Ari Armstrong > Quotes

“Certainly Rand does not intentionally introduce dueling moral standards. As we’ve seen, Rand and her defenders can come up with arguments about how various values that do not seem to support survival “really” do so, if we squint hard enough. I just don’t think those arguments are usually convincing. So, in effect, the “man qua [90] man” standard does serve to introduce values into Rand’s moral system that do not fundamentally support survival.”
― Ari Armstrong, What's Wrong with Ayn Rand's Objectivist Ethics

“Because we can experience certain things as ends in themselves, we have good reason to care about our continued survival, at least in most contexts, as a means to those ends. So Rand is correct that many of the values that we pursue are means to survival. But she gets the fundamental relationship wrong. Life in terms of survival is not the end to which all other values are means; survival is the end of many values (such as nutritious food) and in turn a means to things that we value as ends in themselves.”
― Ari Armstrong, What's Wrong with Ayn Rand's Objectivist Ethics

“The actions of living organisms, even of non-conscious organisms such as plants, are goal-directed.”85 But I disagree with him (and with Rand) that the ultimate goal of those actions generally is the maintenance of the organism’s life; it is instead the furtherance of the organism’s genes.”
― Ari Armstrong, What's Wrong with Ayn Rand's Objectivist Ethics