i only got a few comments deep into in that reddit thread u linked, but i wanna respond already anyway, because it’s past midnight and i’m too eepy to look deeper.
the people in the thread seem to be talking about a kind of selfish egoism, which advocates for the abuse of other peoples altruism, attempting to domniate and abuse, without giving.
i don’t think this is the only egoism there is. i don’t follow anarchist egoism myself, and i did not look super much into it yet, but according to the surface level information i have about it, it proposes that it is in peoples best self interest to cooperate, and practice solidarity, and to fight hierarchies and domination because it is the best way to ensure our maximal and sustainable freedom, as well as allow us to sleep at night.
i think it can be argued that this is still not entirely internally consistent, but i think it is definitely a moral framework i can’t say much against.
But just to share my 2c:
“Rational self interest” is not Randian egoism. It’s simply an acknowledgement that we are all animals seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, and that one would be not only irrational but going against one’s fundamental biology to attempt to act contrary to that fundamental axiom.
I think this view has a lot of explanatory power, and it gives me a mental framework for giving other people grace: when they do things that hurt me, they are likely responding from a place of trauma or pain, and so I should attribute their behavior to those causes rather than assume they acted with calculated intention.
As for the “inconsistencies” with that view, well - I don’t think that the world would be a worse place if everyone behaved this way. In fact, I greatly look forward to a world where everyone is educated, has access to mental healthcare, and has the self-awareness to interact with one another rationally rather than reactionarily. This won’t solve the problem of some people simply lacking empathy, but it will go a long way towards fixing society’s ills.
Yeah there’s Stirnerite egoism which is basically "in a hierarchy I can’t guarantee a good position for myself so it’s better to oppose it and pursue a free society of equals with a high enough floor I don’t mind being on it.
yet that’s the grounding of major schools of ethical thought like Emmanuel Kant and Carol Gilligan. i’m actually not sure where your statement is coming from in that from a long term perspective, the most selfish egotistical thing you can do is act and work in a manner that will bring about a world in which everyone’s needs are met. even when put to test in the crucible of crisis, we find over and over again that the idea that every individual is just another reflection of you helps us build more robust mutual aid networks that address systems failures better than any authority can
Ack! Sorry it’s been a few years since ethics was my primary academic focus. It’s mostly been software engineering of late so I’ll take the L on misspelling Immanuel. However, I am not trying to claim an ethics rooted in naturalism in the first place. It’s more consequentialist/deongological in nature in the first place (which by its very nature puts me at odds with the origin of this meme as I do not believe moral development maps out in praxis). However the root between Kant, Gilligan, and even Mills still remains that the better the world you exist in and work towards, the better off you will be. In fact you’ll find that many of the different ways of phrasing the golden rules are ultimately driving at that.
Either way though it’s clear we fundamentally disagree on the root level of what it means to determine what ought and oughtn’t be done. I believe we must make a world that works for everyone (and I do very much like Kant’s universal law phrasing of the golden rule), and I’m actually not all that clear on what your fundamental root is, just that you consider me to be a “do your own research type” which… Y’know kinda bums me out as someone who dedicated himself to getting educated in doing the right thing and spent a lot of hours reading scholarly journals on ethics and writing papers about what right and wrong is.
I’d actually really like to know what philosophers you like and what your ethical grounding is because it’s clear you think I don’t get it at all, and that means there’s probably an avenue for growth for me. For reference, when I submitted my ethical framework for peer review, the thinkers I cited the most were Gilligan, Nussbaum, Marx, and Daniel Clement’s (sorry about the misspelling, I can’t do accents on this keyboard) collection of essays on Algonquin societal structures (Native American philosophy is organized much differently from how European philosophy is and that’s still something I’m working to better understand my shortcomings in)
Doesn’t look like you’re helping that. All you’ve achieved so far is having yelled at a bunch of people in a barbaric display of anger seasoned with superficially intellectual vocabulary and thereby alienated them from the flavor of intellectual inquiry that you purport to hold dear.
