy is NOT Philosophy !!! + See : http://occupywallst.org/forum/the-real-ayn-rand/ !! fiat lux !
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says she was a philosopher.
Quoting from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ayn-rand/ :
If ethics is the branch of philosophy concerned with practice, then in a sense all of Rand's philosophy is ethics, for Rand stresses “the supremacy of actual living over all other considerations,” and insists that philosophy needs to be “brought up to the realm of actual living”—adding “I say intentionally brought up to it, not down” (Journal entry for 15 May 1934, p. 72; in Rand 1997, p. 73). Consequently, Rand regularly concerns herself with the practical implications and social relevance not only of moral and political philosophy, but likewise of the seemingly more arcane strata of metaphysics and epistemology—as when she identifies errors in concept-formation as one of the roots of racism, or mind-body dualism as a root of the dichotomy between economic and personal freedom. This approach likewise reflects Rand's emphasis on integrating each piece of information into the total context of one's knowledge, and her consequent hostility to compartmentalization.
Rand's conviction of the vital practical importance of abstract theory may help to explain the passionately polemical nature of her philosophical writing, which some readers find inspiring and others hyperbolic and off-putting—though Rand's admiration for Nietzsche, as well as her having been educated in a Marxist-Leninist atmosphere, may also play a role. Rand also tended—perhaps owing in part to the same two influences—to regard philosophical errors as revelatory of the psychological flaws of their authors.
We can disagree with her philosophy, but that doesn't mean she didn't offer one.
I agree with her being a philosopher, but the main critique of her work is the is-ought gap. "The fact that a living entity is, determines what it ought to do".
http://aynrandcontrahumannature.blogspot.com/2007/12/ayn-rand-and-isought-problem.html
I do Not regard "The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy" as the last word on this subject and re."in a sense all of Rand's philosophy is ethics" ... hmmm !!!
'Ethics' essentially revolves around the notion that Human Beings as "Social Creatures" have morality and rules re. 'Society and The Social Sphere'. Rand was an Extreme Antisocial-ist (& Anti-Socialist - which helps explain her appeal to The U$A, body-politic !!). Rand hates any notion of society and regards Altruism as a sickness !!
The damage that this lunatic and her so called 'philosophy' has done to The U$A and US Society is incalculable and still playing out (cf. her long term protege, Alan Greenspan. etc !!). Her so called 'Objectivism' can only really be seen and judged through the prism of her own Objective Psychopathy !
radix malorum est cupiditas ...
Lets talk about Greenspan. He wrote in the '60s about the gold standard then went on to run the fiat currency Fed. He abandoned free markets & Objectivism long ago:
Alan Greenspan vs. Ayn Rand and Freedom 7 November 2008 Harry Binswanger
The connection of Alan Greenspan to Ayn Rand, decades ago, is being used dishonestly to blacken her name and her ideas. http://www.capitalismmagazine.com/markets/alan-greenspan/5353-Alan-Greenspan-Ayn-Rand-and-Freedom.html
No it was the govt's intervention in the economy that tanked it not some non existent free market.
I got my economic mis-education from Mr. Greenspan in the early 60's. He still can't understand his failure. I was also well acquainted with Nathaniel Brandon, her protege about the time of their split.Interesting, in a clinical sense. It is funny to hear you talking about her like she is dead. Oh, she is dead. Then, what am I doing here? Never mind.
OK Shadzz66, get a grip. Rand was an advocate of limited govt not an anarchist. Both us anarchists & the limited govt types understand the need for social cooperation. What socialists don't get is that the only way to have a well functioning society is for human relationships to be voluntary. All libertarians, anarchists & the limited govt types, agree on the non initiation of force. That is the core of libertarianism. This is where socialists fail, they advocate the use of govt force against peaceful people:
"...the society of free individuals is not a society of unconnected, isolated individuals — "atomistic man," as the critics of liberty sometime refer to him. As another 19th-century French classical liberal, Count Destutt Tracy, concisely expressed it, "The social state ... is our natural state .... Society is ... a continual series of exchanges ... in which the two contracting parties always both gain; consequently society is an uninterrupted succession of advantages, unceasingly renewed for all its members."
The exchange relationships that emerge among free men in civil society, however, should not be viewed as meaning only those involving the trading of what is narrowly thought of as "goods and services" within the institutions of the marketplace. The network of exchange relationships include community endeavors, religious and church activities, cultural associations and clubs, professional organizations and charitable callings. Indeed, any relationship in which men find that they have common interests, goals or shared beliefs becomes the foundation for the emergence of exchange. And these exchanges involve agreed-upon terms for association and collaboration for mutual benefit and the enhancement of the quality, character and meaning of life for each participant.
Every free man belongs to numerous voluntary associations and institutions in the civil society. He forms or joins new ones as new interests and ideals develop during his life, and withdraws from others as his inclinations and circumstances change; and the associations and institutions to which individuals belong modify their goals and structures over time, as the members revise their purposes and discover new rules more effective in achieving the ends of the organization." http://www.fff.org/freedom/0293b.asp
dl : I don't like Rand At All - but I've got much more time for you and your thought provoking blog ( http://theinternationallibertarian.blogspot.com/2010/09/principled-nonvoting-beginning-of.html ) and in the spirit of the 23rd Post (cf Chaotic Numbers!) and ''free association' and the exchange of ideas, I offer two further {self-explanatory} links : http://zinelibrary.info/ and http://www.lucyparsonsproject.org/ !!
.+ A tune for you : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzNjmIWbns4 , coz "anger is an energy" ;-)
verbum satis sapienti ...
but nothing compared to the damage and destruction that the collectivist "fairness" ideal of the liberal quasi-marxists beginning with FDR and continuing through LBJ and today...those who think you can reward entitlement mentality, inadequacy, sloth, and idleness and end up with anything but larger shares of it
OWS would have fit nicely into the plot of Atlas Shrugged, and would have been well favored by Wesley Mouch.....