i only got a few comments deep into in that reddit thread u linked, but i wanna respond already anyway, because it’s past midnight and i’m too eepy to look deeper.
the people in the thread seem to be talking about a kind of selfish egoism, which advocates for the abuse of other peoples altruism, attempting to domniate and abuse, without giving.
i don’t think this is the only egoism there is. i don’t follow anarchist egoism myself, and i did not look super much into it yet, but according to the surface level information i have about it, it proposes that it is in peoples best self interest to cooperate, and practice solidarity, and to fight hierarchies and domination because it is the best way to ensure our maximal and sustainable freedom, as well as allow us to sleep at night.
i think it can be argued that this is still not entirely internally consistent, but i think it is definitely a moral framework i can’t say much against.
Seems like you beat me to it. 😄
But just to share my 2c: “Rational self interest” is not Randian egoism. It’s simply an acknowledgement that we are all animals seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, and that one would be not only irrational but going against one’s fundamental biology to attempt to act contrary to that fundamental axiom.
I think this view has a lot of explanatory power, and it gives me a mental framework for giving other people grace: when they do things that hurt me, they are likely responding from a place of trauma or pain, and so I should attribute their behavior to those causes rather than assume they acted with calculated intention.
As for the “inconsistencies” with that view, well - I don’t think that the world would be a worse place if everyone behaved this way. In fact, I greatly look forward to a world where everyone is educated, has access to mental healthcare, and has the self-awareness to interact with one another rationally rather than reactionarily. This won’t solve the problem of some people simply lacking empathy, but it will go a long way towards fixing society’s ills.
Yeah there’s Stirnerite egoism which is basically "in a hierarchy I can’t guarantee a good position for myself so it’s better to oppose it and pursue a free society of equals with a high enough floor I don’t mind being on it.
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Honestly the only one who seems like the “philosophical flat earther” here is you.
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yet that’s the grounding of major schools of ethical thought like Emmanuel Kant and Carol Gilligan. i’m actually not sure where your statement is coming from in that from a long term perspective, the most selfish egotistical thing you can do is act and work in a manner that will bring about a world in which everyone’s needs are met. even when put to test in the crucible of crisis, we find over and over again that the idea that every individual is just another reflection of you helps us build more robust mutual aid networks that address systems failures better than any authority can
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Ack! Sorry it’s been a few years since ethics was my primary academic focus. It’s mostly been software engineering of late so I’ll take the L on misspelling Immanuel. However, I am not trying to claim an ethics rooted in naturalism in the first place. It’s more consequentialist/deongological in nature in the first place (which by its very nature puts me at odds with the origin of this meme as I do not believe moral development maps out in praxis). However the root between Kant, Gilligan, and even Mills still remains that the better the world you exist in and work towards, the better off you will be. In fact you’ll find that many of the different ways of phrasing the golden rules are ultimately driving at that.
Either way though it’s clear we fundamentally disagree on the root level of what it means to determine what ought and oughtn’t be done. I believe we must make a world that works for everyone (and I do very much like Kant’s universal law phrasing of the golden rule), and I’m actually not all that clear on what your fundamental root is, just that you consider me to be a “do your own research type” which… Y’know kinda bums me out as someone who dedicated himself to getting educated in doing the right thing and spent a lot of hours reading scholarly journals on ethics and writing papers about what right and wrong is.
I’d actually really like to know what philosophers you like and what your ethical grounding is because it’s clear you think I don’t get it at all, and that means there’s probably an avenue for growth for me. For reference, when I submitted my ethical framework for peer review, the thinkers I cited the most were Gilligan, Nussbaum, Marx, and Daniel Clement’s (sorry about the misspelling, I can’t do accents on this keyboard) collection of essays on Algonquin societal structures (Native American philosophy is organized much differently from how European philosophy is and that’s still something I’m working to better understand my shortcomings in)
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why are you so mad?
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Doesn’t look like you’re helping that. All you’ve achieved so far is having yelled at a bunch of people in a barbaric display of anger seasoned with superficially intellectual vocabulary and thereby alienated them from the flavor of intellectual inquiry that you purport to hold dear.
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